Oct. 1, 2023
May the words of our mouths and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
All of us, if we’re old enough, will have had some experience with authority. Authority is kind of a weird thing, isn’t it? Because we can’t just show up somewhere and say we have authority. Take it from a guy with four kids – even under the best of circumstances, people are going to challenge your authority. Today I want us to be thinking about authority – where it comes from, how we earn it, and how we can use it effectively.
To put things into context, today’s Gospel reading finds us smack-dab in the middle of Holy Week. Jesus has been acting with the authority granted to a king or a priest or a prophet. He’s entered Jerusalem riding a donkey to a palm branch-waving crowd, driven the moneychangers and merchants out of the Temple, and healed the blind and lame. And now that Jesus has returned to the Temple to teach, the chief priests and the elders have come to demand that he tell them who gave him the authority to do all this. Or in other words, “who do you think you are?”
For the Temple leadership, this is a really important question. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus only goes to Jerusalem once. And unlike modern times, where we can expect regular visits from the bishop, the Temple leadership wasn’t making trips out to rural Galilee. This was the first face-to-face confrontation between Jesus and the religious elite. They’re trying to figure him out.
Authority in these times was a tricky subject. There weren’t seminaries with impressive lists of classes and Master of Divinity degrees. There weren’t ordinations or church-sponsored programs to give a stamp of authority to someone’s ministry. Rabbis like Jesus gained their authority from the teacher with whom they studied. It was assumed after you had learned at their feet, you would be as wise as they were.
And so the chief priests and the elders are expecting Jesus to name some other person as his source of authority. And they can deal with a third-rate rabbi from the backwaters of Galilee. Because they claim their authority comes from God – and that makes them the true authorities. But Jesus, as he so often does, responds by asking a counter-question that turns the tables. On the surface, he asks them a question about John the Baptist’s baptism. But what Jesus is really asking them is: where does your authority come from?
The telling phrase here is when the Temple leadership says “we are afraid of the crowd”. We are afraid of the crowd. In that moment, the truth becomes clear. The Temple leadership says all the right things about God, and true worship, and righteous living. But when push comes to shove, they’re much less concerned with all that, and far more concerned with maintaining their influence over the people.
The reality is that while the Temple Leadership claims God’s authority, they’re accountable to the Roman authorities. And what the Romans are most interested in is making sure that there’s no trouble in Jerusalem. So if they want to maintain their authority, the Temple leadership has to keep the crowds happy, or at least make sure they don’t riot. Jesus’ question puts them in an impossible position – because either answer undercuts their authority. Either they’re religious hypocrites for not acknowledging John the Baptist, or they can’t keep the peace and fail as far as the Romans are concerned.
On the other hand, Jesus’ teacher is God. He doesn’t just talk. He behaves like he really believes in what he’s teaching – that God is saving the world from everything that distorts human life. And living his life in accordance with God’s teachings – unlike the Temple leadership – gives him a unique authority that doesn’t come from any other human. God’s authority shows up in Jesus’ powerful teaching. His forgiveness of sins. His healing of the sick. To coin a phrase, the proof of his authority is in the pudding.
All this frames the second part of this Gospel reading, where Jesus gives a warning to all of us who claim the authority of being his follower. When we refuse to walk in righteousness – but instead live as the son who says he will work in the vineyard, but then chooses not to – we become as hypocritical as the Temple leadership. If we, too, substitute satisfying the crowd for authentic lives of faith, we can’t possibly believe that the lost, the skeptical, or the cynical, will respond to the authority we claim to have. More likely, our proclamation of God’s love for all people comes across as nothing more than hollow words.
The takeaway for each of us from this Gospel passage today is that authority in the Kingdom of God is radically different from the world’s authority. Authority in the world is based on our ability to mobilize resources and power to meet our goals. Authority in the kingdom of God, on the other hand, comes directly from God as we live authentic lives of faith – even if, like the second son, we say “no” at first. We gain authority when we – like Jesus – are immediate Good News to those we meet. To the poor. The hopeless. The outcast.
The Good News for us is that the God of Israel continues to offer us authority today. And we need that authority for our witness to be effective in a world that is trying to figure us out. So the questions we need to think about this week are – what stops me from living an authentic life of faith? Where do I fall short of living out Jesus’ teachings of radical hospitality? What makes me afraid of the crowd? Amen.