If you’ve turned on the news in the last two days or scrolled through social media, you’ve heard the name Cory Booker. He’s the senator from New Jersey who just broke the 68-year-old record for the longest speech in U.S. Senate history by standing on the Senate floor for just more than 25 hours.
And it was downright biblical.
Hannah Brown
Booker took the Senate floor at 7 p.m. March 31 and spoke out against the Trump administration and various topics including proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare, the dismantling of the Department of Education, heinous immigration enforcement practices, violations of constitutional rights, the administration’s abandonment of American allies, the national housing crisis, environmental policy rollbacks and the administration’s failure to honor existing USDA contracts, among others.
Booker also took questions from fellow senators, read poetry, quoted Bible verses, recited song lyrics, drew from famous American speeches and recited personal stories of people who’ve been impacted by the current administration’s policies.
While there is so much that can be applauded and unpacked from this speech, there is one moment at around 2:25 p.m. on April 1 that felt like it had been ripped straight from the sanctuaries of the Black Church tradition Booker grew up in.
“What is the quality of our love, America?”
In a moment of unbridled passion, Booker asked the question, “What is the quality of our love, America?” He went on to say: “Now is the time to get angry, but let that anger fuel you. Now is the time to get scared for what’s happening to your neighbors, but let that fear bring about your courage. Now is your time to stare at despair and say, ‘You will not have the last word because I’m gonna stand up and at least I can give one person hope in this country.’ Can I give one person hope in this country? And so what do I want from my fellow Americans? Do better than me. Do better than we, in this body. We are a flawed and failed people.”
It was a moment so perfect and reminiscent of a Sunday sermon that you almost expected it to be punctuated with the sounds of an organ and followed by an altar call. And maybe it should have been.
As I listened to Booker’s words and his call to action, I couldn’t help being reminded of Jesus flipping over the tables in the temple in Mark 11:15-19.
At first glance, Jesus seems to be making a critique against buying and selling things within the temple. However, this practice was not only common in the temple but necessary because traveling visitors would have no way to perform their necessary sacrifices without these economic services. If this is a regular practice Jesus knows is essential to temple life, his actions beg the question, “What is Jesus mad about?”
As Jesus disrupts activity in the temple, he quotes obscure passages from Isaiah and Jeremiah. In Isaiah 56, an expansive vision is given about Israel’s restoration. This vision imagines both Jews and proselytes being united to one another in a “house of prayer.” In Jeremiah, the Lord warns against the Jews having a false sense of security in the temple. They will not be able to hide from foreigners inside the temple walls like it is a “den of robbers,” but will instead be faced with the reality of comingling with the foreigner because the temple will not last forever. Both Isaiah 56 and Jeremiah 7 add a layer of understanding to Jesus’ actions in the temple. Evidently, Jesus is not mad about a practice that is necessary for proper temple worship but is instead frustrated the people do not understand their security should not lie in the temple.
By overturning the tables, Jesus also overturns the peoples’ expectations about the temple.
“Cory Booker is overturning the tables of American politics.”
In the same way Jesus overturned tables at the temple because of the peoples’ misunderstanding of the temple, Cory Booker is overturning the tables of American politics to remind people of the government’s promises. When our nation has become a safe place to seclude ourselves from the “outsider” or to spew hatred at one another, then it’s time to start flipping tables, or as Booker puts it, “let that fear bring about your courage.”
But the metaphor doesn’t stop there.
By likening his actions to the words of Isaiah and Jeremiah, Jesus is welcoming Gentiles into the temple, thus polluting it according to Jewish law. Jesus’ radical inclusion of those who are considered “unclean” is what strips the pious of their sense of security. Jesus is not claiming the temple business practices are wrong, but rather that they are wholly unnecessary now that the temple and people of God are being reimagined. The temple is no longer a place where the Jews can go to hide from foreigners; it is a place where all are welcome.
So, too, it should be for our country.
Jesus’ actions in the temple are sandwiched between a narrative about a plant. Jesus curses a plant for what it does not produce, flips tables in the temple, and then the disciples observe the plant has died. Jesus’ frustration with the plant is the same as his frustration with the people in the temple. The plant has not produced something good and is therefore corrupt. In the same way, the people in the temple are not corrupted by external things (such as Gentiles) but by what they have produced or not produced within themselves.
So, as Booker asks, “What is the quality of our love, America?” or as Mark 11:15-19 may prompt us to ask, “What fruit are we producing?”
Because the blame for our corruption is not at the hands of foreigners or outsiders, but at the hands of our very government.
Much like Jesus flipping tables because the temple needed cleansing, Booker advocates for Americans and politicians alike to stand up and get to work cleaning things because let’s be honest: lately, they’ve started to smell.
Perhaps as Christians we can understand, as Booker says, that “this is a moral moment; it’s not left or right — it’s right and wrong.”
Perhaps as John Lewis says and both Booker and Jesus demonstrate, it’s time for us Christians to flip some tables and “get in good trouble.”
Hannah Brown has worked as a preacher, writer and researcher. She holds a master of divinity degree from Truett Theological Seminary and is pursuing a master of theology degree from the University of Edinburgh, specializing in theology, ethics and homiletics.