Publications > Sermons

Let's Tip Over the Tables and Dance!

By Maureen Frescott
March 19, 2006

I've been trying an experiment this month. I took Cindy's advice and decided that not only was I going to give up something for Lent…I was going to take something on as well.

I decided that for 40 days I was going to do something new every day. Something I'd never done before…or something that I had been putting off doing, because of procrastination or fear.

My "new" thing for Sundays during Lent has been sit someplace different in church every week. 'Sounds easy enough, but for those of you who tend to sit in the same pew every Sunday I challenge you to try it sometime. You'll be amazed at how unnerving it can feel. Both for you, and the person who finds you sitting in their seat. You also run the risk of alienating your former pew mates.

(After spending a year keeping Ray Nobles company in his pew, the first Sunday that I chose to sit somewhere else, he came up to me after the service and asked…"What, do I smell?")

At first it may feel strange to be out of your comfort zone…to see the church and the people around you from a different perspective. But I urge you to try it. Try sitting next to someone you don't know or rarely talk to, instead of the person that you came with or chat with every week. Try looking out a different window, or hear what the choir sounds like from the front rather than the back.

Most of us choose the same seat every week because that's just where we've always sat…it's familiar, it's comfortable, why change it?

Some of us choose our seats based on very specific preferences. We like the front because we can hear or see Cindy better, or we like the back because we can see everyone else better, and more importantly they can't see us, or we choose the middle by default…we like to experience a little of both perspectives without having to fully commit to either one.

I tend to be a middle person. Mainly because I've found that the middle is the best place to hide. Getting lost in the crowd is something that I've always been good at. I blend in easily. It's an unavoidable side effect of being quiet and introverted.

Being a middle person is where I've always felt comfortable, but I know it is not where I am meant to be. None of us is meant to be lost in the crowd. God would not have gone to the trouble of making each of us unique if He did not intend for us to find some way to express that uniqueness.

One of my favorite quotes comes from a sermon written by the Reverend Dr. Lauren Artress, an Episcopal priest. She wrote:

Each of us is called upon to birth ourselves into the fullness of our being. Each of us is to discover why we are on this planet at this particular moment and bring that realization forward as a gift to our times.

Each of us is called upon to birth ourselves into the fullness of our being. I love that.

I read those words and I can't help but ask myself "What gift do I have to bring to this world? Why am I here?"

We've all asked ourselves that question at some point in our lives. It's a question that cries out for an answer. And we're often surprised when the answer finally comes,
and that our lives, our perspectives, had to be turned upside down to find it.

Cindy gave me permission to preach on what ever I wanted to today but I chose to stick to the scheduled lectionary text because it said just what I wanted to say.

The story of Jesus and the money changers is the story of a lone man who broke out of the crowd. A man who put himself in harm's way in the defense of others. A man who chose not to blend in, although it would have been so much easier to do so.

Jesus was a man who birthed himself into the fullness of his being, asked himself why he was on this planet at that moment, and brought that realization forward, as a gift to his time, and as gift to our time.

"Why am I here?"

I heard those words echoing between the lines when I read today's scriptural passage.
I believe that Jesus may have asked himself that very question when he walked into the temple that fateful day during Passover…and he found his answer when he tipped over the tables of the money changers. Steeped in anger and frustration, Jesus' question would have sounded more like a cry of indignation than a metaphysical wondering, but the answer he received was much the same as we receive. You are here to make a difference….you are here to be the YOU that God intended you to be.

The gospels tell us that Jesus was a teacher, a preacher, a prophet of change, and that he spent his ministry promoting a very simple message. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself.

(It would make for a very short PowerPoint presentation if he were preaching today).

Jesus taught that same simple message throughout his ministry -- in parables, in stories, in proverbs…and he demonstrated it through both deliberate and random acts of kindness. Yet when he walked into the temple that day and saw what was going on, he came face to face with the reality that his message had fallen on deaf ears. He saw how God's love was being bought and sold, and how access to God had been restricted, mainly to those who could afford to pay the necessary fees to have an animal sacrificed in their name. The poor had been barred from worship, barred from God…and God was held up as one who demanded a ritualistic sacrificial act rather than the simple act of love.

"Why am I here?" Jesus must have asked himself, "What more do I have to do to get them to listen?"

