Jesus Wants a Decision

I’m always amused by those interviews on television that are held in an impromptu fashion on the streets asking people where they’re going to stand on a particular political position or person. As I was walking along Bloor Street this past week there was a reporter who was coming up to people and asking them what their opinion was about the upcoming mayoral debates and election and asking people for what position they took. They came up to me and they placed the microphone in front of me and I burbled something, and thank goodness it didn’t appear on air.

Isn’t it strange to just to go up to somebody in an impromptu manner and ask them where they stand on a major thing in life? It is really quite humorous when you listen to the responses. For example there are those people who, when you ask them who they’re going to vote for, will tell you. They’ve made up their minds, they’re convinced and they want you to know it. Then there are those who are nonchalant and apathetic and practise a sense of ennui that they really just don’t care at all one way or the other because government doesn’t matter or something like that.

Then there’s a third group, the people who say that they’re undecided, that they haven’t yet made up their mind. They will vote because they believe it’s important, they just haven’t made up their mind. When I hear these three groups of people I respond differently to them. To those who have made up their mind, yes or no, I say, “Good for you.” That’s brave to say what it is you really believe. To those who don’t give a darn about anything, well, they’re never going to anyway, so fine. But it’s those who say I haven’t made up my mind yet that bother me the most, and I’ll tell you why. The Scottish referendum.

I followed this with considerable interest, and stayed up until 1:00 or 1:30 in the morning waiting for the results. I have family on both sides of the border in Scotland, and for me this was a major event. I was fascinated that 24 hours before the vote, a great number of people said they were undecided. Then the vote was held and it was discovered by pollsters afterwards that a great many of those who were undecided had in fact decided after all and finally voted quite heavily in one direction.

When asked later in a canvass why some of them were undecided, it was because they didn’t want to offend their friends or their relatives or to appear to be on one side or the other, so they held their cards close to their chest. You know after two years of campaigning and a mere 24 hours before you actually vote, you really should have decided in some way or another about the future of your country. There was something disingenuous I think about the undecideds. I’m not denigrating people who give deep thought or consideration to things. I just think that saying you’re undecided is a veil behind which cowards hide.

Having said that, I look at the passage from the Gospel of Matthew today and I see that this indecision for the sake of preserving yourself and your reputation is as old as the hills. I’ve always liked the dictum from Thomas Jefferson: “In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.” In other words, Jefferson was saying that there are times you need to make stand. You need to make a decision. You can’t just go with the flow. You have to make up your mind where you’re going to go and what you’re going to do.

The passage from Matthew is a clear indication that this happened in the life and the times of Jesus of Nazareth. The setting is rather interesting and tells us a lot about the encounter that we read. The setting is the last week of Jesus’ life. Jesus had just come into Jerusalem, had entered into the city in a triumphal way, which we call Palm Sunday, and the beginning of the end of Jesus’ ministry had commenced. He came and the crowds celebrated him. They sang Hosanna. The next day he goes to the temple and, we all know the story, don’t we? He overturns the tables and says, “You have made the House of God into a den of thieves. You have taken my father’s house, which was meant to be a place of worship, and you’ve denigrated it.”

It was a condemnation of the whole way in which the spiritual life of Israel at the time was being governed. It was a statement by Jesus of absolute rejection of the religious powers and what they’d let happen to the place where the holy of holy resides. As N.T. Wright, the great New Testament scholar suggests, this was the defining moment in Jesus’ ministry right up to the cross. This was the moment when he declared who he really was and revealed to people the true nature of his prophetic ministry and his incarnate presence. Jesus not only overturned the tables in the temple, he had told a story, a parable about a dying fig tree to imply that the old order in Israel was coming to an end and a new one would begin.

These were powerful things that Jesus was doing and the religious leaders knew it. They knew precisely what he was saying and what he was doing. It set things up for a conflict. The religious leaders came up to Jesus and said to him, “By what authority are you doing this?”? Jesus, in his usual inimitable and brilliant style, answered the question with a question. I’ve often thought as I read the gospels that Jesus was influenced by Socrates. Socrates predated Jesus by 400 years, so it is possible. He puts the person who’s asking the question on the hot seat and deflects from himself. It was as if for example, I was questioned on Bloor Street and let’s just say hypothetically, the reporter says, “What do you think of Rob Ford and should he run for mayor?”

I would then say, “Well, tell me what do you think about Rob Ford and then we can have a discussion.” The reporter would just freak out, not know what to say, not know what to do and then restate the question. I would repeat mine back again and we’d get absolutely nowhere.

