Matthew 21:23-32
Presented October 9th, 2005, by J.D. Kline
The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
Some years ago I came across a book by United Methodist pastor and retreat leader Robert Raines entitled Living the Questions. Raines wrote the book in the midst of a time of change and stress in his life, a time of challenge and uncertainty, yet also a time filled with opportunity and new growth. Experiencing divorce and remarriage, a new job and geographic location, changing relationships with both parents and children, and the breaking and remaking of both his own self-image and his image of God, it was a time of intense questioning and struggle, a time that included doubting and searching even as it led to a stretching and deepening of his faith.
There is something within many that sometimes yearns to reduce this matter of faith to a prescribed list of beliefs, to a one-size-fits-all kind of thing that does not allow for questioning and struggle. Indeed, there are churches that consider questioning to be hostile to faith, and therefore the raising of questions is treated as a threat. But as Robert Raines reminds us, “The Bible is a book of journeys and questions—of people asking God questions, and God questioning people.”
Of course, not all questions are asked with the intention of learning and growing. This morning’s Gospel lesson begins with the chief priests and elders in Jerusalem questioning Jesus—questioning that occurs during that week we now call Holy Week, in the aftermath of Jesus entering the city to the acclaim of the crowds. The encounter follows on the heels of Jesus cleansing the Temple, driving out the moneychangers, and then Jesus cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit. When Jesus later returns to the Temple, teaching and proclaiming life under the rule of God, the leaders are ready for him. “By what authority,” the leaders question, “are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?” (v. 23). In reality, the leaders are asking Jesus, “Who do you think you are?”
Jesus was acting as the Messiah might choose to act, but Jesus has none of the proper credentials. In Matthew for Everyone, a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Tom Wright asserts that Jesus “had walked in and behaved as though he owned the place. Here he was, a country boy from Galilee, coming to the big, smart capital city. He walked into its holiest shrine, which had been ruled for centuries by the chief priests. And for a moment, he took it over. Who did he think he was?”
The only person who might conceivably have greater authority in the Temple than the high priest was God’s anointed One, the Messiah, and here was Jesus acting as though he had the right to do what only the Messiah could do. So the questions, “Who do you think you are? Are you daring to make the claim that you are the Messiah?”—these questions are asked with an underlying contempt, for the chief priests and elders had already decided that Jesus was not worthy of their attention.
As is often the case when Jesus was confronted with a hostile question, he responds with a question of his own: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or is it of human origin?” The leaders find themselves on the spot. Whichever answer they gave could create difficulty for them. “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ Jesus will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd” (vv. 25-26). And so the leaders answer, “We do not know” (v. 27).
Jesus responds rather curtly, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things” (v. 27). But Jesus doesn’t stop there; he tells a story, trusting that as the chief priests and elders consider its message, they might in fact be able to answer their own question. It’s the story of two sons, a story with which anyone who has been a parent or who has worked with children can readily identify. The father asks each of the sons to work in the vineyard. The first immediately refuses, but soon reconsiders and does in fact go the vineyard and work for his father. The second son agrees to work, but does not follow through on his commitment.
Which brother, Jesus asks his critics, did the will of his father? The answer was a no-brainer. It was not what either son said that ultimately made the difference, but what each did. Still, Jesus doesn’t stop there; he continues on, telling the chief priests and elders which brother they were. They were the Yes men, Jesus told them, saying the right things, believing the right things, perhaps even standing for the right things, but not doing the right things.
They may even have thought they were doing the right things. After all, they understood the law. They embraced the letter of the law, at least as it applied to how others ought to act. But they little understood the heart of faith, which is trust and compassion. Several years ago there was a movie entitled The Spitfire Grill. A stranger, a young woman named Percy, comes to a small town in Maine, a town long in decline, unaccustomed to attracting new residents. The owner of the grill hires her to help out, and for days and weeks, the stranger is the talk of the town. Eventually it becomes known that Percy had spent time in prison, and that knowledge, as you might suspect, only adds to the level of suspicion with which she is viewed. As the story unfolds, money from the sale of the grill turns up missing, and many in the town assume that Percy had taken it. At the same time, Percy fears that the townspeople may blame a hermit, a disillusioned war veteran whom she has befriended, and she flees to warn him. While attempting to do so, Percy drowns in the rapids of a nearby river, and only then does the full story come out. The townspeople, now confronted with the harmful effects of their suspicion, arrive in full force for Percy’s memorial service. One man, nephew of the owner of the Spitfire Grill, makes his way to the front of the town hall, where he sadly confesses something to the effect, “I thought I knew Percy Talbot, but I did not know her. I thought I knew the kind of person she was, but I was wrong—as wrong as wrong can be. I thought I knew Percy Talbot, but I—more than anyone else—am responsible for her death.”