And then he received his answer. Whether he consciously thought about it or acted on pure impulse, we'll never know, but there he was, in the midst of the organized chaos of the Passover crowd, a lone figure in a sea of humanity…and he chose to swim against the current.

He approached the tables of the money changers, placed his fingers beneath the edge of the first table he came to…and he lifted.

For a split second, the rules and the regulations that the temple priests had set down as God's law, became airborne.

And when that table came crashing down, we were set free.

The tables of the money changers acted as a barrier between humanity and God, between rich and poor, between neighbor and neighbor.

Jesus wanted us to comprehend that we are free to love God, free to love each other, without the barriers that the tables represent dividing us. And if the only way that he could show us that truth was by tipping over a table…an act of defiance that would ultimately lead to his death…then so be it.

How many tables are we willing to tip over in the name of truth?

How many do we leave undisturbed because we fear the consequences of claiming that truth as our own?

In 1978 I had the distinction of being labeled as a table-tipping radical.

In reality, I was an 11-year-old, painfully shy, Catholic school girl who followed all of the rules and wouldn't dream of wearing non-regulation knee socks, let alone calling attention to myself by tipping over tables.

But tip I did.

Our fifth-grade class had been instructed to write letters to John Paul I, who had just been installed as the new Pope. While my classmates wrote formulaic "Good luck on the new job" letters, I rather innocently used my letter to address a few issues that concerned me. I inquired as to why I, a girl, could not serve on the altar like my brother, and for that matter, why couldn't women be priests? Showing my true naiveté, I took it a step further and asked the Pope why gay people weren't allowed in the church, when they were just people like everybody else?

In my 11-year-old mind I was just pointing out a few inequities that the new Pope may not have been aware of. But to the nuns who oversaw our school I was attempting to tip over a table that I had no right to be anywhere near. Needless to say, my letter was not included in the batch that was mailed to the Vatican, and I went from being largely ignored as the class mouse to being singled out as the class troublemaker.

( On a side note, Pope John Paul I did die in office a month later, but at least I can honestly say that my letter had nothing to do with it!)

Butting my truth up against the truth that I was taught in Catholic school sent me running from organized religion faster than I could outgrow my green plaid uniform. I had tipped over a table unintentionally, and I didn't like how it felt when I found myself swimming against the current. Rather than turn tail and swim back the way I came, I chose to jump out of the pool entirely. I ran from religion, I ran from God. In a way I felt as if I was being cast out of the temple…and it has taken me most of my adult life to find my way back.

The "cleansing of the temple" story, as today's scriptural passage is commonly referred to, appears in all four gospels. But there is one major detail on which the gospels do not agree. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, this event was reported as having occurred near the end of Jesus' ministry.

It happened during Passion Week, the week leading up to Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus had just arrived in Jerusalem for the Passover celebration, and there he was stirring up trouble in the temple -- effectively sealing his fate with his disruptive actions.

The gospel of John, however, gives us a different take on the incident. In the scriptural passage that Annie read for us this morning, Jesus was not nearing the end of his ministry; his ministry had only just begun.

For those of us who like to flip to the end of a good mystery novel just to see how the story turns out, the contrast between John's account and the other gospel accounts is evident just by looking at the chapter numbers in which this pivotal event occurred -- Mark chapter 11, Luke chapter 19, Matthew chapter 21...John chapter 2. For Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the story was almost over; for John, it was just beginning.

So why did John have Jesus begin his ministry at this point? Why did he not place this climactic moment near the end of the story, like the other gospel writers did, and where most scholars believe it historically occurred?

He did it to make a point.

For John, Jesus' act of defiance symbolically marked his introduction to the world as a force to be reckoned with -- a force like no other that had come before.

As children of God and siblings of Jesus, I believe that we all have the potential for greatness within us. We all are a force to be reckoned with -- a force like no other that has come before.

And as John showed us, we don't have to wait until the climactic end of our story to birth ourselves into the fullness of our being -- we can do it right here, right now.

There is an energy inside of us -- a dance, if you will -- that is uniquely our own, a dance that is just waiting to be unleashed into the world.

As Martha Graham, once said:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

We all have the potential for greatness, Not at some point in the future but in every waking moment. We realize our potential in the moment-to-moment choices that we make. We either choose to let our energy flow out of us through action, or we choose to keep it bottled up through inaction; sometimes out of selfishness, but more often out of fear.

