Jesus starts talking crazy, and ticks of the wrong (or maybe the right?) people.
Matthew 21:23-32; Philippians 2:1-13; Psalm 25:1-9; Ezekiel 18:1-4,25,32
This gospel lesson, and the ones for the next two weeks, could very easily be called “When Jesus started to make the Jewish leadership really, really, super, incredibly mad at him.” This week, he makes them a little mad; next week they look for a way to arrest him; the week after that they go out and try to trap him with words. This kind of makes sense when you think about it. Jesus is going to the cross, so he needs to make sure he can get there without much trouble, much in the same way that in the first half of the gospels Jesus is making sure the disciples understand who he is and what he is doing so they are not too confused when the crucifixion and resurrection happen. Keep in mind, it’s just about 4 chapters until Jesus is arrested in Matthew’s gospel.
So Jesus is hanging out in the Temple, and starting to teach. The Jewish leaders come up to him and say, “On whose authority are you teaching here and who gave you whatever authority you claim?” Jesus, being rather clever, says, “I’ll tell you, if you tell me if John’s baptism was from God or from men.” See, Jesus can play the word games as good as or better than the Jewish leaders. So they discuss things among themselves, realize they were caught, and reply, “We don’t know,” so Jesus doesn’t tell them the answer to their question either.
Then he tells a parable. A man has two sons, he goes up to the first son and tells him to go to work, but the first son refuses, only to later change his mind and go work after all. After the first son’s refusal, he goes to his second son with the same question, and the second son agrees, only to not go to work after all. Jesus then asks the Jewish leadership, “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” They all answered the first son.
Then Jesus gets deep. He says, “Well guess what, Pharisees, the tax collectors and prostitutes are closer to God than you are! John was here to show you the way to God, but you ignored him, but the tax collectors and prostitutes listened. And then, even after that, you still didn’t believe.”
You see, those tax collectors and sinners are the first son. In the beginning they didn’t want anything to do with God, so they said they wouldn’t follow Him, but then they repented of their sin and followed. The Pharisees, on the other hand, said they wanted to follow God, but instead went off and did their own thing. Now, somewhat understandably, the Pharisees who thought themselves so righteous were annoyed at this — not as annoyed as they will be next week of course, but still miffed.
Now this is all well and good for the 1st century Jew, but what does it mean for us? Well, I think it’s fair to say that by being here today we have some level of desire to do the will of the Father. Some of us said no first, to be honest I fought God tooth and nail about becoming a pastor, and some of us said yes first, but it’s not the agreement to follow God’s will that matters so much as the actual following.
Paul expands on this in Philippians: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus”. Jesus, the one person in all of everything who can say he is equal to God, instead came to Earth as a servant, and willingly gave himself up to death on a cross. Paul continues, “Therefore…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”
Now we Lutheran types get nervous when we hear the words “work” and “salvation” in the same sentence without a “not” involved, so I want to clarify this a bit. We always like to say that we are saved from something, but we often forget that we are saved for something as well. Yes, we are saved from sin and death by the death and rising of Christ, but we are also saved for the purpose of being God’s image in the world, like it was intended at Creation. We are saved to do good works. I’m being very careful here, we’re not saved BY good works, we are saved FOR them. And then of course there’s the other half of Paul’s statement, that it is God working in us that empowers us to do good works.
So, in essence, the evidence of salvation is good works. That is very much in line with what Jesus talks about in the gospel, where it’s not just a matter of saying we will follow God, but actually following him. That is our call as Christians, to follow Christ’s example and do God’s work in our world.