MATTHEW 21:23-32
The Authority of Jesus Questioned
23 Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”
24 Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 25 John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”
They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.”
27 So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”
Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
The Parable of the Two Sons
28 “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’
29 “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
30 “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.
Let us pray,
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts, be pleasing and acceptable to you our rock and our redeemer…
Halloween is a big deal in my family. On Halloween we gather at my sister and brother in law’s house. Decked out in our Halloween hoodies, thermal leggings, and Yeti’s filled with “hot tea”. When it’s time to trick or treat, my sister and I set up shop at the end of her driveway to pass out candy to the neighborhood kids. While my brother in law, dressed up like an ax murderer, hides behind his truck. And scares the living daylights out of the kids as they come up to get their candy.
We’re not sure what Halloween is going to look like this year. This past week the Center for Disease Control (CDC) released guidelines for how to celebrate a safe Halloween. I gotta be honest, the recommendations are a bit of a bummer. They’re recommending no Halloween parties. No trick or treating. No Halloween parades. If a community does decide to trick or treat, they’re encouraging homeowners to leave the candy at the end of their driveway for the kiddos to pick up. They also encourage all of the kiddos and their grown-ups to wear masks.
As you can imagine, my family and I are having very intense conversations about what we’re going to do for Halloween this year. These conversations range from doing nothing to doing Halloween like we’ve always done it. We want to keep our community safe. But we also want the kiddos in our community to have as normal of a Halloween as possible. Six months into this pandemic everyone is tired of being told how to live their lives. But with no proven treatment and no vaccine available, we don’t want our behavior to contribute to a public health crisis.
In the middle of one of these discussions, I realized that what we’re really discussing when we go back and forth about our Halloween plans is a question of authority. Do we trust the authority of the CDC to keep our communities safe? Or do we think we know best?
This tension of in what authority do we place our trust would have been a familiar one for the elders and the chief priests in today’s Scripture reading. For the elders and the chief priests, authority comes from Scripture (Torah) and from the temple (church). They think Jesus is challenging the authority of the temple. Because he’s claiming his authority comes from God. And this cannot stand.
So they ask Jesus ‘By what authority are you doing these things?” and “Who gave you this authority?” Jesus doesn’t directly answer their questions. Instead he asks them a question of his own. ”John’s baptism- where did it come from? Was it from heaven or was it from human origin?’
Jesus’ question puts the chief priests and the elders in an impossible situation. If they say John’s baptism is ‘from heaven’ then Jesus can ask them why they don’t trust John’s authority. If they say John’s baptism is ‘from human origin’ they risk inciting a riot from the crowd who are quite loyal to John.
So, they take the easy way out. They say, ‘I don’t know.” In conceding the argument to Jesus, the chief priests and the elders concede that they have been outsmarted by Jesus. The dishonor they feel sets the stage for Jesus’ crucifixion. The chief priests and the elders cannot tolerate this challenge to their authority. So they kill Jesus to protect their own power within their community.
This desire to remove a leader who challenges the status quo happens again and again throughout history. But during this pandemic I’m seeing this desire to eliminate threats to the status quo play out on a local level. I’m watching school board members have to deal with very nasty e-mails the day after they vote on their district’s plan’s for the 2020-2021 school year. I’m watching customers scream at grocery store employees when they are reminded that they have to wear a mask inside the grocery store. And don’t even get me started on the protests and the riots and the court cases protesting stay at home orders.
Friends, our Scripture reading for today teaches us that questioning the authority of people we disagree with is a normal and helpful part of living in community with one another. None of us is Jesus. I don’t believe that anyone of us has all of the answers on how we are to organize our life together. So that we can more faithfully get in on what God is doing in our midst. We need one another and our various opinions to chart the best path forward.
But as we learned two weeks ago with the parable of the unmerciful servant, conflict cannot exist in community without forgiveness. What Jesus means by this is that in community we won’t always get our way. Sometimes our leaders will vote to go in a different direction that we would prefer. And when this happens. This is an opportunity to practice forgiveness. Not revenge.
I know that at this point in the pandemic we’re all tired. We’re all at the end of our rope. We’re all not behaving as our best selves. We’re all operating from our stressed out, anxious, frustrated selves. Those are very normal feelings to be feeling six months into a global health crisis.
Jesus’ advice for us during these seasons of extreme stress is to avoid the nuclear option. Don’t make a bad situation worse by saying or doing something you can’t take back. Jesus could have very easily gotten rid of the elders and the priests and their pesky questions and installed himself as chief priest of the temple. Instead he tries to work with the priests and the elders, listening to them, and showing them a different way forward, up until the very end.
Friends, maybe you’ve had a moment where you’ve chosen the nuclear option this week. Where you sent that nasty email to your kid’s teacher when Zoom froze for the third time that morning. Or where you said, well if this is what Halloween is going to be this year, I’m just not going to do anything. If you did, own it, and apologize. Your apology may not undo the damage you caused. But it is an important first step.
If you were on the receiving end of someone else’s bad behavior try to practice forgiveness. Forgive so that you don’t look for ways to get rid of your hurt by hurting someone else.
I want to end our time together this week with a word of encouragement. I want us all to take a moment to look back at how far we’ve come in the last six months. Six months in we have a better understanding of what this disease is, how it spreads, and how we can protect ourselves. All of us have learned new technology, new ways of ordering our groceries, and new ways of connecting with one another. These last six months have taught us that we can do hard things. And that we will get through this together.
Thanks be to God,
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.