2011-09-25–By What Authority
By what Authority?
The countdown has begun. When the Gospel lesson opens, Jesus is teaching in the Temple. He has entered Jerusalem triumphantly, with the crowds crying, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” Forming part of our Eucharistic Prayer every Sunday, it might perhaps be hard for us to hear those words as the crowds, the Romans, and the religious leaders would have heard them on the Sunday morning that has come to be known as Palm Sunday. Fortunately, we have only to turn on the TV today to get a sense of just what those words meant.
We have heard a lot over the last few months about the Arab Spring, which has spilled over into the summer and is now extending into the Fall. I recognize that it’s a hot button topic. That’s one reason why I chose it. When we see pictures of crowds in the streets of Cairo protesting Hosni Mubarak, when we see them in the streets of Sana protesting Bashir Asaad, when we see them in the streets of Tripoli protesting Muammar Ghadaffi, that’s what we should recall now when read the cries of the crowds as Jesus enters Jerusalem.
Here comes revolution! The old order—the order dominated on the one hand by the Romans, their Idumean puppets, the Herods, and the temple elite known as the Saducees—was on its way out! The new order, led by King David’s own heir, was entering into the city; it was about break in upon the whole world. The Day of the Lord, the day in which God would vindicate his people had come at last! This was as much the language of revolution back then as the chants of “Assad out!” are today.
Interestingly, Jesus does not challenge the Romans upon entering the city in this revolutionary way. He goes straight to the Temple. There, he over turns the money changers tables and the stalls of those who sold animals for sacrifice and begins to heal the blind and the lame who come to him. Children gather and continue the revolutionary changes of “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Not surprisingly, the religious leaders are threatened. They want Jesus to tighten the leash on his followers, to bring them into line. “Do you hear what people are saying? Jesus, hush this up. This is dangerous language! Do you know where this will end?” Jesus refuses, however.
And that’s where our Gospel lesson begins today. Clearly, there’s no way they’re going to bring Jesus onside. So they are going to have to change tactics. It seems from this story that their new strategy is to undermine Jesus in the eyes of the people. Having failed by appealing to him directly to tone it down, they move to undercut him. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” They ask.
These things are the events described in the preceding verses—the cleansing of the temple, followed by the healing and teaching in the temple courts. And the question, of course, is a trap. Jesus, they know, is on their turf. Within the temple precincts, they are the authority. That was why the money changers were there in the first place. The money changers changed the coinage of the worshipers from Roman coins to Temple coins. The religious leaders had, within the Temple precincts, the power of the purse. They had the authority. If Jesus answers, I am here in the name of my heavenly Father and he gave me the authority to do as I have done, they would have only to point to the fact that they were the guardians of the Temple. They oversaw the liturgical life of the people. They ensured the right relationship between the people and God was maintained through the right observance of the sacrifices, observances in which Jesus’ own family were maintained.
Jesus, however, is too savvy. Knowing that they want to dismiss him in the eyes of the crowd as an outsider, he appeals to another outsider. “Did the baptism of John come from heaven or was it from human authority?” He responds to their question with a question of his own. And in so doing, he totally wrong-foots them. They’re stunned. They can’t answer. Not because they done have one, mind you. The text implies that they thought John was a nut. No, they can’t answer because they know their answer will get them in trouble with the crowds.
So, they behave like politicians. They withdraw to get their story straight and then spin it. But their spun answer, a pretty lame, “We don’t know,” doesn’t get them off the hook and provides Jesus with his way of escape. “If you won’t answer about John, there’s no point in talking with you further about my authority,” says Jesus.
All of this is background to the parable that follows. Two sons are bidden by their father to go and work in the vineyard. One assents, but does not go; the other refuses, but goes in the end. The religious leaders agree with Jesus that the latter son is the better example of the two. And now, Jesus pounces on them. The tax collectors and sinners are going ahead of you into the kingdom because they saw John and believed. You saw John and did not. They are the obedient son; you are the disobedient one.
What does that mean? Why is the focus on seeing John and not, say, hearing his message. Here’s why: John looked like a prophet. On purpose. He was very visibly part of the Old Testament prophetic tradition. Striding out of the wilderness into the Jordan river-region, dressed in camels skins, wild-eyed and loud. He looked like Elijah come back from heaven. The people saw and heard John they saw and heard the prophetic message alive and in front of them. There simply was no question about his authority. It was as obvious has his beard, his belt, and his bellowing voice.
The religious leaders saw and heard the same man. They knew as well the crowds did that John was a prophet. But, recognizing John’s divine appointment would mean ceding their authority. It would mean that they too needed to repent. And so they would not.
