Gospel for October 1, 2023

“Les pharisiens questionnent Jésus” (The Pharisees Question Jesus) by James Tissot is part of the Brooklyn Museum’s Euopean Art Collection.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Matthew 21:23-32
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This week’s lectionary Gospel passage seems to begin in the middle of things.  Jesus has come to Jerusalem in order to fulfill his ministry.  While he is teaching in the temple, the chief priests and elders of the people approach him. It is clear that they have an agenda.  They ask a direct and pointed question:

By what authority do you do these things? Who gave you this authority?

On the one hand, what is unsaid is this — they are implying that they are the authority in the temple.  What business does Jesus have teaching there?  He is no priest, nor a proper rabbi.  He is a carpenter preacher from the sticks in Galilee.

But what are these things which they reference?  Surely it is not merely the teaching that Jesus is doing in the temple.  In the first sixteen verses of chapter 21, Jesus has ridden into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, very consciously fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9 concerning the coming of their king.  He has been greeted with a near-riot — the people cut branches from the trees and waved them as though greeting a conqueror, and shouted:

Hosanna  to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! (Matthew 21:9).

This is clearly a Messianic slogan.  Hosanna means Save Us, and as a descendent of David, the crowds expected him to assume the Davidic throne and restore the kingdom to Israel — after expelling the Roman legions, of course!

So when the priests and elders ask their question, they are clearly aware of the political dangers posed to an occupied city and nation.  They have no doubt heard of the healings, miracles, and feeding of the multitude in the wilderness.  Whether they believed any of it or not was irrelevant.  This so-called son of David was now within the gates, and they must exert their own authority over him!

But they do so in a roundabout way — by asking the question.  This introduces a dialogue between Jesus and these leaders. Here we see the brilliant dialectical technique of Jesus, shared by so many brilliant philosophers like Socrates (dialectic is a method of debate that seeks through dialogue to arrive at truth).  Asked a question, Jesus answers with a more incisive question.  This is the method of great teachers.  And Jesus is the greatest.

Brilliantly, Jesus answers a question with a question — much the way some of the great philosophers have done.  Instead of stating the source of his authority as a maxim, Jesus gives them the opportunity to work through their own thoughts:

Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, which if you tell me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, where was it from? From heaven or from men?”

We have seen Jesus use questions in the past to bring out the truth, as when he asks the disciples “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?”  (Matthew 16:12-16).  In this instance, he uses a question to confound the leaders.  He knows exactly how compromised they will be in trying to determine the authority of his cousin John, who preached fearlessly, baptized multitudes as a sign of repentance, and was martyred by King Herod.

The leaders are in a quandary.  They know the crowds are listening, and may turn on them if they answer in an unpopular manner:

They reasoned with themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’  But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the multitude, for all hold John as a prophet.”

Their dilemma is exquisite.  Jesus has painted them into a corner.  These “authorities” had rejected the apocalyptic vision of John when he promised the advent of the Kingdom of God, and had refused to submit to his baptism (actually, there were Pharisees and Sadducees that came to John seeking baptism, but he had greeted them harshly and criticized their pretext for superiority based on their heritage.  He insisted that they too needed to show their repentance by their actions.  See Matthew 3:7-9).

When these chief priests and leaders wrangle with one another about how they should answer Jesus’ question, these “wise” men can’t resolve it.  Their answer is almost comical:

 They answered Jesus, and said, “We don’t know.”

In rhetorical terms, Jesus had trapped them.  Since they can’t even decide whether John was from God or merely a self-anointed prophet, Jesus tells them he is under no obligation to prove himself to them:

He also said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

The authority of Jesus is self-explanatory, based on his fruits — ironically,  John had demanded of the Pharisees and the Sadducees that they produce fruits to prove their repentance!  When John the Baptist, imprisoned by Herod, had sent messengers to ask Jesus if he was the Messiah, Jesus had answered this way:

Go and tell John the things which you hear and see:  the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear,  the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.  Blessed is he who finds no occasion for stumbling in me (Matthew 11:4-6).

