Epistle Lesson: Philippians 2:1-13

Rev. Stephen H. Wilkins

Georgetown Presbyterian Church

September 25, 2005

The Pentagon recently spent billions of dollars developing a supercomputer that would be able to solve any military problem—large or small, tactical or strategic. The day came for a demonstration of the new machine. The computer room was filled with high-powered generals, as well as the proud design engineers. The project’s lead manager instructed the generals to enter into the supercomputer the parameters to a difficult military problem. The military leaders proceeded to enter their hypothetical situation into the computer and then asked the pivotal question: should we attack or retreat? They then pressed the enter key and awaited the computer’s response.

After about 10 seconds the computer printed out its one word answer: Yes.

The generals looked at each other, somewhat stupefied. Did the computer mean "Yes, attack," or "Yes, retreat"? Finally, one of the generals moved over to the keyboard and typed in the question, "Yes what?" The computer responded instantly: "Yes, Sir!"

That’s a machine that had no problem recognizing authority!

In our gospel lesson this morning, though, there are people who clearly have trouble accepting the authority of Jesus. Over the next few weeks we’ll be taking a look at the confrontation between Jesus and the religious authorities. At this point in the narrative of the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus is in the last week of his life. He has entered Jerusalem in the manner of a great king with overwhelming popular acclaim, and the Jewish leadership is forced to watch--silently, jealously. After that, we find Jesus entering the Temple; he doesn’t like the crass commercialism he sees there, and so he overturns the tables of the moneychangers and the sellers of sacrificial animals. The next day, Jesus comes back to the Temple, and it is at this point where our text picks up, as the chief priests and the Temple elders confront Jesus: By what authority are you doing these things?

By what authority…?

The religious leadership of Jesus’ day had spent a great deal of time and energy trying to discredit Jesus, trying to find some way to get Jesus out of the way. Now, they come at Jesus from the angle of authority: By what official permission does Jesus do these things? Who has conferred upon Jesus the power, the official capacity, to do these things?

If Jesus were to openly confess that his authority has come from God, then they could label him as a heretic, or at least as a lunatic, and discredit him; if, on the other hand, Jesus claims his authority has been conferred upon him by the people, then they could turn that information over to the Romans and have Jesus tried for treason.

By what authority…?

In a manner that is not unusual for Jesus, Jesus answers the Jews with a question of his own: "John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or from people?"

The Jews assume that Jesus is asking them an either-or question, and they immediately find themselves in a predicament. If they answer, "from heaven," then they will validate John the Baptist’s ministry, though they had previously rejected it; if they answer, "from people," then they will invoke the wrath of the masses, for John was viewed as a prophet by the general population. And so their answer to Jesus is, "neither."

In truth, though, the correct answer would’ve been to say "both." You see, the Jewish leadership was coming at the issue of authority from only one side, when it is in fact a two-sided issue. It’s one thing for authority to be conferred by some sort of official empowerment; but conferred authority is not complete—conferred authority is not true authority—until it has been accepted.

There was a slogan that was popular in the anti-war climate of the 1970s. You would see it frequently on bumper stickers. It was a buzzword around university campuses. "Question Authority." It typified an attitude of contempt toward people upon whom some official authority had been conferred. It was an attitude that said, "I don’t care what kind of authority you have. You can’t tell me what to do."

You see, conferred authority is meaningless if it is not also accepted. And that, I believe, is the point of the story that Jesus tells. He tells of a father who gives the same command to two sons. One son says "no," but later repents and goes and obeys his father; the other says, "yes, sir," yet he does nothing. The father, by virtue of his family position, has conferred authority; yet that authority is realized in only one of the sons. Jesus is telling the Jews, and through Matthew he’s telling us, "It doesn’t matter where my authority comes from if you have no intention of accepting it."

Conferred authority is meaningless if it is not obeyed.

We saw this in the days that preceded Hurricane Katrina. The governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama had the authority to order evacuations as Katrina approached. Yet thousands of people ignored those orders, and they chose to stay. I’m not talking about the poor who were not able to evacuate; I’m talking about those who had the ability to leave, yet chose to stay. For those people, the authority of the governor was worthless, for they chose to ignore the orders to evacuate; many of them paid with their lives.

