Men of action

Matthew 21:12-17

           Each morning I get a little pearl of wisdom or a thought provoking quotation via e-mail. It is meant to encourage me, to empower me to act, to be the best I can be. It might say 'the only way to surely fail is not to move at all'. Of course, said much more eloquently. Today's was actually this quote of Anthony Robbins.  "In life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action. "  Action is the key to life. Movement, growth and change are all the hallmarks of real life. Those who have stopped thinking and stopped moving have already died even if their bodies still breath and sit around years longer.

          There are examples out there in the real world, men ( and women ) of action that we usually see as heroes and leaders. I think of people like Martin Luther King Jr. I think of people like John Boswell.  Mother Theresa is another person of action!

          Today Jesus enters the Temple and gets angry. They say emotions aren't bad, it's what you do with the emotion that can get you in trouble. Still, Jesus is so angry ( so human ) he overturned tables and drove the merchants out. Bravo! A true man of action, our hero in so many ways. Yes?

          So often we fail to act. We passively stand by. I recall a time in a food store where I watched a woman berate and verbally abuse her mother. I said nothing, I did nothing. I still bear the guilt of non-action. How often do we see something we know is wrong and we just do not do anything. Afraid of getting involved, happy that it does not involve us. But in fact it does involve us. WE are all brothers and sisters. This goes to something I call social sin. I may not have berated that elderly woman but in failing to act as a fellow human being I am guilty of letting it happen. I was not the man of action I want to be and that I now strive to be.

           Of course we can't stand up for every cause and every single thing we see going on around us or in the world that has gone awry. But I caution all of us and am reminded of that quotation of the Protestant pastor Martin Niemoller (1892–1984) that rings as true today as did back in the 1940's .

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— 

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— 

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

        What we need to remember is that no matter how we differ, we are all children of God.

        I cannot help but think that when we are passive and inactive we could all be accused of complicity. That is my ( our ) social sin. Jesus was far from the redeemer and messiah that most Jews expected. Jesus was a rebel and far from ordinary. He bucked all of the accepted social norms, so much so his life story reads like an ancient heretic and yet he was all about love. Jesus was a man of action!

        On this Palm Sunday the Jews laid palm branches to welcome the Messiah to Jerusalem but yet were eerily quiet as he was tortured and hung on a cross. Not just our brother, but our Messiah. Where is our passion, our action our determination and decision to love and seek justice?

        This week, people of decency have been standing up against a heinous law in Indiana that is the furthest thing from Christian. Many will say how horrible it is. Even though someone may not be an overt LGBTQ "ally", they say how sad it is. How could it happen (again)? Haven't we learned this lesson already?  People who think, see the implications of this law and shake their heads.

         What kind of action should you take? Will you be passive and complicit? What wrongs are you called to right? Or will we stand by as Jesus is paraded in the streets, dressed as a gay man or women, tortured, rejected, denied humanity and the freedom we say we stand for? 

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, ‘It is written,

“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;

   but you are making it a den of robbers.’

The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,

“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies

   you have prepared praise for yourself”?’ 

He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.