Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 27, 2026 – 18th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture: Matthew 21:23-32
Most of you know that I’ve gone back to school this year – don’t worry, it is a
programme that is designed to be done while we continue to work full-time! –
and I’ve started my next course which I’ll be taking online between now and
December. The course is called “Theology
and Power” with a subtitle that talks about Political Theology, so I wasn’t
surprised back at the beginning of the week when I read the story from the
gospel of Matthew that we just heard, the thing that jumped out at me was the
question from the chief priests and elders in the temple: “By what authority are you doing these
things, and who gave you this authority?”
Because authority is really about power.
When you have authority, you have power; and when you have power, you
have the ability to make things happen.
It’s a really interesting dynamic at play here, when you look at this story
through the lens of power. The people
who are asking Jesus this question – the chief priests and elders in the temple
in Jerusalem – are in a position where they have more authority than anyone
else around. They are the ones who get
to decide what is OK and what isn’t for all of the Jewish people whether they
live in Jerusalem or not. They have the
power to control the actions of all of the people as the people try to live
their lives as faithfully as possible.
They also had the authority to determine who they would share their
power with, who they would give power to.
But they don’t have ultimate authority, because the land, at that time, was
part of the Roman Empire, and the emperor in Rome had the final say. The emperor had set up a puppet king, in the
person of Herod, and there was also a governor appointed to rule the land on
behalf of the emperor – that would be Pontius Pilate. And those chief priests and temple
authorities – they knew that if they did anything to go against Rome, they
wouldn’t just lose their authority, they would also lose their lives.
So in terms of power and authority, these chief priests and temple elders were
walking a fine line of having and not having power.
And along comes Jesus. They ask him, by
what authority are you doing these things?
These things would refer to preaching to crowds of thousands of people,
healing people who had been cast out from their communities, flipping over the
tables of the currency exchangers in the temple, maybe they’d even heard about
Jesus walking on water and calming the storm.
Here is someone who seems to have even more authority than the chief priests
and temple leaders; someone with more power than them. I imagine that they were worried at this
point in time. “What if Rome hears about
this? What will happen to us if we
haven’t been able to get everyone to toe the line?” Or maybe even, “do we have less power in the
world now, because this itinerant preacher from the backwater of Galilee has
more?”
And so they confront Jesus and ask him:
“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this
authority?”
I’ll also add a note here to say that this is going to be the dynamic for most
of our readings between now and the end of November when we move into the
season of Advent. In the timeline of the
gospel of Matthew, we are now in the last week of Jesus’s life. This story comes almost right after Jesus
entered Jerusalem in the parade that we remember every year on Palm
Sunday. Tensions are high. The streets of Jerusalem are crowded, as is
the temple, as people have come from around the known world to celebrate the
festival of Passover. Over the next
couple of months, we’re going to be reading stories that are situated between
Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday, and the tension of this setting spills into
the stories that we will be reading.
Authorities are questioning Jesus; and Jesus tells some very pointed,
provocative parables in response.
Getting back to that question of authority – we know what the answer is. Jesus’s authority comes from God. It is implied that his questioners also know
the answer to their question, but they are reluctant to say so. If they admit the truth, they will be
admitting that they have less authority and power than they would like to have;
but if they lie and say that his authority comes from humans, the crowds are
likely to react in a negative way.
The ironic thing is, that their power comes from God as well. If we understand God to be the Creator and
Source of All, then God is the source of all power. One of those challenging theological
questions is, if God is good, and if God is powerful, then why do so many awful
things happen in the world. One way that
you can answer this question is that it is because God chooses to share Their
power. God doesn’t hoard power,
micromanaging everything that happens on earth, but God empowers us, even
though we are merely human. That whole
thing about free will and all.
So the chief priests and temple leaders only have authority and power because
God shared it with them. We might go one
step further and say that the emperor off in Rome, only had power because God
gave him power; and even though the emperor might think that Herod and Pilate
had power because he, the emperor, chose to give them power, God is ultimately
the source of all power and authority.
Which brings us to you and to me. We’re
not Jesus. We’re not the Roman
emperor. We’re not even the chief
priests and temple authorities. We’re
just us. What gives us any authority at
all to talk about God, and to act on behalf of God in the world?
I know that this is a question that I have wrestled with – for 13 years now
since I began discerning a call to ministry; for 15 years since I began the
Licenced Lay Worship Leader course; for 21 years since I was first invited to
preach. That day, 21 years ago, when I
was first invited to preach, my immediate reaction was to blurt out “No! I don’t have any training or authority to
preach or teach about God!” And a little
bit of that sense still remains. When I
or anyone else steps into the pulpit, we are handling holy things, things of
God, and what right do any of us, as mere mortals, have to speak of or handle
the holy?
But then I remember that all of us do have that authority because we are
beloved children of God. God empowers
all of Their children to speak of God and of God’s love. God empowers us to share in the bread and
wine of communion and the waters of baptism because we are all God’s beloved
children. God loves you, and God wants
to you feel empowered to share this love with the world.
And if we try to pretend that we don’t have this authority… well, later in
November we are going to be reading the parable of the Talents, and when one of
the slaves hid his talent in a hole in the ground and refused to make use of
it… let me just say that things didn’t end too well for him.
But we do have authority, and we need to decide how we are going to use our
power. And the answer, at least for me,
comes down to love. God empowers us to
love the world and God wants us to share the message of that amazing love with
the world. You’ve probably heard me say
it before, but let me say it again: God
loves you more deeply than you could ever know or even imagine; and God is
equipping and empowering you to love the world!
Thanks be to God.
"Empowerment Sculpture - Lincoln, UK"
Used with Permission
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