04/03/2026
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He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.
Matthew 21:12
For years I’ve imagined a quiet scene that the Gospels never show us: a tired temple janitor, broom in hand, sweeping up the chaos after Jesus left. He rights the overturned tables, straightens the benches, gathers the unfound scattered coins, and gently coaxes the doves back into their cages. Before long, the temple courtyard looks almost exactly as it did before the ruckus.
History tells us that’s pretty much what happened. The system didn’t collapse that day. The money changers and animal sellers returned. Worship went on. For a while, everything went back to “normal.”
But something had shifted.
Jesus’ act planted a seed—small, disruptive, and alive. It didn’t bloom overnight. It sat quietly in the soil of hearts and minds. Then, life by life, family by family, the old status quo began to lose ground. What looked like a momentary outburst was actually the beginning of a quiet revolution.
The temple system would eventually face far greater judgment, but even before that, Jesus was challenging something deeper: the human tendency to turn sacred spaces into marketplaces and sacred callings into profit.
And He’s still doing it.
The hardest part may not be watching Jesus overturn the tables in our lives or in His church.
The hardest part is refusing to set them back up again.
It’s much easier to sweep up the mess, straighten the furniture, and return to business as usual than it is to leave the tables down and let the disruption do its holy work.
I thank God for every rabble-rousing reformer—past and present—who refuses to let the church forget why we exist. Jesus is still calling us to the kind of prayer that doesn’t just feel good, but leads to courageous, costly action.
Lord, give us the courage to leave overturned what You have overturned… and the faith to trust what grows in the mess You leave behind.
Rev. Andy Lambert
Conference Evangelist
