After four weeks of insider conversations between Jesus and his disciples, our text this morning moves Jesus to a different group of insiders, the chief priests and the elders. For all their faults and foibles, it’s fairly easy for us to place ourselves in the role of the disciples. But if we’re honest with ourselves, as members of an established congregation, we, well, especially me as a religious leader, but you also to a certain extent, need to also place ourselves in the role of the chief priests and the elders. Because we, like them, are insiders in the faith who gain a certain amount of societal status from our association with the majority religion. As a Christian clergyperson, I try to be acutely aware of the clout the collar affords me. This ill-fitting piece of plastic gives me power, whether I want it or not. Sometimes that power is helpful. I joke all the time that hospital regulations do not apply when I wear this. Wherever you are in the hospital, and whatever the restrictions on visitors you might have, when I have this little piece of plastic on I can get to you. It’s like an all-access pass to places normal mortals cannot tread.
Of course, to quote Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. There are all too many stories of this little piece of plastic being used to hurt and abuse people. I have plenty of friends who have been wounded by people wearing this little piece of plastic, and that wound has turned them away from not just the abuser, not just the church even, but God. That is the danger of power.
There is a lot of challenge in Jesus’ words to the chief priests and elders that we heard this morning, a lot of weight and a lot of responsibility. But before we get into that weight, because it’s pretty serious, it feels important to ground the whole thing in this one unchangeable truth: In the parable Jesus told the chief priests and the elders about the father and his two sons, both sons remained sons. Both the son who refused the father initially and then went to the vineyard and the son who said he would go but in the end did not were still sons at the end of the parable. Neither their words nor their actions had any effect on their sonship, on the status of their relationship to the father. From my read of it, this parable has nothing to do with justification, with who is saved, with who is a part of the kingdom of God. What this parable is dealing with is sanctification, the ever-unfolding process of growing more deeply in God’s kingdom. Our salvation, our place in the kingdom, is by grace through Christ’s faith in us. It is a gift and is not of our own doing. We are the sons in this parable, and that is a fact of our humanity, nothing can change that. The challenge in this parable is about how we live out our sonship in the best way possible, and when we are loved as unconditionally as that who can not strive to live most fully.
In the parable, Jesus invited the chief priests and the elders, faithful religious leaders who were firmly “in” in the temple social circles, who followed the rules of their religion, went regularly to the worship, and professed all the “right” things about God, while all the while using these rules to draw tighter and tighter restrictions about who was a part of the faith—restrictions so tight that they were beginning to exclude even Jesus—he invited these consummate insiders, to contrast themselves to tax collectors and prostitutes who professed none of the right things, did not run in the right temple social circles, and were the consummate “outsiders” in the temple community, and yet who were coming to Jesus in droves, repenting and changing their ways of living in response to Jesus’ radical grace. Is it more important, Jesus asked the chief priests and elders, to say all the right things and then act in the wrong ways, or to not say the right things, but live out the kingdom? Can you really mean or believe the things you’re saying if those words are not lived out in actions.
I’m walking a careful theological line here, because one thing our Lutheran doctrine does not hold is the idea of “works righteousness,” that is, that we somehow earn our way to salvation by the life that we lead and the works that we do. That’s why I started this morning by grounding this conversation is the fact that both sons remained sons. The actions performed are not about earning sonship, earning a place in the kingdom. Rather, these actions are an outpouring of this place. Martin Luther wrote in The Freedom of a Christian, “we should devote all our works to the welfare of others, since each has such abundant riches in his faith that all his other works and his whole life are a surplus with which he can by voluntary benevolence serve and do good to his neighbor.”
What prompted the telling of this parable was a question about authority. Specifically, the chief priests and the elders demanding to know who gave Jesus the authority to teach in the temple. They knew the origin of their authority, the credentials they held, and they questioned whether Jesus possessed the same credentials. Earlier in the sermon I talked about power, which is relevant because this concern about authority is really a concern about power. Having the authority means having access to the power that such authority confers. Teaching in the temple gave Jesus’ words a clout and access to channels he had not had as a wandering Galilean preacher. That power was threatening to upset the power held by the chief priests and the elders. It was that threat to their power that would eventually lead to their urging the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus’ death on the cross is the ultimate measure of the danger of challenging those in power, and his subsequent resurrection the mark of God’s triumph over earthly powers.
