“Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there.
He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.”
Matthew 21:12
If I asked you the question: “Who would you say is the most radical person you can think of?”,
would you say Jesus of Nazareth?
After all, we live in a so-called Christian America, and in many parts of this great country there are more churches than gas stations.
This is the age of the mega-churches, where feel-good messages are preached by silver tongued preachers,
who can’t wait to get the ushers’ reports of hopefully increased attendance.
But did Jesus count the attendance metrics, or anything else, to gauge His success?
Many of our churches are no different in spirit than the courts of the money changers.
“These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me…”
Jesus is not an icon, but an iconoclast, the ultimate radical.
He came to do the will of His Father, hating the religious spirit that has always been prevalent.
He did not care about the opinions of contemporaries, no;
He came to overturn conventional thought and customs.
We are called to follow, to imitate Him, not to try and squeeze him to conform to a twisted American Dream where we aren’t worshipping Him at all, but ourselves. We are called to be radicals, like Jesus, only greater, and because we can drink from the same chalice He drank from we are called to pick up our own crosses daily, to crucify the lies of materialism.
Our “normal” Christian lives aren’t meant to be normal at all by worldly standards.
Beloved, are you ready to have your tables overturned?