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Proper 21

Matthew 21
23 Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”
24 Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. 25 John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”
They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ 26 But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.”
27 So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”
Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
28 “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’
29 “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
30 “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.


I like to torment Americans.

Back when I was studying in Chicago, I had no greater pleasure than tormenting my American classmates. Talk about free healthcare for a few minutes, and watch then wither. Or the dollar: at the beginning of the program we endured all the jokes (“dinner is $10, thats $20 Canadian”) but by my second year we were briefly at $1.10. We mostly swaggered.

The real fun was in describing a Canadian theological education. Watching their eyes bug out when I told them that I had a half-course on the virtues of communist Cuba, including a visit to the workers’ paradise. Or when I mentioned that I had another half-course on how to lead a successful protest. For the final project my group detailed an action called “Pigs on Parliament,” which included releasing pigs on Parliament Hill. I got an A.

All in all, it was helpful to reinforce how odd we truly are, on this side of the border, and remind them that we are not Americans.

Looking back on all that social action training, my favourite story remains a man named Bob, I think he was an architect during the day, but at night, and on weekends, his thing was getting arrested. He visited the class and told us the story of ARMEX, an exhibit of military hardware held at Lansdowne Park in Ottawa.

Bob knew he couldn’t stop the show, but he figured out a clever way to disrupt it. He put on a light blue shirt and black pants, he held a clipboard, and he started directing traffic. Well, redirecting traffic might be more to the point, because by the end of the day he had caused traffic chaos throughout the area. There were people who tried to see tanks and guns for sale that day, but just couldn’t get to the show.

So Bob discovered the two essential ingredients to a successful action. One, establish yourself as some sort of an authority figure, preferably with something easily regognizable such as a blue shirt and a clipboard, and two, create unavoidable chaos. After that, it was mission accomplished. He didn’t have to break anything, or set anything on fire, he just had to convince a couple of bus drivers that they needed to back up.

“By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked Jesus. “And who gave you this authority?”

Jesus is teaching and healing, making a stir, and generally disrupting the natural flow of things. He speaks for God, always a dangerous thing to do, and he is bold enough to forgive sins. All in all, he makes life uncomfortable for the clergy of the day, the professional types who are content with their diplomas and their offices with ensuite and their mid-size sedans.

And so they ask the question—a good question—about what authority Jesus can point to that allows him to do all he does. But Jesus won’t answer, at least not directly, and certainly not before he gives them a quick lesson in the ways of the Kingdom. He challenges them with a question and he shares a parable.

The question is a question about John the Baptist, recently martyred and very much on the minds of the people. Did his authority to baptize come from heaven or earth? Smelling a trap, the religious ones do not answer. ‘Quid pro quo then,’ Jesus says, ‘I will not answer you. But I will tell you a parable.’ Which, of course, is something that he would have done anyway.

Two sons are told to get to work. One refuses, but eventually goes, and the other agrees readily, but never shows up. Who does the will of the father? It is the first, everyone agrees, much in the way tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of troublesome clergy. Jesus added that part.

By what authority does Jesus teach and heal? Who gave him authority? It would have been easy enough to point heavenward and leave it at that. John’s Jesus, the Jesus found in John’s Gospel, seems to have had an easier time saying ‘I am the way, the truth, the light’ and just leave it at that. And I’m certainly there may have been times—maybe at the end of a long day—that John’s recollected Jesus may have simply said ‘I am’ or ‘I have’ or ‘I’m the authority.’ But in Matthew he’s more quixotic, telling stories and being idealistic and a little impractical with his words.

By being a little vague, almost evasive, he leaves it to the listener to see that you recognize authority when you need something. The first son needed to help his father, maybe needed to please his father, and in spite of his initial reaction to the question, he finally helped. Not so with the second son. Easier to say ‘sure mom, I’ll do the dishes’ and get her out from between the controller and the television than to actually get up and do the dishes. The second son sees no authority, and wants to please no one, and so plays in uninterrupted.

The same, Jesus tells us, for those given to sin—tax collectors, prostitutes, anyone in need of forgiveness—may push back at the beginning, may deny at first that they need anything, but will eventually come around. The self-righteous, the self-satisfied, those who think they got it right the first time: they tend to have a harder time recognizing the authority of the one sent to forgive sins.

All this seems to lead to the question: Do we need God? Do we need the authority that forgives our sin, encourages us on the way, and does all the other things we ascribe to God. Do we need God?

At first glance, we might say ‘yes,’ the people in here need God and the people out there not so much. Maybe that seems harsh, and maybe you disagree, or maybe you want to go a step further and say actually, there seem to be a lot of people in church who don’t seem to need God either. Now that’s harsh. And I’m sure you don’t mean this church, specifically.

Ultimately, I think both church and society are a mixture of people who need God and those who don’t know they need God. Notice that Jesus says ‘tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of you,’ not ‘in place of you.’ We all get there eventually, he insists, and the people who don’t know they need God will eventually figure it out, as surely as autumn follows summer.

But let’s take a closer look at the idea of need. One theory about the United States, a much more religious country where more churches grow, even mainline churches grow, is that the need is greater. Churches comfort and help the sick, many of whom have no health care. Churches run food banks and drop-ins, but do it in a country where 45 million people live below the poverty line (that’s more than one in seven!). The need is real, the stakes are higher, and the ethos of self-reliance means more people turn to the church for help.

For the United States, it would seem, more people need God, or at least God’s church. Back in the 1950’s, before the full-flower of the welfare state, the church in Canada had libraries, gymnasiums, daycares, and even bowling alleys to meet local need. When the state moved in and began to provide for all these things, the role of the church at the centre of the community came to an end. We were no longer needed.

Or maybe we were no longer needed in a physical sense. Maybe the provision of community resources was an easy way to meet the community, when what they really needed was something else. Maybe they needed someone with authority.

Back to our definition: you recognize authority when you need something, and the church of the past had it. We provided community resources (including a handy place to dump the kids for a couple of hours on Sunday) and people gave us pride of place at the centre of the community. City or province begins to replace us, right down to organized sports on Sunday, and we lose authority. So we had it, and lost it, but maybe it wasn’t real in the first place.

This may seem like an aside, but there is wonderful quote for Prof. Elizabeth Warren, that addressed the idea of needing others:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.

In other words, the self-reliant, the people who think they made it on their own are just wrong. The imagine they don’t need government, or label government the enemy, when in fact no one can prosper without the authority called government.

So how do we regain our authority, how do we convince people that we are on a path to God that can represent the ultimate authority in their lives? By telling them. We are very much the first son, falling down on our duty to describe the role that God plays in our lives, but showing through our actions the wonderful role God plays in our lives. We protest ‘no, I’m not that kind of Christian’ when faith comes up at work, but we fail to fill in the rest, to describe just what type of Christian we are, and by what authority we love and serve others. May God give us the words, to speak with authority, and give thanks, amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 5:25 AM