Matthew 21:23-32 (NRSV) The Authority of Jesus Questioned (Mk ...

Matthew 21:23-32 (NRSV)
The Authority of Jesus Questioned
(Mk 11.27—33; Lk 20.1—8)
23
When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he
was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this
authority” 24 Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer,
then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 Did the baptism of John come from
heaven, or was it of human origin” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From
heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him’ 26 But if we say, ‘Of human
origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” 27 So they answered Jesus,
“We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing
these things.
The Parable of the Two Sons
28
“What do you think A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in
the vineyard today.’ 29 He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. 30 The
father e went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. 31
Which of the two did the will of his father” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I
tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32
For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax
collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your
minds and believe him. 1
e Gk He
1
The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1996, c1989. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

Playing Games with the Kingdom of God
A sermon preached at North-Prospect United Church of Christ, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Date: September 25, 2005
Rev. Dudley C. Rose
Text: Matthew 21:23-32
The sermon was interesting. It was full of striking sentences. They would have
commanded attention printed. Spoken with the passion of a dramatic utterance that had the good
taste never to offend with a suspicion of ranting or declamation, they were very effective. If the
Rev. Henry Maxwell that morning felt satisfied with the conditions of his pastorate, the First
Church also had a similar feeling as it congratulated itself on the presence in the pulpit of this
scholarly, refined, somewhat striking face and figure, preaching with such animation and
freedom from all vulgar, noisy or disagreeable mannerism.
Suddenly, into the midst of this perfect accord and concord between preacher and
audience, there came a very remarkable interruption. It would be difficult to indicate the extent
of the shock which this interruption measured. It was so unexpected, so entirely contrary to any
thought of any person present that it offered no room for argument or, for the time being, of
resistance.
The sermon had come to a close. Mr. Maxwell had just turned the half of the big Bible
over upon his manuscript and was about to sit down as the quartet prepared to arise to sing the
closing selection,
"All for Jesus, all for Jesus,
All my being's ransomed powers,..."
when the entire congregation was startled by the sound of a man's voice. It came from the rear of
the church, from one of the seats under the gallery. The next moment the figure of a man came
out of the shadow there and walked down the middle aisle. Before the startled congregation
fairly realized what was going on the man had reached the open space in front of the pulpit and
had turned about facing the people.
…
"I'm not an ordinary tramp, though I don't know of any teaching of Jesus that makes one
kind of a tramp less worth saving than another. Do you" He put the question as naturally as if
the whole congregation had been a small Bible class. He paused just a moment and coughed
painfully. Then he went on.
…
There are a good many others like me. I'm not complaining, am I Just stating facts. But I
was wondering as I sat there under the gallery, if what you call following Jesus is the same thing
as what He taught. What did He mean when He said: 'Follow Me!' The minister said," -- here he
turned about and looked up at the pulpit -- "that it is necessary for the disciple of Jesus to follow
His steps, and he said the steps are 'obedience, faith, love and imitation.' But I did not hear him
tell you just what he meant that to mean, especially the last step. What do you Christians mean
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y following the steps of Jesus 2
These words, taken from the early pages of Charles M. Sheldon’s late nineteenth-century
novel, In His Steps, ask the question, What does it mean to follow in the steps of Jesus And the
implication is that whatever the answer to that question is, it is not being done at First Church of
Raymond, where the Rev. Henry Maxwell is the preacher. Despite fine preaching and beautiful
music, we get the idea that First Church in Raymond has missed the mark.
Of course, what Sheldon put his finger on casts a net far beyond the fictional First
Church of Raymond. The great irony is that religious institutions and religious leaders more
often than not become exactly the opposite of what their religious beliefs would try to make of
them. Along the way it becomes rather amazing to witness the mental and theological
contortions that people will perform to give religious credibility to the most ungodly things. It is
stunning that there seems so little embarrassment when the God of love is used to hate, when the
God of peace is used to justify war, when the God of compassion is used to justify meanspiritedness,
when the God who ate with the poor is used to justify the rich, when the God who
included all at the banquet is used to exclude so many in his name.
In this morning’s scripture we are reminded that religious institutions and people have for
a very long time had the habit of leaving their religious principles to gather dust.
In the story of Jesus, this morning’s passage places us near the end. He has entered
Jerusalem for that last fateful week of his life. He has brought his message to the central symbol
of religious practice and belief in Judea. He has come to the Temple in Jerusalem to teach his
message. And while he is there, the religious leaders, the chief priests and the elders approach
him. They see him as a trespasser, someone who doesn’t belong there. Like the tramp in
Sheldon’s novel, Jesus is out of place. Jesus is always out of place. He’s born out back in a
shed, not in a warm clean room in the inn. He tells those who would follow him that he has no
place to lay his head. He has to borrow a donkey and a room when he comes to Jerusalem. He’s
not comfortable to have around.
And so the priests and the elders come up to him and ask him, “By what authority are you
doing these things, and who gave you this authority” Make no mistake here. The priests and
the elders are asking a pedestrian question, not a lofty one. They are asking, Who let you in
Who said you could be here Who gave you the keys They are asking, Do you have any
credentials to be here Are you a priest Are you an elder Are you ordained Has anyone
given you a mark of approval.
