by the Rev. Robert C. Laird
Today I’d like to begin with an image from Shakespeare,
and I hope you’ll forgive me for it;
let me explain.
Jesus has been having a heck of a week.
Our Gospel reading today begins,
“When he entered the temple,
the chief priests and the elders came to him
as he was teaching,
and [asked him],
‘By what authority are you doing these things
You see, the chief priests and the elders
came to challenge Jesus,
and asked him a question,
hoping to see him hoist with his own petard;
little did they realize
that in a few short sentences,
they themselves would be the ones hoisted.
In fact, a petard is a good illustration for what is happening here:
a petard was a small bomb, used by armies
to blow up gates, and bridges, and fortifications;
when the pétardier set the petard,
it was always against a building, or a fence;
and by their nature, petards were always set against
structures strong enough to require
using a petard in the first place.
So when you put a bomb next to a strong wall,
and the bomb goes off,
there’s going to be a lot of blast back,
in the opposite direction of the wall;
all that energy has to go somewhere, after all.
So if you set a petard and run straight back,
which is one’s normal inclination in moments like that,
you’re as likely as not to be lifted off the ground
when your petard detonates,
because you’re caught in the blast back;
you have to run away and to the side
to avoid getting caught by your own petard,
which is counter-intuitive,
and many a pétardier made that fatal mistake.
Being a pétardier was really dangerous job,
and the risk that the bomb you’ve set would hurt you
was a very real one;
we do not think of bombs as 16th century weapons,
yet Shakespeare wrote of them in Hamlet
(coining the phrase “hoist with his own petard,”
and seemingly adding it to our cultural vocabulary
for time immemorial in the process).
And the chief priests and scribes were acting as pétardiers
that morning when they approached Jesus at the Temple;
they were attempting to approach well-fortified opponent,
namely Jesus, who was clearly smarter than they were,
and to finish him off by putting a little bomb on him,
hoping that would take care of the matter one and for all.
But the thing that turns this “so-so” illustration into a great one
(if you will indulge the hubris of the statement)
is the etymology of the phrase itself:
“petard” is a modern French word meaning “firecracker”
which comes from the middle French “péter,”
meaning literally “break wind;”
it was a vulgar term that became military jargon
because it was such an apt description,
despite the fact that that it was coarse;
so at the risk of being too painfully obvious,
it appears that the Immortal Bard,
William Shakespeare, is, in the third Act Hamlet,
making a fart joke (or really a fart pun).
And as it turns out, the scribes and elders
there on the Temple Mount that day
fare no better than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
the two courtiers and childhood friends of Hamlet
who were the unlucky pétardiers in Shakespeare’s story;
the scribes and elders are enraged with Jesus,
who, in the 24 hours previous to this story,
has arrived into town on a donkey,
stirring up the people of Jerusalem,
who shout “Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessings on the one who comes in the Name of the Lord!”
And if that wasn’t enough,
Jesus then shows up at the Temple,
and threw out everyone selling and buying there;
even going so far as to say
“It’s written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.”
But you’ve made it a hideout for crooks.”
Then Jesus began healing the lame and the blind,
right there in the Temple:
in a few short minutes,
Jesus turned the whole order of things on its head;
in almost the blink of an eye,
everything was upside down.
Jesus then went to Bethany,
which is a short walk,
only a mile and a half, over the Mount of Olives,
and down its’ southern slope;
Bethany was place where the ancient Kings of Judea
had been buried,
and where Jesus himself raised Lazarus from the dead;
Bethany is laden with meaning,
and Jesus retiring there,
after his triumphant entry
and chaotic rage at the Temple,
echoes his being the Christ, the Messiah,
and also foreshadows his death at the week’s end.
The VERY NEXT MORNING,
Jesus is hungry while walking back to Jerusalem,
and he sees a fig tree on the side of the road.
Jesus goes to that fig tree,
only to find that it’s all leaves and no figs.
Jesus is so angry that he shoots that fig tree a dirty glance,
says, “You’ll never again bear fruit!”
and the tree withers up and dies.
Jesus is IN A MOOD TODAY.
Then Jesus arrives at the temple,
and has the encounter from today’s Gospel
with the chief priests and the elders,
in which they see Jesus again,
and are still furious at him,
with yesterday’s fiasco still clearly in their minds.
So the chief priests and the elders think to themselves
“Let’s trap Jesus with his own words,”
and they approach Jesus that morning,
with their indignant question,
“What kind of authority do you have for doing these things?
Who gave you this authority?”
And Jesus catches them at their own game:
he answers their question with a question
(which is also super annoying),
and asks them about John the Baptist,
and where John got his authority.
And they were stumped;
there was no way to answer the question
that didn’t entrap the chief priests and the elders;
and suddenly the hunters were the hunted,
and found themselves in Jesus’ trap.
It’s amazing what Jesus was able to do there:
he saw their trap a mile away,
and, as Shakespeare implied in Hamlet,
trapped them in their own fart.
But then Jesus went on, and really drove his point home:
he asks a question about doing and talking.
