Knock Over Some Tables
Present-day Christian sensibilities suggest that we should be calm, serene, peaceful and measured leaders at all times. Interesting. Especially against the backdrop that Jesus did not always act that way.
#JesusStories: John 2 and Matthew 21 both record Jesus knocking over the moneychangers tables on the front porch of the temple in Jerusalem. These recordings were not different witnesses of the same event – they were two different occurrences altogether. John’s version happened right after the wedding in Cana at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, while Matthews story happened right after the Triumphal Entry when Jesus came riding into the city on a colt. In John’s account, the disciples remembered the prophecy that passion for God’s house would consume the Messiah (Ps. 69:9). The fact that Jesus did this twice makes it very clear that he did not approve of the scam in which the priests declared the peoples sacrificial doves as unclean, and then forcing them to go back out to the vendors on the front porch to buy a “clean” sacrifice at an exorbitant price – after which the sellers and the priests split the profit.
Jesus’ table-tipping and whip-making behaviors seem brutish to us at first glance, but it was actually a defense of the poor. Many having traveled to Jerusalem for the annual sacrifice had little money left after their journey to afford the approved and up-priced turtledoves. It forced them to use their needed food and travel money to be able to make a sacrifice before the Lord for the sake of their family. And all of this to line the pockets of the priests. Jesus simply could not let this stand. This is not the last time that religious systems would clutter the path of salvation – it happens today too. Denominational formation that begins with well-meaning organizational structures often devolve into cluttering the path between sinner and Savior. Everything from closed communion to confession-heavy ‘sinners prayers’ to legalistic teaching to the way some unpack ‘penal-substitution’ can be guilty of this. We need to ponder the path we are creating for lost people in our towns to walk toward Christ. In this day, it is easier to forge man-made requirements for salvation than we can imagine – requirements that Jesus Himself would not ask. There is a reason why only one percent of US churches are effective at leading the secular population to Jesus – we have cluttered the path with our doctrines, our dogma’s, and our teachings that sound good to us Judeo’s, but that our Lord would not impose on the New Gentiles who live in our neighborhoods. When we see these encroachments on the path of Salvation, someone needs to hear the prophetic call: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord; make straight a highway for our God” (Is. 40:3). Pushing hurdles out of the way of sinners with great passion is a significant part of what it means to be Christlike. And it is an ongoing need in this waning chapter of The Day of Salvation. I believe we need an army of Christian Leaders who are so passionate about evangelism that they are willing to knock over some of the tables of our church traditions to make a way for the lost, the least, and the left-behind.
#DinnerChurchQuotes: The attention given in the Gospels to meals is an embodiment of Jesus’ acceptance of outcasts. The visual art about Jesus from the pre-Constantinian period reveal that two of the most crucial elements of that way of life were ‘shared meals’ and ‘healed lives’. -Julian Hills
May the Lord Bless your Bold Leadership,
Verlon
Dr. Verlon and Melodee Fosner have led a multi-site Assemblies of God Dinner Church in Seattle, Washington since 1999 (www.CommunityDinners.com). In this decade when more churches in the U.S. are declining than thriving, and when ninety-six churches a week are closing, Verlon and Melodee sensed that a different way of doing church was needed for their 97-year old Seattle congregation. It soon became obvious that they were not the only ones in need of a different path. They joined the FX team in 2016 and founded the Dinner Church Collective. And then in 2019 founded the Dinner Church School of Leadership. There is a lot to be gained when church leaders begin to see open doors in the American landscape that they had previously overlooked. Therein lies the journey for those who will forge a new future for the American Church.
Categories: Uncategorized
10.8.20
By: Josh Gering
In reading this post it creates an opportunity for pause. We must think deeply and objectively about our religious constructs and ask the question, “Is this how Jesus would worship, reach-out, and love if he lived in 2020?” What barriers or “tables” are in the way of people that don’t know there is a God and frankly don’t care if there is one. I think one thing that is a barrier is our nice churches designed for the middle class. We have glowing signs, nice carpet, people dressed so nice and a coffee shop inside. I’m not saying our places of worship shouldn’t be nice but we can’t expect that a “one size fits all” approach will be enough to let our whole community know about the love of Jesus. We are building the churches but they aren’t coming. Yes, Christians transfer from one church to another but people that are secular are not choosing to come. We must go and begin to rebuild the a trust that followers of Jesus will be love in action. We will drop our preferences and change so that all may know that there is a God that loves them and is for them. It’s time to rebuild the Jesus dinner table and share Christ around a meal, for the lonely, for the needy. This is the table that should be shared. I don’t think Jesus would want to flip this one.
