Friends.
The other day someone told me that I should be more like Jesus and “flip over tables like he did”. This person wasn’t happy that I tend to not use the What If Project as a platform to advocate for or against certain ideas, candidates, principles, etc.
“We have to take a stand!”, this person said, “Even Jesus flipped over tables. If we aren’t flipping over tables, we aren’t being like Jesus.”
I used to say the same thing, honestly.
Back in 2020 in the heat of COVID and on the heels of the George Floyd murder, I was saying the same sort of stuff daily all over social media. When I go back through my Facebook memories there is post after post after post telling people that I was there to flip over the tables of the Anti-Maskers, the Racists, the Christian Nationalists, etc, etc, etc.
And my rationale?
“Jesus flipped over tables in his day and he expects us to flip over tables in ours.”
But.
Does he?
I was pondering this the other day and went back to read the passage (the story is found in all 4 Gospels, told in slightly different ways). Yes, Jesus did flip over tables - flipped over tables and even made a whip (in John’s telling) to drive the animals of the money changers / merchants out of the temple!
The one thing he doesn’t do, though?
He doesn’t turn to his disciples and say, “now go and do likewise.”
Interesting, no? He flips over the tables and then leaves. He doesn’t take his disciples aside and tell them to flip over tables, he doesn’t say that disciples everywhere thoughout history should flip over actual tables or metaphorcial tables - there is no “Table Flipping 101” in the Jesus school of discipleship.
No.
He just flips over the tables and goes on with his day.
Interestingly, though, he did tell his disciples to …
Love their neighbor.
Love their enemies.
Pray for those who persecute them.
Forgive.
Turn the other cheek.
Etc.
And so here’s what I’m pondering today - I think that before we go and do things that Jesus did but didn’t ask us to do (like flipping tables), I think we should make sure we’re doing (like, really doing) the things that Jesus actually asked us to do.
And.
Rather than the moral of the table flipping story being that we should flip tables like Jesus flipped tables, maybe the moral of the story is that we should make sure we aren’t sitting at the table that Jesus has already flipped over.
Think about it.
The table, remember, was a table that kept people separated from God. At the table you could buy animals to be sacrificed in the temple. No money? No animal. No animal? No sacrifice. In essence, you had to pay money to get into the presence of God in the temple.
And so Jesus flipped the tables over and drove the sellers and their animals out of the temple, a symbolic way (I think) of saying, “don’t ever create a boundary between people and God.”
Jesus already flipped over the table, friends, and so I think maybe instead of trying to think of what other tables Jesus might flip over in our day and then taking it upon ourselves to do that for him, maybe our job is to simply make sure that we aren’t trying to sit at this divisive table that Jesus has flipped.
In other words, maybe the question this story should leave us with isn’t, “what tables would Jesus have me flip over in 2025?” BUT. “Does my theology or politics or do my words or actions keep people from God? Aim to exclude people? Do I invite people into the presence of God? Or do I think they need to pay - pay with the right beliefs, pay with the right values, pay by seeing things the way I see them?”
Yes, we need to take a stand against things. But sometimes I think (and this is for me - you don’t need to agree) it’s all too easy to jump to the stories of Jesus that seem to give us a license to be divisive so that we can downplay (sometimes ignore) the stories of Jesus that encourage us to love, exercise compassion, build bridges, etc. … even when those things are hard.
Something to think about.
Much love.
Glenn || PATREON / ART STUDIO
I had to pause and think about your argument here. This is worth pondering. It's tempting to jump on the idea of flipping tables in the name of cause xyz. We live in a keyboard warrior/knee jerk reaction culture. But…as you point out- what was Jesus really teaching us? Thanks for offering this up.
Yessssss! And it’s so hard to love EVERYONE these days. Thanks for the reminder. ❤️