Dear Friends,
Today’s gospel reading marks a significant change for Jesus and his followers. To fully understand this text, we must put it into context by examining what has happened in the preceding days.
Only five weeks ago, we read Peter’s brave declaration in Caesarea Philippi that Jesus was “the Messiah, the living Son of God.” (Matthew 16:16) Jesus then told his disciples what was to come: that he must go to Jerusalem, be arrested and tried; that he would suffer and be crucified; and on the third day, he told them, he would be resurrected. As you may recall, Peter, “the rock,” couldn’t accept this. He declared that such a thing should never happen to his beloved teacher, the one in whom he and so many others had begun to invest their hope for a different kind of deliverance than Jesus was predicting. He was looking for a savior who would vanquish their Roman enemies. He couldn’t begin to understand a savior who would sacrifice himself to vanquish sin itself.
I know it’s still September, but this passage in Matthew brings us into Holy Week. As we say farewell to summer and begin a new season, we remain in pandemic limbo. What better message for this season, which we’ve always thought of as a new beginning of a new program year, than the message of Holy Week, which begins a new reality for us all?
Before we pick up today’s reading of Matthew 21:23-32, let us share together in this prayer for illumination:
Lord, by the power of your Holy Spirit, give us the words of life, that we may understand your way and follow your truth, in Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.
And so, here we are, in the midst of the action of Holy Week. The first twenty-two verses of this chapter have been full of action. And now, having been received so triumphantly as he entered Jerusalem on what we’ve come to know as Palm Sunday, Jesus went directly to the Temple. He found it defiled by money changers, there because Roman money was unacceptable in the Temple. Worshipers had to obtain Hebrew money in order to buy the doves for sacrifice at this time of the Passover. “Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.” (21:12)
The chief priests and scribes were furious at this sacrilegious disruption and threat to their authority. After a brief encounter with them, Jesus left the Temple and the city, going on to Bethany to spend the night.
The next morning, “when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. . .” (21:23). In today’s vernacular, that would read: the chief priests and elders came looking for him and they had an agenda. As I read Matthew, I’m imagining some pretty frantic meetings overnight, ending with a resounding vote to stop Jesus as soon as he entered the Temple the next day. Things were tense enough without this disruptive, rabble-rousing Jesus overturning tables and shouting at people.
The city was filled to overflowing for Passover, and in response to the crowds in the city and growing discontent in the countryside, Rome had significantly increased its military presence. Even Pontius Pilate came to town to keep things locked down. It was a virtual powder-keg, and the priests and elders thought this upstart Jesus was just making a politically and religiously charged situation worse. He had to be stopped.
There’s no doubt that the priests and elders relished the power they thought they had in the midst of occupation, and the appearance of power was important if they were to keep the peace. As they saw it, doing so was their primary role. So long as things stayed calm, they hoped Rome would inflict no additional hardship on the beleaguered people. They therefore sought to show the gathering crowds, the disciples, and Jesus himself that he had no authority and thus no power. Hence their question, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” (21:23) Surely, here in sophisticated Jerusalem, this raggedy itinerant preacher would have no satisfactory answer!
There’s a famous story about a student who asked a rabbi, “Why do rabbis always answer a question with a question?” The rabbi pondered a moment and said, “So what’s wrong with a question?” And here, Jesus responds in typically rabbinic fashion, promising to answer their question if they answered his. Had I been one of those chief priests or elders, I think that would have been my first clue that this was no run-of-the-mill rural preacher; this man might be a force to be reckoned with, and all our plans may well be on very shaky ground.
But Jesus gave them no time to fully contemplate his response. Without a moment of hesitation, he launched directly into his question. “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” (21:25)
John was a beloved man whose deep faith had been known to many, especially after his martyrdom at the hands of Herod. The chief priests were now in a no-win situation. Any answer they gave would offend God and/or the crowds. They may have thought they were laying a trap for Jesus when they questioned his authority, but they must have realized immediately that the tables were turned: it was they who were in a trap. Jesus was turning the tables again!
With their purpose thus defeated, they retreated into ignorance. “So they answered Jesus, ‘We do not know.’” (21:27) Their counterparts today would just as glibly say, “I can’t recall.” And so, just as he’d told them he would, Jesus refused to respond to their question. “He said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’” (21:27)
Jesus wasn’t engaging in a childish tit-for-tat here. With neither sarcasm nor vengefulness, he immediately launched into a new parable about a father who asked his two sons to work in the family vineyard. One son said no but then changed his mind and quietly went out to do the work. The other agreed to do the work, even addressing his father more respectfully as “sir,” but he never actually went out to work in the vineyard. (21:28-30)
“Which of the two,” Jesus asked them, “did the will of his father?” (21:31) These priests and elders, who, in just a few short days, would oversee the trial and conviction of Jesus on charges of blasphemy and send him on to Pontius Pilate for sentencing, now took no time to deliberate their answer. It seemed obvious: the son who did the work did the father’s will, and so they answered, “‘The first.’ Jesus responded, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.’” (21:31)
Can you imagine the stunned silence that must have greeted Jesus’s response? Can you picture the rapt attention everyone in the crowd must have been paying as they heard Jesus, the so-called itinerant preacher from the boondocks, clearly rebuking the high priests and elders?
Jesus was turning the world upside down. He was lecturing, even reprimanding, these people of great authority and influence. He was standing up to them, scolding them because “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.” (21:32)
It’s important to understand the significance of the tax collectors and prostitutes. Tax collectors were roundly despised: they essentially worked for the Emperor, making sure everyone paid their taxes so that Rome could pay the armies that controlled their empire, including the Jews themselves. The tax collectors were complicit in the Roman occupation of the holy city. And prostitutes earned their living (likely involuntarily, but that’s a discussion for another time) in the rest and relaxation camps for Roman soldiers in cities like Tiberias on the coast of the Sea of Galilee. They, too, were complicit in the tyranny of Roman rule.