10.9.20
By: Rodney Martin
Jesus knocking over tables is an image that is hard to embrace in one’s imagination. It’s not the image we are given in Sunday school of the nice Jesus who is never angry. Just portraying Jesus as angry breaks the unwritten rules of behavior for some church traditions. Even if we are not implicitly connected to a specific church tradition/denomination we are still enmeshed in some sort of cultural system that frames the way we see the world and how we embody Christ. Cultural systems are inescapable. They are necessary to provide a map for how we make decisions and function. They can also unintentionally harbor roadblocks that consist of values, patterns of behavior or perspectives that are barriers to secular people seeing Christ in us or the church we are part of. I think we can be so enmeshed in these systems that it can be hard to see the barriers we embody. One of the benefits of self-reflective cross-cultural experiences is that they create liminal space for experiencing people who are different from us in a positive way thereby creating space for a different point of view. Liminal space and self reflection can help us to see the barriers in our lives, church, community, culture, etc. that create stumbling blocks for those who are different, preventing them from belonging or hearing about Christ.
10.9.20
By: Marion Sortore
“…we have cluttered the path with our doctrines, our dogma’s, and our teachings that sound good to us Judeo’s, but that our Lord would not impose on the New Gentiles who live in our neighborhoods.” Yes there are huge tables and small tables to overturn to clear the path for those who don’t know Jesus. And around all those tables is clutter. I suggest that we may need to clear out some clutter before we turn over some tables – or the stuff on the tables will just add to the clutter. Okay. Enough of the metaphor. The clutter can be anything that will negate that turned over table. Clearing the clutter can prepare the way for the table to be turned over and the way forward to be clear. Case in point: Tiny town in Florida: Fort Meade was never going to have racially blended weekly church services. (Special services yes, weekly – really?) When we first suggested dinner church – it was met with skepticism, but after 1 1/2 years of prayer and meeting and training, Dinner Church started. We broke the racial, gender, and age divides. Each week averaged 75 – 100 people. We could have done better at our percentages (25% Black, 25% Hispanic, 50% Anglo) but it was a beginning… then COVID hit. The racial tensions in town went down significantly. But putting it all together for a successful outcome meant clearing the clutter out of the way before we turned that racial divide on its head.
I’m not saying that this will work for everything – but it may be wise to make certain we aren’t adding to the clutter.
10.13.20
By: Carl Bauchspiess
I wonder if, when the money changers saw Him coming the second time, said “Oh crud, here He comes again” while trying to gather up their stuff. We know Jesus’ zeal for the House of God, both from Matthew and John. The disciples remembered the scripture while Jesus Himself exclaimed “you have made my Fathers house a den of thieves”. In both cases, I believe Jesus was saying you have defiled this temple. What defiled the temple? It wasn’t the worship, that I imagine was impecible. It was the attitude and actions of the leaders. They didn’t care for the poor, simply seeing them as a source of income. Paul tells us we are the temple of God, not only individually but corporately. How do we defile the temple today? Sin, of course. But both Paul and James tell us another way. Just as the physical temple was defiled in Jesus’ day, we also can defile our temple by neglect of the marginalized. In 1 Cor. 1, Paul puts the Corinthian church on blast because of their treatment of the Lords’ Supper and their neglect of the poorer members of the church. James condemns the believers he was writing to for showing favoritism to the wealthy over the poor and tells them that if they do, they are condemned a lawbreakers. I believe we (big C church) are guilty of this as well. We must go out of our way to welcome the marginalized honor them. This is a way we overturn tables today.
10.13.20
By: Shawn
This reminds me of modern day Proclomation church. “The poor” often don’t feel like they can afford to go to “church”. They don’t have nice enough clothes, car, or house, to sit with well-to-do middle classers. The table is the great equalizer.
10.13.20
By: JoAnn Bastien
This passage has always puzzled me. I understand the context. I see the objectification of the poor and the manipulation of the elite at work. I also know it has been taken out of context for years to keep Churches from selling anything on Sunday mornings. Jesus had every right to do what he did and we are grateful for his example. I don’t know that I would be so well received by my denomination for such an outburst. I have witnessed crazy things in the last year as colleagues are passionate about many things, but not so much about taking care of the poor. They are, however, passionate about discrediting colleagues who do not vote like them. Those of us who are passionate about ministering to the poor and other sore neighborhoods are labeled “liberal” and watched with a careful eye. So we find ways to minister to the least of these in quiet ways.
10.13.20
By: Nicole Fike
Jesus’ temple tantrums and knocking over tables is what is needed for church leadership on the frontlines. The church definitely needs to do some pruning. What have we not used during the pandemic that we no longer need? What can we get rid of? What are the needs in our communities? How can we use the resources we aren’t using for ministries and programs to serve the needs in our communities?