The crux of the story today is the issue of authority. And that’s a tough one for us moderns. Our understandings of authority are very different than those in the first century. We tend to think authority is given by the consent of the governed. It’s called democracy. One reason why many folks across the political spectrum want to reform the Senate and Supreme Court and make Canada a republic is because we have lost the language of appointed or inherited authority. The solution for many folks is to elect senators, elect judges, and even, perhaps, a governor general. There’s nothing wrong with the notion of authority arising from the bottom up. I happen to think it’s a good thing. It’s called democracy. But today, it does get in the way of our wrestling with the Gospel.
The Sadducees—that party of first century Jewish life—were asking Jesus a question about authority. They were asking, in a much more sophisticated way, the great playground question, “Says who?” Look at us, Jesus, we have a lineage. We have a tradition. We have real power. We can show where our authority comes from. Who says you can just kick our money changers out of our temple? Who says you can fill up the courts with the lame and the blind and the down-and-outers and teach and heal them? Who says? Now we’re getting somewhere. This, I think, makes sense to us. Dr Phil—I know, here I go quoting Dr Phil again—says 90 percent of questions are statements in disguise. The statement disguised in the Sadducees question here is, “We have the authority and we say you cannot do these things.”
Jesus, in his counter question and subsequent parable wrenches the Sadducees gaze away from their own sense of self-importance to look at John. John had none of trappings of the Temple. He wasn’t at the center of life. He remained on the fringes. In the wilderness. At the Jordan. He didn’t authorise a way of life, he called it into question with his radical call to repentance. But everybody could see that John was a prophet. Everybody could see that his authority came from God. Even the Sadducees could see it. And they refused to believe.
The lesson that the text has for us begins not that with the instruction to recognize a prophet by the kookiness of his dress or manner. That would get us in all kinds of trouble (and it does!). For we are not talking about just any prophet. We are talking about John the Baptist and Jesus, the Messiah. The text is calling us, all of us, to look squarely at John and Jesus, to see how they are given to us in the Gospels, and to make a fundamental decision. The question is now put to us: Who says John can call us to repentance? Who says Jesus can stand in front of us and say, Come and follow me?
And the lesson that the text has for us continues: a religious pedigree, however important and good that might be, can actually be used to evade, to avoid, to escape having to answer this question directly. It can even be used to justify ignoring the plain call of Jesus and John to a life of repentance, humility, and radical discipleship.
The twentieth century is often remembered as the century that religion (or at least, European Christianity) entered into a terminal decline. It certainly was the century that the great theoretical critiques of religion that emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries became popular. So popular in fact that we like to think that we moderns invented the criticism of religion. I find it striking that the great masters of suspicion—Freud, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche—the great critics who constructed modern atheism—say nothing that the great prophets of the Old Testament Amos and Isaiah as well as John and Jesus did not say before them. The real criticism of religion lies not outside Christian faith, but at its heart.
Unpacking that is a task for another day. For now, it is enough to say that Jesus himself teaches us—teaches me—that religion is often a cover, a ruse, a way of avoiding God, or running from God. A way to get away from his plain question: “By what authority to I—Jesus—teach this way and do these things?”
The last lesson that this Gospel reading follows on from the first. If a religious pedigree can be a barrier to recognizing Jesus and the God who authorizes the way he teaches and acts, lack of religion is not necessarily a barrier. The tax collectors and the prostitutes are getting into the kingdom ahead of you! That’s what Jesus says to his critics. There simply were no lower rungs on the social ladder. These folks were not simply on the margins, they were miles away from being right with God. At least that’s what the Sadducees thought. But Jesus says no. These folks, who might feel the most rejection from good religious people, are not excluded by God just because they are excluded by good religious people. They are perfectly capable of hearing the question and responding to it too.
So let’s allow Jesus to put the question to them. Let’s allow Jesus to put the question to you. Let’s allow Jesus to put the question to all of us. Whether we’re self-consciously fine upstanding religious folks or whether we’re self-consciously not or whether we’re (as I suspect most of us are) self-consciously somewhere in between.
Jesus as question. Have you ever thought of Jesus in that way? Blessed John Paul II was fond of saying that Jesus Christ is the answer to the question that is every human life. By that he meant that Jesus Christ, as he is given to us in the pages of Holy Scripture, is the pattern for human behaving and believing. He shows is, in his life and death, the example of what it means to be human and he invites us to pattern our lives after his. This is no doubt true. But today, Jesus comes to us, through the same Holy Scriptures, not as the answer, but as the question. We may well say as a compliment to Blessed John Paul, Jesus Christ is the question that undermines the answer that is every human life.
As we look at Jesus in the New Testament, and as we read the Gospel for the day, we are given not Jesus the answer, but Jesus the question. And today, he comes to us and asks us, “By what authority to I do these things? By what authority to I say these things? Who do you say that I am?” No more evasions. No more avoidances. It’s time for all of us—religious or not or in between—to deal with Jesus.