Friends: It is a mix of joy, faith, and gratitude, not self-inflicted misery, that defines a Christian life. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1005

February 17, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Sack Cloth and Ashes

By Bob Walters

“It will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.” – Jesus, leveling a condemnation at Capernaum, Matthew 11:24

You know the story well. John the Baptist is in prison, not exactly condemned but knowing Herod wants him dead for criticizing Herod’s marriage to Herodius.

Contemplating his own imminent fate, John sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:3). This question leads Jesus – who isn’t yet ready to say, “Yes, it’s me” – to recount His own miracles, and identify several of those who have seen miracles but not believed.

This included the town of Capernaum on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus performed much of his ministry. As a shortcut, I asked A.I., “Why was Jesus mad at Capernaum?” A.I.’s answer: “...because of [Capernaum’s] unrepentant hearts, their stubborn unbelief, and indifference despite being the primary location of his ministry and witnessing the most ‘mighty works.’ Despite being treated as ‘his own city,’ the town failed to believe or repent.” Sodom, you see, didn’t know Jesus; Capernaum did.

It is worth reading the rest of Matthew 11:1-24 as Jesus speaks to the gathered crowd, noting the unmistakable and famous condemnation of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18, 19) and that it will be worse for Capernaum. (John’s ultimate fate, his beheading, took place at the hilltop palace of Herod Antipas at Machaerus, east of the Dead Sea in Jordan, approximately A.D. 30, is recorded in Matthew 14:1-12 and Mark 6:14-29.)

What Capernaum was facing, and what every Christian knows, is that once the presence and truth of Jesus have been revealed to a person – and His presence and truth are rejected – woe to the unbeliever and the unrepentant. None of us is exactly sure how God’s grace and mercy work for those who have never heard the word of God or encountered Jesus. But Jesus had lived, preached, and performed miracles there, and to paraphrase many Bible verses, the people of Capernaum “believed Him not.”

Our greatest personal gift is to know Jesus, believe He is the Christ, accept His grace and love, and live in repentance – renewed thinking – knowing our own sin but also trusting God’s forgiveness. “Sack cloth and ashes” is the Bible’s way of signaling our own sorrow and humility, and our discipline of repentance. It indicates our low moments.

Yet I am sure Jesus does not want us to live that way: Our joy is our strength.

We examine the life of Jesus, the very few of his years we know about, and despite His looming fate Jesus lived what I perceive to be – what I hope was – a life of joy. It seems that from the young age of 12 Jesus knew who He was. And at the start of His ministry in his late 20s, we see signals that He knew the tasks, obedience, and crucifixion ahead.

Incarnate Jesus is God become man.  What God made “very good” in His own image – humanity – Jesus is God’s perfect image and visitation into that now fallen and imperfect creation. There was a scene in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ movie (2004) of Jesus as a young carpenter laughing with his mother Mary. While that is a movie I never want to see again, the imagined image of Jesus knowing moments of joy, despite being a “man of sorrows,” gives me comfort, even if it is a made-up vignette of cinematography.

This week, on Ash Wednesday, some Christian denominations begin the observance of Lent, 40 days of fasting and prayer ending on Resurrection Sunday, Easter. The celebration typically involves “giving up” – sacrificing – some favored thing, but must properly be met with renewed focus and prayer on the gifts we have received.

Despite the “sack cloth and ashes,” we honor Jesus by being joyous for His gift.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) continually states his belief that repentance reaches far beyond behaviors and into spiritual and intellectual transformation: Think like a Christian.

Friends: What did the cursed fig tree ever do to Jesus? Let’s discuss. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #955

March 4, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Withering Curse

By Bob Walters

“In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from its roots.” – Mark 11:20, said Tuesday morning, of the fig tree Jesus cursed Monday evening

Jesus is much more known for healing things than cursing and destroying things, but here we have Jesus Tuesday morning of the first “Holy Week” with a dead fig tree.

What did the tree do to Him to become “withered from the roots,” i.e., dead?

This is a story / parable that initially mystified me in my early days of Bible study 20 years ago.  But with the pre-Easter season of Lent upon us – Ash Wednesday is this week – let’s go over the ostensibly simple explanation: the fig tree is a metaphor of and for failed Israel. God’s own nation has shunned Jesus, rewritten the holy laws, and in three more days will have Jesus killed by crucifixion.

The fig tree is what Jesus sees as the present – and future – of Israel.

To back up the story by two days, on Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem to the rousing Hosanna’s of the people already gathered for that week’s Passover Feast. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Mark 11:9). Especially excited were the Galileans from the north, where Jesus had occupied most of his three-year ministry.

