Thoughts for the Day

Luke 20:1b-3 … the chief priests and the teachers of the law together with the elders came up to him. “Tell us by what authority you are doing these things,” they said.  “Who gave you this authority?”  He replied, “I will ask you a question.  Tell me, John’s baptism – was it from heaven or from men?”

One final time, Luke draws this thread between John the Baptist’s ministry and that of Jesus.  We’ve already considered how the crowds but not those in authority accepted John, and through his ministry were somehow ‘prepared’ in order to accept Jesus.  Now Jesus challenges those who challenge his authority about their view of John’s authority.  It gives Luke the opportunity to spell it out.  They know the people accepted John as a prophet – enough to turn on and kill anyone who would deny it – but they can’t admit his ministry was from heaven without explaining why they rejected it.  So, they decline to comment.   But what, I wonder, were the “things” that Jesus was doing that led them to challenge Jesus’s authority in the first place.  The text says he was teaching and preaching.  Was it simply words?  Unlikely!  Was he also forgiving sins? Quite possibly! But as we look back over Luke’s account, we find repeatedly that Jesus’s ministry was accompanied by miracles that were signposts to who he is.  These were what the disciples were praising God for on Palm Sunday.  Were these signposts evident in his teaching now in the temple courts?  I suspect so!  But these leaders cannot see the signposts and then deduce the authority they signal.  They would rather the miracles were left unexplained than attribute them to God.  Are things so different today?