"Who gave you this authority"-A Sermon for Proper 21, Matthew 21:23-32
I will never forget an experience I had on a Thursday afternoon back in my youth ministry days at St. Martin’s in Houston. Again, it was a Thursday, which even to today, always sort of feels like Friday to me. What I mean is that I have, since I began working in the church way back in 1996, taken Fridays off. As clergy and many professional lay ministers, work Sundays and many weekends, they traditionally take a day off during the week…typically a Friday or Monday. So, again, it was Thursday, the end of my work week, and it had been a full one and a full day. It was about 5 PM. I was very ready for the weekend, and I felt like it was time to head home and kick up my heals. So, I checked my calendar one last time…it was paper and not electronic in those days…to be sure the coast was clear…and indeed it looked like smooth sailing till Sunday morning…so I packed up my things, wondered what fun there was to be had, jumped in the car, and waded into the streets of Houston’s rush hour traffic. And, indeed, though I lived only about 8 miles from the church, at 5 PM it was about a 45-minute affair to get home.
But here’s the thing…as I made my way closer to my home…the dog and remote control awaiting and looking forward to an evening out with friends…I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was supposed to be at the church. And as I left the highway and the traffic began to ease and I entered neighborhood streets…getting ever closer to freedom…the urge to turn around only grew. It was utterly compelling…overwhelming even…though I resisted mightily. I was telling myself I was just struggling with guilt for not putting more hours in at the office and perhaps struggling against a latent Jesus complex…the overwhelming urge that some minister types struggle with to be the world’s savior, which is silly because we already have one. So, I strong armed the overwhelming feeling that I should go back to the church…shoving it into some sort of internal box…and made my way home.
So here I am 45-minutes after my departure from church sitting in my drive way…and I can’t get out of the car. I couldn’t lock down the lid of that box inside…and if flew open…and the only thing left for me to do…though it was the very last thing I wanted to do…to release myself from this moment of madness…was to put the car in reverse and head back the way I came. And the whole way back to the church I was telling myself that this was utterly ridiculous. I was acting entirely irrationally, and if anyone knew what I was doing they would think I had lost it. So now I was sitting in the church parking lot about an hour and half later. Not knowing what to do next, I got out of my car walked back into the building…why not at this point…and as I walked past the youth room and toward my office…I noticed that the youth room was full of adults…actually parents of youth at the church…and one called out to me something like, “Great you made it…right on time!”. I just smiled…like I knew what she was talking about. It was not an insubstantial gathering of parents who we called Acolyte Parents…these were folk who volunteered in myriad ways to assist me with the Acolyte program…from washing and ironing robes to sending out service reminders and other odds and ends…and, apparently, we had a meeting scheduled to make plans for the semester or some such.
Now, I don’t want to overstate the importance of the moment. I did not come back to the church to find it on fire and save the sacred space from certain destruction…like superman. I did not come back to find someone in a life-altering crisis that desperately needed my care and attention…like a faithful and ever-present pastor. It was an ordinary sort of church meeting…like we do all the time at church. And, surely, they would have been fine and reasonably productive had I not made an appearance, though they were planning on me leading the meeting. Nonetheless, that feeling to return to the church that day was so overwhelming…so compelling…so real…like nothing I had experienced before…almost like someone was in the car physically with me yelling in my ear…go back you are needed…you are needed at the church. But the urge wasn’t coming from the outside…it was coming from within...right here…in my heart and in my mind. And here’s the thing. I really don’t know from whence the urging came. Was it the Holy Spirit, simply a person’s intuition, or just an inkling or memory firing in the synapses of my still forming 23-year-old pre-frontal cortex…recalling something planned weeks before that I simply neglected to write down on that paper calendar. Most people would likely suggest it was the latter…and I would probably agree…but, honestly, I don’t know…to this day. And I am not going to assign the experience to one thing or another in definite terms…because it meant something to me then and now…so I don’t want to write it off. It was a lived experience and a powerful and memorable one at that.
