Mark 7 - Poles Apart

When you’re a kid, you always want to have something cool at your house that no one else has.  That way you can invite people over to show off.

For me, it was our rope swing.  Shortly after moving into our new home, my dad had climbed up and secured a rope to this big cherry tree next to our house.  The swing was perfectly positioned so that we kids could climb up on the porch deck, grab onto the rope, and sail off into the air.  The tree swing became a significant asset in the social currency of young boys.

This particular tree stood out among all the others in our yard—the thing was massive, gnarled and imposing—like something you’d expect to find on the soundstage of a Lord of the Rings movie.  It was an impressive sight, especially around springtime when blossoms came out all around its branches.

But if you were to look closer, not all was as it seemed.  Folded into its impressive coils of bark, you could see great gashes in the wood.  If you got close enough to peer inside them, you would see quite plainly that the great cherry tree… was hollow.  Termites and decay had ravaged it from the inside.  And though this tree appeared to bloom every season, in reality these blossoms came from another healthy, neighboring tree.  The blooms from this tree would shoot up and cover the dead branches of its neighbor, making it appear as though the old cherry tree was still flourishing. 

But it was dead and empty on the inside.  Well, dead and empty but for one exception: it was full of snakes.  We would regularly find their discarded skins in and around the tree that had become their home.  And then one day after a windstorm, half of the tree collapsed onto our lawn.

This is the kind of life Jesus insists we are to guard against in the first part Mark chapter 7: a life that might look impressive on the outside, but is really filled with snakes and decay that will all come out in the end.  This life might look like social currency now, but it will leave us empty in the end.

Reuben Smith