Casting Out the Caster-Outers

This Holy Week we recall how Jesus threw people out of the temple. Specifically the moneychangers and those who set up tables

Mark’s telling of this story goes like this:

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 money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”?
But you have made it a den of robbers.’
And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

It is said that the chief priests and scribes were upset about this action, so much so they wanted to kill Jesus. They are so offended that Jesus would do such an action and they want to get to the bottom of this. So just a few verses later, they go to Jesus and ask him by what authority does he act?

These folks are not a fan of being thrown out of the temple and called thieves or bandits. They do not like the idea that Jesus was suggesting that these leaders did not care about the people; Jesus suggesting they were taking advantage of the poor. They did not like being tossed out of the center of their religious home.

Among the many genius things of Jesus, one of the most brilliant things of Jesus is his ability to use the very mechanism of the systems against itself. Jesus only does what the leadership of the temple had been doing - casting people out.

For instance, there were ten people with leprosy (Luke 17:11-19). If you had leprosy, you were cast out of the temple for being a sinner and unclean. There was a man born blind and when he disagreed with the leadership, he was cast out (John 9). There was a woman at a well who had been cast out of the community for having several husbands (John 4). There were children who wanted to see Jesus and the disciples tried to cast them out (Mark 10:13-16).

The temple and the leadership of the day was excellent at casting people out.

The leadership found it acceptable and perhaps even honorable when others were cast out. But when the leadership is cast out, when they get a taste of their own medicine, when they see in the mirror all that they had been doing to others - it was only then that the leadership wanted to kill Jesus.

It is brilliant that Jesus was able to use the very same system of “casting out” to expose and destroy the very system of casting out. It is not surprising that we do not like to be the ones doing the casting, but we surely are deeply offended when we are the ones cast out.

What About Those Satan Shoes?

Violence is all around us and we know this, but we do all that we can to avoid knowing that we know this. And so, when that violence is put in our faces and we are forced to see it, we are confronted with the reality that now we know, that we know that we know.

Enter the weird world of high end shoes.

I do not know who "Lil Nas X” is. From what I see he is a child of God, African American, member of the LGBTQ community who also makes music. The only reason I know this name is that he helped to create something called “Satan” shoes. Nike has no affiliation with these shoes, just like they had no affiliation with the “Jesus” shoes. Chances are you and I did not hear about the Jesus shoes, but you may have heard of the “Satan” shoes.

I am not endorsing either shoe, I think they are both idols. They are both similar in their design using the same base shoe. It is unclear to me if Nike was okay with the Jesus shoe, but they clearly want it known they are not okay with the Satan shoe (everyone is more comfortable profiting off Jesus anyways). While one has a pentagram tag, the other has a golden Jesus on a silver cross. Both has scripture on the side (we will return to that) that translates to their obscene price point. The Jesus shoe was more expensive ($1425 vs. $1018) because the scripture reference was from Matthew 14:25 (“And early in the morning he [Jesus] came walking towards them on the lake”). The Satan shoes reference Luke 10:18 (“He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.’”).

The Satan shoes have a disgust factor and that is adding to all this I am sure. The Jesus shoe has water from the River Jordan in the shoe. The Satan shoe has red ink and a drop of human blood. Let’s start with that.

The Satan shoes are not the only thing on the market with human blood. Many of us have diamonds on our hands that have blood in them. Fast fashion has blood in it. Technology has blood in it. These are not the first Nike shoes (again, Nike is not involved with these shoes) that have blood in them. What makes the Satan shoes different is that the blood is not masked or hidden. The violence is right in front of you. You cannot pretend to not know the human cost. And when we know that we know that we know, we often get upset. The blood in the shoes is not new, we just liked it better when we could not see it.

The Satan shoes are awful to us not just because of the idolatry we might associate with them. Our collective non-rage of the Jesus shoes suggests that we are okay with the idolatry of Christ in gold form. The Satan shoes are awful to us because they reveal to us that we know what we pretend to not know. We know that we know and we would rather not know that we know. We are a people addicted to violence. We are a people who believe the lie that violence can solve our conflicts. We are a people who believe that there are conditions where spilling of human blood is acceptable - war, capital punishment, abortion, gun violence, etc.

I did not think that we had a limit to where blood could be spilled. Apparently I was wrong.

We draw the line at shoes.

Jesus as the Means

In the first month, the entire Israelite community entered the Zin desert and the people stayed at Kadesh. Miriam died and was buried there. Now there was no water for the community, and they assembled against Moses and Aaron. Then the people confronted Moses and said to him, “If only we too had died when our brothers perished in the Lord’s presence! Why have you brought the Lord’s assembly into this desert to kill us and our animals here? Why have you led us up from Egypt to bring us to this evil place without grain, figs, vines, or pomegranates? And there’s no water to drink!”

Moses and Aaron went away from the assembly to the entrance of the meeting tent and they fell on their faces. Then the Lord’s glory appeared to them. The Lord spoke to Moses: “You and Aaron your brother, take the staff and assemble the community. In their presence, tell the rock to provide water. You will produce water from the rock for them and allow the community and their animals to drink.”

Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, as the Lord had commanded him. Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock. He said to them, “Listen, you rebels! Should we produce water from the rock for you?” Then Moses raised his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice. Out flooded water so that the community and their animals could drink.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you didn’t trust me to show my holiness before the Israelites, you will not bring this assembly into the land that I am giving them.” These were the waters of Meribah, where the Israelites confronted the Lord with controversy and he showed his holiness to them. - Numbers 20:1-13

You read that correctly. Moses cannot enter the Promised Land because he hit a rock two times rather than just speaking to the rock. Which of course seems crazy. Moses did a lot of things that seemed a bit more “out of line” than hitting a rock in order to provide water. The time he murdered a man (Exodus 2:12). There was that time he smashed the ten commandments (Exodus 32:19). The time he ordered the killing of 3,000 fellow Israelites (Exodus 32:27-29). We do not call these actions “the sin of Moses”, that title is reserved for when he hit a rock to provide water for the people. 

It is easy (and lazy if you ask me) to chalk this story up to some moral or ethical imperative for leaders. Something like, “leaders are held to a higher standard” or “Moses should have had faith” are found all over the internet. And maybe those are true, but these suggest that previous actions of Moses were less important than this one act. 

It is interesting to me that those who told this story of Moses were willing to justify the violence of Moses as though he had a sort of divine permission. Those who told this story suggest that the most important thing is “following orders” - even if they are violent to another sister or brother. We live in a time where we are prone to think that the ends justify the means, but perhaps it is worth considering that God cares about the means just as much (or even more so) than the ends they produce. Maybe Moses could not enter the Promised Land not because the rock was struck, but because Moses fell prey to the idea that the ends justify the means - even violent means. Maybe God forbids Moses from entering the Promised Land because God desires that we pay attention to the means (the way) we use to bring about healing in the world? 

This may be why Jesus says that he is “the Way” and not “the end”. The Way (the means) matters.