By What Authority?
Today’s Gospel involves a dramatic but (in the Lectionary at least) unacknowledged shift of scene and mood. The narrative has just now brought Jesus to Jerusalem for the beginning of the dramatic events of his last days. The Lectionary (here the Revised Common Lectionary is just the same as its Roman Catholic ancestor) does not mention this, skipping over the memorable story of the triumphal entry—read, of course, by everyone before Holy Week, palms and all—and relies on us to contextualize this story, or maybe not.
The stakes are quite high: this Gospel and most of those between now and the end of the liturgical year foreground conflict between Jesus and the authorities, as well as the urgency of his message and the impending crisis. Without the reminder that these are not timeless sayings and stories, but provide the prelude to the cross and resurrection, we will risk repeating caricatures or even anti-Judaic slurs, as well as missing the point.
After the triumphal entry, Jesus has entered the Temple and thrown out the money-changers. He has then received the blind and lame there, and healed them. This set of actions declares Jesus’ relationship with the Temple and with Israel, with undoubted Messianic effect. The events in this week’s Gospel passage belong to a second day of this fateful visit, and assume the loaded actions of the first. Jesus is not in Jerusalem as a tourist or even just as a teacher, but is speaking and acting as the one who has come to lead and free Israel.
The question posed by the chief priests and the elders is asked amid this upheaval, and in response to Jesus’ suggestive actions, not least the turning of the tables. When they ask about his “authority,” this is a directly political question. It is of course, in our terms, also a religious question, although these areas of practice are not really distinct in antiquity. Here in the Temple they are the ones officially in charge, and he is a challenger and an upstart both to their custody of the holy place and to their civil authority, which has been compromised in the eyes of many (including of the Pharisees) by their collaboration. Their civil authority has of course also been compromised by the Romans, whose Emperor now claims to be the highest authority. Jesus’ challenge is to both.
“Chief priest(s)” have only appeared twice in Matthew’s Gospel, or at least in two ways, prior to this. They have never been Jesus’ opponents or critics before, back when he was teaching in the back-blocks of Galilee. They—or their predecessors, really—were however in attendance when, at the time of Jesus’ birth, Herod the Great had asked them and the scribes to tell him where the Messiah would be born (2:4). Thus they are presented from the outset as real authorities, as to the identity of the Messiah. They are supposed to know.
Then in just two cases (16:21, 20:28) prior to this, they are mentioned by Jesus, only when predicting his impending passion. But after today’s reading they appear—either as a group or just in the person of the chief priest—a staggering 19 times before the end of the Gospel.
The encounter between Jesus and these custodians of Israel’s sacred places relies on the same fact provided in the infancy story, namely that the chief priests are real authorities, able to the reality and the challenge of Jesus’ presence. Their failure thus centers on the fact that they could indeed, just as of old, discern the true Messiah, but would not. It is not that the chief priests are not taken seriously, quite the contrary. There is no anti-Judaic element here, even though Christians have failed their own interpretive challenges often enough (ironically) by assuming there was. Rather this particular group are failing to embody their calling as the leaders of Israel.
The figure of John the Baptist seems to appear somewhat abruptly in the conversation when Jesus asks a counter-question about John’s authority, but this is more than just a distraction. Jesus counters the demand from the chief priests and elders for his own credentials, by asking them about their discernment of John’s. This deflection mirrors the place of John in the Gospel narrative relative to Jesus; he was the forerunner of the Messiah, and now Jesus suggests that the chief priests and elders have already had one opportunity to work out where true authority comes from. This is a sort of window into how poorly they will handle the real challenge, given that the warm-up act baffled them completely.
The two parts of the Gospel, the controversy dialogue and the parable, are contrasting in genre but still form a whole. Matthew seems to have added the parable of the two sons to the controversy story with the elders, which comes from Mark. The overall sense of the parable is clear enough; it relates both to some timeless wisdom as well as to some very specific events. Actions speak louder than words, is our familiar wisdom to the same effect; to give lip service to God, but not do what has been asked, is also the more specific failure of the chief priests. While their position will continue to be elaborated in the chapters that follow (and every time a “chief priest” takes part in the subsequent actions against Jesus, I think we should remember this encounter), the same judgement may fall on us all.
It is worth remembering that the parable concerns two brothers, a family unit (note, by the way, the resonance with Luke’s parable of the Prodigal, which is almost an elaboration of this one). While the portrayal of the chief priests from here on will be profoundly critical, it is not a critique of an enemy, but one that laments over the fracture and failure involved within a family.
I mentioned already the irony of Christian interpretation that assimilates all this into anti-Judaic views. That sort of reading bears a deeply ironic resemblance to the failure of these authority figures, or of the second son. If we read and hear the Gospel, and yet do not act on it—failing either to realize God’s fidelity to Israel (the people rather than the modern state of that name, to be sure) or God’s reign as a place where all are called into a new community of love—we may be be like the son whose negative actions speak louder than words.