If you can demonstrate your life is “gooder” than that of Jesus… your moral teaching higher… your love and compassion deeper… your integrity greater… your wisdom deeper… then I’ll follow you and your value system Keiran.

The greatest people I can think of, past and present… Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King… are simply following Christ’s example imperfectly, but more clearly than most of us do.

“I would argue that no single entity/system should have sovereignty in our lives.” … and yet you worry what your family would say if you gave away everythying you owned to the poor.

Now we know that Mark knew that Jesus knew that all of his disciples knew - face it we all know that it was not the season for fig’s so this story (despite Kieren’s misunderstanding) is not about one particular plants reproductive system. What is it about?

Once again Mark breaks a story in two around an interupting episode (remember the time Jesus told a parable about telling parables or the synagogue leader who needed faith interupted by a bleeding woman…who had faith) and the interupting episode gives an interetive framework.
Notice how Jesus says “THIS tree” I can imagine Jesus with a wink in his eye nodding to the thing he was really refering to as he says it - but what could it possibly be about if not figs.

“Jesus went into the TEMPLE” (Setting: Dodge Central)
We travel to the heart of the temple relgion/state authority. Jesus finds the temple is fruitless and damns it. Much to the annoyance of the chief priests and the ‘teachers of the Law of Moses’ so the plot to kill Jesus grows.

“If you have faith in God and don’t doubt, you can tell THIS mountain to get up and jump into the sea, and it will.” (Setting: road out of Dodge City)

Sure enough the tree has completely dried up, roots and all. How did that happen? Don’t the kings of this world draw their authoirty from controlling access to health and education and eccononic systems, or ritual cleanness, or social capital, or exchange or even ‘God’ - so what authoirty does Jesus have?

“Faith in God!” Once more Jesus shows he is on about a different approach. Trusting God and not any of these other sorces of power that we may be tempted to have sovereignty in our lives.

“You can tell THIS mountain to get up and jump into the sea, and it will.” Now we know that Mark knew that Jesus knew that all of his disciples knew - face it we all know that moutains of rock and soil don’t levitate through mind control. This story is not (despite Kieren’s misunderstanding) about geo-physic landscaping. What is it about?

Notice how Jesus says “THIS mountain” and not “just any old mountain”.
I can imagine Jesus with a wink in his eye nodding to the thing he was really refering to as he says it - but what could it possibly be about?

I’ll give you one guess which mount Jesus was standing on when he said it…

“As he was walking through the TEMPLE” (Setting: back in Dodge Cetnral) “the chief priests, the nation’s leaders, and the teachers of the Law of Moses came over to him. They asked, “What right do you have to do these things? Who gave you this authority?”

So we are back to the issue of the opening confrontation between Jesus and the spirit of evil represented by those enamoured by the ‘teachers of the Law of Moses’?

And what do you do with people who refuse to see? Tell them a riddle that exposes their own blindness. And the one Jesus uses is … John the baptiser! Yes this story is turning full circle. The way Mark is bringing back his earlier themes and starting to tie them together is very satisfying narratively.

Yes our expectations were correct afterall, Act three is looking like it is about the confrontation betwen the entrenched religious / ecconomic / political authorities based in the temple at the heart of Jerusalem and the authority of Jesus who has prefered to identify with the fringes of society and proclaims a radically different picture of the soverignty of God. Mark has shown us in this passage through the twin signs of the damn fig tree and beach-going mountain that he believes Jesus’ faith in God has the power to beat the temple system — I wonder how that will happen before the book ends?

Feel free to exercise that option any time you wish.

A shame.

And back to the mental dysfunction analogy - do you mean to say you cannot any oddness with the reported behaviour of Jesus? Do you think your theological training has conditioned your viewpoint?