Holy Week

If Monday’s arrival at the temple was marked by Jesus’ living parable of cleansing God’s house, Tuesday’s entrance was marked by a direct, verbal confrontation from the religious leadership, the Sanhedrin. They demanded to know who gave Jesus the right to behave as He has in their temple.

In Mark 11:27-33 we read, “They came again to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came and asked him, “By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do these things?”

Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; then answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things.  Was John’s baptism from heaven or of human origin? Answer me.”

They discussed it among themselves: “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’ ”—they were afraid of the crowd, because everyone thought that John was truly a prophet. So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”

And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Jesus was challenging the authority of the religious leadership, and they felt threatened, so they decided to confront him. By what authority are you doing these things? Perhaps we should allow Jesus and his way of acting and speaking to challenge us, or have we grown too used to them? Do we feel he has authority over me and do we resist him?

Brennan Manning in his book ‘The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out’ writes, “Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of KNOWING Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.”

Jesus knew his detractors were not really interested in his answer, so he answered their challenge by challenging them himself. Unfortunately, they were not after the truth but after holding on to their own power. Perhaps we could notice the same mechanism in ourselves, as we seek to justify and rationalise our choices to ourselves.

God of silence and God of all sound,
help me to listen.
Help me to do the deep listening 

to the sounds of my soul,
waiting to hear your soft voice 

calling me deeper into you.
Give me attentive ears
that begin to separate the noise 

from the sounds that are you;
you who have been speaking to me
and through me my whole life,
for so long that you can seem like background noise.
Today help me hear you anew. Amen