Introduction   

The chief priests and the eld­ers of the people were the worst oppon­ents of Jesus and, there­fore, of truth and justice. This was because Jesus refused to par­take in their cor­rup­tion and selfish­ness. Without min­cing words, Jesus told them their sins and offences. The Gos­pel read­ing of this Sunday is dir­ectly addressed to them (cf. Matt 21:23) and it is a fur­ther example of Jesus’ zero tol­er­ance for evil. Jesus is now found in Jer­u­s­alem, the final des­tin­a­tion of his mis­sion. After his tri­umphant entry into the city, his first move was to enter the Temple, the sup­posed holy place of God. What he saw baffled him enough that he had to drive those mer­chants out of the temple. Unfor­tu­nately, the same prob­lem con­tin­ues today in vari­ous churches and Chris­ti­an com­munit­ies. People do their busi­ness under the dis­guise of wor­ship, ador­a­tion, break­throughs, mir­acles, and heal­ing. Who knows what Jesus is think­ing about this ugly and ungodly situ­ation? Back to our top­ic: Jesus’ action in the Temple cre­ated a ser­i­ous con­front­a­tion between him and the Temple authority—the chief priests and the eld­ers of the people (cf. Matt 21:11–27). It was after such intense dis­cus­sion that Jesus con­tin­ued to address them with the mes­sage found in Mat­thew 21:28–32.

The way of righteousness

Jesus said that John the Baptist came to show the way of right­eous­ness (Greek: dikaiosunē). Now, when the tax col­lect­ors and pros­ti­tutes heard such a mes­sage of right­eous­ness, they real­ized their mis­takes and repen­ted. But when the priests and eld­ers heard the same mes­sage, they nev­er cared and, con­sequently, did not see the need to repent. They even opposed both the mes­sage and the bear­er of the mes­sage. John only preached the way of right­eous­ness. He did not preach suc­cess, break­through, the gos­pel of pro­gress, favour, total heal­ing, wealth without effort, spir­itu­al battle with the dev­il, or fight­ing ima­gined enemies. In Mat­thew 6:33, Jesus advised his dis­ciples to seek the king­dom and right­eous­ness of God first, so that those things they worry about in Matt 6:25–32 will be giv­en to them. Right­eous­ness refers to that which God has approved. Whatever God has examined and deemed right is right­eous, and this is what should be prac­ticed. Priests and eld­ers of the Church, then and now, tend to sub­sti­tute God’s right­eous­ness with their own right­eous­ness. Every spir­it must be thor­oughly examined to see if it is God’s spir­it or simply human spir­it, because there are too many false proph­ets in the world (cf. 1John 4:1), who pre­tend to be God’s mes­sen­gers when actu­ally they are work­ing for their own per­son­al and selfish grat­i­fic­a­tion and enrichment.

Conclusion

With the story of the two sons, Jesus reminded the chief priests and the eld­ers that not­with­stand­ing their pre­sumed sanc­tity, pros­ti­tutes and tax col­lect­ors find their way to the king­dom of God because they were and are still touched by the mes­sage of John the Baptist, while priests and eld­ers who claimed and still claim to be almost one with God nev­er cared to listen to such a mes­sage, how much more repent­ing (cf. Matt 21:32). This should be a ser­i­ous mes­sage to all, espe­cially the reli­gious lead­ers who usu­ally think the Word of God is nev­er for them but always for oth­ers. Today, most reli­gious lead­ers are involved in all sorts of evil and dirty busi­ness for the sake of wealth and power, sub­ject­ing the masses to end­less suf­fer­ing. Reli­gious lead­ers are sup­posed to be mon­it­ors of politi­cians, dir­ect­ing and recall­ing their atten­tion with their undi­luted mes­sages and preach­ing about their oblig­a­tions towards the people. Unfor­tu­nately, the oppos­ite is the case.

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