Is God with Us? SALT's Commentary for Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A): Exodus 17:1-7 and Matthew 21:23-32
Big Picture:
1) In this week’s passage from Matthew, tensions that simmer throughout the gospel are now coming to a boil. Jesus has been teaching and healing in the countryside, moving through various cities and towns, occasionally getting into scuffles with local religious authorities — and just yesterday, as Matthew tells it, he arrived in Jerusalem, the epicenter of Israel’s political and spiritual power.
2) And he did not arrive quietly. In a kind of street theater dramatizing ancient prophecy of how the Messiah will appear, Jesus rode in on a donkey, surrounded by great crowds crying, “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” — such that “the whole city was in turmoil” (Matthew 21:1-10; compare Isa 62:11; Zech 9:9). And this raucous procession went straight downtown, right into the Jerusalem Temple, no less, where Jesus summarily drove out the vendors and welcomed in crowds of people in need of healing — as well as children crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (Matthew 21:12-16).
3) The temple authorities (“chief priests and elders of the people”) are alarmed and offended by all this, particularly by what they understand to be the audacity of the children: “they became angry and said to Jesus, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’” (Matthew 21:16). Remember, for Jesus’ religious opponents, the “blasphemy” of claiming to be the Messiah ends up being the crucial charge that leads to his death sentence (Matthew 26:64-66). The children’s cry — “Hosanna to the Son of David!” — is a messianic formula, and the authorities are not amused.
4) Nor are they thrilled with the fact that Jesus, his entourage, and the crowds following them essentially occupy the temple for two days straight: the first day spent cleansing the temple of vendors and healing those in need, and the second day — after Jesus slips away to spend the night in Bethany, and then returns — spent debating, teaching, telling parables, and pronouncing “woe” on the powers that be (Matthew 21:23-24:2). This week’s passage is the first episode on that second day of the occupation: the temple authorities arrive and confront Jesus directly, planning to put him in his place.
5) This week’s story from Exodus is the last of several incidents before reaching Mount Sinai in which the Israelites, having just escaped enslavement, complain against Moses and/or God: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” (Ex 17:3).
Scripture:
1) From the point of view of the chief priests and elders, Jesus is an insolent upstart threatening the status quo, a supposed “prophet” who’s whipped up the city into a frenzy, driven out perfectly legitimate vendors from the temple, and convinced the crowds that he’s the Messiah. As they confront him, then, their aim is to undermine his authority and unmask him as a pretender.
2) Their twofold question is designed to entrap. If Jesus publically declares that his authority is divine, the case for blasphemy will be open and shut. But Jesus sidesteps the snare with one of his own, a kind of mirror for their entrapment that entraps them, and at the same time answers their question indirectly: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” (Matthew 21:25). This response puts the authorities in a bind because, if they say “from heaven,” they’ll look like hypocrites, because they didn’t believe or get baptized by John the Baptizer; and if they say “of human origin,” they’ll invite the ire of the crowds, who regard John as a prophet.
3) And at the same time, Jesus thereby answers their original question in a roundabout way, since he casts the options starkly — either “from heaven” or “of human origin” — and implicitly lines up both his own authority and John’s baptism on the “from heaven” side of the ledger. It’s a brilliant piece of rhetorical fencing: simultaneously fending off his opponents, answering their question, and avoiding exposure to a “blasphemy” charge.
4) Still speaking to the authorities (while the crowds listen in, delighted, no doubt!), Jesus turns to a parable. A man tells his two sons to go work in the vineyard; the first declines, but changes his mind and goes later. The second agrees, but does not go. “Which of the two did the will of the father?” Jesus asks, and his opponents answer, “The first” — the one who “changed his mind” (Matthew 21:28-31).
5) The word for “change of mind” here is metamelomai, literally “to change one’s cares,” or “to feel remorse,” or “to regret.” Especially since John the Baptizer has just been mentioned in this exchange, the sentiment is clearly reminiscent of John’s famous sermon, which became Jesus’ first sermon: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” (Matthew 3:2; 4:17). The word for “repent” in these sermons is metanoia, also legitimately translated as “change of mind.” But this only makes more conspicuous that Jesus uses metamelomai in this parable: the driving idea is still “change of mind,” but the accent is on sorrow, remorse, regret.
