For a couple of years I had to attend a prayer meeting before each Sunday morning service at a church I was serving in. I slowly began to dread it. Every week we prayed for people to have an experience with God that morning in the service, as if God were in the building and people were coming in from the godless world to meet with God. But every week I kept getting a creeping feeling that this framing was the opposite of the truth.
First, God does not live in the church building alone, and most of my peers would have agreed with that, but I also understood that people were actually coming in from a God-soaked world, and were bringing God into the church building as we gathered together. Praying those prayers inside that building every Sunday created a feeling of gnawing emptiness inside me. As I prayed, I heard a small voice within me saying, “God is not in here. God is outside.” That voice grew louder and louder as the weeks went by, and I was only able to avoid an exhausting discomfort by walking outside and continuing to pray in the parking lot. Gradually, my prayers turned to cultivating an openness to an experience of God who was always coming from the outside world into the church to disrupt the familiar performances of Christian ministers.
What started as a scary feeling now seems like an obvious spiritual truth. As the apostle Paul said in Acts 17, God does not live in churches, temples, shrines, or any other religious buildings made by human hands.1 In fact, the prophets throughout the Bible always come with a message of criticism, not for the world, but for the religious authorities in the temple or the church. When you are open to the experience of God within the world, then you discover the blasphemous smallness of the God bound up inside the walls of the church. And you start to resonate more and more with the religion of the prophets who always saved their sharpest criticisms for the church.
Jesus aligned himself with this prophetic tradition. The clearest example of this is the story of Jesus entering the temple, starting a riot, and preaching against the religious authorities. This was not a temper tantrum. This was a planned demonstration that communicated the justice Jesus wanted to see in the world. Jesus was not the first one to protest in the temple, and he wasn’t the last. Jesus was part of a long prophetic stream of those who called for justice in the location where injustice had been justified again and again.
Remember, the desire for a new world emerges as a solution to the problems of the current world. Those problems are first named by powerless people who experience the constraints of the current world. It is through their collective organizing and revolt that more and more people begin to comprehend the intolerability of the constraints of the current world. Revolt is a process, not a singular event.2 No small instance of revolt proposes to be the solution to the problems of the current world. Rather, every small instance of revolt raises the consciousness of the masses to inspire unity in the process of revolt. Eventually, this process leads to the development of a new world. This is how historical change works. And God is always on the side of the powerless as they struggle for liberation and build a new world.
Building a new world begins with raising people’s consciousness to the constraints experienced by the powerless of the current world. Protests, riots, and strikes have increased over the last few years as part of the same work, led by the powerless who have experienced the constraints of this world.
Jesus was also participating in this work through his ministry. This is most obvious in Jesus’s actions in the temple. The riots of Black Lives Matter protests and the riot of Jesus in the temple are both doing something similar in their societies. By reading these riots side by side, we can gain a deeper understanding of each of them and begin to discover their historical significance.
The process that leads to the development of a new world begins by listening to what is being communicated in these forms of protest. We must listen to those who experience the constraints of the current world in order to understand how to build a new world.
Many people have gone to Black Lives Matter protests and are quick to claim that the most aggressive protesters are making the protest into something that it wasn’t supposed to be about. The wise ones are willing to stop and ask themselves Am I the one who is actually wrong about what this protest is about? We are quick to assume the naivete of others before ever exposing it in ourselves. Many people went to a protest in the summer of 2020 expecting to protest the arrest of police officer Derek Chauvin, and then were surprised to discover the general anti-police sentiment of many protests.
“A riot is the language of the unheard,” people repeated to each other amid the frustration, quoting an old Dr. King interview, while trying to satisfy their own complex feelings. Many people were fine with a couple of days of protests, hoping it would lead to an increase in the police budget, so they could get some better training. The protests, however, just wouldn’t stop.
The media sensationalized every tiny moment of property destruction, vandalism, and looting because that’s what gets attention as networks compete with one another for clicks and ratings. This made it seem like every moment of every protest was a destructive riot. By doing this, they manufactured a new narrative that left them with only two choices: either support all forms of violence and destruction from every side, or give your sole support to the “peaceful,” “nonviolent” protests of those fighting for reform alone. The ones who wanted more than reform were painted as violent extremists who must be condemned “if you really cared about Black lives and really wanted to make some realistic changes.”