Who has done his Father’s will,
the one who walks the walk,
or the one who talks the talk?
Jesus tells the scribes and elders
that the tax collectors and prostitutes,
the absolute lowest rung on the Jewish social ladder,
disqualified from being persons in a way,
with their very humanity denied
because of the things they have done;
unclean, untouchable, unlovable,
the very people who the elders and scribes believe
have betrayed God and the People,
these will enter the Kingdom of God
before the scribes and elders.
Jesus is working that bad mood he’s in,
and he’s almost taunting the elders and scribes,
and making a point that is core to Matthew’s view of Jesus:
faith is a verb, not a noun.
It’s not something you have, and cherish,
like a keepsake on a shelf,
but something that you do out in the world.
Even better, it’s like health;
we have our health, and we’re grateful for our health,
but to keep our health, and to become even healthier,
we have to exercise,
we have to eat well,
we have to get enough sleep;
and it’s in doing those things
that we maintain the health we have,
or start to build stronger health
where there has been little before.
The tax collectors and prostitutes
were being very unhealthy,
and they desperately needed to change their health,
and they heard the word from John the Baptist
and changed their lives,
and became healthier people.
The scribes and elders, on the other hand,
are very happy with how they are doing at this point;
they have respect, they have authority, they have privilege,
so the chief priests and elders
don’t particularly want to change
like the tax collectors and prostitutes do,
and the scribes and elders are further enraged
by Jesus telling them that the way they see the world
is upside down and backwards,
and these leaders at the Temple
will be the last ones into the Kingdom of God,
not the first, like they expect to be.
It’s not hard to imagine the scribes and elders
going over the locker room at the Temple
and replaying the game film,
wondering how the whole debacle happened:
how did they get themselves into this,
and how did that country rube from Nazareth
manage to get the better of them?
This is one more brick in the wall of evidence
that was used to condemn Jesus,
later on that week;
one more example to the authorities of the time
that Jesus was trouble, and had to be killed.
And the chief priests and elders were right about that;
Jesus did have to die on the cross.
But the chief priests and elders had the reasons all wrong:
Jesus had to give himself for us because of our brokenness,
not because of our brilliance;
Jesus was crucified because we are so flawed,
not because we are so right;
Jesus died so we could be saved,
not so we would be vindicated.
So what do we take from this today?
Jesus manages in just a few words
to both claim and challenge us,
inviting us into loving relationship with the whole world,
with the tax collectors and the prostitutes,
of our own day, and of our own lives.
Jesus is asking the chief priests and the elders,
and asking each of us today, to change.
Jesus is all about change,
all about disrupting the way we live our lives,
the routines and customs that we’ve settled into,
and Jesus asks us to change them,
to share the power and privilege we have
with those who have none
(like the prostitutes and tax collectors in his day,
and the prostitutes and tax collectors of our day,
along with the people of color,
and the people who are poor,
and the people who are queer,
and the people who are addicted,
and the people who are mentally ill,
all of whom our society blames for its problems,
because blaming is easier than changing).
Jesus is inviting us to change,
as individuals and as a society,
going out into the vineyards to work,
instead of just talking
about the work that needs to be done.
Conversations with Jesus are a truly risky thing:
Jesus claims us, calls us his own,
and then challenges us to change,
because we all need to change,
you, and me, and everyone,
to make the Kingdom of God a reality now.
It’s like our health:
we have to keep eating well,
and exercising,
and making the Kingdom of God a priority,
because overcoming the Kingdom of the World
is a full time job,
and it’s not exactly in our nature as humans.
But Jesus is there with us in it,
if we’re ready to let him lead.
And that is the mission of the church:
teaching, and supporting, and nurturing,
and helping each other
make the Kingdom of God a reality,
today, and every day;
to put it in the words of the Book of Common Prayer,
“restor[ing] all people to unity with God
and each other in Christ.”
That’s the work we’re called to as the Church,
and that’s the work we’re called to at St. Luke’s:
To invite our community here
to make the Kingdom of God a reality,
by making disciples here in Ballard,
and by proclaiming the Good News,
and inviting others into a life of faith,
faith the verb, the action in the community.
Faith: the love of God manifest in our lives.
Today’s reading from the Gospel
is one of the readings where we see
how Jesus has an edge:
Jesus is the Good Shepherd,
but Jesus can also be angry,
and shrewd, and biting.
The chief priests and elders at the Temple wanted to trap him,
but they were hoist by their own petard on this one;
To revisit Shakespeare one last time,
there is something rotten there on the Temple Mount,
but it’s the chief priests and elders, not Jesus.
As Christians, knowing the rest of the story,
and reading it from our perspective,
it’s fun to delve into this story,
and see Jesus get one over so fully on his antagonists;
but we today need to remember
that Jesus not only claims us,
but also challenges us,
to make the Kingdom of God known on earth,
and to work to change the world we live in,
for the better.
Jesus is calling us to love everyone that he loves,
and Jesus loves everyone, full stop.
That’s the vision for world,
that’s the mission of the church,
that’s the life we are invited and called into together,
lest we find that
we are the ones hoist ourselves.
