Sermon - 10-1-23

<p>What comes to mind when you hear the word ‘authority’? Who has authority? How do we get it? Do we want it? Sometimes the older you get the less you want, other than over your own life.</p> <p>The way our world is set up there are levels of authority. The way our church is set up there are levels of authority. The way our lives are set up there is authority.</p> <p>We are surrounded by authority. In some respect we have a choice whether we want to recognize it or not. Often there is a price to pay if we don’t recognize authority.</p> <p>We first learn about authority in our homes growing up. Our parents or guardians are the first authority figures that we meet. Parents set healthy expectations to help children learn how to set healthy boundary lines for their own lives. As we are growing up we desire autonomy over our lives and once we have it we find out that it takes work to maintain it.</p> <p>          Throughout history we have seen healthy uses of authority and unhealthy. We have seen this in the church and in homes. Unhealthy authority occurs when we think we have all the answers. Healthy authority happens when we are willing to listen and work with others.</p> <p>Unhealthy authority often causes us to want to keep things the same, as that is when we think we will have the most control. Jesus challenges the authority of the chief priests and elders of the people in our Gospel lesson for today. To put this scene in context in our Gospel lesson, let us first look at what came before this in chapter 21 of Matthew.</p> <p>At the beginning of the chapter, we hear the familiar Palm Sunday story. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey with the people shouting Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The crowd was saying that he was the prophet, Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.</p> <p>Then he entered the temple and began tipping tables and driving out those who were buying and selling. This is one of the only times that we see Jesus exerting this kind of physical energy toward