Matthew
21:23-32
When
Jesus 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?" 24Jesus 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. 25Did 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?' 26But if we say, `Of human
origin,' we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet." 27So
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.' 29He
answered, `I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. 30The
father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, `I go, sir'; but
he did not go. 31Which 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. 32For 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."
The setting in context: In
chapter 21 of Matthew, Jesus makes a triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The crowds
(some, but not all ,of Jerusalem) greet him with shouts full of messianic
imagery in v. 21:9: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes
in the name of the Lord!” (language we recognize from the opening of the
liturgy leading to Eucharist in Eucharistic Prayer A). He proceeds to get right
in the face of the priests and Pharisees by engaging in his wild cleansing of
the Temple in vv. 12-17. Then we have the humorous and petulant nugget of a
story of Jesus cursing of the fig tree that bore no fruit in verses 18-22. The
cleansing of the Temple is not just a religious act of a zealot but a political
act that could undermine the role of the chief priests and elders in the eyes
of the Jewish population. The chief priests and elders believe that they serve
an important role as intermediaries between the people and the occupying Roman
Empire. And here comes this wild-eyed erratic hick, claiming that he is all
about peace while looting the Temple’s marketplace, threatening to bring
disaster down upon everyone’s heads.
So let’s understand: when
the chief priests and elders approach Jesus in v. 23, they are fully aware of
the criticism he is leveling at them in these actions, and in that it seems
like a big chunk of Jerusalem agrees with him. And they are PISSED. So you can
bet there was a certain… tone… in their opening question, a definite visual
once-over that takes in his peasant’s clothing and dusty sandals and probably
unkempt hair and sweat stains from all that throwing money-changers’ tables
around. “Who the heck do you think you are??” they ask with an implied sneer. “We’re
the people with the power around here. We’ve got a nice set-up here, and we’re
not about to let some carpenter’s son from the sticks imply that they are
promoting irreverence and blasphemy.” Allowing the sale of animals and the
breaking of change is a practical matter in a cultic system that requires
animal sacrifice.
So Jesus does that really
annoying thing that most of us can’t stand: he answers a question with a
question. And some of us who have been following along all through the year
probably are glad to see him taking a page from the playbook of his opponents and
trying to use a question to trip them up instead, since this certainly was one
of their favorite tactics. It is obvious at this point that Jesus is in no mood
to play. There are 10 different times in the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus
is asked questions directly, and at least three times were Matthew notes the
questions were asked in order to “test” Jesus.
Although the primary cause of this question is indignation and probably
not a little fear, Jesus uses this occasion as a chance to test them, his
opponents. Jesus agrees to answer their question—if, first, they can answer a
question of his.
And the chief priests and
elders did not get to the position they are in now without sensing the trap. His
question in v. 25 gets at the heart of the authority of John the Baptist. The
game is afoot! Given that the authorities have opposed John the Baptist, they
certainly cannot say that his actions were ordained by God; yet, if they answer that John was a fraud, religiously
speaking, they could very well face a riot, since many of the people who supported
the temple believed in John. So they
fall back on the classic answer used by students everywhere: “we don’t know.”
And when they chicken out, Jesus then responds with a refusal to answer.
Jesus’s question gets at the
heart of his ministry, however. And in a way, he does answer their question—or
at least provides a hint for the readers of the gospel of Matthew. Jesus’s
ministry had started with his baptism by John. In Matthew’s Gospel, the
beginning of chapter 3 explains that John served as a prophet, announcing the
coming of Jesus, the Messiah. Jesus was baptized by John in chapter 3, and is driven
immediately thereafter into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, in 4:1-11, to be
tested by the devil. At Matthew 4:12,
Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee, and in v. 18 he calls his first
disciples; by v. 23 crowds of people are following him. The authority of Jesus
and the authority of John build upon each other: John is the foundation, and
Jesus is the New Temple built upon that foundation, as was hinted at in the
questions that the devil asked him in the wilderness in chapter 4. What Jesus
is saying here is this: if John’s authority comes from God, then so does that
of Jesus, since Jesus is the fulfillment of John’s prophecies and ministry.
The second half of our
reading makes this linkage explicit. The parable of the two sons is the first
of three parables that expose the greed and injustice of Jerusalem’s religious
leaders-- the other two include the
Parable of the Wicked Tenants (which we will read next week) and the Parable of
the Wedding Banquet (which is not read during this liturgical year at all).
Any of us who have spent
time with teenagers can see that the story of the two sons is pulled from real
life. If I had a dollar for every time one of my students or my children had
told me they were going to do something, and then didn’t do it, I could buy a
football team. The refusal of the kid to do something, only to go ahead and do
it later, also happens, although not as frequently as we would like. Sometimes
kids just have to refuse to do stuff to assert their independence, even when
they know that there’s a good reason to do the thing they’ve been asked to do.
The Pharisees, the religious
leaders, and the elders, all claim to be doing the will of God, and being
obedient to God. Their notions of purity and propriety lead them to condemn and
sometimes even shun others—specifically, the tax collectors and prostitutes
that Jesus mentions in v. 31. Yet, those
same outcasts, those people limited to the margins of society by the rules of
the authorities, are exactly the people who are listening to Jesus’s radical
gospel message. Jesus makes it clear that although the lives of tax collectors
and prostitutes may not have been examples of obedience up to this point,
ultimately they demonstrate obedience by becoming true disciples of Christ—by
being transformed in the way that our epistle speaks of. The repeated refusal
of the chief priests and elders to understand Jesus’s authority as the Messiah
places them in the role of the first son in the parable.
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