And it’s equally important to understand the very thin line the priests and elders walked. Though they reaped the benefits of status, the priests and elders were also collaborators in profound and basic ways. They may well have been acting in order to preserve a fragile peace and protect the Jewish people, but the priests and elders actually surrendered all real control to Rome.
The high priest, for example, wore special robes on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which was the holiest of days. These robes, reverently passed down from one high priest to the next, were worn only on that single day of the year. Their value was incalculable: embedded in them were all the prayers and memories of Israel as a people. Wearing these precious vestments, the chief priest would enter the inner sanctum of the Temple alone; no one else was permitted to be in that sacred space. Here, in the Holy of Holies, he confessed his sins and the collective sins of the people and sought forgiveness from God. One would think nothing could come between the high priest and these ancient robes, but the high priest had agreed to abide by the Roman governor’s demand that he, the governor, would keep the high priest’s vestments under lock and key. Those important robes, essential to the high priest’s atonement for himself and his people, were thus under the procurator’s control. With that act, though he may have been trying to protect his people with the best of intentions, the high priest actually relinquished his religious control to Rome in the most fundamental of ways.
And here was Jesus telling them that because these outcastes, these tax collectors and prostitutes, believed John, they “are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (21:31) He brought the desert witness of John into the urban, religious, and political center of Jerusalem. And with these words, he not only insulted the priests and elders, but also demonstrated his authority, the very authority they had questioned. He was telling the chief priests that they were more compromised than the tax collectors and prostitutes. Indeed, he was saying that they were not only complicit, but they had failed to heed the word of God spoken through John the Baptist.
With this parable and in this quiet confrontation, Jesus was clearly setting the stage for his trial before the chief priests and elders of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council, and laying the groundwork for his conviction and sentencing by Pilate. He was preparing his followers for his death on the cross and his resurrection. His sacrificial act had already begun. God was moving beyond the status quo, with Jesus as the ultimate witness of this new divine reality.
The power of that reality lives on through and with us to this day. May we experience and recognize God’s ongoing acts of selfless love for all of us. And even when things seem most calamitous, may we find comfort and security as we remember that divine love.
Joys and Concerns:
For our Jewish sisters and brothers as they observe Yom Kippur, their highest holy day, starting this evening at sunset.
For all who have contracted Covid-19, for their caregivers, their families, their friends, and the congregation of all of humanity that is affected directly and indirectly by this virus.
Let us pray together:
Sustaining God, you offer us unceasing invitations to walk in your way and do your will. You offer us parables of still-uncharted depth and wisdom. We thank you for your insistent patience with us as we try to discern your will.
Encourage us to accept your invitation. Lead us to humility and show us that our holiness cannot be found in outward things like forms observed and rituals performed unless it is nurtured by the inward things of contrite hearts and minds bent on justice.
We are grateful for the example of your Son to guide us. Help us to understand his teaching. Give us the strength to be, as your Son was, a faithful witness of your gospel before the people, a faithful advocate even in solitude. Guided by the Holy Spirit, we pray this in the name of your Son. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Rich
P.S. At sundown tonight, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, will begin. This day of fasting and repentance is the holiest of days for our Jewish brothers and sisters.
Tradition has it that Yom Kippur started with the prophet Moses. After God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai, Moses returned from the mountain only to discover that the people, in yet another show of faithlessness, had begun to worship a false idol, a statue of a golden calf. In a fury, Moses smashed the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments and returned to the top of Mt. Sinai, where he begged for God’s forgiveness for himself and all of his people.
It is said that it’s this act of contrition by Moses that the high priest would replicate every year in the Temple’s Holy of Holies when he asked for forgiveness for his and the peoples’ sins.
Within forty years of Jesus’s death and resurrection, the Temple and Jerusalem were destroyed by Rome. The Holy of Holies and the Temple itself no longer existed, and the people were scattered.
But the practice of faith and worship continued. The people had a model for the practice of their faith that had been developed over four centuries earlier, during the Babylonian exile. In exile, called diaspora, the Israelites had developed the concept of the synagogue (from the Greek word for assembly). In many ways, it was through the development of worship in the synagogue that Judaism as a faith was born. They no longer had access to the Temple, which had been the center of worship, including sacrificial rites (those doves!), but the synagogue replaced those rites with prayer, psalms, Torah reading, and study. Today, Conservative and Orthodox Jews call their houses of worship synagogues or shuls, which means schools; they refer to the Temple only in Jerusalem. Reform Jews call their houses of worship temples in order to recall and affirm the centrality of the Temple in their daily lives.
Yom Kippur marks the end of the Days of Awe, or Days of Repentance, that begin with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. During this ten-day period, the faithful reflect on their shortcomings and atone for them. Though it is a time of introspection and reflection, it’s also a celebration of the creation of the world. Prayer; time with family; special foods including something sweet, most often apples and honey to begin the new year and ensure a sweet one to come; and charitable giving mark these days. Yom Kippur, the solemn Day of Atonement, closes the Days of Awe.
This year, Yom Kippur begins this evening at sundown and lasts until sundown tomorrow evening. Work is forbidden, and atonement for the sins of the past year is expressed through such self-sacrifice as fasting. Synagogue attendance, this year most often by Zoom, is a critical part of Yom Kippur, with five prayer services held during the day.
The greetings for Yom Kippur are “Have an easy fast” or “Happy New Year.” May we pray that our Jewish sisters and brothers have an easy fast and a happy new year.