{"id":10717,"date":"2005-09-07T19:49:13","date_gmt":"2005-09-07T17:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theologie.whp.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/?p=10717"},"modified":"2025-07-14T10:10:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T08:10:35","slug":"matthew-21-23-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/matthew-21-23-32\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew 21: 23-32"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

PENTECOST 19 | SEPTEMBER 25, 2005 |\u00a0MATTHEW 21: 23-32 | DAVID ZERSEN |<\/h3>\n

Jesus came back to the temple and as he taught the chief priests and the Jewish elders came to him and asked, \u201cWhat right do you have to do these things? Who gave you this right?\u201d Jesus answered the, \u201cI will ask you just one question and if you give me an answer I will tell you what right I have to do these things. \u201cWhere did John\u2019s right to baptize come from: from God or from men?\u201d They started to argue among themselves. \u201cWhat shall we say? If we answer, \u2018From God,\u2019 he will say to us, \u2018Why, then, did you not believe John? But if we say, \u2018From men,\u2019 we are afraid of what the people might do, because they are all convinced that John was a prophet.\u201d So they answered Jesus, \u201cWe don\u2019t know.\u201d And he said to them, \u201cNeither will I tell you, then, by what right I do these things.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNow, what do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the older one and said, \u2018Son, go work in the vineyard today.\u2019 \u2018I don\u2019t want to,\u2019 he answered, but later he changed his mind and went to the vineyard. Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. \u2018Yes, sir,\u2019 he answered, but he did not go. Which one of the two did what his father wanted?\u201d \u201cThe older one,\u201d they answered. \u201cAnd I tell you this,\u201d Jesus said to them. \u201cThe tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you. For John the Baptist came to you showing you the right path to take, and you would not believe him; but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. Even when you saw this you did not change your minds later on and believe him.\u201d<\/em> (NIV)<\/p>\n

SIDE COMMENTS TO THE CHURCH CROWD<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly clear that Jesus reserved different remarks for different crowds. The crowd to whom he had the least to say was comprised of the insiders. In Jesus\u2019 world, a rigid system of both religious and political laws structured the daily life of people. Paying careful attention to these laws marked one as an insider. Theoretically, these insiders were the upstanding citizens, the ones whose attention to moral and legal codes showed respect for God and held society together. Although the parallel is not exact, these people were in some senses the \u201cchurch\u201d crowd. While Jesus makes occasional remarks to them, most of his comments are not intended for them. A physician does not attend to those who are healthy, Jesus tells us, but to those who are not well.<\/p>\n

Wellness, of course, is a matter of definition. Some of the sickness among the outsiders was surely immorality, infractions of the commandments that enjoined people to rejoice in God\u2019s love and serve the neighbor. However, in addition to the many Scriptural laws, in the Talmudic era during and after the Exile, Halakah evolved as an application of these laws within daily life. These were laws within laws, a system wherein one\u2019s status in society and before God was determined by how carefully one performed. Even more, it was a setting in which one could be excluded because physical blemishes or deformities made it impossible to be considered healthy or whole. In reality, these people were the average Joes and Sarahs, they were commoners who had a difficult time keeping up with the Weinbergs. They knew that the insiders had no respect for them and in a society in which the Weinbergs regarded themselves as whole and well, the Silbersteins had to feel incomplete and ill. And Jesus said that it was for these, those who knew themselves to be outsiders, that he had come. He had come to seek and to save the lost. The poor. The lepers, lame and blind. The tax collectors and prostitutes. The tenants and servants. The thieves, the farmers, the shepherds.<\/p>\n

Given that, it\u2019s interesting that today\u2019s text incorporates some of the material which Jesus reserves for the church crowd. And there is a difference in style between what he says to the outsiders and what he says to the insiders, what he says to the poor and to the rich. The words to the poor lift them up. The words to the rich challenge them and critique them. The poor and the sick and the meek inherit the earth. The rich and whole and arrogant will be the last to enter the kingdom of heaven. Despite Jesus\u2019 hard words for the church crowd, however, there is always good news to be found. For that matter, behind Jesus\u2019 words of challenge and critique, no matter the audience, there is always Gospel for those who know that grace, not pious performance, is the heart of the matter. And this is good news for you and me\u2014for, perhaps with some exceptions, we are the church crowd here today.<\/p>\n

