Episode Details

Two Kinds of AuthorityToday I would like to talk about the Gospel reading we have just heard from Matthew, and also that great text from Philippians chapter 2. I will come to the latter in a little while. First, the Gospel.The chief priests and elders, as they often do, challenge Jesus. They ask him, “By what authority are you doing these things?” Where do you get the authority to carry out this ministry, these signs, these miracles, to say the things you have been saying?It becomes clear over the course of the narrative that the religious officials have a very different idea of authority from Christ. They believe authority comes from status, from title, from position. Of course, in our world there is a certain type of authority that comes from these things. But Jesus possessed a different kind of authority altogether—an authority that ultimately came from above, from God. That is where Christ’s influence lay.In that situation it did not really matter that the scribes, the elders, the chief priests and the Pharisees had a badge, as it were—a title, a position. The important thing was where true authority lay, and it lay in Christ, because it came from God. The problem, of course, was that they would not acknowledge this authority that Jesus possessed.The Parable of the Two SonsSo, in the course of this narrative, Jesus tells them a rather incendiary parable. A man has two sons. He says to the first, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” The son answers, “I will not.” But afterwards he changes his mind and goes. The second answers, “I go, sir.” He even says “sir”—sounding very pious and respectful—but he does not go. He says he will; he says all the right things; yet he does not go and work in his father’s vineyard.Jesus asks, “Which of the two did the will of the father?” They reply, of course, “The first.”The point Christ is making is that it is worse to say you will do something and then not do it, than to refuse at first and later obey. And of course he is applying this directly to the chief priests, the elders, and the religious officials: “You are like those who say, ‘Yes, yes, yes—look at me, I follow God, I have a position in the religious infrastructure of the time, I keep the law, I do all these things’—but then you do not actually live in line with your profession.” In the context, this is evident in their rejection of the authority of John the Baptist and of Christ himself.Meanwhile the sinners—the tax collectors and the prostitutes—the ones who at first said no, but then repented, changed their minds and went—it is they who will inherit the kingdom of heaven. Those who said no, but then went and did.The Real Problem: Pride and HypocrisyThe issue with the religious officials was not that they were making this profession and trying their best to live up to it and simply failing. That would be more forgivable; that would be far more understandable. It was rather—and we see this again and again throughout the Gospels—their arrogance, their high-handedness, and their constant criticism of other people. “Why do you eat with sinners and tax collectors?” In other words: “We are godly people; we keep to ourselves; we keep the law—unlike those people over there.” They were proud, they were hypocritical, and they looked down on others.This is given to us in the Gospels time and time again so that we might examine ourselves—so that we might recognise this sensibility, this temptation, as Christians, as followers of Christ, as those who come to church on a Sunday morning. It is a temptation to think ourselves respectable, to think ourselves good, to think ourselves holy, and then to become proud and critical of other people who we think do not match up to our standards.Work Out Your Own SalvationIn that beautiful reading from the New Testament, Philippians chapter 2, Paul says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” He does not say, “Work out somebody else’s salvation with fear and trembling.” This is repeat