Jesus wouldn’t have occupied Wall Street?

Over at Patheos, J.E. Dyer pushes back against the claim that Jesus would have joined the OWS protest, contending that he wouldn’t have had any part of it, that he “actually operated through invitation and respect for authority.” Thus, during that famous Palm Sunday visit to Jerusalem: Even when he rebuked the money-changers in the […]

moneychangers.jpgOver at Patheos, J.E. Dyer pushes back against the claim that Jesus would have joined the OWS protest, contending that he wouldn’t have had any part of it, that he “actually operated through invitation and respect for authority.” Thus, during that famous Palm Sunday visit to Jerusalem:

Even when he rebuked the money-changers in the Temple, he did not
approach the institution as an antagonist, demanding entry on his own
terms. He entered the Temple in obedience to the Father, as a Jew going
to worship: exercising the privilege of a Jew under the commandments of
God and the system of worship and priestly authority God had instituted.
At no time did Jesus enter the premises of any person or institution on
any but an orderly pretext.

Come again? Let’s go to the text, Matthew 21:12-13:

And Jesus went into
the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the
temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of
them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

That actually sounds a lot more obstreperous than anything the OWStreeters have done in and around Zuccotti Park. They entered it on an orderly pretext, exercising the privilege of being members of the public. They’ve done nothing to disrupt the functioning of the financial services industry. And they’ve not even denounced the moneychangers for turning Mammon’s house into a gambling den.


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