Meeting church people on their own turf <\/strong><\/p>\n

The first dialogue that Matthew shares has Jesus involved in a bit of Jewish pilpul with a rabbinical crowd. Let me tell you how I learned to appreciate pilpul and why it is important to understand what it\u2019s about. I used to be a fan of Harry Kemmelman\u2019s mystery stories. I used to be, I say, because once I had read all of them, there were no more to discover. They had titles like Friday the Rabbi Slept Late<\/strong> and Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry<\/strong>, etc.. There was one for each day of the week. The hero in the mysteries was Rabbi David Small who helped police chief Paul Lanigan solve the murders in Barnard\u2019s Crossing, Massachusetts, by using a form of rabbinical dialectic called pilpul which comes from a Hebrew word meaning to \u201cspice up\u201d or, in a metaphorical sense, to \u201cdispute violently.\u201d Small would take the facts as he knew them from Lanigan, and toss them back and forth, letting them split hairs with each other, until some clarity evolved, or some new, heretofore, unseen fact emerged. It was the same thing the members of the Sanhedrin did in Jesus\u2019 day. While it can be an interesting dialectic device, you can see how it can also lead to splitting hairs. This is why Jesus used the method seldom, much to the surprise of listeners who said, \u201cHe doesn\u2019t talk like the teachers of the Law, but he speaks with authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, in today\u2019s text, he confronts the church people on their own turf. It\u2019s a rare moment when Jesus participates in the traditional rabbinical style of argumentation, and to us he comes off sounding like a smart aleck. The rabbis say to him \u201cwhere do you get the right to say and do this stuff!\u201d Jesus responds in pilpul fashion, \u201cWhere did John get the right to do what he did?\u201d And then, the rabbis begin to argue, as befits the style of pilpul . If we say \u201cfrom God,\u201d then he\u2019ll say, \u201cwhy didn\u2019t you believe him?\u201d And if we say, \u201cfrom men,\u201d the crowd won\u2019t like it (political correctness was important even then) and they\u2019ll attack us.\u201d So they couldn\u2019t come up with an answer. And Jesus tells them, \u201cI won\u2019t give you one either.\u201d It sounds wonderfully smart alecky unless you understand that Jesus was using an acceptable style of debate. He understood his audience. It was a church crowd. So he met them on their turf, using language and strategies they would have considered \u201cin house\u201d talk. One has the impression that Jesus is showing no respect for the insiders or that, as Barclay, the Scottish theologian says, his time hadn\u2019t come yet and he wasn\u2019t ready to tell them who he really was ( Matthew 2, 258). However, I think that is to miss the point. Jesus did respect this particular church crowd; he just sought to meet them on their terms. He talked with them as they talked with each other.<\/p>\n

Challenging church people to think <\/strong><\/p>\n

Matthew includes one more segment in today\u2019s text, perhaps originally from a totally different context, but in this setting Matthew has his own purpose for including it. Once again, Jesus is addressing a church crowd, the kind of people who tend to condescend to people outside their circles. Instead of a debate setting, however, we are here confronted with a story setting. Jesus uses not pilpul , but a parable. The function of a parable, somewhat like pilpul , is to contrast two thoughts with each other in order to force the listeners to a conclusion\u2014and it\u2019s usually a conclusion about themselves.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s it\u2019s a story about two bad boys. Boys don\u2019t change much, so the story is wonderfully modern. We can identify with these boys, because we did these things too\u2014and so did our children. The father asks the boys to \u201cmow the lawn.\u201d The one says\u2014he will, but he never does it. The other says he won\u2019t, but he changes his mind and does it. \u201cWhich one, \u201c Jesus asks, \u201cdid what the father asks?\u201d Now, you see, we are not comparing one good and one bad boy here. Neither did what the father asked\u2014at least not at first. The one who changed his mind and finally \u201ccut the grass,\u201d however\u2014well, even the spiritual leaders could figure out that he was less bad than the other!<\/p>\n

