Cleansing the Temple and Turning Over Tables

Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who were selling doves…

‘MY house shall be called a house of prayer for all people’ but you have made it a den of thieves.

                  Mark 11:115-18

How lonely sits the city that once was full of people. How like a widow she has become,

she that was great among nations!

She that was a princess among the provinces

has become a vassal. 

      Lamentations 1:1---response to destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC

     Jesus, like Gandhi walking to the sea to make salt or King walking through Birmingham downtown, or thousands of people marching to Jerusalem last weekend from all over the world, Jesus has walked from Galilee to Jerusalem waging a nonviolent revolution on behalf of the poor. He has come to disturb the business of the Temple-State. His final act must therefore be in the Temple itself, the center of Jewish life and now the economic center of Rome’s imperial outpost.

     He practices nonviolent civil disobedience by driving out those who were buying and selling, by turning over the tables of the moneychangers and the dove sellers, by calling for prayer instead of commerce.  The pilgrims buy doves for their sacrifice and the temple priests oversee the exchange of Roman currency into Jewish money in order to pay temple taxes here. It is a robust exchange with everyone profiting by the exchange based on piety. His outburst, “You have made it a den of thieves” leads immediately to his arrest, jailing, trial, torture, and execution.

     Jesus goes to the heart of the city and the issue of the way his faith is cooperating and benefiting from empire.  As in most empires, the dominant ruling class cooperates with secular authority in order to maintain the status quo that favors their own moneymaking interests and power. Jesus forces the hidden violence of the entire system into the open.

     Jesus does not criticize the Temple’s economic oppression; he pleads for its restoration as a house of prayer and so should we. Our faith too should call us to praise God and to action including civil disobedience whenever injustice and violence---economic or political threaten people’s lives or when our spiritual ideology of the status quo replaces our faith in God.

     We too are called to cleanse our temples of their complicity with imperial powers and turn over the tables of economic exploitation.

There are so many tables to turn over around the siege of Jerusalem. Let me name just a few. The first is the “ethnic cleansing” of the city itself as I have already mentioned of its Palestinian Israeli citizens, Muslim and Christian, through land appropriation, home demolitions, and the revoking of IDs and permits. These practices are crimes against the Palestinian people under international and humanitarian law. Directly related to ethnic cleansing is the continued development of settlements which also means supporting or “tolerating” settler violence.  Lastly, the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967 was only the beginning in creating a Jerusalem capitol for Jews only. We now have a Jerusalem Metropolis extending for miles beyond the city thanks to the creation of a matrix of laws and policies that favor Israeli Jews over Palestinians. And of course the Separation Barrier continues to not only divide people from their land and their ability to make a living but also from their families.

These are just a few of the tables that must be overturned in our Temples but we people of faith have another issue to address and that is our complicity in these injustices.  We are complicit when our faith communities invest or profit from the occupation. We are also complicit when our theologies of God and land support an unquestioning loyalty to Israel without critique of its policies and practices of injustices.

In times of a moral crisis such as now or prolonged military occupation of a people, I believe that neutrality is not an acceptable position. You cannot be neutral on a moving train said the late historian Howard Zinn. The hottest places in hell are for those who maintain neutrality said Dante.  Furthermore, Jesus, our brother and mentor and soon to be Savior, calls us to participate in direct action campaigns and they begin with doing our own house cleaning.

To that end, I lift up those people in their faith communities who are actively engaged in doing such work. They are our prophets and like the stones they are shouting out, they are examining and calling into question the status quo of money, power, and religion.  They are the ones calling for their communities to “engage” with companies who are profiting by the occupation in dialogue about their unjust practices or to divestment from them altogether.  They are the ones, who are looking at where their faith communities spend their resources, who they are invested in. And for this they are often considered traitors by their own people, self hating Jews, or anti-Semitic for their critique of Israel’s policies. No one likes a whistle blower or a challenge to authority.

“Our question to our brothers and sisters in the churches today is: Are you willing and able to work with us to restore our freedom? Our freedom will be the only sustainable foundation for both Palestinian and Israelis to live in love, justice, peace and security.”   Kairos Palestine Document

“When will we find the wherewithal to say out loud that this policy of home demolitions, checkpoints, evictions, increased Jewish settlements, and land expropriation is inhumane and indefensible?”

      Rabbi Brant Rosen

 Jewish Voice of Peace is focusing its attention on those corporations and those companies that are profiting from the Occupation in its TIAA/CREF Campaign. JVP supports divestment from and boycotts of companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. “This includes companies operating in or from occupied Palestinian territory, exploiting Palestinian labor and scarce environmental resources, providing materials or labor for settlements, or producing military or other equipment or materials used to violate human rights or to profit from the Occupation.”