Like the townspeople who regularly gathered at the Spitfire Grill, like the chief priests and elders of Jesus’ day, we may well convince ourselves that we are doing what is right, even when we are harming one another. In a book of sermons, Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor has this to say about the chief priests and elders:
They thought they were doing the right things, mind you, but they had gotten so attached to their own ideas about what those things were that it was hard for them to accept much correction. First John the Baptist and then Jesus suggested that they trade in their beliefs for a fresh experience of God, but they could not bring themselves to do that. They said yes to God while they acted out a great big NO to Jesus, who suggested they might be in for a big surprise.
People they despised were going into the kingdom ahead of them, Jesus told them—not instead of them, but ahead of them—people who may have said no at the beginning but who changed their minds and went, while those who refused to go continued to mistake their own convictions for obedience to God.
On the one hand, it is just one more story about hypocrisy, which has always been the number one charge leveled against religious people—that we say one thing and do another, promising we will love each other on Sunday and finding a dozen ways to slander, cheat, or just plain ignore each other on Monday. It is a serious charge against those who pretend goodness, wearing a fake fur of faith in God in order to gain advantage over other people. But I do not think conscious pretense is the real problem. I am much more concerned about the unconscious way many of us substitute our beliefs about God for our obedience to God, as if it were enough to say, “I go, sir,” without ever tensing a muscle to get out of our chairs.
Jesus challenges the leaders of his day to embrace a fresh experience with God, to recognize that faith has far less to do with easy answers than with a recognition that you and I are called to grapple, each and every day, with what it means to live lives of faithfulness in the midst of life’s pressing challenges, struggles, and hopes. Faith is a process; faith is a journey. Faith is an unfolding relationship with the Spirit in which we seek, over and over again, to discern what it means to walk in paths of discipleship, and then to find the courage to venture forth. It is not enough to hold fast to doctrine, to a set of beliefs about God. Much more, we are called to embrace God’s vision for living, to be about the life-long task of doing justice, loving tenderly, proclaiming peace, and walking humbly with God.
Faith opens discussion, rather than ending conversation. William Sloane Coffin writes of the Scriptures,
It is a mistake to look to the Bible to close a discussion; the Bible seeks to open one. God leads with a light rein, giving us our head. Jesus spoke in parables because the stories have a way of shifting responsibility from the narrator to the hearer. Christians have to listen to the world as well as to the Word—to science, to history, to what reason and our own experience tell us. We do not honor the higher truth we find in Christ by ignoring truths found elsewhere.
The Bible, according to Robert Raines, is a book of journeys and questions; it is a book that invites us to an ever-deepening life in the Spirit, to abundant living in which we face head-on into the struggles and hurts, the doubts and questions, the uncertainties and stresses, the hopes and the searching of our lives. Along the way, we may well find ourselves being stretched; we may well find ourselves growing in ways we had not anticipated, encountering anew our God and God’s vision for life. We may well hear anew the challenge of Jesus’ parable of the two sons, to move beyond mere lip service to the faith, to a willingness to put that faith into practice.
Sisters and brothers, let us give thanks for the gift of abundant life in the Spirit. Let us give thanks for the promise of God’s abiding presence in times of storm and times of calm, reminding us that “in our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity. In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see” (The Hymnal, #614, “In the bulb there is a flower”).
Pastoral Prayer
God of our living, Source of all good gifts, come among us in these moments of prayer—in this time when we remind ourselves that all that we have, all that we are, comes as gift from you. Holy God, lead us by faith, that we might bring your light into places of darkness, that we might offer expressions of forgiveness and healing in places of brokenness, that we might bring hope and peace into places of discouragement and despair. Thanks be to you, O God, for your Spirit that brings love, power, and grace to us, your Spirit that guides us into faithful living.
Compassionate God, listen to your children praying for forgiveness. Forgive us when we ignore the gifts of your Spirit and pursue our own selfish ways. Forgive us when we become satisfied with divisions and brokenness, with injustice and self-centeredness. Forgive us, O God, and create within us a renewed willingness to be your salt and light in the world around us. Create in us, O God, a new and right spirit.
Gracious God, sometimes we little know how to pray. Sometimes we come before you with sighs too deep for words, so overwhelmed are we with the needs of the world. Poverty, fear, violence, the destruction of hurricanes and flooding and earthquakes, human frailty and sinfulness—all these cry out for our response. God of us all, grant us courage to reach out to those who are hurting, wisdom to know where we can make a difference, and faith to trust that you are at work in the world.
God of wholeness, listen to your children praying for those in special need of your loving arms of healing. We pray for…
God of peace, teach us new ways of resolving conflicts, new alternatives to violence and suspicion, to hostility and war making. Send your Spirit of love, power, grace, and peace. We pray these prayers in the name of Christ Jesus our Redeemer. Amen.