This narrative exposes the obvious tactic here: the refusal to listen. It’s a refusal to listen to the message of the protest and a manipulation of the message by creating a narrative of a “real reason” for protesting while condemning the reasons of all the others as violent extremism.
This gave the perfect opportunity for all the white moderates to say, “Of course I believe Black Lives Matter, I just don’t support (insert whatever was demonized by the media that day).” This isn’t that different from the white moderate spoken of by Dr. King,
who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action…”3
The subtle, unspoken message I sense from the white moderate of today is: “I believe Black lives matter, but I don’t want to eliminate the institutions that were built, and are continually funded, to destroy Black lives.”
So let’s begin listening to the entire protest, including the parts that make us uncomfortable. Let’s listen to the larger spirit of revolt that each of these protests live within.
Marxist humanist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya, while discussing the revolutionary movements around the world throughout the twentieth century, reminds us to take notice of “certain creative moments in history” when “the self-determination of ideas and the self-determination of masses readying for revolt explode.”
These are the moments where we must pay attention with, as Jesus said, eyes to see and ears to hear. “Something is in the air, and you catch it,” Dunayevskaya explains. “That is, you catch it if you have a clear head and if you have good ears to hear what is upsurging from below.”4
The protest, and often the riot, is an expression of what is upsurging from below. When we claim that the protests are supposed to be only about this or that, we are refusing to listen, and are contributing to the historic suppression of what is upsurging from below.
Jesus led a few disruptive demonstrations that also tapped into what was upsurging from below, beginning with riding into Jerusalem on something as lowly as a donkey. Now celebrated by Christians on the first day of Holy Week as Palm Sunday, stripped away from its political context, this demonstration harbored a dangerous message that would lead to Jesus’s public execution by the end of the week. The way Jesus entered Jerusalem at the beginning of Passover week was a strategically organized demonstration.
Jesus’s entire ministry was headed toward Jerusalem. Every time he had to leave a large crowd of sick people begging to be healed, it was because his journey was aimed toward Jerusalem. Word of Jesus’s message had already spread to Jews in Jerusalem, and they were prepared to participate in these planned demonstrations. Mark 11 tells us that when Jesus and his disciples were approaching Jerusalem, he told two of his disciples, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’ ”5
We don’t know who was assigned to tie up the colt at the entrance, but taking the colt communicated to the crowds waiting in Jerusalem that Jesus was about to arrive. From the Mount of Olives, Jesus entered through the east entrance of Jerusalem on the colt while a crowd surrounded him, preparing the road for Jesus by spreading their cloaks and “leafy branches that they had cut in the fields” on the ground. And they shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”6
This deliberate sequence of actions was a symbolic reenactment of the prophecy of Zechariah. Zechariah 9:9 says, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Matthew even directly quotes the verse in his account.
This was a purposefully timed demonstration that would also remind people of the next verse in Zechariah 9: “He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”
Although the gospel accounts do not report this detail, we know that the Roman governor Pontius Pilate arrived in Jerusalem at the beginning of Passover Week as well. First-century Jewish historian Josephus wrote that during every Passover, Pontius Pilate and a legion of Roman soldiers spent the week in Jerusalem because of an increased chance of an uprising as Jews celebrated the event of the Exodus. The Romans wanted to make sure nobody got any dangerous ideas as they recounted God’s attack on Egypt and the liberation of the Israelites.7
So as Jesus humbly entered Jerusalem from the east on a donkey, surrounded by a crowd of peasants and leafy branches, Pontius Pilate was likely entering Jerusalem from the west on a chariot led by a war horse, surrounded by a legion of Roman soldiers with armor and deadly weaponry. In their book on Jesus’s last week in Jerusalem, John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg point out, “What we often call Jesus’s triumphal entry was actually an anti-imperial, anti-triumphal one, a deliberate lampoon of the conquering emperor entering a city on horseback through gates opened in abject submission.”8
The symbolism is packed with meaning for the lives of those in the crowd surrounding Jesus. This demonstration exposed two warring kingdoms: the kingdom of Rome, with the power and weapons on their side, and the kingdom of God with the people on their side, desperate for liberation.