And the very thing I think this brief moment in my life taught me is to pay attention. To pay attention to what my heart and mind speaks to me. To trust my instincts. To foster and follow my intuition. To even believe by faith, something I have preached over and over again in so many ways and settings…often even preaching it to myself…that God lives here…in me…in you. The Holy Spirit is pleased to dwell in us…in the lives of real, ordinary, fallible human beings…what grace…what good and comforting news. For we are not left alone to navigate this difficult, often pain filled, and complex world. A world in which we live lives full of changes and chances of challenges and opportunities…that often make it difficult to choose which way to go, which fork to take, where to turn next. Jesus lives…he is risen…alive…and speaks to us even now…providing real knowledge and insight to live good lives, meaningful lives, courageous lives, that know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil…and act accordingly. So, do we have ears to hear that still soft voice and sometimes even loud and unavoidable voice…that speaks to us…myriad manifestations of God’s own voice…in dreams and intuition and revelation and prayer and epiphanies and subtle and sometimes not so subtle urgings…that offer us the blessing and grace of wisdom, words, direction. So, are we listening and looking with ears and eyes of our hearts…and are we brave enough to follow wherever we are being led?
Which brings me to our Gospel lesson…believe it or not…I have been working toward it. For I believe the whole text is about following the God given intuition that flows from within and then making often the hard choice to follow where that urging leads. To begin with, I believe the religious authorities who question Jesus about the place where his own inner authority comes from…know deep down…or maybe even fear deep down…that it can only come from God. If they would but pay attention, stop and listen, they too, like the hundreds if not thousands of people who are now following Jesus at this point in Matthew’s gospel…we have moved well beyond the original twelve disciples…like all of them…if they but pay attention these religious leaders would find within themselves the truth that Jesus’ authority is from God…that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. For one who speaks such words of love and does such deeds of love can only be from God. But acknowledging such an inner conviction would require a bravery that they do not at the moment possess. For it would mean laying down the authority vested in them as the religious and social leaders in first century Jerusalem. It would require leaving all that power behind…and becoming simple disciples, followers, themselves…a change in direction they seem entirely unwilling to make. Further they know…or maybe even fear…the answer to the question Jesus poses to them in response. As a reminder, Jesus’ question to them is essentially, “Under what authority did John the Baptist baptize and preach?” Again, if they looked within, paid attention to the good and Godly work John did in the wilderness, they would surely come to realize, their hearts would have to cry out, that John was nothing less than God’s own prophet who came to prepare the way for God’s own Messiah. But to do so would require tremendous bravery that again they do not seem to possess…for this admission would place John’s innocent blood…his head literally served up on a platter…at least in part on their own hands. This is not a sin that they are courageous enough to confess. Jesus, in this instance, is literally trying to speak to these religious leaders’ hearts, to unlock their own intuition, to point out the very thing deep within that they know to be true…to hear and acknowledge for themselves the new work of love that God is doing in and for the world through Jesus…to be convicted…to be compelled…and then to be brave enough to follow his urging…for in doing so…and only in doing so…can they find their own way forward…find freedom…find redemption…find meaning…find their holy place in God’s own kingdom…even if it is hard…not what they want to do…even if it is costly.
And, finally, the parable that Jesus tells in response to the religious leaders’ unwillingness to answer his question about John’s authority…the parable about two sons asked by their father to work in his vineyard…is ultimately, again, about knowing from within what is right and good and then having the resolve to follow through. Sure, the first son refused his father’s request…and however wrong or rude that initial very human response is, clearly, he thought about what his father was asking of him. He struggled with it. Maybe he even prayed over it. And in the end, something or someone spoke to him…he found from within himself the answer he was looking for…he followed his intuition and discovered there the resolve he needed to follow…to enter the vineyard…to do the good work set before him…even if it is hard…not what he wants to do…even if it is costly.
Thus, I think our Gospel lesson is inviting us to pay attention to what is being spoken in our own hearts and minds. To be intentional in that work through prayer and study and worship...which exist, at least in part, to tune up the eyes and ears of our hearts…to hear and see more clearly the truth that God is speaking within each of us. Jesus is asking us to trust our instincts…to foster and follow our intuition, that have real power to discern the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. To discover right here…in our own hearts and minds…Holy Spirit inspired wisdom, words, direction…that allow us to claim our own inner authority…and find the bravery to follow wherever that leads…even if it is hard…not what we want to do…even if it is costly. Amen.