September 27, 2020
Exodus 17:1-7
Matthew 21:23-32
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?”
I was a student minister at a church out west. I was in the middle of my theological studies and took the my third year of studies to work full time for this church. I liked the Senior minister. He knew his stuff. We worked well together, the church was and still is a solid UCC church which faithfully serves the city where it is located. I was there for 12 months.
This incident took place in month number 10, after I had a pretty good grasp of the church, the city and the Sr. Minister…or so I thought. It was a church council meeting which went on quite long. There were no big smoking issues, we just had a lot of folks who gave far too much information in their council reports. It went so long that I figured the second coming would arrive before we completed our business. But, as we neared the end of the third hour we could sense that things were winding down. We received one final report from the worship board and hurray, we were done. But, just as she finished her Worship report, Georgia wanted to say how much she loved the UCC and this particular church. We were all delighted. Then Georgia went into a 10 minute description of her previous church connections and how they were not satisfactory. OK, we gave her some latitude seeing as how this was important to her. Then around the 20th minute of her soliloquy she began to say how much she loved this particular church and all that she and others could do and how the congregation and council had most of the power and how it really felt like it was shared power and worship and that the leadership of the church and pastor really listened to the congregation. By this time, though her talk was heartwarming and accurate, we were approaching 3 ½ hours and Georgia was just getting warmed up. I had known her for a year and was well aware that she could talk a lot. Sensing that a couple of the council members were about to go comatose, and knowing that Georgia had a pretty good sense of humor, I just jumped into her testimony and said, “In other words, what Georgia likes about this church is that no one listens to the minister.”
Ha, Ha, everyone laughed uproariously. Not because the joke was so funny, but because they sensed an opening for ending the meeting. So they laughed, kept laughing and pulled on their coats and patted Georgia on the back and hugged her for her testimony and headed out the door into the night. Georgia was quite happy and for a few of the folks who truly understood UCC polity, my joke was on-target meaning that the strength of any UCC church is that it is run by the congregation, not the minister. Indeed, the minister has great persuasive powers and is expected to lead, but we are a congregational style of governance and the minister is secondary to the congregation and that, in an exaggerated way is what I was joking about. So, everyone escaped at 10:55 pm under the cover of laughter.
The next morning I came into the office and the Sr. Minister called me into his office and said that he did not sleep at all the night before. And it had to do with my joke the night before and the long and the short of it was…I recognized that I had learned about as much from him as I could over the past year and from that moment on I found that because he was so unsure of his own authority and how highly he was thought of in the congregation that he had less authority with me.
Authority is a tenuous thing. You either got it or you don’t got it. But the more you try to hold onto it; the more you insist that you deserve it or still hold it; like vapor, it is gone. You do not bestow authority on yourself; others give it to you and as easily as it is given, it evaporates.
What Jesus is facing is indeed, a test of his authority and He is not willing to risk it by stating directly that He is the Son of God….that is a pretty outrageous thing for the old authorities to accept. And if Jesus is to make any headway at all with the people and the old authorities, it is best at this stage NOT to ruffle feathers. In other words…Jesus decided to pick and choose His battles. Yes, even Jesus had to do that!
He had a couple battles to pick and choose from. He clearly decided to pick a battle with the notion of whether to work on and with the poor and the outcasts…or to NOT work with them. That was a significant battle, still is.
In Matthew we learn about Jesus being questioned by old authorities and whether He, Jesus has new authority after we read about Jesus cleansing the temple of the crooked sellers who were cheating the poor faithful worshippers. We learn about the old authorities questioning the new authority of Jesus after Jesus has just ridden into Jerusalem with a triumphant entry which electrified the populace.
You see? Jesus makes a splash in the midst of society. Some people begin to think that there is something new and wonderful here…and the opposite reaction is that some of the old authorities start to lash out at this new authority and the way it is done is to belittle it. Jesus recognizes this and picking and choosing his battles…he does not deny that he is helping the outcasts, but He does not get into the verbal debate as to whether He is the Son of God.
What I see in today’s passage from Matthew is that the authorities are at odds with Jesus because of his popularity and that people were beginning to see the real authority that he was wielding. And you can be certain, that if his popularity and his authority were NOT on the rise, then the old guard would NOT have been concerned enough to question his authority in public in the first place. If Jesus were NOT a force to be reckoned with the Pharisees would not have bothered with him. But He was and they did. It was at points like this that the people truly had to make a decision to follow this new authority and all the risks it would bring or stay where they were with the old.
I am very appreciative of that Old Time Religion…but I am very mindful that these are not old times. That’s what Jesus was saying to the Pharisees. These are not “old times.” I believe in a God and a Jesus who are always changing, yet all the while, remaining God.