Jesus then turns to one of his favorite teaching methods — the story, or parable.  The parable allows him to engage the imagination of his audience, and forces them to figure out the answer:

 But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first, and said, ‘Son, go work today in my vineyard.’  He answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind, and went. He came to the second, and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but he didn’t go.  Which of the two did the will of his father?”

When Jesus asks this question, the leaders feel compelled to answer.  This seems like an easy question:

They said to him, “The first.”

Then Jesus springs his verbal trap.  They are the second son, who pretends to be obedient, making promises and then not keeping them.  Instead, Jesus points out that those whom the ‘religious’ people deem to be unacceptable are truly the first son:

Jesus said to them, “Most certainly I tell you that the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering into God’s Kingdom before you.”

To be clear, Jesus is not excusing the covetous extortion of most of the tax collectors of that day, nor is he endorsing the sex trade.  Instead, he is pointing out that these people recognized their own sin and need for repentance when John came, and they were the ones who came for baptism:

For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you didn’t believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. When you saw it, you didn’t even repent afterward, that you might believe him.

The contrast between sinners who know they need to repent and the self-righteous who delude themselves and fail to repent is clear.  The former enter the Kingdom of God because they depend on God’s mercy, not their own righteousness.

Incidentally, Jesus himself now answers the question that he asked at the beginning of this passage about John’s authority:

John came to you in the way of righteousness.

John’s authority came from a righteous God.

APPLY:  

Where does authority come from?  Ultimately — in the Kingdom of God — it doesn’t come from titles, or pedigrees, or education, or even political and military might.  Authority comes from righteousness.  Specifically, the righteousness of the Kingdom of God.

By this definition Herod had a title, but John had authority.  The chief priests and the leaders of the people had titles, but Jesus had authority.  True, the naked, raw, violent titles of Herod and the others gave them power over the very lives of John and Jesus — at least temporarily.

But when Pilate asserts in John’s Gospel that he has power over the life and death of Jesus, Jesus refutes him:

You would have no power at all against me, unless it were given to you from above (John 19:11).

And the power of God would be vindicated by the resurrection of Jesus.

We are not to be too impressed by the powers and principalities of this world.  Their authority is derivative, and it is temporary.

We are also to remember that none of us is without sin — whether we are the ones society considers to be outcasts (tax collectors and prostitutes) or those whom society honors (clergy and leaders).  All those who truly repent and seek God’s mercy shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

RESPOND: 

My wife is a musician, with a degree in music education.  She has shared with me about a concept called discovery-learning.  This is a method that relies on a student being exposed to concepts and educational objectives, and then processing and interacting with these concepts and objectives and figuring it out for themselves.  This is in contrast to the lecture or the rote-learning method of education.

I’m struck by the fact that Jesus uses such discovery-learning techniques, together with a dialectical method (dialectical means to engage in logical dialogue) quite often in his teaching.  True, he also preaches messages in longer sections, such as the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 to 7).  But he tends to invite people to discover for themselves who he is or what he’s talking about.

We have cited several examples of this kind of technique in the Bible study:

• He asks John the Baptist’s messengers to go back to John and tell him that they’ve seen Jesus heal, cast out demons, and teach the poor, and to draw his own conclusions.
• He asks the disciples, Who do men say that the Son of Man is?
• And he poses a difficult, loaded question about the authority of John, and also an easy question about which son was obedient to his father, and thus makes the chief priests and leaders figure it out on their own.

Together with his plentiful parables, we get the sense that Jesus really is a Master Teacher.  When people engage in discovery learning, they own what they learn.  It isn’t something that some ‘authority’ has dispensed.  They know it from their own experience.

In this case, the chief priests and leaders come face to face with a figure of formidable authority — and find themselves cast in the role of the son who pretends to obey his father, but actually does not.

When confronted with their own shortcomings, they can either repent and follow Jesus — or they can reject him and begin the process that will lead to his cross.  We know which they will choose.  But no one else is responsible except themselves for their choice.

Lord, I pray that I won’t be so impressed by human authority, power and glitziness that I miss the source of real authority.  You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  I seek to listen to you.  Amen. 

PHOTOS:
"Les pharisiens questionnent Jésus" by James Tissot is in the Public Domain.