The Third Monday of Advent -- December 13, 2010

Matthew 21:23 - 27

Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”

Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”

They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.”

So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”

Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things."


During the World Cup matches this summer, I listened to the debates -- mostly among persons from the United States -- about international futball (what we would call soccer). One of the great frustrations many expressed about futball is that the international sport allows the two teams or clubs to play to a draw. In most sporting events in the United States, a game or match tied after regulation would lead to overtime, perhaps to "sudden death." The goal is to have a winner and a loser in every match; therefore, Americans are completely frustrated by the thought that the two clubs could play an entire match and end in a draw.

We don't like ties. We want winners and losers. Our culture is soaked in this "either-or" mentality.

We want things to be decisive, clearly one way or the other. We moderns don't do well with paradox and tension. The word "nebulous" is not a positive, inviting term for us. Ambiguity is frowned upon. Things need to be one way or the other. We must make a choice. In or out. Right or wrong. Good or bad. All or nothing.

This is the world in which we live. We sometimes call it, "Taking a stand," or, "Making a commitment."

This kind of "either-or" thinking is characteristic of human life and judgments. It tends to divide and separate. It traffics in comparison and contrast. We identify ourselves in terms of who someone else is or is not: "I am like them," or "I am not like them."

I suspect we would even prefer to say, "I am a winner" or "I am a loser" before saying, "I am a tie-er!"

Persons, especially religious persons, continually tried to draw Jesus into taking a stand or committing himself one way or another. They tried to pin him down with questions which usually had an "either-or" feel about them. And most always, Jesus refused to answer the questions on "either-or" terms.

In contemporary interpretations of these exchanges, writers generally have caricatured the persons as testing Jesus or trying to entrap him. Perhaps they were. But I suspect they also were working out of the only framework they knew. In that sense, we are no different than they were.

We operate out of dualistic, one way or another frameworks. It is the basic mental structure we inherited early on. It was ingrained in us through our educational system. When this system gets pulled out from under us, we are left feeling very ungrounded. In fact, for many Christians, there is little more unsettling than "fuzzy thinking" or ambiguity. For that group, Christianity means being always more certain, more assured -- and even more right! So Jesus' teachings and doings are turned into "either-or" proclamations, used to support a particular mindset.

It is, though, also possible to read most of Jesus teaching, healing and miracle-working from the standpoint of the non-dual mind. In that case, they are not justifications for either-or, all-or-nothing thinking. They do not divide and separate. Rather, they bring together. They unite. They promote union with God, others, the world and with one's own most authentic self.

We make Jesus into a religious answer-giver, into someone who "takes a stand." But Richard Rohr says, "Jesus creates problems for us more than resolves them, problems that very often cannot be resolved by all-or-nothing thinking but only by love and forgiveness."

Jesus embodied the Divine Presence, a holding of this tension. That is what Advent anticipates, the coming of one in human flesh who was also the revealing of God. Not either-or, all-or-nothing. Jesus held humanity and divinity in one flesh.