What follows, now, is hard to judge. The charm of a parable, or\u2014to say it in a more forceful way, the hammer-blow of a parable, is that it encourages you to make a judgement about the meaning and to apply it to yourself. Church people might be able to figure out that although they love to critique others who are not as faithful in church attendance or Bible Class or personal piety as they are, even they have reason to confess sins. Nowhere in Scripture was even a super pious person given reason to believe that he\/she had achieved perfection.<\/p>\n

However, Matthew springs words on us here which would catch any hearer by surprise\u2014leading some to believe that Matthew himself added this hammer-blow to make sure that the religious leaders don\u2019t miss the point: EVEN THE TAX COLLECTORS AND PROSTITUTES WILL GET INTO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN BEFORE YOU!! It\u2019s not that Jesus could not have added these remarks in a fit of pique, but if one remains true to the character of a parable, it\u2019s good to let the parable do its own thing, something it\u2019s very good at. Either way, the church people had something to think about that day, and perhaps we do as well.<\/p>\n

Listening to Jesus\u2019 comments to us <\/strong><\/p>\n

In both of these side comments to the church crowd, perhaps after a long day of teaching and healing with the truly poor and sick, Matthew wants us to be fascinated that Jesus could really talk turkey with the insiders, address them on their own turf, understand his audience completely. One wonders, even though we can learn a lot from these same words, how Jesus might address us today, were he to have the chance to use communication techniques appropriate to our world. Would he use power point presentations and sci fi allegories in film? Would he use clever approaches gleaned from non-directive therapy or recommend frontal lobotomies to perform radical change? Would he consider hypnosis or primal scream therapy to bring us face to face with our most basic needs? Of course, you know I\u2019m coming off the wall here, but I do think it\u2019s valuable to note that Jesus understood his audiences, their needs as either outsiders or insiders, and was a master at communicating what various types of crowds needed to understand.<\/p>\n

And here we might stop to ask ourselves what message you and I really need to take from this text today, what we ourselves need to understand. If we are indeed those who feel alienated from any kind of loving community, or separated from God himself\u2014and perhaps some of you do\u2014then there are words of love and support, which Jesus would intend specifically for you. In today\u2019s world, there are many on the Southern Coast of our country who feel lost and abandoned, and still others in Florida or Galveston who are now afraid. In Sudan there are many that hunger for food and fear for their lives. In Iraq there are families that worry that a bomb may forever destroy the life they have known. In a hospital or a prison nearby, there are some that have a \u201csickness unto death\u201d that gives them no cause for hope. To such people Jesus, in his personal way, understands their needs and has words of comfort, touches of healing, and assurances of forgiveness.<\/p>\n

Finally, for those of us who know ourselves to be loved and affirmed by God, forgiven because Jesus cancelled our burdens and the cross and gave us life at the empty tomb, there are words of challenge and direction in these side comments to the church crowd.<\/p>\n

We are reminded that were it not for God\u2019s boundless love and mercy we ourselves would be poor, wretched and blind. We are reminded that only those who have known themselves to be impoverished without Christ can understand deep gratitude. And most, of all, we are reminded that God\u2019s love for us assures that we cannot promise to help our neighbor and never go, for we who once were poor have been made rich. We who have been forgiven much have much to share.<\/p>\n

\n

Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
\nConcordia University at Austin,
\nAustin , Texas
\n djzersen@aol.com<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PENTECOST 19 | SEPTEMBER 25, 2005 |\u00a0MATTHEW 21: 23-32 | DAVID ZERSEN | Jesus came back to the temple and as he taught the chief priests and the Jewish elders came to him and asked, \u201cWhat right do you have to do these things? Who gave you this right?\u201d Jesus answered the, \u201cI will ask […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,540,727,157,853,108,222,110,274,349,3,109],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-10717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-matthaeus","category-19-so-n-trinitatis","category-archiv","category-beitragende","category-bibel","category-current","category-david-zersen","category-engl","category-kapitel-21-chapter-21-matthaeus","category-kasus","category-nt","category-predigten"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25164,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10717\/revisions\/25164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10717"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=10717"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=10717"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=10717"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=10717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}