Proper 21A
Matthew 21:23-32
September 25, 2011

Ouch

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

“Just where does Jesus get off doing ‘these things’?” the Jerusalem Pastors’ Association wants to know. These are my colleagues, you know, these chief priests and elders of the people. I like some of them. Others I tolerate. They are clergy, respected leaders of the community. And they are all my colleagues.

And the ‘these things’ they are talking about? Well, let’s see: the chapter begins with Jesus coming into Jerusalem in a parade that imitated the ancient Jewish kings as they came into Jerusalem and up to the temple in an enthronement processional. It was also an echo of the Roman-style “triumph,” an honor sometimes granted by the Roman Senate to a victorious general—the right to have a parade and to bring a legion into Rome itself. The crowd recognized what Jesus was doing and they took up the ancient shout of “Hosanna!” This was a prayer that God would be with Jesus to deliver him from his enemies. It was a prayer that God would deliver the people through Jesus. “Just where does Jesus get off doing this?”

The next thing that happened was that Jesus went into the temple complex and smashed all the ATM machines. The machines were charging outrageous transaction fees that were going straight into the temple treasury. Authorities can overlook a lot, but don’t you dare disrupt business. “Just where does Jesus get off doing this?”

Even the children were calling him the “Son of David” and Jesus accepted this royal title. “Just where does Jesus get off doing this?”

The Jerusalem Pastors’ Association made a list.

The next day when Jesus and his disciples came to the temple to pick up where they had left off the day before, my colleagues were waiting. They had their list. There were ready for him. They wanted an explanation. They wanted a justification. They wanted him to stop disrupting their plans. They wanted him to go away. They wanted him dead. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

So they asked him the question, “What kind of authority do you have for doing these things?”

There is something we have to understand about life in Jesus’ day. The historian Peter Brown called this a “face-to-face” society. People interacted directly with each other under intense public scrutiny. We don’t really get this because instead of a face-to-face society we live in an interface-to-interface society. We email. We text. We telephone. We twitter. We instant message. We blog. We post on Facebook. When two people relate in our society, there is often some machine between them, some technology, some interface. (By the way using all this stuff is what we call “connecting!”)

The ancients didn’t use any of this. If they wanted to communicate, they talked face-to-face. Mostly they did it in public. If they had a conflict with someone, they confronted each other out loud and in sight and sound of a crowd. Naturally, they were good at the art of verbal jousting. The crowds knew the game and they appreciated it. Jesus’ right to do the things he did rested in part on his being able to out-talk the chief priests and the elders.

So this is an important episode in Jesus’ story. My colleagues hoped to shut Jesus up by asking a question he couldn’t answer. “Stump the preacher” played for keeps.

Jesus turned the question around and asked them about the baptism that John did and whether he did it by human authority or by God’s. They wouldn’t answer the question. It isn’t that they didn’t know the answer: John acted on his own authority, of course. He wasn’t part of any priestly family, like the chief priests were. He wasn’t part of any school of thought, like the rabbis. He had not sat at the feet of any master. These were the ways in which God fashioned the clergy. My colleagues have been through this process. And so have I. I’ve been vetted. I’ve been educated. I’ve been trained. I’ve been enculturated into the fraternity of clergy (and when I started out, it was pretty much a fraternity.). I’m part of the club. I have credentials—the approvals and authorizations and pieces of paper that show that I can be trusted in this role.

John went through none of this. He simply put on a feed sack, made a show of eating grasshoppers and honey, and started dunking people in the Jordan, all while claiming to be acting at God’s direction.

My colleagues knew this. But they couldn’t say it on account of the crowd. The crowd thought John was a prophet. Any suggestion that he was a crazy, if sincere, trouble-maker would have been met with what? With violence? Maybe. Which shows just how little authority we really have. Authority, you know, is different from power. Power is the ability to make things happen—good things, bad things, it doesn’t matter. Authority is the ability to be seen as having the right to make things happen. The education, the approvals, the pieces of paper—they may give some power, but mostly they are an attempt to gain authority.

And learned just how little authority we actually have. We can state an obvious truth, namely, that John is barking mad, crazy as a green kangaroo, completely bonkers. But if the crowd doesn’t want to hear it, no one will believe us.

And here’s a thing you can take away with you: whenever anyone demands to know by what authority you are doing something, it’s because they are very aware that it’s their authority that is in question. It’s an attempt to shift attention away from them and onto you. If you fall for it and start defending yourself, you lose and they win.

Since my colleagues refused to answer his question, Jesus refused to answer theirs. Game, set and match, as they say in tennis. Check and mate, as they say in chess.

Now the way that Matthew tells the story, Jesus refused to answer the question about the source of his right to do the things that he did. But then he went on and answered the question anyway, by telling a series of parables.

The first—and really one is enough—is about a man with two sons. And, sticking to my rule about interpreting parables, I’ll just say that this is not a story that seems to be about a man who had two sons but that is really about God and the Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus. No, this story about a man who had two sons is about a man who had two sons. He tells them both to go work in the vineyard. The first says, “I don’t want to,” but then he does. The second says, “Sure thing!” but then he never actually goes. “Which one,” Jesus asks, “did the will of the father?”

Now this story as I see it could be about obedience. It could be, “Which son obeyed his father?”

Or this story could be about resistance. After all, the father is “the man.” He owns a vineyard. Wine was a luxury item. The father is a wealthy landowner, so he is “the man.” In this case it’s, “Which son successfully resisted the man?”

But it really doesn’t matter which of those alternatives it is. In either case, the question is about action, not words. If it’s about obedience, then it doesn’t matter who is more agreeable. The only one who obeyed was the son who actually did what he was told. If the story is about resistance then it doesn’t matter how well you trash-talk the man, the only thing that matters is not doing what the man tells you to do.

It’s deeds that count, not words. It’s actions that count, not rhetoric. It praxis that counts, not discourse. It’s what we do that matters, not what we say.

Now, may I say, as a colleague of these pastors, and as someone who makes his living with his words, that this is for me not entirely good news? I put a lot of store in words, you know. I have logged many years as a student. I have been a scholar—not one who made any money, but a scholar all the same. I’m still pretty scholarly. I read serious stuff. I write some serious stuff, too. All of it adding up to many words. Many of them long words. When I was ordained, Bishop Job told me, “Take authority as an elder to preach the word of God.” He told me other things, too, but that was the first. One of the things that I am called is a preacher. Preachers string together words. To put it more formally, we generate discourse. We talk, to put it simply.

All my talking, all my clever reading strategies, all my working of generating discourse, all of it takes a back seat to what I do, says Jesus. In the end that’s what matters: not what I say, but what I do. And I know in my heart that I talk a much better game than I play. Ouch.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

Sometimes, you know, good news doesn’t come candy-coated. Sometimes it’s a lot like medicine—good for you, but no particular fun. And after a game-changer like this, I’ve had about as much good news as I can handle.

©2011, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.