Authority (Matthew 21)

“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 21, verse 23.

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     It may seem odd that the lectionary for today has paired these two stories, the first in which the chief priests and elders question Jesus about his authority, and the second, in which Jesus questions them about an apparently unrelated topic, a father’s difficulties with his contrary sons. But when we listen to the stories closely, we realize that one subject unites them: authority and its nature, its basis, who exercises it and how, what may or may not happen, and what the consequences are. The way Jesus handles the subject illustrates what he thinks about it.

     Let us recall where this story is placed in Matthew’s Gospel. Earlier in the 21^st chapter, Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph, he drives the moneychangers and buyers and sellers from the temple, and causes a fig tree to wither. This last seems to us rather harsh, perhaps, but it is a reminder that there is a certain toughness in Jesus which all who encounter him need to be aware of. It is with these stories in mind, these very recent events, that the chief priests and elders ask Jesus about his authority. The events in themselves are rather alarming, and questions about it are justifiable.

     Notice what the chief priests and elders take for granted: that there is such a thing as authority, and that Jesus has it, or something like it. Of course they want to know where it comes from, so they can decide what kind of authority it is and whether they need to respect it or not.

     Now authority in the society that the priests and elders and Jesus live in has three sources: God, or heredity, or military might, or some combination of these sources. The empire is based on force; the rulers don’t even pretend to rule with the consent of the people. The rulers acquired their empire by force, and they legitimize it by saying that God willed it, and it must be so, because, after all, they won. And the authority of the priests comes from God as well, inherited in priestly families. There is no vocational priesthood in this society, only a family-based institution deriving its authority from divinely-sanctioned heredity.

     Jesus, of course, has no imperial authority, although the Evangelist does say that he’s from the House of David and so is royal, perhaps even a king. And Pilate asks him in chapter 27, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus doesn’t deny it, but he doesn’t affirm it either. In any case, in today’s story, he doesn’t claim royal authority. We know from the Letter to the Hebrews that the earliest Christians considered Jesus to be the Melchizedek High Priest, but he makes no such claim in our story either. In other words, Jesus avoids making any claim to traditional authority. Jesus does something else entirely.

     Jesus does something that every genuine spiritual teacher does: he asks a question of his questioners. And he promises an answer if his questioners answer him correctly. As it happens, he doesn’t actually answer their question --- not with a straight answer anyway. But it is in the question-and-answer that Jesus begins to reveal his attitude to authority.

     “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? ... 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.’” In other words, Jesus is saying, “if you won’t tell me where John’s authority comes from, I won’t tell you where my authority comes from.” There is authority, but what it is, and where it comes from, is not known, at least to the priests and elders. Jesus knows what it is and where it comes from, but he is taking a roundabout way of telling them and us what it is.

     The first clue to the answer is in the questioning itself. The fact that the actors in this story are asking each other questions means that the source of true authority can’t be revealed in any other way. The kind of authority that relies on force does not like to be questioned: kings and emperors and other rulers, religious functionaries, economic powers, and all the other powers that the people of the story know about and take for granted. The religious authorities of the time of the story definitely don’t allow themselves to be questioned. But question them Jesus certainly does, and in that questioning he points them, and us, in the direction of true authority.

     “We do not know,” say the chief priests and elders to Jesus. They answer this way out of fear of another penetrating question from Jesus, but also out of fear of the crowd, who regard John’s baptism as coming from heaven. But there is more than fear in their answer; there is also, I like to think, a hint of humility, a hint of awareness that maybe they have something to learn about true authority after all. By admitting that they do not know, they have opened themselves just enough to allow a new truth to come to light. That little opening is all Jesus needs, so, like the artful spiritual guide that he is, he decides to tell them a story.

     Now we know why the Parable of the Two Sons is included in today’s reading. It is the beginning of an answer to the question of the chief priests and elders, “By what authority are you doing these things?” Jesus is not giving them the conventional, canonical, legalistic answer they are looking for; there isn’t one, really. He is leading them into a wider awareness of spiritual reality, the source of true authority.

     We remember the Parable of the Two Sons. The first refused to work in the vineyard, but “changed his mind and went.” The other agreed to work, but didn’t. “’Which of the two did the will of his father?’ They said, ‘The first.’” Then Jesus says, “The tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” In Jesus’s world, tax collectors and prostitutes have no authority whatever, and the authorities disapprove of them, yet they receive the reward which according to the belief of the time, they should have been denied. Jesus upends the conventional understanding of authority, of who is important and who isn’t, of who gets into the Kingdom and who doesn’t. The real authority here is God himself, and not the usual ideas that people have about God. God is not interested in convention, legality, canonical ways of doing things. As a friend of mine said many years ago, “God is not religious!”

     The first son who says that he will not go into the vineyard and yet does go, is responding to genuine authority. The vineyard is the Kingdom and the first son sees it for what it is. The tax collectors and prostitutes see it too. John the Baptist saw it and pointed it out to them; he is the prophet of true authority, which invites everyone into the Kingdom. Conventional authority is always looking for reasons to exclude people from the Kingdom. The second son, who says he will go but does not, missed the point of the invitation. Perhaps he disapproves of the low-status people who are already there. Conventional authority routinely sorts people by status; true authority does not. True authority invites everyone into the Kingdom.

     “Even after you saw it,” Jesus says to the priests and elders, “you did not change your minds and believe him,” … believe John, that is. Even after the priests and elders got a glimpse of the Kingdom, they still stubbornly held out against the idea that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of them. But the invitation still stands, backed up by true authority, which Jesus has revealed in today’s Gospel.

“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. (24.IX.14 Adv., 1.X.17 Adv.)