By What Authority?

 

September 27, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

It’s a week before Passover and Jesus is in the Temple.

Not just in the Temple. He’s holding the Temple captive to his righteous presence. He entered Jerusalem in a grand procession celebrated with flowers and palms and went directly to the Temple with a lash to toss animal cages and money boxes into the air.

Now he stands his ground in what one commentator calls a one-man occupation of the Temple. He’s attracting too many people who believe in his powers of healing and comfort and the Chief priests and scribes are eager to move him out. They mount a series of offensives to undermine Jesus’ authority or paint him as a  posturing fraud.

First the Temple leaders concoct a “gotcha” question to trap Jesus into saying things that would be regarded as blasphemous or, even worse, force him to be conspicuously silent.

Aware that much of Jesus’ popularity is based on the astonishing miracles he performs, they ask two questions. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you that authority?”

The disciples near Jesus must have cringed when they heard this. Jesus is in danger! After three years of itinerate ministry, the disciples had no doubt Jesus was God’s son, the Messiah, the Christ. But if the chief priests could force him to say that aloud in public, they would have all the evidence they needed to arrest him. That kind of blasphemy carried a death sentence with it.

But Jesus, who had spent three years sparring with the Pharisees, was not about to get entangled in an ill-conceived verbal snare. 

“I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” 

The chief priests glanced at each other and turned aside. John the Baptizer was an off-limits topic because the people had loved him and regarded John as God’s  prophet. The Temple leaders did not have the political clout to declare John’s baptism had no divine origin. The crowd would turn against them.

Abashed, the turned back to Jesus and murmured, “We don’t know.” 

“Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things,” Jesus said. And I like to think he said this with a slight smile on his face.

Jesus is, after all, still occupying the Temple where he can’t be touched and he plans to be there for a while. In fact he won’t leave until the first verses of Matthew’s chapter 24.

But Jesus is not through with the chief priests and elders yet. Before they can wander away, he calls to them.

“What do you think?”

Perhaps Jesus is soliciting their opinion on what he is about to say, or perhaps he is inviting them to reason together with him. The question certainly has the effect of compelling the senior leaders to listen.

Jesus tells the story of a man who had two sons who he wanted to work in his vineyard for a day. He asked one son who told him no but later changed his mind and went to the Vineyard. He asked the other son who told him yes, but went away and forgot about it.

Professor Stanley Saunders, a retired seminary professor, sets this parable in the “two sons” motif of biblical story telling.

He writes: “The two sons tradition itself begins with Cain and Abel and Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Aaron and Moses, and David and his brothers, the prodigal and his older brother —a tradition laden with motifs of envy and betrayal, struggles for power, and sometimes reconciliation.”

And perhaps the two sons in Matthew’s parable strike a common chord. As I was reading the story it occurred to me: I am these guys.

I hate to think how many times in my adolescent rebellion I adamantly refused my father’s request to do a job but, feeling guilty moments later, did it anyway. And how many times I said, “Sure, Dad,” but went to my room to type and draw cartoons and forgot all about it. There are times when I accepted my father’s authority, albeit reluctantly, and times when I paid lip service to my father’s authority but rejected it.

The leaders of the Temple agree with Jesus that it was the first son, the one who said no but went to the vineyard anyway.

“Actions speak louder than words,” Professor Saunders notes.. “Jesus uses this exchange to expose what the leaders really thought about John. The chief priests’ and elders’ failure to believe and respond to John reveals the truth about where they stood, and thus which brother they actually represent. 

“Jesus’ authority, in contrast, is affirmed by the integrity of his words and actions, as well as by its outcomes: gathering and restoration, healing and cleansing, release from demonic powers, restored sight, table fellowship with sinners, and preservation of the least ones—all examples of the “fruit” of repentance.”

Early Christian leaders came to Matthew’s gospel years after 70 C.E. when the Romans destroyed the temple and abolished the priesthood. But the parable of the two sons reminded people of how much more the priests could have done in their day.

“Although the chief priests were appointed by God and the elders were elected by God’s people, they professed allegiance to God in empty words alone while failing to fulfill their divine calling to serve others (20:25–27),” writes Professor Eunyung Lim of Middlebury College in Connecticut. “Like the second son—whose reply, ‘Yes, Master’, sounds emphatically obedient—their words never translated into action.

One of Matthew’s goals throughout his Gospel is to affirm the authority and power of Jesus.

But “Matthew is not content,” writers Professor Saunders, “with the simple claim that Jesus possesses divine power, nor even that his power surpasses that of worldly leaders. Matthew focuses instead on the nature, source, and consequences of Jesus’ power. He aims to demonstrate not only that Jesus is more powerful than the world’s powers, but that his power is of a different kind, a power that produces healing and reconciliation rather than alienation and violence.”

Our human spirit is not equipped to fully understand the enormity of Jesus power. John’s Gospel is only a poetic approximation of that power and its source.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life,  and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.”

We will never fully comprehend the astounding power of creation that is gracefully and unpretentiously expressed in the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth …” (Genesis 1:1).

What was it like? A blinding Big Bang as God flung matter into the void, resulting in billions of spheres of hot plasma made of hydrogen and helium that became stars and sons, and the manifestation of orbs of iron and gas and water that hardened into planets. Over billions of years the earth cooled, land masses split apart, drifted into continents, rock was ground into soil, soil mixed with water and created the intangible conditions that gave forth to single celled life. Cells joined together, Life clung tenaciously to the earth and over long eons became birds, reptiles, mammals, primates, and, finally, humankind.

We will never comprehend it. But in faith we trust it all happened by God’s plan and by God’s hands.

And an integral part of it at the very beginning was the Word, the Son who in the fullness of time became flesh and walked the earth as a human being.

Therein lies the authority of Jesus. That authority is from God, and that authority manifests God’s love for creation. And not withstanding breathtaking and creative power that authority is, we know it in the form of Jesus who brings us eternal life, unconditional love, healing, comfort, and holy instructions to love one another and manifest justice for all.