At the end of the day, Jesus and his disciples discreetly traveled back through the Mount of Olives to Bethany, where they stayed every night that week, likely to avoid arrest in Jerusalem after sundown with no crowds around to protect Jesus. The next day Jesus and his disciples traveled back to Jerusalem for another demonstration, this time at the temple. Mark says,
Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.9
It’s important to notice that Jesus’s actions are not random here. They are calculated. He is not throwing a tantrum, spontaneously triggered by witnessing something uniquely scandalous happening in the temple. Jesus isn’t just knocking over whatever is in his way. When we look at his specific actions, we notice that Jesus drove out those who were buying and selling, overturned the money changers’ tables, and overturned the seats of those who sold doves. Jesus is staging a temporary shutdown of the temple’s activities to get the attention of those present.
Jesus’s shutdown of the temple was his second demonstration that week, and the one that would lead to his arrest and execution just a couple of days later. Jesus avoids arrest this day by being protected by the large crowds, and he ends the day by sneaking back to Bethany for the night. Eventually, this nightly passage through the Mount of Olives would be exposed, leading to his arrest.
It’s important to notice the lack of a spirit of reform in these demonstrations. The spirit of abolition is the driving force here. What is being communicated in these demonstrations is a rejection of the current world, not its reform.
On May 28, 2020, the third night of protests in Minneapolis after the police murder of George Floyd, protesters set the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct building on fire. The precinct was where the four officers involved in the murder were based, so protesters had been gathered around the building since the first night.
Some thought the fire was taking things too far. Most of these people, however, seemed to view the act strictly as a response to the murder of George Floyd. Those who viewed the fire as a response to centuries of racist violence experienced a kind of catharsis witnessing a police precinct in flames. The last time a police station had been destroyed in the United States was in 1863 during the New York draft riots.
Queen Jacobs, a Minneapolis swim instructor, arrived at the scene after the fire had begun. “I think we all felt a sense of strength and community, and a piece of what our ancestors went through, and when they were able to be liberated,” she said. “We’re done backing down. We’re done rolling over. We’re done dying.”10
For the crime of conspiracy to commit arson, the police arrested and charged two white men, Dylan Shakespeare Robinson and Branden Michael Wolfe, along with two Black men, Davon De-Andre Turner and Bryce Michael Williams. Although many more participated in setting the station on fire, these four men were the ones caught on the video that was posted to social media.
In an Instagram interview shortly after that night, Bryce Williams said, “For once we feel like we’re in complete control. The police can’t do anything. We’re burning down their sanctuary, their home.”11
Juno Choi, the owner of a local brewery a few doors down from the precinct, said, “It has become sort of symbolic of police brutality and systemic racism across the country. It was really a protest about what’s been going on all across the nation for a long, long time.”12
Jennifer Starr Dodd, a relief emergency organizer for the local Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, said, “I think of it as the Pentecost.” Pentecost refers to the story in Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit appeared to Jesus’s disciples through a rushing wind and “tongues of fire.” “It’s like a holy anger,” Dodd said. “The spirit came and it was a great fire, and everybody changed in that moment of Pentecost. I see the burning of the Third Precinct as the same. It changed everyone, whether they like it or not.”13
That night I watched the fire on a livestream, and I was overwhelmed with similar feelings as I saw hundreds of people cheering and dancing in front of the flames. When shutdowns began in response to the spread of the deadly coronavirus, many people asked, “Where is God in all this?” Since this question was at the front of my mind during this season, I couldn’t help but think: there, among those celebrating in front of that burning police station is exactly where God is to be found. And I couldn’t help but think of Jesus, who rioted in the temple two thousand years ago.
It’s important we understand exactly what Jesus was protesting in the temple when he shut down its activities. To assume that Jesus’s demonstration in the temple was protesting the temple itself would be a misinterpretation. It would also be a misinterpretation to assume that Jesus was protesting the sacrificial system housed at the temple, or even worse, to assume that Jesus was protesting Judaism.
To help us understand what Jesus was protesting, let’s look at a scene in Mark right before Jesus’s temple demonstration. That morning on the way to Jerusalem, Jesus looked for something to eat.
Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.14
Jesus enters the temple in the very next verse. It’s clear that Jesus’s cursing of the fig tree is a symbol for how Jesus approaches the temple. As Borg and Crossan point out, “In both cases, the problem is a lack of the ‘fruit’ that Jesus expected to be present.”15
After Jesus shut down the activities in the temple, he began teaching, saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”16 Some have made the mistake of interpreting the reference to a den of robbers as Jesus claiming that people are being robbed in the temple, literally or symbolically. However, a den of robbers is not a place where robbers steal. A den of robbers is where robbers run and hide, expecting to be safe.
