Divinity Flips the Tables of Oppression

Scripture

Matthew 21:12-17

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written,

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’;
    but you are making it a den of robbers.”

The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,

‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
    you have prepared praise for yourself’?”

He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

John 2:13-17

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.”

Divinity Flips the Tables of Oppression

by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts

Read the message below. Video premieres today at 8 pm EDT, click here to watch on YouTube with live text chat

Hello everyone, our hearts are with each other in these times of uncertainty and often grief. May we come together to worship the Divine Lord who carries each of us with love to eternity. 

The most prolific world scriptures make it clear that above all we are tasked with rejecting bigotry and the spirit of domination in our hearts and actions if we are to ever experience heaven within or without. Indeed, this is often the core message of the Bible, although we tend to twist the text into something of our own making. The current protests and civil rights activism in the wake of George Floyd's murder by police officers can be viewed as an embodiment of the Spirit of God moving through the people, in the same vein that Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple - flipping tables and wielding a whip. As the protesters have started to do so robustly - shutting down looters and the violent, our police must also do by starting to reject the destructive elements in their own hearts, releasing hateful and flippant officers from their duties and also becoming zealous in their acceptance of a true transformation of their enforcement roles, releasing their defensive posturing, violent tools, and fearful hearts for the light and warmth of the Divine Creator.

Despite the whip, Christ's pointed stance of non-violence was always at the heart of his message, just as today the vast majority of protesters are non-violent. And yet, as we see in his earthly journey, to disrupt a violent system one must often place their self in the wake of harm. Black Americans know this well, because when not faced with the loss of their life by officers, trumped up bigots, or a life behind bars, many black Americans endure repeated verbal, economic, and subtle abuse throughout their lives, often daily, with no true recourse. Today, protesters and those that express how Black Lives Matter are asking each of us to start to take this enormous violence more seriously, instead of using our hardened and blinded minds to become reactive, dismissive, and defensive, as is our typical posture.

We each have our roles in this regenerative journey of civil rights and social justice. And although we each will approach it different, Christ's ministry and the Western experience speak to a few core attributes: 1) work hard to reject racist, bigoted, and defensive thinking, knowing that you are empowered by Divinity; 2) support the downtrodden and the oppressed by speaking out, giving much of yourself, and getting active without a core motive of destruction; and ultimately, 3) accept the gift of love for others that God offer us when we humble ourselves and start to see the higher ideals of love and justice calling to be expressed diversely in the universe.

Although many point to how there are only a few "bad apples" in each police force, the evidence now is clear that a few bad apples can poison the pie (a pie that we all must eat). The part of each of us that are our "bad apples" tend to stem from the rot at the core of our wider distorted capitalist system (since it discounts human capital) - our dominating greed, lust, and selfishness.

For our societies to move forward further into the Divine cascade of life, the murderous, racist, and callous within law enforcement and politics (especially in the U.S.) must be called out and relieved with both compassion and with immediacy, similar to how these aspects of ourselves must be approached with compassion, an eye toward understanding, and also with much urgency toward dedicated change. Unfortunately, often the opposite has been true, with courageous officers reporting how they are often forced out of the precinct when they take on corrupt and hurtful practices. A true rehabilitation of our police training and current methods must be viewed as necessary and of the utmost urgency, as is our financial and educational support for all the poor and the unemployed, including newly released officers.

Jesus' example is poignant and significant today. Forgiving his murderers while on the cross, he points to how ignorance is at the root of the communal horror. And we see that throughout his story it is those close-minded religious and political leaders that subjugate, destroy, and eventually cause the murder of the Divine One himself. If Christ was the One God - Krishna, Allah, Jehovah, Sophia - in the flesh, then throughout his process of "glorification" he must have become more and more aware of the circumstances today and throughout history of oppression and bigoted hate. He would see how ignorance and "sin" (missing the mark) could become fetishized even 2000 years in the future, turning huge swaths of the population against rightful treatment, democratic processes, rehabilitative punishment.

Because indeed, our system needs the type of repentance and rehabilitation towards love that he encourages and died for. Systemic evil and racism have led to more black Americans being imprisoned today than there were slaves in 1850, many of whom are forced to work for close-to-no wage. There's a straight line from the "abolishment" of U.S. slavery to the blooming of the number of blacks incarcerated soon after, when fear and economic greed drove the system to discover that prison labor can be used as a loophole in the 13th amendment, while also conveniently sweeping the "problem" under the rug and behind bars. Crazy enough, the rental nature of prison labor means that the equivalent to modern day slave drivers care even less about black lives than when they were the "property" of the wealthy, which has driven up the death rates of these workers astronomically especially at the beginning of the U.S. prison state (when tens of thousands of black men died in mines) and today, on the streets.  There's a reason that the U.S. doesn't publish police killing statistics nor tries to hold prisons accountable for rehabilitation or worker conditions.

Ultimately, it comes back to the economics of greed and selfishness - the money changers in our temple. Selfishness drives the fear of insular and dominating thinking, the hoarding of wealth, and hate. We've allowed these motives to drive our complacency and ignorance toward the abuse of others and it's corrupted our environmental, physical, mental, and spiritual temples, just as it had in Jesus' day. It's time that we flip those tables to find that the temple is still salvageable, if we're willing to work for it.

Yes, even in this day of protest we must continue to protect lives through social distancing as much as possible, wearing protective clothing, and safeguarding our most vulnerable populations. These issues are greatly expounded when police and armed forces resort to pepper spray, hoses, forced marches, and violence. Although its clearly necessary to start speaking out and acting on the call to social justice, the ramifications of looting, violence (even if rare on the part of true protestors), ignoring health measures, and furthering Covid-19 will be lasting, and in the case of the virus, often measured in an incredible loss of life. However, the same system that looks down on these civil rights protests and responded so quickly to harshly dismantle them is also the one that encourages reopening, protests that support reopening, and shirks health measures and a modicum of preparedness. This already creates a trajectory of viral tragedy for the U.S. A system of hidden violence often means that we must allow that violence to rise to the surface in order to dispel it, as Christ exemplified.

More specifically, for our Swedenborgian community, it's time to amplify the voice of the oppressed and to become active in ways that protect the vulnerable to reject racism, inequality, and bigotry. I believe that turning toward Divinity is at the core of all healthy action and so we each should strive to listen for how the Spirit of the Divine Christ that uplifts every healthy spirit speaks to us, and in what ways the voice of fear and selfishness still does. May we meditate on the Fearless One to become fearless, on the Just One to embody social justice, and on the Living Love of the Lord to empower our compassionate protest of that which puts domination and ignorance over human lives.

Please close by taking some time to pray or meditate in support of racial and social justice in this world.

Peace and care to you and yours,

Rev. Cory