Occupy London are true followers of Jesus, even if they despise religion

[CHIMO]

For the moment at least, the custodians of St Paul's seem to have backed down. In a mildly comic inversion, the dean has carted himself off while the protestors could stay put until 2012. Even so, the cathedral staff can take comfort from the fact that the demonstrators are camped down peacefully outside their sacred building, whereas their own master was far less well behaved. Rather than squat down with a placard outside the Jerusalem temple, he staged his protest within its walls, and it was a violent rather than peaceful one.

The fracas Jesus created in this holiest of places, driving out the money changers and overturning their tables, was probably enough to get him executed. To strike at the temple was to strike at the heart of Judaism. This itinerant upstart with a country-bumpkin background was issuing a direct challenge to the authority of the high priests. Even some of his comrades would probably have seen this astonishing act of defiance as nothing short of sacrilegious.

We are not told whether the riot police (temple guards) dragged him off, but they would surely have felt fully justified in doing so. Some members of the Jewish ruling caste would have been searching for an excuse to shut the mouth of this populist agitator. They were fearful that, in the highly charged atmosphere of Passover, he might trigger an uprising that would bring the full force of Roman imperial power down on the heads of the hapless Jews. If the priests really were looking for an excuse to do away with him, Jesus seems to have handed it to them on a plate. Not long after this piece of political theatre, he was dead. Not only dead, but crucified, and crucifixion was a punishment the Romans reserved mainly for political offences. You were pinned up on public view as a warning to other prospective rebels.

What did Jesus have against money changers? It can't have been that he was opposed to commercial transactions. In fact, he seems to have had a money man, Judas Iscariot, on his own staff, though admittedly not the kind of man to give accountancy a good name. Nor would he have thought that religion should have no truck with such lowly affairs. "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" is not a declaration that politics is one thing and religion another. Any Jew familiar with scripture would know that the things that are God's include justice, compassion, welcoming the immigrant and protecting the poor from the violence of the rich.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/nov/03/occupy-london-jesus-religion

[dipsydoodle]

1. custodians of St Paul's ?

I assume that's a joke. The only reason they're there is because they were daft enough to publicise over a week in advance their intention to occupy the private square where the London Stock Exchange is sited. If they'd kept their gobs shut and hadn't crowed about it so much they wouldn't necessarily be outside St Pauls now. St Pauls is an accident.