Back in my younger days when I was
working at the Rhode Island Department of Attorney General, we had a department
wide meeting. We had one of these meetings right after the new Attorney General’s
took office. So I am sitting in this meeting and the new elected Attorney
General informed the Department that he was putting a placque on the outside of
the building and it read “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Does
anyone know where that came from? It was from the movie Spiderman…the first one
with Toby McGuire; at least that is what was told to us. I am sure you can
imagine my shock to find that our office was basing its work from a superhero
movie quote.
Today’s Gospel reading is all about
power. It is important to set the scene for what is going on today in our
Gospel of Matthew. In the beginning of the chapter, Jesus enters Jerusalem on
what we now celebrate as Palm Sunday. It is a festive occasion and all the
people greeting him sing “Hosanna to the Son of David!. I mean, there is a
serious party going on because Jesus has entered the city, where the temple is
located. But things turned pretty quickly for Jesus and the chief priests.
Jesus went into the temple and cleaned the place out; he overturned tables and
uttered those words “my house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are
making it a den of thieves.” So you can imagine that at the site of this
happening, the chief priests are not too happy. Then Jesus leaves.
SO here we are the very next day and
here comes this Jesus again. This time they are ready for him. They have a plan
to trap Jesus by asking him this one question. It is the question about his own
baptism. They are not just setting Jesus up but they think they are so ready
for this guy that there is no way this guy will give the correct answer; maybe
they thought after this tough question, Jesus will be ridiculed and shamed and
then everything can go back to the way it was.
But it does not go as easy as they
hoped it would. In fact, Jesus turns the tables on them. He challenges them by
asking them a question; “did the baptism of John come from heaven or human?”
That is like the slam dunk of questions and these chief priests know it. They
start thinking (and scripture says arguing) about the answer. A question with
two choices. IF they say it is from heaven then why didn’t they believe what
Jesus was saying all along? IF they say it is from human then they have a
bigger problem on their hands (as they see it). IF they say human, then all the
people who have been following Jesus will be angry.
It would make sense that Jesus’
followers would be angry, because they have been with him; some for a long time
and some not so long. But they witnessed things that would show that this is
not just a human action. They have been the recipient of God’s grace in the
face of illness, sin, hunger when they needed food (how about that feeding of
the 5000 or 4000?). I think we might be able to understand why they would be
upset.
What is underlying in all of this
back and forth is the first choice of the priests. “IF we say it is from
heaven…” there is one thing that they are concerned about and that is nothing
more than power. Up to this point in society, the priests were the ones that
held the proverbial keys to the kingdom. Meaning, they knew what made people
clean and unclean. They studied the Torah (the first five books of the bible)
quite extensively. They knew what was in it and they knew God’s law. They knew
(or thought they knew) what and how God wanted them to live their lives to be
in a right relationship with God. This term right relationship is defined as
living in a way that is pleasing to God and worshipped God as the creator of
all things.
But they fell victim to one thing;
the realization of knowing the limits of their authority. They lived by the
instructions that they understood of what it means to live in the world as
God’s chosen people. They knew what the rules…the law…was to be in this right
relationship with God, what the proper sacrifices were, the procedures and the
words to say because they studied it; and that became the crux of the problem.
They became so centered on the law, they did not know or could not see that God
has come into the world in a new way, in the form of Jesus Christ. They did not
think that God would do something different or new in the world; That God would
send a Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to walk among the people…for God to
come into the world to see what was going on, to heal, feed, and teach about
God’s love.
What they realized in answering that
John’s baptism came from heaven means the loss of their power. It meant that they
did not determine who was named or claimed as a child of God. It meant that
Jesus, who is standing right in front of them is THE DIRECT LINE to God; that
people would continue believing or convert to believing in who Jesus was THE
MESSIAH. It meant that Jesus would be the inheritor of the temple and AS THE
MESSIAH, GOD was now outside that most sacred space in the temple called the
holy of holies.
This one question from Jesus puts
all this in jeopardy. I think we can relate to that as well. We grow up hearing
about how we are the masters of our own destiny. Society tells us that we can
control every aspect of our lives; our diets (and body shape if you believe the
infomercials), what we watch, read, who our friends are, the people we want in
our lives or don’t want in our lives. Society tells us we can have the job we
want at the income level that we want. But it doesn’t stop there. This notion
of control can spill over into our faith lives. The notion that we are in
control can affect how we read scripture. It can affect how we look at one
another or treat each other. It can cause us to look at the law of God (like
the priests) rather than looking at the law and the Gospel. That quote that,
with great power comes great responsibility, did not come originally from
Spiderman, but from the French philosopher Voltaire who wrote this during the
French Revolution; who saw people abusing their power and lording it over the
poor and oppressed.
The
point of all of this is that God is the one who is in control. As much as we
would like to think we are, we are not. It is when we think are in control that
we begin to lose Jesus Christ at the center of what we do and who we are. We
try to be the masters of our universe and sometimes think we don’t need anyone
else or can do whatever we want. When we think that all the things we do is of
our own accomplishments and achievements and that no one helped us get to where
we are, we run the risk of seeing ourselves as idols and maybe God like. That
leads us down a dangerous path.
But
Jesus question can come to us as a relief rather than a threat to our control. We
are called to give control of our hearts and our heads over to God. Meaning,
what if we said, “God, you called me to be a scientist, engineer, nurse,
teacher, student, farmer, or to retire; call me to do your work in this world.
I give all this over to you to guide my mind and my heart where you will.”
Giving that kind of control of our lives over to God can be scary and quite
freeing.
It means that we have given our
control as God’s child over to the one who created us. It means understanding
something that I misunderstood at my previous career in the Attorney General’s
office; with “great power comes great responsibility;” but using that statement
with a little twist. “With faith comes responsibility.” Giving that power and
control of our minds and hearts to God means that we hear God’s word with our
ears and hearts. It means that being a witness to the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s only son is something that God did for us,
you and me. It means that witnessing the Son of God on the cross was all done
out of God’s love for us and teaching and sharing with others the love of God;
from the smallest child to older people who do not yet know God. It means
acting out of that love…God’s love in our words and deeds. Not out of
obligation but out of celebration and appreciation for the blessings we have
received.
TODAY Jesus asks this question of us
and with joy we can answer that Jesus baptism came from God the creator of all
things. We celebrate that our baptism and claiming comes from the one who
created us. Thanks be to God
AMEN!!!
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