Jesus does this to the disciples, but unlike me, Jesus is smart. He asks a question that demands a response. He says, “You ask me by what authority I speak. Let me ask you a question. John the Baptist, was his ministry exercised and/or had authority from Heaven or from human beings? What was the source of John the Baptist’s ministry?”

Now, you would think that on the surface that is a very strange question, but it’s a very powerful one. Jesus and John the Baptist, throughout the gospels, are inextricably tied. Every gospel records the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. John the Baptist was the one to first declare that Jesus was the Messiah. It was John the Baptist who said, “I am not worthy to tie the laces of this person who is following me,” namely Jesus. John the Baptist’s ministry was always a preparation for the coming of Jesus. It was always a moment to say here comes the power of the Lord.

Therefore, the religious leaders are in a bind. The legal scholars are in a bind. What do they do with this question? They start a debate between themselves. One of them says, “Well you know, the problem is if we agree that John the Baptist was blessed by God and that his words were from Heaven, well ipso facto, that would mean that Jesus is the Messiah, John’s words are blessed by God and he has affirmed Jesus. Therefore, Jesus is the Holy One, the Messiah, the Chosen One.”

On the other hand, if we say that John the Baptist’s words are only that of a human being and are not inspired by the Divine, then the crowds are going to get mad at us because they were following John the Baptist, and he was popular wherever he went. They were frightful that this group of people, the common people, the ordinary people would turn on them. They couldn’t win. If on the one hand they said John was blessed, then Jesus is the Messiah. If they say no, they’re going to be unpopular. So what was their answer? We don’t know. That is the vote of the undecided. Why? Because there’s a lot in there to suggest that they knew very well the authority with which Jesus was speaking and John the Baptist beforehand.

Richard Bauckham, who is one of, in my opinion, the leading biblical scholars and theologians of the last 30 years, teaches at St. Andrews University in Scotland and also at Ridley College in Cambridge, has written a delightful book, “Jesus: A Very Short Introduction.” I recommend you go home and you get this from Amazon. In this little book, and it’s just a few pages long, Bauckham writes these words, and they’re far more authoritative than I could write, “What seems most to have impressed people about Jesus in his lifetime is the authority with which he spoke and acted.” The Greek word indicates the power to commend. About his teaching, people said that he taught with authority, unlike the scribes, the legal experts who relied on professional expertise to do no more than apply traditional teaching.

When he claimed authority to forgive sins, the scribes were shocked because only God had the authority to forgive sins. His exorcisms were recognized as the exercise of authority over the powers of evil. The only way the scribes could explain this was to accuse Jesus of collusion with those evil powers. Bauchkam is right. Jesus’ ministry was characterised by authority, the authority of his relationship and the certainty in the relationship that he had with his heavenly Father. Time and time again he refers to things as “My Father’s house or my Father’s will or my Father’s power.” There is a recognition in everything that Jesus said, that he is under the guidance and the influence and the authority of his heavenly Father. Jesus’ ministry is unique and it is powerful because it is God’s ministry.

Therefore, when he performs miracles, it is to God, the Father he ascribes glory and honour. When he drives out evil he does so in the name of his Father. Jesus’ ministry was one of authority because of the close relationship, the bond, the unity, as the son has with the Father. And you know what was interesting? The ordinary people saw that.

In the parable that follows a distinction is made between those who espouse their religion and their faith and those who didn’t. What was interesting was that those who espoused it didn’t recognize Jesus for what he was, but those who didn’t were the ones who followed Jesus, the prostitutes and the tax collectors. They were merely examples of ordinary people who knew and understood the authority of Jesus. Why was Jesus’ ministry such a threat? Why was it so powerful if there was not the authority of God within it? The ordinary people saw it, but the leaders were threatened by it. Be under no illusion, they saw it. They knew what they were up against and they did everything they could to undermine him. More than that, they wanted him to say straight out who he was, and Jesus would not give them that satisfaction. He wanted them to say it. He wanted them to acknowledge is authority.

Therefore, for us it’s not up to a religious power or an authority to say this is the authority of Jesus. It’s not just for those who have words that are articulate and powerful to tell you that Jesus has authority. It is not up to a great institution to impose that authority on you. Rather it is something that you are confronted by and have to decide. That is why this passage is so powerful. There is no room for fence-sitting, no place for indecision. The word comes to us and demands a decision.

I read a great article by Charles Campbell, the fiery American preacher, about him watching an episode of Dr. Phil and he asked this question. “Dr. Phil, if you could interview anyone that had ever been in history, who would you like to interview?”

And he said, “I would like to interview Jesus of Nazareth.”

Charles Campbell said about this, “Don’t do it. Why? Because you might be shocked at just what a difficult interview it would turn out to be.”

