What Gives You The Right to Call for Change?

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Season 1, Episode 32: Matthew 21.23-32. Lectionary A, Proper 21

Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.

If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.

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What Gives You The Right to Call for Change?

Herb Montgomery | September 29, 2023

To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.

“Our story this week models a possible response we could use when our authority is challenged and as we stand up to injustice and harmful abuses. As Christians, some of us are looking for equal access to a seat at a table we should be flipping because of whom those systems are harming.” 

Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:

Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?” 

Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?” 

They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.” 

Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

“Which of the two did what his father wanted?” 

“The first,” they answered. 

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.” (Matthew 21:23-32)

If we are going to arrive at life-giving interpretations that do not devolve into anti-Semitic tropes, we’ll need to understand the context of this passage. First, this passage represents a debate within Judaism. Christianity does not exist yet. So the passage doesn’t point to a choice between Christianity and Judaism, or some embracing “Christianity” ahead of others. Jesus was a Jewish man. The tax collectors and prostitutes in this passage are all Jewish folk, as were the chief priests and all the elders. 

This is instead a debate among people in different social locations within Judaism, the elite and powerful of a society and those who were shunned or pushed to the edges of their society, about what faithfulness to the God of the Torah looked like and how to follow the Torah’s economic teachings. 

Jesus had just overturned the money changers tables in the Temple, a political symbol and not solely a religious one. The Temple was the “Capital building” of the Temple state of Jerusalem over which Rome exercised imperial control. The chief priests and elders were not only religious leaders but also held political positions of power, property, and privilege. 

By flipping over these Temple tables, Jesus staged a political protest over the exploitation of the poor, and his authority for teaching and acting was challenged by those in positions of authority within the Temple state. 

Again, all of this happening economically, politically, socially, and religiously, and within Jewish culture and society. 

This story gives those of us who are not Jewish a window into a society from which we can glean wisdom as we stand in solidarity with the oppressed and marginalized, those in underprivileged social locations in our own society.

Jesus also mentions tax collectors and prostitutes in our reading. These people were labelled transgressors of national interests (tax collectors) and of religious morality (prostitutes), but they also embraced Jesus’ vision for human community (the kingdom) and its economic teachings of sharing resources, mutual aid, wealth redistribution, taking care of the vulnerable, and including the marginalized and excluded. Zacchaeus was an example of those who breached the national interest, and it’s interesting that, in true patriarchal form, we have no names of prostitutes passed down. Instead, we have the later fabrication that labels Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. This fabrication was a patriarchal (or patristic) attempt to lessen her influence and marginalize those who recognized her apostleship. (Thus the term patristic fathers.) 

Our story this week models a possible response we could use when our authority is challenged and as we stand up to injustice and harmful abuses. As Christians, some of us are looking for equal access to a seat at a table we should be flipping because of whom those systems are harming. There is a vast difference between working for the equal opportunity to compete in a system that rewards some and harms others and working toward an entirely different social order that doesn’t produce winners and losers. This “entirely different social order” means a way of living together with enough for everyone, where we only take what we need and share the rest, and where we make sure everyone cared for. 

In this light, taking up the cross becomes a mandate to flip oppressive tables even if you are threatened with a cross for doing so. We can read a lot more from this story that may help us in our justice work today. 

If the powerful and privileged elites in Jesus’s society couldn’t recognize that John the Baptist was standing in the authority of the Hebrew prophetic justice tradition, they would not recognize him doing the same. Note that Jesus doesn’t attempt to convince them. He doesn’t waste time defending his right to speak out or his right to exist. He’s got work to do. He dismisses their challenges to his authority to speak out and gets back to his work of shaping our world into a just, compassionate, safe home for everyone, specifically those presently marginalized. 

There is a lesson in this for us. Don’t get side tracked or distracted by the naysayers or those who want to pivot away from the injustice we are challenging to ourselves and what gives us permission to speak out again the injustice. We don’t have to have anyone’s permission to speak out. The presence of injustice is permission enough. Care for our fellow human beings gives us the right to speak out. Being a member of the human family gives us intrinsic authority when we see fellow humans being harmed. This applies ecologically and environmentally also. Humans are harmed by ruining our shared home on this planet in order to profit a few in the short term. 

Lastly, our reading this week includes the parable of the two sons of which scholars have spent much ink debating on the variations of this story that we have today (there are three different versions). Thee author of this story is placing much more emphasis on a person’s actions than their words. It’s not enough say yes to Jesus kingdom if the actions that follow that yes don’t align with the ethics and values of Jesus’ kingdom. In other words, accepting a ticket to a heaven later in other words is meaningless if we aren’t attempting to follow Jesus today in making our present home safe and just for everyone. In the end, the professions of the two sons didn’t matter’ . It was their actions that mattered. This is why I value whether someone is part of the solution to today’s injustice or whether they are part of the cause far more than whether that person claims or embraces Christianity or even Jesus. Professions matter little. The question is not what you believe or don’t believe. The question is whether you are choosing to be a life-giving human to those around you. In the end, and in the words of our story, Christian or not, those making the world a safer place for everyone are the ones doing what the “father wanted.”

I’ll close this week with the words of the late Oscar Romero:

“Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down.” (Quoted by Leonardo Vilchis, We Cry Justice, p. 93)

HeartGroup Application

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.

2. How does the parable of the two sons inspire you to work for justice? Share and discuss with your group.

3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate. 

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Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.

If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.

And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.

My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com

Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

Now Available at Renewed Heart Ministries!

Herb’s new book Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels, is available at renewedheartministries.com.

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