In the same way that Jesus was reenacting Zechariah’s prophecy while riding the donkey into Jerusalem, Jesus is reenacting an earlier Hebrew prophet’s demonstration in the temple. The Jewish crowds would have been certain of this connection the moment Jesus said the temple had been made into a den of robbers, directly quoting Jeremiah. Roughly six hundred years before Jesus’s temple demonstration, the prophet Jeremiah spoke at the gate of the temple,
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.”17
Jeremiah seems prepared for the accusation of blasphemy as he condemns those in the temple. The ritualistic way of proclaiming the temple of the Lord as indeed the holy and glorious cannot save people from the correction Jeremiah is about to deliver. Jeremiah begins by naming the deceptive nature of the claim that the temple of the Lord is the wrong place to speak his message. It is in the place where people thought they could hide in safety that they needed to hear this condemnation. Jeremiah continues, speaking on behalf of God:
For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever. Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the Lord.18
In December 2014, during Christmas shopping season, more than one thousand protesters filled the Mall of America in Minneapolis in response to the police murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Twenty-five people were arrested for trespassing. Exactly one year later, organizers planned to protest in the mall again in response to the Minneapolis Police murder of Jamar Clark. The day before the protest, CNN’s Carol Costello interviewed the attorney of the Mall of America, who said they “totally respect the message” and “totally respect their free speech rights,” but “a demonstration doesn’t belong on private property.” She added, “Come here and shop. School choirs come and sing holiday music. That is what we're about. We're not about demonstrations.”19
Then Costello brought on Black Lives Matter organizer Miski Noor. Costello pressured, “Why not just move your protest outside? People can see you’re protesting as they pull into the parliament by the parking lot by the thousands. What’s wrong with that?” Noor responded,
Carol, it also brings to mind the idea . . . that Dr. King said, about people who agree with your message but not with your tactics. We don't need anybody to agree with our tactics, right? We're disrupting business as usual. That is the whole idea. We're not going to stand in a corner and protest, because nobody pays attention to that. We are going disrupt your life. You are going to know that business as usual in America and the world is not going to continue while black people–unarmed black people–are literally being shot and killed by law enforcement in the street every day.20
Before being dismissed, Noor also made sure to shed light on the ways the Mall of America participates in “anti-Black racism and white supremacy”:
The Mall of America has been investigated by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights for violations for the way they treat people of color in the mall. So these same issues that we're seeing in police departments are manifesting in the mall, and people of color and black people are being affected negatively because of the way the mall decides to act. So that is why they are an appropriate target.21
It is an ancient tactic to shut down protest by claiming the place people choose to protest is the wrong place and the wrong time. And yet, the places where people think they can avoid confronting their injustice are often the best places to confront it. The Mall of America is this type of place. The Minneapolis Third Precinct is this type of place. And the temple is this type of place.
Requiring peaceful protests that don’t disrupt anything—or be met with police violence—exposes that the United States has always suppressed the free speech of protesters. Those who claim to “support the message” but not protesters’ disruptive tactics are disguising their real desire: to not be inconvenienced or challenged by protesters at all.
There must be a disruption of everyday life in order to make a change. Many people did not realize how much of a problem police violence was until the protests went on a couple of days longer than expected. When that happens, people are forced to listen in ways they couldn’t have before.
There are many in this country whose lives are intolerable, and in order to bring attention to their struggle they must make others experience a glimpse of intolerability. When that happens, people are exposed to all the ways we tolerate the intolerable every day. We gain “eyes to see” and “ears to hear” through the aggressive experience of being exposed to what we can no longer unsee and unhear.
Jesus’s demonstration exposed people to the ways they tolerated the intolerable as well. Jesus chose to disrupt the temple during Passover week, the busiest time of the year. I imagine there were those back then who “supported Jesus’s message” but didn’t think the temple during Passover was the right place and time to protest. We would call a person naive, if not deceptive, if they were to tell Jesus that he should have demonstrated in some other public area during some other time. We should think that response to Black Lives Matter protests is just as naive, if not deceptive.
