Palm Sunday Sermon: Was Jesus a "Teabagger?"

A sermon by Rev. Max, blogger at Culver's Conservative.

Today in the Christian tradition is 'Palm Sunday.' The day when Jesus road into town riding on a donkey a week before his death.

So let's take a look at the text:

[ 1Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. 2And they began to accuse him, saying, "We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ,[a] a king."

3So Pilate asked Jesus, "Are you the king of the Jews?"
"Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied.

4Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, "I find no basis for a charge against this man."

5But they insisted, "He stirs up the people all over Judea[b]by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here."
--Luke 23:1-49 ]

Whoa, wait, hang on a second. Back up to that very first complaint. He opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar. Now Caesar would be the government, who is historically know for being, well, a tyrant. So he would be the big government. Now Jesus would come out and say "stop paying taxes to him. This man is a tyrant who is running an out of control government. You do not get your rights from this tyranny, but from God." Isn't that a key message from Jesus, that we get our rights from God.?

THen they complain that he stirs up people all over Judea. Ok stop. He stirs up people, into what, large crowds protesting? When you picture that, does it look anything like this,



This is a tea party. This is a protest against big taxes, and out of control government. Leader groups such as Freedom Works and Tea Party Patriots were definitely "stirring up people" there. As they started back in California on the Tea Party Express and came all the way to D.C. where 2 million protesters sat outside the capitol.

"The conservatives, they oppose paying taxes to fund our big government and claim to be patriotic [...] they stir up people all over the country. The 9/12 project started in California and has come all the way here."

So just think about that, what were the complaints of Jesus, he was against paying taxes to their massive government, the Pharisees all hated him because he rebelled against them. Ok so who were the pharisees? They were those who supposedly upheld the law, and the leaders. The Bureaucrats. He was against them, and he led protests that were "stirring up people," against the government!

That was what the Roman's complained about, when it came to Jesus. Organizing protests, and opposing taxes.

Hmmm, sounds like a "teabagger" to me.

Now i'm gonna get lots of criticism from lots of progressive Christians for this one. But this is the Bible, not my twisted right wing opinion. I simply read the text and thought, "gee, that really sounds like a tea partier, not a liberal." They always make Jesus out to be a liberal, so i thought i would share this counter view to that. That's all.