For more information on the campaign:  http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/tiaa-cref

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) joins Jewish Voice for Peace in this campaign.“The AFSC Board affirmed that the decision to join this campaign is “rooted in our Quaker beliefs that we speak with love to ‘that of God’ in every person, that we ‘utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fighting with outward weapons for any end or under any pretense whatsoever’, and that we testify to this by removing the ‘seeds of conflict’ – including economic seeds – from our own lives.  This decision is a response to ongoing Israeli violations of human rights and international law and is a rejection of any actions that might support these violations. Consistent with AFSC’s investment screen, this campaign seeks to change Israeli government actions and to end its continued occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.”

                        Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA)

The ELCA Peace Not Walls committee has just issued a position paper called Advocacy for Equality to inform ELCA members and congregations of possible approaches to current realities in Israel-Palestine situation. It discusses how inequalities have lead to lack of resources and denial of freedom for most Palestinians. The paper acknowledges that advocacy efforts have primarily focused on long-term solutions and that we now need to focus on advocacy priorities that insist on consequences for the occupying power. Toward that end they outline an additional advocacy approach:

       “Church-based calls for equality will be strengthened by insistence on consequences for the occupying power if it continues to choose inaction. Specifically, advocates in the United States can employ their citizenship and consumer choices in the service of a just peace. The ELCA’s 2005 Churchwide Strategy for Engagement in Israel and Palestine points out that U.S. foreign aid ‘helps frame the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians,’ and affirms that the ELCA “will seek to expend God-given economic resources in ways that support the quest for a just peace in the Holy Land.”

       Calls for equality should be accompanied by the message to elected officials that U.S. aid will be contingent on respect for U.S. and international law, both of which support equality. And individuals can vote with their personal expenditures by, for example, exploring ways to avoid purchasing products grown or made in Israeli settlements.”

United Methodist Church in response to the Kairos Palestine Document that came out in 2009 Methodists are bringing to their General Assembly this Spring (April 24-May 4) a resolution that calls for divestment from Caterpillar, Motorala, and Hewett Packard and an engagement process with other companies that support the occupation. The Methodist’s call for divestment is not only a response to the Kairos document but also a response to seeing with their own eyes the impact of the occupation on Palestinian lives. It is also a response to observing how the occupation works and which companies are supporting it. “Israeli soldiers could not conduct their raids on Palestinian villages without weapons supplied by the US government and manufactured by companies in which many of our churches invest. …Our task during this trip was to document as many items as possible that are used in the occupation and companies that are involved with the wall, the settlements and the military which enforces the occupation.”

Read more about the divestment resolution at www.kairosresponse.org

You can also click here to directly support the Methodist resolution

The Presbyterian Church of the United States (PCUSA) is also bringing forward at their annual gathering in late June (June 30-July 7) a divestment resolution from the Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI).  
I had the honor to attend their meeting here in Chicago last fall when they made their bold and prophetic decision to bring this resolution to their general assembly.

Like their Methodist brothers and sisters they too have come to see how our private corporations support the occupation. “The roadblocks to a just peace in Israel-Palestine could not be sustained or be so effective without the complicity of private corporations and their involvement in the infrastructure of violence and occupation that violates human rights and degrades human dignity.”  From summary of MRTI Report to 2012 General Assembly: Engagement with Corporations on Israel-Palestine Issues from 2004-2011.

This will be the second go around for the Presbyterians. Again they are being criticized from both inside and outside the church for their bold witness. Here are two excerpts from Jewish groups in support of the Presbyterian call.

The first is from Jeff Halper from the Israeli Coalition Against Housing Demolition in support of the Presbyterian effort.

“We in Israel who work tirelessly for peace are comforted that MRTI exists, is active and receives the support it does from the Presbyterian Church. We urge you to continue to give practical expression to your moral concerns by supporting the divestment campaign, and not to let external attacks divide you or weaken your resolve. We look forward to the day when we all come together at Beit Arabiya to celebrate the end of Occupation and the dawn of a just peace. In that you will all have been instrumental.”

click here to read this letter on ICAHD website
click here for ICAHD-USA and pictures of house demolitions and rebuilding by ICAH

I encourage you to read their full report at http://www.pcusa.org/media/uploads/mrti/pdfs/2012-mrti-report-9-9-11.pdf

Click here to support the Presbyterian initiative, which will be brought before the PC USA General Assembly

The Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council have released a letter of support of both Presbyterian and United Methodist church’s efforts to divest that profit from the Israeli Occupation. I end with a quote from their wonderful letter:

We believe that to invest your own resources in corporations which pursue your vision of a just and peaceful world, and to withdraw your resources from those which contradict this vision, is the best way to support Muslims, Christians, Jews, Israelis, Palestinians –truly all people.

We can think of no greater act of friendship than to work with us, side by side to bring justice, equality and self-determination to all people. This selective divestment process is one of the strongest tools we have. In making this decision, we are together, Jews and Christians, living up to the biblical promise to pursue justice.

Visit rabbisletter.org to see the whole letter