The chief priests and elders question, and Jesus’ subsequent parable, should cause us to think about our own experience with authority, where we have it and who we grant it to. Authority is both given and earned. As the parable points out, it is both the result of a station and a position that has to be proved and lived. In Martin Luther’s explanation of the fourth commandment to honor ones father and mother, in addition to explaining the command to honor, he also talked extensively about the requirement of parents, and the “nature of their responsibility, how they should treat those whom they have been appointed to rule.” Authority is a two-way street, those under it have an obligation to honor those who have it, and those who have it have an obligation to be deserving of it.
Take, for example, my own authority as your pastor. I have hanging on the wall in my office two documents certifying my authority as a called and ordained minister of the Lutheran Church, a certificate of my ordination and a letter of call to be your pastor. In order for me to have the authority to lead you, to preach, to teach, and to administer the sacraments, in theory I have to have both of those documents. But here’s the funny thing. Before I came to Trinity, I served two years as the pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. And when I was the pastor at St. Paul’s I had neither of those documents. I was not called to be their pastor, I was appointed by the synod. And I was not ordained a pastor, I presided under the authority of the bishop. But they called me pastor, and I did the work of being their pastor, and I felt the responsibility to them of their pastor. So was my authority as their pastor, and the subsequent power I held in that place any more or less because I lacked the required framed documents? I don’t think so. I never asked them, but I think they felt the same. I earned my authority in that role on the basis of my actions among them.
And just as much as I held authority at St. Paul’s despite not having the proper documentation, I could just as easily lose my authority here despite having the proper documentation. You grant me a fair amount of power and respect for my authority, you listen to my preaching, you respect my teaching, you allow me to lead you, and maybe I’m wrong, but I’m going to guess you grant me that honor not because I have two framed documents hanging on the wall in my office, but because of the way I am among you and the relationship that we have developed. If I were to stop leading in a way that was deserving of your honor, if I started using this power in a way that was oppressive or degrading or dangerous, then you would, and rightly should, take the honor and the authority away from me, regardless of how many framed documents I may hang on the wall in my office. Because at the end of the day those documents are just pieces of paper, they are meaningless if I am not living out the actions those documents hold me to. If I were to stop acting in a way that was deserving of the honor you give to your pastor, I think it would not just be your right, but your responsibility even, to protect the authority of the position of pastor by holding the holder of that position accountable to deserving the power of the position.
And I want to push this one step further to say that what is true of religious authorities is also true of worldly ones. Anyone, be they religious, social, or political, who wields power through the authority of that position ought to be subject to the same challenges and questions that Jesus held the chief priests and the elders to. We live in a time where authority is often questioned, and I would say rightly. What this passage from Matthew teaches us is questioning authority is not new. Jesus encouraged the chief priests and the elders to consider the source of their own authority and to reflect on whether or not they were deserving of it, and that encouraging went over as well with the chief priests and the elders as it does with those who question authority in our own time. Yes, we owe respect and honor to those in authority, but those in authority also hold responsibility to be deserving of that authority. And if those in authority are not using their power rightly, but are instead using their power like the chief priests and the elders, to lift themselves up at the expense of others and to close others off from the fullness promised by the kingdom of God, then we have not just the right, but the obligation to question that authority and ultimately even to strip them of such dangerously held power. Because as much as authority is a virtue of position, it also must be earned.
And again, like every other parable from Jesus we’ve talked about recently, this is a careful and delicate balancing act. As people who live in the tenuous already and not yet of the kingdom of God, our relationship to power and authority, both our own and those who wield it over us, must continually be checked and considered. Are we using the authority we have been given in ways that are life-giving for those around us, or are we taking advantage of power we do not deserve? Are we challenging the power and authority above us because they are not using it rightly, or because we have something to gain from the lessening of their power? And because the world is vast and messy and complicated, the answer to those questions is almost always yes. Yes unjust authority needs to be stopped and yes our own desire to seek power through our judgment of others must be checked. This is why we need the church, why we need to be among a community of believers, because we can challenge and check and empower each other. As your pastor I am stretched to be bolder in my prophetic witness and more expansive in my offer of grace because of the ways you challenge and check and accept and empower me. You are stronger in your declaration of justice and more open in your expansive welcome, and it challenges me to be both stronger and more open. And so we dance together in this on-going process of challenge and grace, of calling out and welcoming in. And we do that confident that at the end of the day, no matter what, in the places we earned it and the places we fell far short we are, and forever will be, children of God. Free to screw up, and fail, and try again tomorrow. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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