Sept. 27, 2020 Sermon

P17A 2020 Matthew 21:23-32
Do you ever think about your family and friends and how you are able to get along with
them pretty well even though they are not just Lutheran but also Brethren and Methodist and
Catholic and Non-denominational and Jewish and Muslim, and then wonder why the chief
priests and elders couldn’t just let Jesus alone if they didn’t like what he was teaching?
Historically, of course, we aren’t very good at welcoming different ideas about religion:
centuries of Christians persecuting Jews; the Crusades; the Reformation when Protestants and
Catholics delighted in burning each other at the stake. It’s no wonder that the very first freedom
ensured in our Bill of Rights is the freedom from established religion after the early American
colonists spent so much time drowning witches and branding Quakers. Religion has always
caused division. And we have to remember that when Jesus challenged the status quo, it was
more than merely a question of which brand of church people were going to spend an hour in on
Sunday mornings.
Today’s gospel story takes place in the temple, the center of Israel’s world; it was not just
a place of worship and teaching, it was also the treasury, the marketplace, the social security
office, the court, the seat of political power. And Jesus, who had just entered Jerusalem to the
shouts and praise of the crowd, what we commemorate as Palm Sunday, is now sitting in the
Temple, teaching, calling to account the priests and scribes—the ones who were running the
place—and predicting that the whole thing was going to be destroyed. Jesus was not talking
about creedal differences between this church and the one on the next block; Jesus was talking
about a radical change to the religious and social and political and economic and justice system
—their entire way of life. That’s why the priests and the elders were so invested in what
happened to Jesus and his movement—why they very much wanted to stop him and it. If we
want to understand how they could get so worked up, don’t compare catechisms: open a
newspaper, turn on the TV, scroll through social media, or look out the window at your
neighbor’s yard signs.
Now, this is not the sermon about how Jesus was political but not partisan, how
Christianity in no way resembles American civil religion, or how our faith should inform our
politics (and not the other way around). There is a sermon for that, but this isn’t it. Yet the
priests and elders speaking around the truth so as not to lose public support made them quite the
deft political operatives. In an effort to discredit Jesus, they ask him for his credentials. Jesus
answers their question with a question: was John’s baptism of human or divine origin?
Matthew told us that John baptized people for the purpose of repentance, that is,
reorienting to a whole new direction in life. The tax collectors and sinners were lining up to get
dunked by John, because they recognized that their lives were a mess and they needed to change
course. When the Pharisees and Sadducees showed up, John called them a “brood of vipers”
because they weren’t there to repent—to make any kind of change; they weren’t going to admit
that they needed to do anything differently in their lives, that they weren’t already completely
righteous all on their own. So these religious experts can’t say that John had heavenly
authority, because then Jesus is going to ask them why they rejected him. But they also know
they can’t say that John was just a rogue weirdo in camel’s hair, because the crowds who
supported Jesus all believed John was a prophet—and they don’t want to risk angering the
crowd. So even though they know the truth—that John was preaching a godly message—and
they know what they want say—that John was a fraud—they take the middle road and say “We
don’t know.”
There are plenty of times when the right thing to say is, “I don’t know.” In fact, the
world would be a much better place if we were more willing to admit—to others or to ourselves
—“I don’t know” and then not presume or pretend to know, or judge someone who does know,
or make a decision before we work to find out. But then there are times when we absolutely do
know the answer, when we do know right from wrong. And when we do, we are called to not
just say it but to do it. The chief priests and elders are the ones who should know best that
Jesus, or for that matter John, embodied God’s law through both words and deeds. Yet they still
choose to act against the truth and try to hide their intentions from the crowd. I sort of
suggested a critique of our politicians for abandoning what’s right and not saying the things that
will make them look bad, but the truth is that all of us fail in similar fashion sometimes, albeit
not so publicly or with such wide-reaching consequences.
Jesus’ parable contrasts the priests and elders—the son who says he’ll work but doesn’t,
with the tax collectors and prostitutes—the son who says he’s not going but ends up working
after all. These religious leaders, by virtue of their vocation, claim to lead godly lives, but in
reality, they don’t. The tax collectors and prostitutes would appear to be the last people to live
in accordance with God’s law, yet they are the ones who recognized when God was calling them
and they responded. The priests and elders still haven’t acknowledge any need in themselves to
repent; they’re too busy trying to slander the one who is calling them to repentance.
Sometimes what we say is not what we do. Sometimes we know which way is right but
we stand in the middle instead of standing up. Sometimes instead of hearing the message, we
look for reasons to ignore the messenger. And these would be some reasons why, like Jesus’
adversaries, we sometimes need to repent. But there is some good news. Jesus doesn’t say the
chief priests and the elders are excluded from the kingdom of God. He just says that the people
who have figured out that they need to live a new life have gotten there first. He’s not
predicting what will happen after death, he’s talking about their quality of this life, right now.
They can begin to live more fully into God’s calling, now, and so can we. How is God calling
us to more love, more justice, more mercy, more righteousness? What might it look like if we
took a step deeper into God’s kingdom by answering that call?