In Matthew’s account, the author mostly copies Mark. After Jesus calls the temple a den of robbers, Matthew adds in verse 14:
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’?”22
It’s beautiful and inspiring to imagine this scene of a crowd of disabled people rushing into the temple. Jesus once again crosses social boundaries as he makes the temple his center for healing those who had been cast out again and again. In the temple that had taken so much wealth in tithes and taxes, Jesus illuminates those who had suffered the most from a lack of wealth and resources. Jesus once again demonstrates what the upside-down reign of God looks like, where the last become first.
Jesus tapped into the Hebrew prophetic tradition and spoke against the injustice happening, not in the temple, but everywhere, and he condemned those who treat the temple as a safe refuge in which to hide from the consequences of their unjust actions.
We need to place Jesus’s antagonism toward the temple in its proper context. An adequate comparison is the way Frederick Douglass talked about the Christianity of Christ vs. the Christianity of the land, the religion of the slaveholders. In the name of the Christianity of Christ, Douglass condemned and rejected the Christianity of the land. Similarly, within Jewish history the Hebrew prophets condemned and rejected the Judaism of the land in the name of the prophetic Judaism of justice. The Judaism often critiqued by the prophets was one that had prioritized worship over justice. Jesus continues the tradition of the Hebrew prophets in the temple.
The temple was also the socioeconomic center that symbolized the collaboration between the Jewish priesthood and the Roman government. The temple had been tainted by compromise since the Jews were conquered by the Persian empire in the sixth century BCE. While the Babylonians had previously destroyed the first temple and deported the Jews, the Persians allowed the priesthood to rebuild the temple, but created a double role for the priesthood to also serve as officers of the Persian emperor. The emperor saw the compromise as conveniently practical, requiring the Jews to pay their taxes to the Persian government along with their tithes to the priests.23 From the Persians to the Greeks to the Romans, the priests profited from this collaboration and used the Torah to justify their privileged social position while preaching pacifism to the peasants whose poverty continued to grow more and more unbearable.24
During Jesus’s day, under the Roman Empire, people were required to make sacrifices to Caesar as Lord in the temple as well. Herod the Great had renovated the temple around 20 BCE and built a portico above it where soldiers would stand guard when there was an increased chance of an uprising, such as Passover week. When discussing whether the people supported the temple, we must distinguish between the temple as a symbol of Jewish faith and the actual temple system that had been compromised by the Roman government.25
If Jesus wanted to protest Judaism, or the sacrificial system specifically, then he could have easily overturned items inside the temple where sacrifices were taking place. Instead, Jesus shut down the temple in the outer courts where people were buying and selling. As Horsley puts it, “Jesus attacks the activities in which the exploitation of God’s people by their priestly rulers was most visible.”26
The Gospel of Luke adds a scene right before Jesus enters the temple:
As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”27
The original readers of this gospel would have understood this passage as a reference to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, which was the Roman response to a Jewish revolt in 66 CE against the Roman Empire. Mark was the first gospel written, around 70 CE, while Matthew, Luke, and John were written during the following decades. An earlier Jewish revolt took place in 4 BCE, which was also brutally crushed by Rome. Jesus’s ministry took place between these two revolts, but the gospels were written down after the temple was destroyed in 70 CE.
Jesus either predicted the destruction of the temple or Luke retroactively placed these words on the lips of Jesus as a way of letting his audience know that Jesus’s actions are part of the larger sequence of events that would lead to the destruction of the temple. Either way it’s safe to assume that the historical Jesus truly did see the end of the temple as inevitable. Even Jeremiah had a similar outlook of the temple. Jeremiah, Jesus, and other prophets witnessed the people of their day prioritize worship over justice and understood that this path would only lead to the destruction of the places in which they worship.
We gain a wider perspective of the ministry of Jesus when we learn that it took place between these two major violent Jewish revolts in 4 BCE and 66 CE, both of which resulted in massive Roman suppression. Jesus and his followers did not condemn these revolts. They easily could have, but they did not. They understood that they were a part of an inevitable stream of conflict that rages on before a new world is birthed, as do many people who protest and revolt against the current world.
Jesus did not advocate for violence, but we must also recognize that Jesus did not advocate for nonviolence either. In fact, he believed God would violently destroy the Roman Empire, like many Jews of his time did. What Jesus was more interested in was showing people a new way to live in preparation for the new world that would be birthed from the destruction of the Roman Empire.
