Matthew 21:23-32
“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up,” said the late John Lewis. “You have to say something. You have to do something. You must be bold, brave and courageous and find a way to get in the way, to get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble.”[1]
From the moment Jesus entered Jerusalem, he was getting in the way and making trouble. Good trouble. He came into the city with a bit of satirical street theater straight out of the prophetic writings of Zechariah. His Palm Sunday parade into the city was a parody of Roman pageantry and a protest against the arrogant and oppressive might of Rome as it was being displayed by Pontius Pilate who, at that same moment, was entering Jerusalem on the other side of the city with a military procession of cavalry and soldiers. Instead of a white charger, Jesus was riding a donkey. Instead of the mandated shouts of “hail Caesar,” the crowd spreading branches and cloaks in front of Jesus cried out “Hosannah. Save us, Son of David.”
Soon after entering the city, Jesus went to the temple and drove out the money changers and all the merchants who were buying and selling sacrificial animals. He may have found all the noise and smell and mess and open commerce at the temple disturbing, but he was absolutely outraged at the brazen thievery of the money changers who fleeced the poor with extortionate exchange rates. On top of that, he was furious because they had set up their market in the Court of the Gentiles, the only place at the temple where Gentiles were allowed to gather and pray to Israel’s God. In his anger he quoted both Isaiah and Jeremiah when he said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers,”[2] and the language he used makes it clear that he regarded what they are doing as a kind of violence.
Matthew tells us that after things calmed down “the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he cured them.” Matthew also notes that little children were repeating the hosannahs they had heard their parents singing out in the streets. So you have to believe that all of this was working the nerves of the chief priests and the scribes.
And then there was that business with the fig tree.
Let’s talk about that fig tree.
The fig tree carried a lot of freight as a symbol in ancient Jewish culture and religion. It symbolized peace, prosperity, wisdom and the study of Torah. Rabbis would gather their students under the shade of a fig tree to study the scriptures and to meditate on their meaning. The phrase “every man under his vine and his fig tree” from 1 Kings envisioned a promised Messianic golden age of peace, safety and abundance for Israel. A profusion of fig trees in the land indicated that the nation was at peace and experiencing God’s favor. The prophets used the fig tree as a metaphor for the nation of Israel as a whole: In prophetic imagery a thriving tree represented physical and spiritual health while a fruitless tree was a sign of spiritual sickness and a warning of impending judgment.
So, on the morning after Jesus had driven the moneychangers out of the temple, Matthew tells us “when he returned to the city, he was hungry, and seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it but found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to the tree, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ and the fig tree withered at once.”[3]
When Jesus cursed the fig tree he was symbolically delivering a prophetic indictment against Israel’s spiritual leadership by the temple authorities. It would have been seen as an omen of coming disaster for the nation. So it’s no surprise that the chief priests and elders interrupt Jesus while he’s teaching in the temple and ask him, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”
It’s a legitimate question and they have every right to ask it. It’s their responsibility to ensure that everything that happens in the temple is done in conformity with the traditions of their people and the teachings of Torah. It’s also their job to keep a lid on any kind of activity that might aggravate their Roman overlords. Jesus is pushing all their buttons, so they ask him: “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you that authority?”
It’s a legitimate question, but it’s also a “gotcha” question. It was a question designed to put Jesus on the spot. There aren’t too many answers he could give that wouldn’t open the door to more trouble. But Jesus knows it’s not quite time yet for his final confrontation at the corner of religion and politics and he is too smart to fall into their trap.
“Let me ask you a question,” said Jesus. “If you answer my question then I’ll answer yours. So tell me, who authorized the baptism of John—was it from heaven or was it merely human?”
This question that Jesus asked was also a “gotcha” question and now the temple authorities were on the spot. Matthew tells us they started arguing with each other. “If we say, ‘John’s baptism came from heaven,’ he’ll ask us, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘John’s baptism was merely a human thing,’ the crowd will turn against us because they all think John was a prophet.” In the end, they gave up and simply answered, “We don’t know.”
“Fine,” said Jesus. “Then I’m not going to answer your question.”
What the temple authorities didn’t realize was that Jesus could have asked them a much harder question that would have made things much more awkward for them than they already were. He could have turned their own question back on them: By what authority do you do the things you do in the temple and who gave you that authority?
That would have been a very uncomfortable question for the chief priests and elders.
It had been a very long time since the priests in the temple had been appointed by any religious or hereditary authority. When Herod the Great became king he felt that the temple priests had too much power so he removed them from office then replaced the high priest with an obscure priest from Babylon who would be easier to manipulate. Later, the Romans assumed the power of appointing the temple priests, and they, too, made a point of choosing men they knew they could control. If Jesus had asked the priests and elders the question they had asked him, “By what authority do you do these things?” they would have had to publicly admit that they were appointed by the Roman authorities and that their service in the temple all too often required them to cooperate with the empire’s demands and dictates.
Jesus could have made the moment much more awkward for the priests who were questioning him but Jesus was always, first and foremost, a teacher, so instead of blatantly exposing and denouncing their complicity with the empire, he created a teaching moment. He told them a parable.
“Here’s a little story,” he said. “Tell me what you think.” A man had two sons. He went to his first son and said, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.” “No,” said his son, “I really don’t want to.” But later he changed his mind and went out to do what his father asked. The father went to the second son and said, “Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.” “I will go out right now,” said the son. But he never left the house. “Now,” said Jesus, “which of the two sons did what the father asked?”
Jesus wanted the priests and elders to see themselves in this little parable. He wanted them to understand that they were like the son who said yes to the father’s request but did not actually obey by doing the work. To bring home the point, he lifted up the social outcasts who had responded to John the Baptist in ways that had transformed their lives.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Jesus. “The tax collectors and sex workers are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him. But the tax collectors and sex workers believed him. Yet even after you saw how these people were changed for the better you still didn’t change your minds and trust John.”
“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something. You have to do something,” said John Lewis. “You must…find a way to get in the way, to get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble.”[4]
That is exactly what Jesus did. He saw religious authorities collaborating with a brutally oppressive empire. He saw those same authorities failing to intervene as swindlers grifted people out of their hard-earned money in the very courts of the temple. He saw devout and curious Gentiles seeking a quiet moment with Israel’s God in a holy place squeezed out of the place that had been explicitly created for them, the only place in the temple where they were allowed to pray. So he found a way to get in the way. He found a way to get into trouble. Good trouble. And he did it all without violence.
He got in the way with parody and parables. He symbolically pronounced judgment on the pious guardians of religious hierarchy and authority by cursing the symbolic emblem spiritual health. He disrupted the economic machinery of the temple without abusing the people operating that machinery. When they tried to entrap him with “gotcha” questions he responded with difficult questions of his own but refrained from asking the question that had the power to destroy them.
At the corner of Religion and Politics, Jesus saw something that was not right, not just, not fair. So he got in the way. He got into trouble. Necessary trouble. Good trouble.
And he asks us to do the same.
[1] Rep. John Lewis, 2014 Commencement Speech at Emory University
[2] Isaiah 56:7; Jeremiah 7:11
[3] Matthew 21:18-19
[4] Rep. John Lewis, 2014 Commencement Speech at Emory University
