By What Authority?
Pentecost 18, Proper 21
Fr. Tim Nunez
October 1, 2023
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
We need to set the scene. Imagine if some street preacher walked in here on the Tuesday morning of Holy Week and started teaching and holding services without my permission. I know exactly what I’d say. “Excuse me, by what authority are you doing these things? And who, pray tell, gave you this authority?”
In order to grasp the weight of today’s Gospel we need to consider where we are time-wise in Matthew’s Gospel. It is what we call Holy Week. Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. He has driven out the money changers in the courtyards and he has done some healings in front of big crowds.
And we need to consider where we are physically. Jesus is teaching in the Temple. The Temple itself was the second one, about 550 years old, and was roughly 90 feet long, 30 feet wide and 45 feet high. The Temple would have fit inside this room except it was a bit taller. Herod the Great, the Herod that tried to get the wise men to tell him where the baby Jesus was, had completely restored the Temple and built a huge complex of plazas, colonnades and courtyards all around it that was as big as 29 football fields. The foundation of the Temple Mount was 62 feet high, part of which we know today as the wailing wall. It was one of the great wonders of the ancient world.
Spiritually, it was even bigger for the Jews. Remember that the original Temple was ordained by God to Solomon to be built on that spot and to God’s specifications. The Temple mount sits atop Mount Moriah, the top of which is exposed bedrock. The altar inside the temple, the Holy of Holies, is on the very spot where Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac, then God provided a ram to substitute for Isaac, which was a defining illustration of faithfulness, deliverance and provision framing God’s covenant with Israel. It’s also above a chamber where they stored the Ark of the Covenant, which they lost when Babylon sacked the first Temple.
Mount Moriah is not the highest mountain in Israel. It isn’t even the highest point in Jerusalem. But it is the spiritual high ground for all of Judaism. That’s where Jesus is teaching in the nave. That’s where, earlier, he was healing blind and lame people. Do you see the conflict? He’s physically on the rock upon which Judaism was built, teaching and healing without any permission or sanction from the chief priests and elders. This sets up the conflict that will lead to the cross.
Recall, as we heard a few weeks ago, when Jesus asked his disciples who they said he was. Simon answered, “You are the Christ,” and Jesus said, “You are Peter – or The Rock – and on this rock I will build my church.” The entire witness of the One true God is shifting from the bedrock of Mount Moriah, and the Temple on it, to Jesus himself. All the Law, all the Prophets, their entire salvation history is manifest in this one man, who will open direct access to the Father.
“By what authority,” indeed! (I’d like to hope that if I saw someone else’s prayer lead to a physical healing I’d get in the flow. But they don’t.)
Jesus’ response is what I like to call “Jesus judo” because he takes the weight of their argument and their momentum and turns it against them. By asking them about the baptism of John, he exposes their inability to get in the flow of what God is doing. They are caught between admitting John’s ministry was authentic yet outside their control, or risking the rebuke of all the crowds who know it was authentic yet the big cheeses deny it.
The parable underscores his point. These chief priests and elders are like the second son. They make all appearances of following God’s will, but they don’t actually do it. And as we see in this passage from the prophet Ezekiel, they very much knew better. “The righteous turn away from their righteousness and they shall die for it.” That’s the second son.
But when the wicked turn away from their wickedness, “…they shall save their life.” That’s the first son. That’s the tax collectors and prostitutes and the rest who first turned to John for his baptism of repentance and now turn to Jesus as the Word of life. The chief priests and elders knew better. Yet they are fully vested in a hierarchy that has lost critical aspects of the faith that was passed to them.
Think about the massive expansion done by Herod. Herod built a lot of amazing projects. All of them, including the Temple Mount, was for his glory, not God’s. Imagine the temptation to pride and self-importance one would have going to work there day by day. It would be like working in Washington D.C.!
That’s all very interesting, I hope. But what does this mean, then, for us? There are two points I hope we can all take to heart. The first is to be on guard that we ourselves would not fall into that same error. We don’t want to be like that second son. We don’t ever want to be so enamored of ourselves and neglect God’s call to this community. That’s largely a matter of listening to and responding to Christ’s call.
The second is to see what Jesus is doing here, resolutely confronting the fatally flawed misrepresentation of God’s presence and love for his people, knowing that this confrontation is going to lead to his own death which he will suffer so that he can redeem you, redeem me, redeem our children and grandchildren, redeem the lost, redeem the found, redeem all who will call upon his name.
In turning toward him, we necessarily turn away from all wickedness. And we all turn together. So make my joy complete. Be of the same mind, having the same love, being of full accord and one mind, the same mind that was in Christ Jesus who, even as he was in the outrageously enormous process of moving the center of faith in God from the Temple to himself, the temple he would raise up in three days, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
He did that for you. Keep turning to him.
AMEN