In other words, Dr. Phil, you might think that you’re sitting there on your stool entertaining the masses by asking Jesus some very nice questions, but you know what will happen? What’ll happen to you says Charles Campbell is what happened to the scribes and the Pharisees, Jesus will start asking you the questions and he will want to know what you believe and he will want to know what’s going on in your life, and he will want to know precisely where you stand on things. By the time it’s finished, the interview by Jesus of Dr. Phil would become an interview for the ages that maybe Dr. Phil wouldn’t want.
I think Campbell’s right. I’m not sure I would want to sit down and do an interview with Jesus and ask him questions because I have a strange feeling he’s going to want to know what I think about things and where I stand.

Time and time again in his ministry it is Jesus who asked the questions of us, not us asking the questions of Jesus. It’s Jesus who confronts us with the truth and asks for us to make the verdict, not for Jesus to defend himself or give an articulation of himself. That is the beauty of the gospels. It demands something of us. I think that those religious leaders were deceiving themselves. I think they knew exactly who he was, and it was, to quote a certain Vice President of the United States, an “inconvenient truth.” It was probable that they knew exactly who he was and even if they didn’t, as Matthew suggested, they were going out of their way to trick him, so there wasn’t anything particularly nice but rather something rather pernicious about what they were trying to do. They wanted to play games with Jesus, and Jesus would have none of it. He wanted to know where they stood on John the Baptist because he knew that by answering, it would say whether they stood with him.

That’s, I think, the problem with being an undecided. I realize, and I think we have to be fair and honest with people, that in matters of religious phenomena an in matters of theological truth there is room for ambiguity and uncertainty. I’m not saying that everything is all nice and clear and neat and packaged. I’m not going to come to you with an eight-page statement that you have to adhere to, to make you a Christian or a set of propositions that are required before you can actually say you are a Christian. We come from that great Protestant reformed root that says no such thing should be demanded of us from outside. But neither should ambiguity and uncertainty be a veil for not making a decision and not finally saying, “I stand with this Jesus, I commit my life.” Because living with those ambiguities and uncertainties, can only end in something good, once a decision has been made. Jesus comes to us as he comes to every generation and every soul and says, “Where do you stand on me? Don’t ask me where I stand on myself or on you.”

I read a lovely story in a book called The Zookeeper. It is a children’s story, but when I read it I thought it was a little scary. It is about people who kept racoons as pets. I guess some people do that. And anyway, they have racoons as pets, and there was this one friend of the zookeeper called Julie, who evidently had a racoon that was cuddly and friendly and had that lovely little long, dark face and lashes and big eyes. Julie was quite besotted with this racoon. But the zookeeper said, “You realize that by the time the racoon is 24 months old, they go through a hormonal change and when they change hormonally, they have a propensity to become violent and unpredictable and dangerous.

He warned her and said, “You really have got to do something about this pet. It might be cuddly now, but trust me, it’s not going to be cuddly in the future.”

She said “Oh, I’m going to be different. I love Bozo, or whatever his name was, and Bozo wouldn’t hurt me. I mean look at him, Bozo’s cute and cuddly.”
The zookeepers said, “Yeah, you’ll cuddle this thing once too often and one of these days when the hormones kick in, you’re going to suffer. You’ve got to make up your mind. Are you going to keep the racoon or are you going to let it go? And I’d let it go.”

She kept the racoon. You all know what happened, don’t you? She got mauled. Her face got scarred. She ended up in hospital. She didn’t listen. She didn’t want to make up her mind. She was uncertain but she wouldn’t listen to the one who had authority. She sat on the fence and it hurt her. Jesus is saying to the religious leaders, “I want you to know what authority I have because I want you to know where it came from. And you do know,” Jesus was saying to them, and this is implied. “You do know that this is going to hurt you.” He’d stood outside Jerusalem and he wept for the city. He was concerned about what had happened in the temple and the way that God had been dishonoured. He was concerned about the way that they were sailing too close to the winds of Roman power. He was concerned that they were turning on the very one that God had sent to save them. Jesus wasn’t here just condemning them, he was trying to get them to change their mind, and they wouldn’t. They just simply tried to trap him.

This morning, if I would have come up to you with a microphone and I said to you, “I’m Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, where do you stand? Are you for me, yes, or no?” What would your answer be? If I asked you that question, would you care at all? Probably, or would you say you were undecided and need to know more. If you need to know more, then search your hearts and minds and see if you’re being true to yourself and to him. If you are, fine. If you’re not, think again. Jesus comes to every generation and every age and every person, and says: ”By whose authority did John speak? Heaven or from humanity?” And the one answer you can’t give is: “We don’t know.” Amen.