Authority comes in two parts: It is conferred from above, but it must also be accepted in order for it to become true authority. It’s "like an electrical circuit demanding its completion in order to be actual; it is both the request to act, and the responding action."

Conferred authority is meaningless if it is not also accepted.

There’s an interesting connection between today’s parable and something Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. When the second son initially assents to his father’s command, he says, "Yes, SIR." The Greek word translated as "sir" is the same word that is translated elsewhere as "Lord." At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."

And so there is this connection between the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, and the parable before us this morning: To CALL Jesus your Lord is one thing; to MAKE Jesus your Lord is another thing altogether. "Lord" is more than a word. It’s not saying "Jesus is Lord" that makes him Lord; it’s obedience that makes him Lord.

You know, we sometimes have an unhealthy over-emphasis on doctrine and knowledge, at the expense of obedience. We’re content with knowing what to do, yet do we act upon what we know? We’re satisfied at acknowledging that something is right, but do we then go on and do the right thing? We invest incredible intellectual energy into crafting weighty theological arguments, but what kind of investment of our lives do we make in living out the implications of those intellectual theological arguments?

Which son was it who recognized the authority of the father? Which son was it who ultimately submits to the lordship of the father? It was the son who obeyed.

Do you see what Jesus is trying to tell us? He’s confronting our tendency to believe that right doctrine alone will save us, when in fact obedience is required. He’s trying to tell us that there has to be more than right knowledge, there has to be more than just saying the right things. Obedience is not what saves us, but obedience is the evidence that right doctrine has taken root; obedience is the tangible manifestation of our faith.

We have this idea that there is a necessary separation between faith and works, when in fact that is an artificial separation. It is true that it is not works that save us, but faith; it is also true that faith without works is not faith at all. Obedience is not subordinate to faith; it goes hand-in-hand with faith. Jesus cannot be Lord if all we do is confess with our mouths that he is Lord. It takes more than words to make Jesus our Lord.

Jesus has the conferred authority; his authority has been given to him by God. The question is, have you accepted his authority? Have you submitted your life to him? In Philippians, Paul looks toward the day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. We’re quick to confess with our lips, but the bowing of the knee doesn’t come so naturally for us, does it?

The other day Flo Mabe gave me a page she had just cut out from the latest edition of Horizons Magazine, the magazine of Presbyterian Women. The page had a brief testimony written by a woman who is from First Presbyterian Church in Midland. Phyllis Roush is a delightful woman of faith. In the testimony, she tells of her mother, who not only understood Jesus’ command to care for the poor, but who also lived out that command on a daily basis. She said, "Yes, sir", with both lip and life. Phyllis said:

"One of my earliest memories is of Mother feeding ‘hobos’ on the back porch. She served meals with such grace and kindness, placing a small lunch cloth on an overturned wash tub and feeding our guests whatever we ate that day. All through the 1930s, old friends and half-forgotten relatives would show up at our doorstep, miraculously close to mealtime, and Mother always asked them to stay. She would whisper to me, ‘FHB’ (family hold back)—meaning that we were to take the smallest portions, never second helpings and on occasion we were to pretend that we were not hungry at all. I know that Mother did that more than once."

It seems that Phyllis Roush’s mother had a keen understanding that it’s not enough simply to acknowledge that Jesus is Lord. It’s not the words "Jesus is Lord" that put food on the table of the poor; it’s a life lived in obedience to Jesus that fed the poor on the back porch of Phyllis’ childhood home during the Great Depression.

The leaders asked Jesus, "By what authority do you do these things?" It really didn’t matter how Jesus would answer them, because where Jesus’ authority came from would mean nothing to people who had no intention of accepting his authority in the first place.

In reality, Jesus’ authority doesn’t just come from God; his authority is not complete until you have accepted it in your own life.

Is Jesus the Lord of your life? You’d better be careful how you answer that, because "Lord" is more than a word, you know.

Amen.