But Jesus didn’t ride into Jerusalem as a conquering king on a horse; He rode in humbly sitting on a year-old donkey. And before He mounted the donkey, within sight of Jerusalem, Jesus wept loudly for what Israel had become and what He knew would eventually happen to the Holy City.  Israel had not kept the Law and did not even recognize God’s Son. Did Jesus weep for his own pending doom? Perhaps, but Isaiah 53:7 says that later, facing crucifixion, Jesus was “silent, like a lamb led to slaughter.”

God had made Israel His own centuries before.  Now the Son of God Jesus, recognized by some, entered Jerusalem not to save the Jews from the Romans but to save the Jews – and all humanity – from its sin. Jews simply wanted the Romans dead. For all the scripture and prophecy available and studied, Israel failed to see its need for salvation and didn’t even understand its real problem: its sin and distance from God.

That’s what Jesus came to fix and restore as a perfect sacrifice for the Jews and all mankind. Compared with the world’s fallenness, the Romans were merely a “light and momentary trouble” (2 Corinthians 4:17). God’s will was to restore humanity back into eternal relationship with Him in heaven; all Israel could think about was killing Romans.

The Jews would then plot to have Jesus killed: some because He wasn’t the warrior they had hoped for, many because He revealed the corruption of the Pharisees.

The fig tree, then, is a Godly symbol for the unfruitfulness of Israel. A fig tree has leaves and small, inedible figs in the early growing season, as in springtime’s Passover. That indicates edible fruit will come later. Jesus found none of the small figs on the leafy tree, which signaled there would never be edible fruit from that particular tree.

So, the curse levied on the fig tree was a picture of Jesus’s levy of justice on Israel, over which He had wept bitterly on His approach two days prior. We all know that just as God’s mercy is great, God’s righteousness is absolute. Jesus, by His death and resurrection, would fulfil the Law of Israel and save for eternity all who believe in Him.

Jesus didn’t give a fig about the Romans; He came to save us from ourselves.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that Easter is very late this year, April 20.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) does not feel like a lamb led to slaughter; he feels like an American Christian blessed with freedom, responsibility, opportunity, and hope.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that the 40 days of Lent lasts for 46 calendar days because Sundays don’t count … they are already holy but your “give up” applies.

Spirituality Column #431
February 17, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville

By Bob Walters

On a spring Sunday centuries ago, the impromptu crowd cheered wildly as the peaceful, miracle-working young priest humbly rode into town on a donkey.

Palms and cloaks were laid in the man’s path.  Triumphant voices of common people raised glorious hosannas and hallelujahs.  On this next day after the Saturday Sabbath, the much-talked-about but mysterious Jesus arrived in Jerusalem.  “This is the son of God,” many believed.  “This is our savior; the Christ, the Messiah promised by God and the prophets.”  They knew of His startling teaching many had heard, and His miracles many had seen.

He healed the sick, raised the dead, talked of living water, life everlasting, love, freedom and the Kingdom of God.  Crowds followed Him.  Jesus fed them, loved them, taught them, challenged them, and comforted them.  He routinely, amazingly, outwitted and out-argued the Jewish leaders.  He suffered no fools.  He cried for the weak.

Jesus, sent of and by God, was the end of oppression, the beginning of true life, the fulfillment of freedom and the deliverance of God’s promised salvation.  The cheering people sensed things were about to change.

If only the people themselves hadn’t stayed the same … as before.

Within days the welcoming crowd was a jeering mob clamoring for Jesus’s death.  Unwilling to accept on faith the truth of His divine identity and purpose, people saw only their own fallen, fearful and self-centered desires.  Jesus had not matched their worldly expectations.  How could this miracle-performing Son of God now bleed as a beaten prisoner of both the fearsome religious leaders and the hated Romans?

The crowd possessing such great joy and hope on Sunday had lost its faith by Friday.  Consumed in their abiding self-interest, people did not understand the message Jesus was preparing to die to deliver.  When presented the choice to save Jesus or save Barabbas – the terrorist, traitor and murderer – the people chose Barabbas, the devil they knew instead of the savior they didn’t (Mark 15).

Barabbas – ironically in Hebrew, “bar abbas” means “son of the father” – represents our worldly appetites, sin and fear, personifies mankind’s flair for self-destruction, and is a caricature of our common human inability to discern the true good.  Familiarity beats faith; evil trumps virtue.  We ignore the true Son, Jesus.  We get mad at the true Father, God.  Faith wanes, and we embrace the familiar Barabbas who cannot, will not – and has no desire – to save us.  We obey man’s anger; we shun God’s love.

Tomorrow begins Lent, the season of contemplation and sacrifice leading to Easter and the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, who is so alive among us.

So what?  So is Barabbas.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows Barabbas by many names.