After the march in DC, we had a lot more attention than ever
before. I mean, Jesus had always attracted attention, but before it was local
news, or bloggers that were showing up. Occasionally, it would be a magazine,
or some big newspaper that would show up to do what they always called a “human
interest” piece, bet even they usually barely understood what he was saying and
the stories would get relegated to the back pages of publication. But now it
was big time cable companies, or national broadcast news teams. Dateline showed
up at one point, and CNN had a guy assigned to follow us full time. We all
started to really feel like the pressure was on.
Jesus seemed to take it in stride, but some of their
questions would annoy him. They’d ask him to give perspective on this political
movement, or that news event, and sometimes he would make this face that we all
knew meant he was getting annoyed because they were missing the point.(we’d
seen the look directed at us more than a few times) Usually, he’d patiently try
and answer them by turning it back on them, or using one of his parables to
make another point, but every once in a while you could tell he’d just get fed
up he’d start talking about “leavening” and then he’d disappear for a while to
pray by himself.
It was one of those times, we were still in DC, and the
press were hamming it up pretty good. They’d been asking him to comment about
some starlet who’d been found overdosed in her bedroom. They said her name and
he got this hurt and sad look on his face. Then they asked if it was a sign of
the “determination of our youth” and if she’d “paid the price for her poor
choices,” and he just got this disgusted look when he glared at the reporter.
No words were said, but Mr. Dateline didn’t ask us anything more for the next
hour.
It was this mood that Jesus was in when we got to the
church. The First Church of the Divine was this big rambling building on the
southern outskirts of DC. It wasn’t near as large or famous as the National
Cathedral, but it had been getting pretty popular because some TV minister was
based out of there. He had programs on some of the smaller cable networks, but
every year around certain holidays, they’d put together a big program on one of
the major networks, complete with singing and dancing, even some pyrotechnics,
a real show. Consequently, there was always a crowd around the place,
especially on Sundays. We weren’t sure why Jesus suddenly wanted to go there,
he’d normally avoided a lot of the churches that had invited him, usually sticking
to speaking in truck stop parking lots or public parks. But that morning, he’d
woken up with this air of determination and announced we were going.
When we first got there, we took a bit to park, everyone
piled into the various trucks and station wagons we used when caravanning
around. We made our way up to the main building, along with the rest of the
crowd. When we got in, we were surprised by how tightly packed the place was
inside. There was a tour guide who was greeting everyone and explaining the history
of the building. I’d mostly tuned him out and was looking around at all the
people until I noticed Jesus’s face.
I hadn’t seen that look before.
I realized he’d been listening to the tour guide. Turns out
the area we were in had used to be a homeless shelter and a food pantry when
the church had first been built, but when they started attracting national
attention they’d been “required” to repurpose the area to handle the giant
influx of visitors. The whole section of the building had been turned into a
marketplace of sorts. Selling books written by the famous pastor, videos of the
big televised holiday selections, as well as all kinds of trinkets and bits
that were branded with the church’s name and supposedly pithy sayings, usually
based on some marketing campaign the place had run at one time or another. I
think all of this wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the last part.
All along the sides of the giant room, from the looks of things where the food
had previously been served in a previous incarnation, there were clothes up on
racks. The tour guide was explaining that the various people who came to visit
the church were often not “properly attired” for television. Consequently, the
church had for sale the finest suits and dresses to properly show the
“ambiance” the church was looking for.
And that’s when Jesus went into a rage. He started by
grabbing the display table in front of him and flipping it over, tossing
keychains and bumper stickers to the ground. Next he grabbed some rack that was
holding up sunglasses with the church’s logo on the side and started to swing
it back and forth, scattering people from around him, making a clear path as
people were screaming.
He was headed right for those clothes racks.
He started tearing them down, ripping suits and shredding
dresses. He tossed torn bits of rags left over to the ground like they were
chaff left from harvesting wheat. And the look in his eyes was quite frankly
terrifying. Security showed up to escort him out, but he chased them off with
the shear presence of his will. He screamed at the top of his lungs, “You’ve
made my Father’s House into a den of thieves!”
And the cameras never stopped rolling.
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