Who Flipped My Table?
Why do people love when Jesus flipped tables? They should be scared to death.
Is it not written,
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?
But you have made it a den of robbers.”
-Mark 5:17
There are few verses in the gospels that I really don’t know what to do with. The first one is Jesus meeting the Syrophoenician Woman. The second one is where Jesus cleans the temple. Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman is challenging because he calls this woman a “dog.” Why does it seem like Jesus called the woman a racial slur? What was the point of this story?
Jesus cleansing the temple also brings up many questions. Where the Syrophoenician Woman focused on a Jesus that seemed racist, Jesus cleansing the temple shows an angry Jesus, a fuming Jesus. What does it mean that Jesus was angry? What does it mean that he was so violent? What does this story tell us about God?
I’ve preached on this story many times and each time it seems I feel like I only understand a part of it. Seminary and further study allowed me to understand the passage better, but even with that knowledge it still unsettles me.I try to explain it, but the questions remain stuck in the back of my brain: why did Jesus respond so violently?
What’s even more puzzling than seeing Jesus fly into a rage is how modern readers react to the story. Most of the time, people try to imagine Jesus grabbing a whip and flipping tables in some modern setting. Maybe you’ve seen the meme of a classic painting of the Cleaning of the Temple where the logos of large corporations replace the heads of the fleeing merchants.
Whenever somebody talks about Jesus cleansing the temple listen to where the speaker is in the story. More often than not they are not among the merchants. They aren’t on the sidelines. Where are they? They aren’t in the crowd and they aren’t among the moneychangers. Usually, they are in Jesus’s shoes flipping over the tables of injustice that they see in their own world.
The problem with this text or actually, how people interpret the text is that it is focused on others that we don’t like. God is focused on our enemies, while we are left blameless, fighting God’s good fight.
But what if that isn’t where we’re supposed to be? What if we are the money changers? What if we are at times standing in judgment just like the money changers? Do we need Jesus to come in a cleanse our hearts and minds?
It’s far easier and fun to be on Jesus’ side flipping over the tables of the people we don’t like. We want them to get their comeuppance.
Jesus isn’t just flipping over the tables of people we don’t like. Why do we think Jesus is just going to stop there? Do we really think that we are exempt? Jesus is a disruptor. Jesus comes and flips the tables that we like he comes into our lives which we might think is all put together and pretty and starts tearing up our hearts.
This story is considered by some to be a “go and do likewise” kind of text. We should be following Jesus and overturning the tables of sin and greed in our own world. It’s used to justify left-wing agendas, but it is also increasingly being used to justify right-wing agendas such as the mob violence that occurred at the US Capitol on January 6.
We forget that Jesus is God and that there are something that isn’t a “go and do likewise” because we can’t do what God does. Jesus grabbed a whip because what was going on was such an offense and what was going on was an act of judgment. God through Jesus was acting to judge the people using God’s temple to make money instead of using it to worship God. It was never intended for us to excuse our bad behavior.
Last year Veggie Tales founder and podcaster Phil Vischer caused some controversy when he said that if the table-flipping Jesus is your favorite Jesus, you’ve probably lost the plot.
So maybe when we hear this story, we shouldn’t put ourselves in Jesus’ shoes. Because we aren’t Jesus. In fact, this flipping table isn’t what defines Jesus. What does define Jesus is not a whip, but a cross. Jesus decides to give up his life instead of, well, flipping tables.
Leave the tables alone and seek to follow Jesus, not the Jesus flipping tables, but the one who was obedient to death on a cross.