Jesus, Flip My Tables!

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“Hosanna, loud Hosanna
The little children sang;
Through pillared court and temple
The lovely anthem rang.
To Jesus, who had blest them,
Close folded to His breast,
The children sang their praises,
The simplest and the best.” ^[1]

Palm Sunday, the day where pastel colors reappear in the frills of little girls’ dresses and where church podiums are littered with withering branches. It’s the day where the old hymns are sung in a key many strain to reach and when all the guy’s ties match a similar spring-time scheme. It’s one Sunday leading up to the most important day in all of Christendom- Resurrection Sunday. In many cases, this is a day of great joy and celebration. Children’s’ choirs often sing joyous songs, pastor’s preach of Hosannas and laud, and the overall mood of the church body is generally upbeat. Why then, does the very One receiving the praise begin to weep at the sight of it all?

Every gospel records the account of the “Triumphal Entry”, but Luke (in chapter 19) gives us the most thorough. We all know the story. Jesus is heading into Jerusalem in preparation for the Passover, and ultimately His crucifixion. He fulfills the prophecy in Zachariah by borrowing a donkey for a mount. His followers begin to grow greatly excited because they think that Jesus is heading to overthrow the Roman government and be their King, as per their understanding of what “the messiah” was to do. In their elation, Jesus’s followers began to worship Him with songs and Hosannas and the laying of their cloaks for Him to ride over. It’s a beautiful story from the disciple’s viewpoint, but not from Jesus’s. His response to it all wasn’t elation, the gospels don’t even record that He smiled. Rather it is written that He did the very opposite- He wept. [Luke 19:41]

This account is followed directly by another not so joyous one- “Jesus at the Temple” (as the heading in my Bible states). These few simple sentences tell of Jesus’s entering the Temple before Passover and, in a holy anger, flipping over the tables of those who were selling inside. It’s interesting to note that the selling of livestock in the outer court of the temple was completely socially acceptable. It offered convenience to the faraway traveler to purchase his sacrifice once he arrived at the Temple. Many believe that Jesus was upset over the deceit and greed inside His Father’s house, and this is entirely true in some sense; but there’s another view of thought (of which I take part) that believes that Jesus’s holy outburst had more to do with his weeping (in verse 41) than specifically with the money lending.

What if Jesus, in His holy and omniscient state, foresaw the deep depravity that was infesting His chosen people? You know He could. What if Jesus wept, there sitting atop the donkey amidst the hosannas, because His people were excited over the wrong triumph? What if He flipped over those tables, not purely out of holy anger from the obvious sin, but more so from the disgust that His people were so blind and stagnant in their worship of His Dad? What if the purification of the Temple (by flipping the tables) and the piercingly direct quality of His following messages were a time-is-ticking, last-resort, warning to His followers of what was to come? Jesus was mourning the fact that His followers just didn’t get it.

They didn’t get that Jesus wasn’t there to save them from the oppression of the Romans, He was there to save them from their sins. They didn’t get that Jesus hadn’t come to earth to perform miracles, but to bring people to repentance. They didn’t get that this completely human man was also entirely Creator God. They didn’t get that this Man that they were just now praising would soon be the same Man that they would vote to have killed. They didn’t get it.

We are no different than them, ya know. We celebrate the pomp and circumstance of the Sunday. We clean the house and prepare a special meal. We shop for candy and plastic grass to fill baskets. We hide cheap eggs with coins inside. We even go to church and hold palms and sing hymns. Yet we miss the worship.  We completely glance over the pure deprivation of our sin that Jesus took on Himself for us. We replace the humility that should befall us, especially around this time of year, with a pride that has no place in our life.

If we truly allowed Jesus to reign in our life, the first thing He would have to do is flip our tables of pride and false security. If we honestly were to surrender all to Him, we would have to lay down and allow Him to ride over our cloaks of plastic perfection and our masks of adulterous discipleship. I suppose that there is some room for joyous celebration, but Palm Sunday should more prominently be focused on the reality that everything Jesus is about to endure is all our fault.

Jesus wept because we, because I, didn’t get it; and you know what? I still don’t. Lord, forgive me. 

Jesus, flip the tables of my heart!