"Who Do You Think You Are?"

Text: Luke 20:1-8

We can safely assume that this exchange between Jesus the upper echelon of priests and teachers was more than a simple tit-for-tat game. It wasn't primarily about showing up the leaders, regardless of how deserving they may have ben of such treatment. So what was the point?

First of all, we should note what was taking place when the question was posed to Jesus: who gave you the right to do what you did to those merchants the other day? Let's review the scene. Jesus is teaching in the Temple, speaking the "good news" to people who were hanging on every word. What HAD they been hearing in the Temple if it wasn't good news? And the ones who were set apart to do the teaching weren't teaching--they were interrupting the preaching of the good news of the kingdom in order to ask about protocol. They were more concerned with silencing the one whose words were life than they were with the people given into their spiritual care.

Secondly, by pointing to John as one who had been sent by God Jesus again implied their own failure as teachers. John, too, was one whom people went out of their way to hear a message worthy of their response. And by refusing to answer Jesus' question, the teachers proved themselves incapable of discerning and stating where God was acting in their world.

Have we ever been more interested in whether protocol is followed than in whether the truth is being spoken, or so caught up in the trappings and procedures that we attempt to silence the good news, without even hearing it ourselves? Have we left people longing for the Word, and at the same time cast doubt upon those who provide it? Not everyone who draws a crowd is speaking truly for and of God; but we must be willing to listen first. God speaks in surprising places when the voices He first provides have been unfaithful in proclamation.