Jesus knows the question they are asking, and he knows that it’s not the right question,
either. A battle of authority, when authority means who in authority gave you permission, is a
battle he cannot win, and he knows that it’s a battle not worth fighting, either.
So Jesus shifts the ground. He says, First, let me ask you a question. Did the baptism of
John come from heaven, or was it of human origin” Jesus changes the framework, and he raises
the stakes. He asks the priests and elders to weigh in on a different kind of authority. He asks
them to tell him if they think that John the Baptist baptized with heavenly authority or human
2
From Charles M. Sheldon, In His Steps, chapter 1. This book was never properly copyrighted
in 1896 when it was serialized, so it was immediately in the public domain. It has been
published by numerous publishers, translated into several languages, and has been said to have
sold more copies than any other book save the Bible.
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authority. He moves the question from Who gave you permission to Who is actually following
what God stands for He shifts the discussion from building security (Who said you can be in
here) to the real issue (Is what John did and said true And by implication, Is what I’m doing
here true).
The priests and the elders step aside and hold a caucus. If the stake for Jesus is the
kingdom of God, for the priests and the elders it is but a game they are trying to win. They say
to themselves, We’ve got to be careful here. This is a Catch-22. If we say that John baptized
with heavenly authority, he’s going to ask us why we rejected him and why we let him be
executed. But if we say that John baptized with only human authority, we’re going to have a
problem with the crowd, because they think he was a prophet. Let’s just say we don’t know.
That’s our safest bet.
It reminds you a lot of the recent hearings on John Roberts, nominee for Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court. A journalist summarized the Roberts strategy this way. He said, “Karl Rove
took John Roberts out back and showed him the chalk outline of former Supreme Court nominee
Robert Bork laying on the sidewalk. Rove told Roberts, you can be like Bork if you want. You
can have a catharsis and tell people what you really think about important things. And if you do,
you’ll be laying there just like him, dead. Or you can shut up and win confirmation.”
The priests and the elders took the John Roberts approach. They said, “Well, actually,
we don’t know where John the Baptist got his authority.”
There are lessons here, lessons that in some ways would seem to vindicate the Karl Rove
approach. Jesus bested the priests and elders in this interchange. They took a pass on the real
conversation. Jesus clearly comes off the best in the interchange. And yet, within the week,
these priests and elders will be a party to Jesus’ condemnation to death. Within the week, they
will participate in his crucifixion. Within the week, they will win, and Jesus will lose. The
strategy of remaining squarely in the earthly and human realm, the strategy of avoiding the real
questions, often seems to payoff. It is certainly a tried and true strategy. And its ramifications
are far from trivial.
In January 1933 Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany. On April 7th of the
same year, Hitler passed the Aryan Civil Service legislation that prohibited those of Jewish
descent, irrespective of their current religious affiliation, from holding offices in the state or in
the church. It was but the beginning of what would become perhaps the largest scale human
tragedy in history. Even though from heaven’s view the un-Christian-ness of it all was obvious,
only a few in the Christian church thought there was a problem. Most of them rallied around the
idea that the realm of God and the realm of the Third Reich were compatible. More than
compatible, they were seen to be the same thing. The young theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was
one of the few who thought the idea was dead wrong. In the summer of that same year, 1933, at
the University of Berlin Bonhoeffer lectured on the meaning of Christ, and there in a pointed
reference to the directions his homeland was taking he noted, “Christ goes through the ages,
questioned anew, misunderstood anew, and again and again put to death.” 3 To Bonhoeffer it
wasn’t just that Christ wasn’t on the same page as the human and political realm, he was put to
death by the human and political realm. After twelve years of resistance, on April 9, 1945 at the
3 A Testament to Freedom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited by Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton
Nelson. HarperSanFrancisco, 1990, 1995. 114.
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Flossenbürg concentration camp, less than a month before Germany’s surrender, Bonhoeffer,
along with other key figures in the resistance, was himself executed, executed largely because,
like Jesus, he insisted on living his life from the perspective of heavenly authority.
So, where has this brought us this morning Has your pastor found the ultimate tool of
Christian evangelism: Follow Jesus, it’ll cost you your life History says there may,
unfortunately, be some truth to that. Elsewhere Jesus addresses this issue himself.
Mark 8:35-37 (NASB95) “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever
loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the
whole world, and forfeit his soul For what will a man give in exchange for his soul”
The point, however, is not martyrdom. Fortunately, only in extreme cases does following
Jesus end in death. But very often, because to follow Jesus means to insist on a heavenly
yardstick, it does mean running against the powers and principalities of this world. And it can be
particularly confusing because very often, as in the interchange in this morning’s scripture, as in
the Weimar Republic, as in the First Church in Raymond, and, quite dangerously, as in this
country today, the realm of religion joins forces with the realm of the powers and principalities,
and together they let the most ungodly perspectives masquerade as the word of God.
Sometimes siding with the heavenly realm can be deadly, as it was for Dietrich
Bonhoeffer. But his life was not in vain. Today, on the Römerberg in the center plaza of
Frankfurt there is a plaque on the spot where in 1933 the books were burned. Because of people
like Bonhoeffer the plaque confesses the sins of the past, and it stands as a constant reminder of
the difference between heavenly and human authority. Amen.
Copyright © 2005 by Dudley C. Rose. All rights reserved.
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