March 7, 2021

 This week I mark the day my life changed.  These anniversaries of traumatic or dramatic change bring up all kinds of feelings.  Ask anyone over 25 and they can tell you where they were when they found out the twin towers had fallen.  Ask anyone over 40 in Oregon or Washington and they can tell you where they were when Mt. St. Helens blew.  Ask anyone over 45 and they can tell you when the Challenger Exploded.  Ask anyone over 60 and they can tell you where they were when they learned that President Kennedy was shot.  I remember distinctly the call I got when my church organist died at the church on the Saturday evening after my sister in law’s baby shower.  “Pastor Aimee, this is Graham, I’m at the church with Ed and he’s dead.”  I really didn’t hear anything else after that. And ask anyone over 5 and they can tell you where they were when the quarantine began, when it really hit home that everything was changing and that the tables were flipped. 

            March 15 I got a phone message from the school.  It was in a terrible robot voice—they did that so that it could easily be translated into a number of languages, but it felt very cold and impersonal and like our world was being taken over by robots who were ordering us into hiding.  I was volunteering in Sterling’s classroom like I did every Friday.  The teacher had me making packets to send home with the children for them to learn from for the next 5 weeks.  I was sharpening pencils for the students who didn’t have pencils at home.  We knew it was coming, but that doesn’t mean I was emotionally prepared or that it didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks.  Our lives were drastically changing.  None of us knew what the future would bring.  Would we get sick?  Would people we love get sick?  How many would die?  How many would lose their jobs?  Would we be able to afford our rent?  Would we have to move in with our family?  Would we have enough to eat?  Would the church be able to continue?  It was a spiral of questions and I could choose any scenario and try to follow it through all of the different possibilities in an attempt to prepare and it was impossible.  The good thing is, as outcomes unfold, we have a chance to respond to them and everyone else is in the same situation, so we don’t have to add guilt or shame to the pile of pressure.  And the good thing is, as Jesus people, we practice flipping the tables all the time.

            For the Israelites traveling through the wilderness, the tables were flipped.  They had been slaves in Egypt for generations.  Freedom is a whole new scary thing, wandering in the wilderness a whole new scary thing—these are very different from how they had lived before.  To try to prepare and imagine what the future would bring was impossible.  All they could do was follow and trust and eat a whole bunch of manna. 

            Now they get their law from God.  Their law had come from Pharaoh, whose laws were engineered to keep them slaves and enrich the Pharaoh.  Now God’s laws were coming to the people and they were about the good of the community.  How can we live together as a nomadic people who need to care for each other?  How can we put God at the center instead of Pharaoh or ourselves?  How can we get the rest we need?  How can we serve our neighbor?  How can we live long in the land?  And t his law was very different than Pharaoh’s law because Pharaoh’s law was heavy and oppressive—it was meant to squeeze the life out of the people and to make money for Pharaoh.  But God’s law is meant to increase life.  If we do these things, life gets easier for people.  These laws are light, not burdensome.

            The Israelites marked the day tables turned, that was the day of the Passover.  Every year, they told the story of God’s saving power and the angel of death passing over the houses of the faithful people.  They eat the bitter herbs and drink the wine and unleavened bread and our Holy Communion comes from that very meal—a meal of liberation and remembrance of the day God flipped the tables.

            For Christians, the cross is a table flipping event.  We recall it, tell the story of the cross, of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we eat the bread and wine because it was an event that changed everything.  The cross showed us that death is not the end, that suffering is undeserved, that the systems of power that were oppressive were really very weak, that weak people are actually very strong, and that abundant life cannot be killed, what is good and loving cannot be killed, what is of God cannot be killed.  We remember the death and resurrection of Jesus when we take Holy Communion, we remember his body broken and blood outpoured, we remember Jesus’ forgiveness even from the cross, and we join ourselves in Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Then we are invited each day to die to sin and let God flip the tables, and rise to new life to go in a completely different direction, returning to God. 

            On this day in the temple, Jesus literally flips the tables.  The people thought they were doing right.  It is a commandment not to make a graven image.  All their money had Ceasar’s head on it and the words that he is the son of God.  So when they set up the money changers, they were trying to follow the commandments.  There is a special coin for the temple to get around this.  However, the coin was then used to exploit people.  The exchange rate varied.  People needed a coin to get access to God—to purchase the right sacrifice to get clearance with God.  The whole operation became about who had money and who had influence and that’s who was invited there to communicate with God.  People who were poor could forget it!  It became a new kind of slavery, a new kind of law that crushed and oppressed people, not giving them life at all, but giving life to the priests running around in their long robes or to important people who thought they were better than anyone else. 

            In the other Gospels, the table flipping comes as the last straw at the end of the story, the final offensive act that Jesus does that leads to his arrest and crucifixion.  In John’s Gospel it is almost the first thing that happens, anyway it is during Jesus’ first trip to Jerusalem.  Jesus took this moment to clear the temple to make way for a totally new approach.  He turned the tables of the money changers and he turned the tables on believers.  He was saying by his actions, that the temple isn’t all that.  People thought that was the only place you could access God.  Well it ain’t.  The temple is corrupt, it’s not accessible to everyone, it’s a heavy system that takes away life, it’s got to go.  And by the time John writes this story, the temple has fallen, literally.  So where can we look for God?  In Christ. 

            The tables have been flipped on us, during the pandemic.  Much of what we knew is at least gone for now.  We will never see the world the same again.  We don’t know what the world will look like when and if this is all over.  Women will take 20 years to recoup their losses of income that have been caused by this pandemic—quitting jobs to look after children, losing jobs that are no longer there.  The costs will be paid long into the future.  Kyra won’t have a mom that should have been there, would be here if it weren’t for this virus.  That’s 30 years of a person’s life cut short.  Maybe it would have been 2-3 for some.  There is no way to calculate our losses or ever to recover from them.  And in a lot of ways the coins are still skittering across the floor.  We will never sort out what belongs to whom. 

            Jesus is with us when the tables are flipped.  I love picturing all the reactions when he does this.  Some people are very offended and want him arrested or maybe his picture put up someone—don’t let this guy in here anymore.  And others and standing there absolutely grinning.  I sometimes picture our church offering plates, if someone came in and dumped them out all over the place in the middle of the service.  Some of us would be in shock, others angry, and I can picture our youth grinning!  It’s kind of exciting to have something surprising happen and a little bit funny how seriously everyone takes money. 

            The question is, how are we going to learn from this?  We are not going to get everything set right and sorted and return to normal.  That’s never what Jesus wants for us.  How can we embrace the opportunity to ask ourselves what is life-giving about what we do and what is heavy and burdensome?  How can we bring in more spontaneity?  How can we let go of all of our temples and embrace Jesus, instead?  How can we put Jesus at the center instead of the title “Lutheran,” or our favorite seat?  How can we see our homes as a place that is holy and where God is present?  How can we get out of our building and go into the world to see Jesus?  How can we not just serve the hungry and poor, but how can we create community with them, put them at the center, leave what is comfortable and listen for a while to what abundant life means for our greater community?