Text: Matthew 21:23-32 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
The Authority of Jesus Questioned
23 And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” 24 Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you a question; and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven or from men?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘From men,’ we are afraid of the multitude; for all hold that John was a prophet.” 27 So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.
The Parable of the Two Sons
28 “What do you think? A man had two sons; and he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ 29 And he answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he repented and went. 30 And he went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him; and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
This incident between Jesus and the chief priests and elders takes place the day after he cleansed the Temple. That was the kind of act that the prophets had been known for – but there had been no prophets in Israel for some centuries, and so they wanted to get to the bottom of it all.
It was a question of authority.
“By what authority are you doing these things…?” They might just as well have said, “Just who do you think you are? We are the only authorities around here, and we have definitely not granted any of it to you!”
There was an electric tension in the air. Jesus and the authorities had reached the point of no return in their dealings with each other. We call what Jesus did “the cleansing of the Temple”; the chief priests and scribes would have called it wonton destruction and law-breaking. Even those of us who grew up with the concept of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” can’t help but be shocked at the image of a wild-eyed reformer, turning over the tables, scattering the coins, running them all out – in John’s Gospel, Jesus even had a whip of ox-hide that he used to further make his point….
Such an incredible display of wrath and anger had never been seen in the Temple before! Imagine how we would react, what we would think, if someone burst in here this morning and turned over our Communion table, or knocked over the tables during coffee hour, or created a ruckus during our German Dinner – we would certainly not invite that person back, would we? In fact, we would probably call the police! Such things are simply not done!
That was the reaction on the part of the leaders of the day. Jesus had crossed the line. There was no turning back. Any hope of reconciliation was gone.
So you can imagine the scene: Jesus has returned to the Temple, and is teaching, when a posse of the chief priests and elders march up to him and demand to know just what he’s doing there. They haven’t gotten over their shock at his behavior yet, and they’re probably pretty amazed at the boldness of this itinerant preacher from the nowhere to even show his face again after what he’s done!
And, as usual, they try to trap him by asking him about the authority that allowed him to make a mess of the Temple – no matter how Jesus answered that question, either by saying that his authority came from God, which would be blasphemy, or by admitting that his actions were borne of a righteous indignation at the disgrace of turning the Temple into a shopping mall, which have landed him in jail for vandalism, they figure they’ve got this upstart from nowhere dead to rights.
Something else that was adding kerosene to the fire of their anger was that Jesus had begun the week by riding into Jerusalem where he was hailed as the Messiah.
Add all that up, and there’s only one solution, if you’re one of the chief priests or an elder: This Jesus had to go!
But their trick boomerangs on them when Jesus tells them, “OK, I’ll answer your question if you answer a question from me first. So, that baptism of John – what was its source? Heaven? Or was it just something made up by him?” No matter which way they answered that question, they were trapped. And, rather than give an answer that would incriminate them, one way or the other, they just say, “We don’t know.” People standing around must have been surprised by that response, too – “what’s this? The ‘people in the know’ don’t know?” Their authority definitely took a hit that day.
It took a hit because authority is always something that is given. We give authority to doctors, for example, because they’ve got the years of medical school and practice behind them – so we consider them authorities because we assume they know more than we do about health issues. Same thing with teachers, lawyers, judges, police officers, civil servants, and pastors. Authority is power that has been given for a specific purpose, most often to serve the common good. But when it ceases to serve that common good, it needs to be replaced by a new authority that does.
The chief priests and other leaders lost a bit of their authority because Jesus pointed out to them that they were asking questions meant to puff themselves up, meant to defend the status quo, not to serve the common good, not to try to understand more about the Kingdom of God, and what God might be doing in and through this brave young man.
So Jesus tells the parable about the two sons. This story doesn’t seem to have much to do with authority as we generally understand it, but it goes right to the heart of the reason why Jesus and the authorities were in such conflict: They were locked in the past. They had ceased to have faith in God; instead, they put all their faith in their laws and rules. Authority based on the past is a fine thing, but it crumbles into dust when the world changes. And the world had most definitely changed in the person standing before them. Jesus had his gaze fixed toward the future.
This parable has everything to do with how we regard the past. One son says he’ll help out and doesn’t follow through. But the other son, who actually is the focus of the parable, says he won’t help, but then he does. Whatever the reason behind his initial refusal, he apparently recognizes, at some level, that the door isn’t closed because of his past decision. The future is always open. He can change his mind. He can still respond to his father’s request and invitation, and as he does he proves himself faithful and lives into his father’s hopes for him. We’re all familiar with the phrase, “you made your bed, now you must lie in it”; but Jesus tells us here that, though that might be true, it’s not true forever. If your children misbehave and you send them to their rooms, you don’t mean for it to be a life sentence! If you make a mistake and pay the price for it, eventually the slate is wiped clean. Jesus always holds out the invitation for a new future, an open future, a future that might honor the past but is not stuck in it – a future, in short, that is open to the movement of God to heal, revive, restore, and make all things new.
Regrettably, the chief priests and elders do not accept this invitation. The past has become their primary identity. They have become dependent on that identity – and so they refuse to trade the past for an open future, no matter how promising it might be. They think they have too much at stake, too much to lose.
This reminds me once again of that poor Russian Jewish milkman, Tevye, in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” We talked about him a few weeks ago regarding his peoples’ adherence to their traditions. Tevye says, “It is because of our traditions that every one of us knows who he is, and what God expects him to do.”
I also love traditions and history. They are very important for us as individuals and as a society. George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it,” and I absolutely agree with those words.
But the real value of traditions and history is that they help us understand who we were and how we became what we are. We are different today than we were last week, or even yesterday. New experiences, even small ones, change us. If we spend our lives looking backward, we miss the opportunities that are right in front of us. God does not lead us backward. Just as God led the people of Israel forward out of Egypt into the Promised Land, so, too, does God lead us forward today.
But we have to accept the invitation. And sometimes that means we have to adapt, to let go.
Even Tevye, a man deeply rooted in his traditions, found himself bending and adapting his understanding of those traditions to meet the demands of his changing world. But that was something the chief priests and the elders simply couldn’t do.
To those in the crowd Jesus address in our Gospel lesson, however, those who are down and out, those who have nothing to lose and everything to gain, those who know that the current identity created by their past does not bring them life – these folks grab hold of Jesus’ promise with both hands.
There is a lesson here for us. Traditions can become like graven images – we learn from the Old Testament that graven images do nothing for us. They don’t help us. They don’t save us. So, do we hang on for dear life to things that even we know don’t help us anymore, or do we accept the promise of Jesus? This text is about which side of the fence we want to be on.
The promise Jesus made to those stodgy authorities and to the disciples and to the people in the crowd that day is the same promise he makes to us. No matter what we have done in the past, no matter what may have been done to us in the past, the future is still open. The past is the past. We can learn from it, and we should. We can honor it, and we should. We can keep our traditions, and we should. But we do not need to allow our traditions or our past to determine or dominate our future. The future is open.
And isn’t that exciting?
Let us go forward, embracing that glorious, exciting, open future that Jesus offers us!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.