It’s Time To Start Flipping Tables

In his recent campaign speeches, James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, often quoted the Christian scriptures. In particular he has quoted the gospel passage that we read today from John 2. Talarico has said (and repeated in his election night speech after he won the Texas senate seat), “2,000 years ago, when the people at the top hurt his neighbors, that barefoot Rabbi didn’t stay in his room and pray. He walked into the seat of power and he flipped over the tables of injustice… It’s time to start flipping tables.” 

Numerous people I know have this phrase on t-shirts or have posted memes saying “It’s time to start flipping tables.”

Part of Talarico’s vision – which is deeply informed by the Christian scriptural tradition – is that when there is harm happening we must get active and disrupt the harm.

You may have heard me previously reference a book by Damon Garcia called The God Who Riots. In it Garcia points to a passage like John 2 and said that Jesus’ act of flipping tables is part of that tradition. In his introduction to the book, Garcia acknowledges that “Christianity has been used to suppress change” and that this has hurt a lot of people along the way. But at its heart, Jesus embodies a “God who riots” and prioritizes justice over harmony. His life and witness invite us to be active agents in that struggle. 

What does this bring up in you when you reflect on a God who riots and flips over tables?

I know that I did not grow up with this vision of Jesus. And if I am honest, I was taught to value harmony over justice (and it is a serious and ongoing tension that I need to keep confronting in my life). 

It’s important to pause here and reflect on why we’d need to flip tables. I don’t think Jesus would just flip tables for nothing.

Let’s start at the beginning of today’s readings because they kind of build up to the gospel.

In the first reading from Ezekiel 47 the prophet has a vision. In the vision, the flowing river water was the source of life. In it, “every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live” and along the banks “fruit trees of every kind shall grow [and] their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine.”

While Ezekiel’s vision sounds a lot like the Garden of Eden from Genesis, it also sounds a lot like how our indigenous ancestors lived (and how some still try to live). They recognized that “water is life” and that our lives are radically interdependent on the world around us.

Yet through many harmful developments – like patriarchy, colonization and racial capitalism – we now live in a state of profound disconnection from the land and from one another. And we see and feel the effects all around us.

In our second reading from 1 Corinthians 3, Paul says that his work “laid a foundation” that others can build upon. But, he cautions, “each one must be careful how [they build] upon it.” He then asks his readers, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

Paul affirms the dignity of humanity and invites us to see that as a foundation. I can imagine him cautioning us, however, because he knew that we can quickly lose sight of that foundation. We might begin to move from what Martin Buber called an “I-Thou” relationship to an “I-It” relationship – where other people become objects to be used or just a means to an end.

Again we can see and feel the effects of this in our world today. 

And this is why, I think, Jesus felt the need to flip tables. He knew in his bones what the vision of the beloved community could be like. He knew that we are all deeply interconnected – with each other and with the land. And he saw with great clarity the forces that were tearing us apart.

• He saw the greed and exploitation.
• He saw people being left out and left behind.
• He saw the land being treated as object.
• He saw his religious tradition being co-opted by the powers that be.

And he was not OK with it.

Now some might say, “But why did he have to flip tables? I thought Jesus was nonviolent. Isn’t flipping tables violence?”

A similar argument was made against Martin Luther King, Jr. in his campaigns of direct action. I would invite readers to pause right now and read MLK’s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In it, King might help us shed a lot of light on why Jesus did what he did.

What Jesus did was not an act of hate. It did, however, break the “harmony” that existed. It did disrupt the status quo. 

And as King said back in 1963, “we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.”

Jesus’ actions brought the tension out into the open so that the “business-as-usual”could be exposed.

In his acceptance speech the other night, James Talarico said that “There is something broken in America. Our economic system is broken. Our political system is broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken.” He went on to say that, “People across the political spectrum are hungry for a different kind of politics. Not a politics of hate, not a politics of fear, not a politics of division, but a politics of love. My faith teaches me that love is the strongest force in the universe. Love is not passive. Love is not neutral. Love is not weak. Love requires that we stand between the bullies and the bullied. Love requires that we look evil in the eye and not blink. That kind of love has always been a threat to the powers that be. That kind of love is revolutionary. That kind of love is creative.”

What Jesus was doing that day in the temple was embodying a creative, revolutionary love that offers us the chance to once again reclaim a vision where we see everyone as a “temple of the Holy Spirit” and the earth as kin. 

And sometimes we need to be shaken from our complacency.

There are so many things that we could take away from our scriptures today.

• We might reflect on the waters of life and the many ways that our earth sustains us and offers us everything that we need.
• We might reflect on our own bodies as temples of the Great Spirit as we work to honor and care for them and one another.
• And we might reflect on the need to flip tables as we seek to bring greater justice in this world.

I often think back to the words of the global activist, Greta Thunberg, who frequently reminds her audiences, “What we refer to as normal is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet.” Reflecting on the living waters, reflecting on our bodies as temples and reflecting on injustices reminds us that the systems that we live in are not normal and they are not our destiny. Another world is possible, but not without our work and cooperation.

Side Note: If anyone is interested, we will be going to Temple Sinai as part of the Interfaith Journey on Friday, November 13 at 5:30 for a Shabbat service. If you’d like to join us, please register here.