Fear is the force that has bottled up my energy for more years than I care to admit.
I learned at an early age that expressing uniqueness was a rocky path to travel, but given my natural reticence, it didn't take much to get me to hide behind the wall of conformity…to blend into the background with no desire to be found.

This is how I've lived for most of my life.

Being shy, quiet, and socially introverted is like having a rope tied around your leg…you tie the other end to wherever it is that you feel safe, and you rarely venture farther than the slack will allow. Sometimes you work up the courage to run out the length of the rope. But like a bungee cord stretched to its limit, the pent-up energy pulls you back to where you started, and with your heart thumping out of your chest, it takes time to steady yourself before you are ready to try again.

Up until eight years ago I didn't think I would ever see the world that lay beyond the confines of my rope.

Until one day when I ran the rope to its limit...and it snapped. Sending me tumbling into the unknown, uncertain as to where I would land.

It was the summer of 1998. As a teenager I had taken up competitive cycling, not only to challenge myself but because I found that I could use my athletic skills to set goals and achieve some sense of accomplishment. Fifteen years later I was still measuring my worth solely on how far and how fast I could pedal a bike.

Then in one momentary lapse of concentration, I lost it all.

I was in a race and a group of riders had crashed in front of me, and while trying to avoid them I went down hard on my left side and slid along the pavement at 35 mph.

As I lay twisted on the ground, trying to fight back the intense pain that I equated with having the wind knocked out me, I heard a woman scream. A bloodcurdling scream like I had never heard before. Someone had fallen next to me, and she sounded like she was hurt bad. It was only when I opened my eyes and I saw the ambulance gurney being wheeled towards me that I realized that all of the other riders had remounted and ridden away. I was the only one hurt. I was the one who was screaming.

I had broken my pelvis in two places.

For five months I couldn't work, I couldn't ride, I couldn't walk.

And it was the best thing to ever happen to me.

Finding myself temporarily physically disabled, I recognized and embraced all of the things that I had shut out of my life prior to the accident -- things that I discovered gave my life meaning and purpose: the personal connection with friends and family; the intellectual stimulation I found in reading, writing, and contemplative thought; and the spiritual connection I found with the larger community through volunteer work and being part of an active church once again.

When people ask me what caused me to crash, I tell them that God did it. It literally felt as if some force had grabbed onto the back wheel of my bike and yanked it from under me. But I also believe that I did it. When I felt myself falling, I did nothing to try to prevent it. It's as if I wanted to crash. I wanted out. I wanted to get off the treadmill I had trapped myself on.

Looking back, I realized that God had been trying to communicate with me for years, but I was so focused on my fear that I was unable to listen, so in true God fashion I was sent a message that I couldn't ignore. I had my table tipped, in a dramatic way.

As the Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor, another favorite of mine, so eloquently said:

Creatures of flesh, we learn best by flesh. Our bodies are primary sources of revelation for us. God knows that if nothing else works to get our attention, then what happens in our bodies will do the trick.

Those among us who left the church, and then came back after experiencing a life-altering event, can attest that having our tables tipped was a good thing. Like Jesus, we finally reached the point where there was no other choice but to scream "Enough!" -- and to turn our anger into action for change.

In her book The Dance of Anger, Harriet Lerner put a positive spin on this otherwise shunned emotion:

Our anger may be a message that we are being hurt, that our rights -- or someone else's rights -- are being violated, that needs or wants are not being adequately met. [Our anger] may simply be a sign that something is not right.

Our anger is a sign that we are in pain.

And our pain is only eased when we discover that we can dance.

After my crash, my body may have been immobilized, but on the inside I was learning how to dance.

I'm still learning. I'm still discovering how to translate my energy into action, how to turn over the tables that I find blocking my way...how to resist the urge to tie that rope back around my leg.

I resist that urge in small ways -- by choosing to sit in a different seat every week in church, making the effort to meet new people, try new things, see things from a different perspective.

And I resist that urge in big ways -- by remaining open to the path to ministry that I believe God is calling me to, to stop saying, "No, I can't," and instead to say, "Yes, I can."

We all have a dance inside of us -- a dance that is just waiting to spring forth into the world.

And we all have tables of money changers blocking our path, whether placed there by our own doing or by circumstances beyond our control.

Yet we may be surprised at how many of those tables we can turn over ourselves...if we just place our fingers beneath the edge...and lift.

Amen.