Jesus advocated for a way of communal life committed to sacrificial love and the liberation of the oppressed. By teaching the values of a new world, Jesus and his followers raised the consciousness of people who couldn’t imagine what life would look like beyond the current world.
Remember, the type of rejection of the current world that we’re talking about has nothing to do with an obsession with destruction or death. Protesting the current world is driven by the desire for a new world. Working toward the development of a new world is the sole reason for rejecting the current world here.
In her book, In Defense of Looting, historian Vicky Osterweil talks about historical movements that were birthed out of historical riots. Osterweil reminds us that the “Stonewall riots gave birth to the gay liberation movement; the storming of the Bastille gave birth to the French Revolution; the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution.”28
She also reminds us that the physical birth of a child can be violent and dangerous, even “life-threatening,” so we should expect the same of the births that are achieved through riots.
Riots are violent, extreme, and femme as fuck: they rip, tear, burn, and destroy to give birth to a new world. They can emerge from rising tensions and lead to nothing—a miscarriage—or be the height and end point of a given movement. In most instances, however, they transform and build a nascent moment into a movement: rioting, as the Black trans women of Stonewall showed us, is a form of queer birth.29
We must pay attention to what riots are struggling to give birth to. Those who are fighting solely for reform often believe they are the only ones concerned with a new world, dismissing abolitionists as people who are obsessed with tearing everything down. That’s one of the common arguments used to shut down ambitious conversations about alternatives to the prison–industrial complex.
Abolition, as Mariame Kaba says, “is a vision of a restructured society in a world where we have everything we need: food, shelter, education, health, art, beauty, clean water, and more things that are foundational to our personal and community safety.”30
PIC abolitionists are committed to collectively solving socioeconomic problems that lead to crime. Police and prisons do not prevent crime. They only punish crime. The core motivation of abolition is building a new world, not tearing everything down. The thing is, at some point the current world must die for a new world to be birthed. That is how change happens.
After Jesus’s demonstration at the temple, the Gospel of Mark again mentions the fig tree that Jesus had cursed the previous morning:
In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”31
When Jesus is walking through the Mount of Olives and says, “This mountain,” in the distance they would have seen the Herodium, which may be the mountain Jesus was referring to. The Herodium was named by Herod the Great after himself, with an innovative palace-fortress built on top to celebrate his victory over the Hasmoneans and the Parthians in 40 BCE. Josephus described the mountain being artificially raised “by the hand of man and rounded off in the shape of a breast.”32 In honor of Herod the Great’s military victory, the mountain was raised by enslaved workers who carried over pieces of another mountain from a nearby demolished hill. Herod the Great literally moved a mountain using enslaved people. Jesus may have been referring to Herod’s ability to move mountains when he told his disciples that they can move mountains too.
We can make real transformation here and now. We don’t have to prolong transformation to some sort of afterlife. Christians are called to materialize the reign of God on earth “as it is in heaven.” In the reign of God, we—not just Herod—can move mountains. In the reign of God, the power dynamic is flipped upside down. In the reign of God, transformation comes from below, not above.
But not every single riot is attempting to give birth to a new world. Sometimes a riot emerges as to suppress the birth of a new world, in reaction to radical change. This is why the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, does not fit into the kind of riots I’m talking about. Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in protest of the alleged rigged presidential election of Joe Biden. And yet, it was about more than that.
Many of these protesters claimed that they were also taking the country back from an imagined cabal of elites that had led the country away from the traditional Christian nationalism of the past. Just as the slogan “Make America Great Again” implies, these protesters were not calling for anything new, but were calling for a violent suppression of those fighting for a new world. They were fighting for a cultural reversal to an old, imagined social order in which the “right people” were in charge.
Although the media portrayed this riot as an insurrection, this riot was more of an intimidation tactic. It was an attempt to show the world that they can cause disorder just like those who are fighting for a new world. It was an attempt to intimidate those who support the kind of revolt I’ve been talking about.
Building a new world will always be met with suppression. Those who contribute to that suppression believe that they are protecting what God has made and become ignorant of the new thing God is doing. Like Peter in Acts 10, they refuse to listen to God because of their previous experience of God.
Jesus is executed because fighting for a new world will always be met with suppression by those who benefit from the current world. Jesus is not on the side of those who fight to preserve the current world. Those people killed Jesus. Jesus is on the side of those who fight for a new world. Jesus sacrificed his life in that temple to prove that.