The chief priests wanted to put Jesus on the spot, asking him “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” (Matthew 21:23). It’s a classic ploy, trying to create a setup where Jesus has to justify himself to you. The idea is that if you can get Jesus on the defensive, then you won’t have to justify yourself before him. The strategy didn’t work as well as they hoped. Jesus turned the argument around on them, asking whether they thought John’s ministry of baptism was from God, or just a human project that John had dreamed up (21:24-25).

It wasn’t a question they wanted to answer. They could see that if they said that it was a genuine movement of God, they’d be in trouble for not following it; but if they said it was a mere human phenomenon, they’d be in trouble with the common people who all regarded John as a genuine prophet. So they opted to say, “We do not know” (21:25-26). Yet surely they knew quite well what they thought about it. They just didn’t want to say out loud that they thought that John was a fake and Jesus was a fake, while they themselves were honest and true. So rather than make an honest and true answer, they came up with a response that was fake.

Jesus pointed up the falseness of their response with a parable (21:28-32), which may well be a bare-bones version of the famous Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Both stories show us a father with two sons, and both sons reverse their initial behaviors. Moreover, both passages show us Jesus telling the parable as a response to the criticisms of religious authorities; and in both texts the point of the parable is about how sinners get restored while the self-righteous end up on the outside looking in.

It’s easy enough for us to shake our heads at those ancient opponents for their critical attitude toward Jesus’ authority: but I suspect that we are no better. We are just as likely to deny the authority of Jesus, sometimes with our words and sometimes with our actions.

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All our fake answers stand exposed before you, O Lord, and all our efforts to put you on the defensive just show how little we qualify as honest and true. Teach us to set ourselves in humility before you, and grant us the grace to live in repentance before you.

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