Holy Week Reflection - Overturning

Today, I have been thinking about Jesus overturning tables in the Temple. An indignant response to injustice as the poor were being ripped off for what they needed to come into the presence of God. 

Have we the courage to take action over things that are not fair?

Some of us in the Circuit during Lent had a day looking at the life and theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Just two days after Hitler had seized control of Germany in early 1933, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio sermon in which he criticised the new regime and warned Germans worship of the Fuhrer was dangerous and wrong. “Leaders of offices which set themselves up as gods mock God” his address concluded. But Germany never got to hear those final statements because his microphone was turned off mid transmission.

Sometimes overturning things, the money changers, the power seekers of today is hard. Sometimes the Church has to stand up. However hard that is. I read in a church magazine letter the other day we need to challenge prospective MPs over the next five weeks or so how their policies will bring good to people, all people. Some things need overturning. The trouble is most politicians will blame the other lot for the problem or pretend there isn’t a problem. Perhaps the whole of Parliament needs overturning.

Will we challenge those things that are wrong in our own Temple courts maybe?

What needs overturning in our church this very day and us making a fuss about? It might make us unpopular but we might need to make a stand. I did it once, and I was besieged by letters. I was not fit to be the minister and obnoxious and arrogant but something was happening that simply could not continue, injustice and prejudice, discrimination and one group dominating another. Sometimes the call to cleanse the community of God leads to cost and the need to be supported. 

When Jesus enters Jerusalem and it says in the bit before the bit we read “the whole city was in turmoil, this can also be interpreted that the whole city ‘shook’ saying, “Who is this?” Jerusalem shook like an earthquake in the presence of the Christ king because Jesus claims the city’s economics, politics, and culture for the way of God. This city would never be the same. Shaken at its very foundations. Things overturned, a religious system overturned, a reminder of the way of God present. 

Perhaps this week is all about choices. Do we continue to put up with corrupt and unhealthy ways or do we stick to and promote the way of God’s Kingdom. Perhaps Jerusalem was not big enough for Jesus Kingdom and the Temple might. Perhaps sometimes we are determined in our Jerusalem to put with things and not promote a different vision – the vision that Jesus came to announce and live. This week on Friday sees the result of the two ideals clashing. Perhaps this episode reminds us in the end we don’t need a Temple or a church, that God can be met anywhere. This week needs some controversial and radical thinking about. All can come and where we are blocking people or charging them beyond their means, we need to think again about what we are about.