Luke 20:1-8

Confrontation - Priests and Authority

Jesus was not interested in avoiding conflict. His concern was to share his vision with all who would listen. His audience would have been largely pilgrims, many of them Galileans, who had arrived early, had little else to do, and had nowhere else convenient to gather other than in the open spaces of the temple courtyards.

Jesus had his reservations about all that the Temple stood for, but it was still the one place in Jerusalem big enough for people to gather, and where the pilgrims naturally tended to congregate. Though he knew he would have been anything but welcome to the priests, his concern was always to share with people as much as he could about God’s love for them and its radical consequences for their lives as individuals and as community.

Luke 20:1-8 - Priests Challenge Jesus’ Authority

¹ One day while he was teaching the people in the temple

and proclaiming the good news,

For Jesus, people were made whole more by enlightenment than by physical healing. Luke summed up Jesus’ activity under two headings:

he taught
he told them the good news.

... the high priests and the scribes came up to him with the aristocrats

² and addressed him,

“Tell us with whose authority you do these things,

and who gives you this authority.”

This was his first encounter with the chief priests. Jesus’ unilateral shutting down of temple activity had publicly defied their authority. Not surprisingly their challenge was direct and, true to type, their question was about his authority. Their purpose in confronting him publicly was to undermine his credibility with the people. They could then move to discredit and finally to eliminate him. The presence of the people was crucial to the contest.

³ He said in answer to them,

“I shall ask you something and you can tell me.

⁴ Was John’s baptism from heaven

or was it purely human?”

⁵ They discussed among themselves, saying,

“If we say from heaven,

he will say, ‘Then why did you not believe in it?’

⁶ If we say human,

all the people will stone us,

convinced as they are that John was a prophet.”

⁷ So they answered that they did not know from where.

⁸ Jesus then said to them,

“Nor shall I tell you with whose authority I do these things.”

The priests and scribes had been unable (or unwilling) to see the hand of God behind the work of the Baptist. Consistently they were unable to discern the presence of God in the mission of Jesus. These were the men in power, the men whose responsibility was to be particularly responsive to the things of God. It is fascinating how their possession of power seemed especially to deaden their sensitivity to God. Such is the potentially, though not intrinsically, corrupting pressure of institutional systems. It tended to keep them locked into the status quo, unable to respond to the ever-creating God constantly at work in the world.

Jesus’ response took them by surprise, and left them with no room to manoeuvre. In the honour culture of the time, their inability to accept Jesus’ challenge meant further public loss of face for them and increased respect for Jesus. Their stratagem had recoiled on themselves.

Next >> Luke 20:9-19