10.14.20
By: Rev Kim DuBreuil
One Sunday morning as I entered the Sanctuary I notice a red collection box for a local food pantry. Some people were placing bags of can goods in it as they arrived. Beside it was a brightly wrapped box that looked like beautiful Christmas present and people were adding toys for tots. Beside it was another box wrapped in baby paper for the “Baby Jesus shower” for a local ministry to pregnant women. People were adding adorable baby clothes and newborn necessities. A cart by the front door was the woman’s group selling pecans, with proceeds going to there pet ministry projects. Inside the front door was a large glass container with the words “Summer Reserve” (a collection to bridge the gap during the slower summer months).
But wait there was still more…flyers for fundraising dinners were on the welcome table racks, slides for the same were being projected as announcements on the front wall. Shoes lined the altar rail given for students at a near by school to be blessed. And let’s not forget the regular church offering time.
Okay you get the picture. I realized what it must have felt like for Jesus as he entered the synagogue. When I broached the subject with church leadership they didn’t understand what the big deal was. People love to give to these different projects every year. It shows we are a giving community.
As their newly appointed senior pastor i was in shock. Now if this church had thousands entering the doors it would make sense, but this is a church with about 90 members and 135 regular attendees. I thought what about the first time guest? Talk about literal hurdles that one must navigate just to get in the front door.
Jesus commanded us to love God and love others. A simple statement for a complex society to grasp. Where should the church draw a line in the sand on merely funding projects to help others and making disciples to help others?
10.14.20
By: Roger Bird
This is such a great reminder! Jesus’s harshest criticisms were leveled at the religious (or church) leaders of His day. People who were supposed to “get it”. In Mark 7:8-9, Jesus said, “8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” 9 And He continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!”
The scariest part was that they couldn’t see how far they had drifted from God’s intended plan for them, and that we are not immune from it either. I know I have my own blind spots but time and time again I have had conversations with people who tell me, genuinely I believe, that God’s Word is their ultimate authority and will in their next breath make a statement that, in my opinion, completely contradicts the Heart of God as revealed in His Word. We start with good intentions but we can get ourselves so twisted around with our own rules trying to follow the letter of the Law that we miss the spirit of it’s intent.
In one of my seminary classes I had a professor who was teaching on Matthew 18, particularly about the tool of “excommunication” in the process of church discipline. He told us that if anyone was unrepentant after taking them through the steps laid out by Jesus in Matthew 18 that we should, “cut them out of the church and have nothing to do with them.” This really bothered me so I raised my hand and asked if those people were still “saved”, would we still see them in the Kingdom. He assured me that, if they had truly been born again, we would see them in heaven. Trying to be as respectful as possible, I pointed out the irony to him that the standards of our denomination were higher than God’s, seeing that those people would be welcome in God’s Kingdom but not in our churches.
The professor responded that, in the text, Jesus said if they won’t repent we should treat them like tax collectors and sinners. I said, yes that is what it says but how did Jesus treat tax collectors and sinners? He told us Himself just a few chapters earlier in Matthew 11 that He was known as a “friend of tax collectors and sinners.”
I don’t share this story to show how smart I am, it was just a real life example that has stuck with me about how easily we can get off track when we get caught up in the religious system rather than the heart of the Father. I also know that I probably didn’t change my professor’s mind that day but I hope that some of my fellow students, most of whom where 20 years younger than me, began to read the Scriptures in a different light after that.
10.15.20
By: michael cox
“Pondering the path we are creating for lost people” should be the focus of the church. Sadly, in all my years of ministry, I was never asked to consider this question. I remember when my church put on a three-hour long Christmas “outreach” play for the “community”. My daughter had invited her non-Christian friend and family to attend. They attended and got to hear the gospel story reimagined through hip hop music and art. At the end of the play the pastor got up and did a full-on altar call/ pass the offering plate tirade. I wonder how my friends felt buying tickets to support my daughter to then be yelled at to “obey the Lord” and dig a little deeper.
Last Sunday our dinner church stood under a canopy in the pouring down rain. We served seventy-one meals and blessed many cold and wet people waiting for the bus. One gentleman came up and immediately told us how he had been filled with the Holy Spirit. We prayed about his addiction, his abusive dad, and our loving father in heaven who calls us his own. Full of the Spirit, he almost fell over. When I look at Face Book and see all of the churches promoting online engagement during the pandemic, I wonder how a homeless person without socks, in the rain, is going to download the app, and jump into a break out session. I know Jesus would go to a church in a rainy parking lot! I know he wouldn’t flip over any tables at my church because I only have one!