TRANSLATION MATTHEW 21:18

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Now early in the morning as he led the way back to the city, he was hungry; and seeing a single fig tree beside the way, went to it and found nothing on it but leaves. “Never, for all time,” he said to it, “will any fruit come from you!” And instantly the fig tree withered.

Seeing this the pupils were astonished, asking, “How did the fig tree wither in an instant?”

Jesus answered them, “Amen, I tell you, if you have trust and do not hesitate, not only will you do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be moved from your place and dumped in the sea,’ it will happen. And all that you ask for in prayer, if you have trust, you will hold in your hands.”

Matthew and Mark present this story as an incident while Luke makes it a parable. Matthew changes the outwardly. strange detail in Mark, that it was not the season for figs, and legitimises Jesus’ desire for nourishment. I think the philosopher Bertrand Russell used the story as an example of Jesus’ petty spleen.

It is of course designed by Matthew as part of his examination of Jesus’ ‘magic’.How can he heal, how can he feed? In the Jerusalem section of the gospel, Matthew makes it evident that the answer is trust; in Jesus, in his father in heaven. Without trust, there will be no ‘magic.’

Trust is revealed as an essential component of Matthew’ magical realism. His story of Jesus is a story of and from trust. The magic is inseparable from trust, as readers will see when the trust is absent. The Jesus he presents in the Galilee section is the hero of the poor and powerless; The Jesus of the rich and powerful is a defeated man upon an execution stake.

The ‘mountain’ that might be dumped in the sea, is probably the Temple Mount, destroyed by the Romans in response to what Jesus’ followers will have regarded as fake Messianic violence in CE 70.

In view of his own fate, how could Jesus tell his pupils that all their prayers would be answered? In Jesus’ case what he had in his hands was nails. We need to follow Matthew’s answer carefully.