6) Accordingly, this parable is not a simple contrast between a good brother and a bad one, or between “walking the talk” and “just talking the talk.” Both sons fall short of the father’s wishes. The first, though he eventually goes to the vineyard, only gets around to it after experiencing a remorseful change of mind — and so he has no grounds for looking down on his brother. In terms of initial action, the two are fundamentally the same: neither went to the vineyard in the first place. The difference is that one of them had a remorseful transformation. Those “tax collectors and prostitutes” who have been so transformed, Jesus declares to the chief priests and elders, “are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21:31).
7) But that does not mean the authorities, too, cannot enter! We all fall short, the parable suggests; what matters is the willingness to be open to changing our minds and our lives. Without that willingness, all the social status, rank, or position in the world doesn’t matter. And you high ranking authorities, Jesus says, though you could have recognized John’s righteousness perfectly well, did not change your minds and believe him (Matthew 21:32).
8) As they oppose Jesus, these authorities unwittingly play out a classic role in the drama of Israel’s salvation history: people who test and quarrel with God. In this week’s story from Exodus, Moses eventually names the site “Massah” and “Maribah” (that is, “Test” and “Quarrel”), “because the Israelites quarreled and tested the LORD, saying, ‘Is the LORD among us or not?’” (Ex 17:7). In a sense, this is the ultimate question, the ultimate worry, the deep anxiety underneath much of our lives, especially in difficult times. In the Christian tradition, this is the question to which Christmas is a direct answer (Immanuel, “God with Us”) — which is why we need Christmas to come back around every year (and for that matter, worship to come back around every week!).
Takeaways:
1) Viewed in context, this week’s story in Matthew narrates nothing less than a key reason why Jesus is killed. This is no ordinary encounter with some skeptical religious authorities: this is an extension of the Palm Sunday march, complete with cheering crowds (Hosanna!), a city in turmoil, the temple cleared out and occupied, a scandalous, explosive (if still implicit) messianic claim, and a face-to-face confrontation with the most powerful religious officials in the land. In short, this is a showdown.
2) Those powers that be — both the religious establishment and, decisively, the Roman imperial establishment — don’t want the status quo to change, and so they’re mobilizing to address the threat. The Gospel, at its heart, is a world-changing, apple-cart-upsetting force of the Spirit in creation. Following Jesus means signing up for a bumpy, transformative ride — and meeting with strong resistance along the way.
3) This passage is also a reminder of the central role “change of mind” plays in Christian life: both metanoia, “change of mind” or “change of heart” or “change of life"; and metamelomai, “change of cares” or “remorse” or “regret.” If we have ears to hear, we can receive the parable as if it’s addressed directly to us: what change of mind is God calling us to? What pang of regret may help us chart a new way forward? How is God challenging us to “change our cares,” to reset our priorities, to rearrange what most concerns us?
4) Finally, Jesus is pretty tough on the powers-that-be in these chapters in Matthew: in this parable, for starters, and eventually ramping up to a blistering set of “woes” in chapter 23. But as the parable itself attests, even as he lifts up “tax collectors and prostitutes” as models of mind-changing, Jesus implicitly keeps the door open, even for his opponents — and even for us. Changing our minds and our hearts is a permanent possiblity, and a permanent invitation. No matter what path we’ve taken thus far, no matter how supposedly wayward or pious, God continually beckons us to take part anew in the unfolding divine mission. Is God with us? Yes: calling us to change.
5) There’s a beautiful Jewish midrash that goes like this: Even when God exiles Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, saying to them as they go, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” the three words left ringing in their ears contain a hidden seed of hope, a promise of blessing: “you shall return” (Gen 3:19). Likewise, for all of us, a “change of mind” is always possible; the road back to the vineyard is always open. God’s love and faithfulness are steadfast, as “God with Us” proclaims — and so despite our worries, our quarreling, our testing of God and each other, in the end God will quench our thirst with surprising, living water: refreshment springing up from what looks like nothing but dry rock, resurrection from a tomb in Jerusalem, new life in the valley of the shadow of death.