The Occupy Wall Street movement started when the
Canadian editor of an anti-consumerism magazine proposed the occupation of Wall
Street on September 17, 2011. His call to action went viral and spawned a
worldwide movement. Groups representing the “99%” protested a variety of causes
and many engaged in criminal behavior causing millions of dollars of property
damage. These protesters required public safety agencies to clear encampments;
make arrests and restore order. Media reports spun the movement as representing
the economically trampled on one hand or as anarchists trying to take over the
world on the other. I saw firsthand in San Francisco how a small group of
people disrupted communities and disrespected people who chose not to be part of their movement.
Behind it all is a man not really interested in meaningful
reform proclaiming, “We will wreck the world.” He and his followers are self
described anarchists. His first act of defiance was to jam a quarter into a shopping
cart dispensing machine in a Canadian supermarket parking lot rendering it
inoperable. “I didn’t stop to analyze whether this was ethical or not. I just
let my anger flow.” What followed was a philosophy that espoused the hatred of big
business in any form. “Let
your anger out. When it wells up suddenly from deep in your gut, don’t suppress
it -- channel it, trust it, use it. Don’t be so unthinkingly civil all the
time. Rage drives revolutions.”
With the beginning of Lent, we celebrate and
remember a very different Occupy movement in Jerusalem. Occupy Jerusalem took
place 2,000 years ago on what we call Palm Sunday. Matthew 21 describes it this
way, “The disciples…brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on
them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road,
while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The
crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, ‘Hosanna
to the Son of David!’ ‘Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord!’ ‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, 'Who
is this?’ The crowds answered, ‘This is Jesus, the prophet from
Nazareth in Galilee.’”
This “occupy” movement started with one man and
twelve apostles. This was no call to anarchy but a call to repentance. Jesus
would unite God to man on the cross and break the power of sin. If Jesus and his followers were part of the 1%, it was only to reach the 99% that were
perishing. Where one man called followers to anarchy to, “wreck the world,”
Jesus called people, by grace, to be saved through faith.
1 John 4:4-6, “You, dear children, are from God and
have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who
is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint
of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows
God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is
how we recognize the Spirit
of truth and the spirit of falsehood.”
John 1: 1-5, “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through
him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In
him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in
the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome
it.”
