Facing the truth
Year A
Pentecost 15
I
have talked to several rectors about what we miss most about being an assistant. Most of us miss knowing that if there was a
tricky question that we did not know the answer to or did not want to answer,
we could always say, “I need to ask the rector.” Of course the reason that most assistants are
called to be rectors eventually is that more often than not, we would rather be
the ones answering the questions. Most
assistants get a little sick of asking the rector about everything. Occasionally we just want to make the decision
ourselves. But like the Hebrew people
who longed for the food of Egypt, we remember those experiences through rose
colored glasses, especially when we are stressed and frantic about what we are
experiencing right now.
The
people that Jesus is talking to in this Gospel reading are the chief priests
and the elders, also known as the Sanhedrin.
The Sanhedrin was essentially the Supreme Court of the Jewish
people. In some ways, they had even more
power than the Supreme Court because they were involved with legislation,
administration, and justice. One of
their jobs was to ferret out the false messiahs. You would think that there would not be too
many of those, but there were often several false messiahs lurking in parts of
Israel. We don’t know about them now
because they were false.
The
chief priests and elders are never portrayed very kindly in the gospels. They were after all, at least partially
responsible for the death of Jesus. We often
hear them questioning Jesus, often rather condescendingly. When Jesus tells parables (like the one we
hear today) religious leaders usually look pretty bad. So it is understandable that we might have
bad opinions of the chief priests and elders.
But they
weren’t all bad. They were committed to
their faith and to God. Perhaps not all
had the best of intentions, but many did.
The reason that they questioned Jesus was because that was their
job. They needed to prove that these
messiahs were false. Otherwise the false
messiahs would lead the people astray and possibly cause huge problems between
the Jews and the empire that controlled them, Rome. The chief priests and elders were trying to
keep the peace and ease the tensions that these false messiahs created.
What
they did not anticipate was that not all of these men were false. John the Baptist was neither false nor the
messiah. He was the person pointing to
the true messiah. One would have hoped the
priests and elders would have learned something from John the Baptist, but they
never really gave him a chance. And if
he was false, well then Jesus must be false as well. While it was their job to judge these
potential messiahs, they were supposed to allow for the possibility that this
person could be the real deal. However,
as we know it’s a lot easier to be cynical than hopeful…a lot easier to be
negative than positive. It also did not help that Jesus did not fit the messiah
mold. He was a peasant with no formal
education. The educated and well-bred
religious leaders of the day could not have a
messiah like that as their king.
Instead
of giving Jesus a fair hearing, they tried to trap him with questions. Being the teacher that he was, Jesus would
always turn those questions on them.
Many people believe that this technique of Jesus was a bit of a mind
game, but I think it was a teaching technique.
I believe he hoped to open their minds, even if he knew it was almost
impossible. Jesus was not the kind to
give up on lost causes. Unlike their
typical questions, this question we heard today was a pretty clear cut
question. They asked him where he got
his authority.
There
were a couple of recent events that concerned the Jewish leadership and led
them to ask this question. Right before
this interaction, Jesus had paraded into Jerusalem while people shouted
“Hosanna to the Son of David!” This was
a pretty magnificent claim and not one he denied. It would appear that he even encouraged this
representation. He then went into the
temple, the very seat of the power of God and in many ways, the power of the
Jewish leadership. He drove out the people
who were buying and selling goods saying, “My house shall be called a house of
prayer.” Can you imagine the response of
the elders and chief priests? “Did he
just say: ‘my house’?” Of course they
had to confront the man who made such claims.
So
they did. Instead of answering their
question, Jesus asked them, “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was
it of human origin?” That question put
them in a bit of a bind. They were in
the midst of people who were followers of John, who had just been killed. The elders and priests knew that if they said
that the baptism of John was of human origin they would offend all these
people…and that offense would potentially end in violence. They also knew if they said that the baptism
was from heaven, then they would be admitting that Jesus was potentially the
messiah because that was what John had said all along. How could someone who baptized on behalf of
God be so wrong when it came to the coming messiah?
What
I find rather interesting is that we never hear what they really believe. Perhaps they did believe that John’s baptism
came from heaven. Maybe there was disagreement among them. However, the text indicates that they really
believed that the baptism was of human origin and they were just afraid to say
that. This is where I lose a little respect for them. They took the easy way out. Instead of just telling the truth, they
answered, “I don’t know.”
In general I
have no problem with that answer. I
would much rather people admit they do not know than bluster through an answer
that is not even correct. But they did
know. They had a very definite opinion
and they didn’t give it because they were afraid of how it would affect them. They were not answering on the basis of
truth, but on what was safe to say. It
wasn’t what was safe for anyone else. They were not protecting the feelings of
others. They were only protecting themselves.
Because they were unwilling to answer honestly, Jesus refused to answer
their question. It’s not because he was being
evasive, he just knew that they were not interested in the truth. They only wanted to protect their beliefs and
their lives. If Jesus’s answer did not
comply with that, they did not want to hear it.
While
I lose a little respect for them in this interaction, I can also
sympathize. There were many times when I
was an assistant when I knew the answer and it was absolutely in my power to
give it, but I took the easy way out. I
used my lack of authority to avoid the harder questions. While I know it was a little cowardly, I miss
it sometimes! Haven’t most of us done
that at one time or another? Either we
have avoided answering or provided the answer we just knew the person wanted to
hear because that was the safe way to go.
While it is the safe way; it’s not the true way. Because in avoiding the hard questions and
the even harder answers we are avoiding conversations that can open up new
possibilities and futures that we can’t even imagine.
We
all have some truth in our life that we are fighting. It could be something that we are afraid to
acknowledge or something we are just not sure of. Let us all take some time in the next week,
month or year to consider what truth it is that we are avoiding. God will help us answer the hard questions
of life, but only if we are willing to provide honest and authentic answers. We get frustrated when God doesn’t answer our
prayers and our questions. But maybe it
would be easier to hear those answers if we weren’t working so hard to avoid the
truth in our own lives.
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