This Week

This week at praxis...Overturning the Tables

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  
In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, 
and the money changers seated at their tables.  Making a whip of 
cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and 
the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers 
and overturned their tables.  He told those who were selling the 
doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's 
house a marketplace!"   His disciples remembered that it was written, 
"Zeal for your house will consume me."  The Jews then said to him, 
"What sign can you show us for doing this?"  Jesus answered them, 
"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."  
The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for 
forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?"  
But he was speaking of the temple of his body.  
After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered 
that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and 
the word that Jesus had spoken. 
-John 2:13-22

"Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for."  
- Chief Justice Earl Warren

Jesus' arrest resulted from his angry demonstration in the Temple.  
He disrupted the jewish political order at its heart.  
His demonstration signaled the total disruption of the Jewish 
political order with God's coming reign.  his demonstration 
was directed against the wealthy priestly aristocracy and 
Jerusalem elites, their exploitation of the poor, and their 
exclusion of "throw-away" people.  He antagonized the guardians 
of Jewish religious and political values with his transgressive actions.  
The chief priests and the Jerusalem elites took the initiative 
in arresting Jesus and bringing him before Pilate.  
They perceived Jesus' action as threatening to and contemptuous of the Temple.  
Such a challenge to the Temple clergy and the Jerusalem 
elites had to be decisively met.  From one perspective, 
Jesus' demonstration within the sacred space of the Temple failed and 
directly led to his arrest, legal proceedings, and execution.  
Jesus' staged demonstration models transgressive practice for queer Christians.
- Robert Goss, Jesus Acted Up:  A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto


Anger shines through me.
Anger shines through me.
I am a burning bush.
My rage is a cloud of flame.
My rage is a cloud of flame
in which I walk
seeking justice
like a precipice.
How the streets
or the iron city
flicker, flicker,
and the dirty air
fumes.
Anger storms
between me and things,
transfiguring,
transfiguring.
A good anger acted upon
is beautiful as lightening
and swift with power.
A good anger swallowed,
a good anger swallowed
clots the blood
to slime.
- "A Just Anger", Marge Piercy


Don't let them tame you! 
-Isadora Duncan (1877-1927)

I resist, therefore I am. 
- James W. Douglass 

Jesus would be framed and in jail if he was living today. 
- Caron McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

If one is going to change things, one has to make a fuss and catch the eye of the world. 
 - Elizabeth Janeway, in Barbaralee Diamonstein, Open Secrets


Questions:

	What do you think Jesus was doing when he overturned the tables in the Temple?
	Do you agree with Goss that this was a political statement?
	Is it okay for Christians to get angry?  Are there guidelines for our anger?  
	How do you deal with your own anger at social injustice?
	How does the Church overturn tables today?  How do Christians overturn tables?
	Where should we overturn tables?
	Which quotes today do you agree with, and which upset you?  Why?