Day 19: Making Space for Disruption

BY MAUREEN O’CONNELL | March 4, 2018
Third Sunday of Lent
Today’s Readings

Jesus rejects power that dehumanizes and exploits. In literally clearing out the Temple, Jesus creates for us space for two things.

First, his dramatic reaction to what was going on in God’s holy space can help us understand racism in the context of power. Jesus did not flip the tables because of prejudices, or the actions of particular merchants, or the privileges the sacrificial system awarded some people. Rather, he was enraged by an entire system that benefited a few precisely by taking advantage of many others. He was disgusted that this power masked itself in the name of upholding the religious law. Power is deceptive like that and Jesus wants none of it. He names it and denounces it unequivocally.

[Stephen Melkisethian via Flickr]

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.” Jesus doesn’t walk away from the chaos he creates in disrupting power. Rather he doubles down in his promise to correct it with a new kind power—a power with and for others rather than over them.

For Reflection:

• What power needs to be corrected in our own lives?
  
• What might our resistance to disruptive actions unfolding around us tell us about our relationship to exploitative power?
  
• How can we make space for disruption?

Maureen O'Connell, Ph.D.

Maureen H. O’Connell is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics in the Department of Religion and Theology at La Salle University. She recently published Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness with Beacon Press.

Maureen H. O’Connell es profesora asociada de ética cristiana en el departamento de religión y teología de la Universidad La Salle. Recientemente publicó Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness con Beacon Press.