Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost Sermon
By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Sept. 27, 2026)
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us this day and always. Amen. So our gospel lesson this morning ends with a parable. Jesus tells us about a man who had two sons and one son, he asked them both to go out in the field and work. One son says no, but ends up doing it. The other one says yes, but doesn't. Sometimes I like to begin my sermons with stories about my family and about my children, but I couldn't find an example of the latter. And so no story this morning.
The parable has a clear kind of moral lesson. It's almost like an Aesop's fable. Actions speak louder than words. And that's right. And if you take nothing else from our lesson this morning, actions speak louder than words. That's okay, that's good. But there's more going on in this lesson also. Because the priests Jesus is arguing with, they also believe that actions speak louder than words. It's Jesus' actions that are the problem. They have a problem with what Jesus is doing, not just with what he's saying. And so what's actually really at stake in this argument between the priests and Jesus?
So the context for this scene, the context for this confrontation or this encounter matters a lot. This is toward the end of the gospel. If you look, it's chapter 21. This is right toward the end of Jesus' life. In fact, it's after Palm Sunday. It's after the triumphal injury. Jesus has already come into the city of Jerusalem, and the first thing he does when he gets to Jerusalem is he goes into the temple where the priests are, and he boots all the money changers out. He overthrows their tables. So the priests have some reason to be irritated with him.
That story is told in every one of the gospels that Jesus comes into Jerusalem, goes into the temple and kicks out the money changers. Matthew adds one detail that's unique to his version of the story. Matthew says that after Jesus had driven out the money changers, people started coming in. Matthew says the blind and the lame came in, and he started healing them. And then children came in and started singing praises to God. Now these are tenuous categories of people for the temple. Samuel, the book from the Hebrew Bible, actually bars the blind and lame from entering the temple. This was not the practice in the first century. The blind and the lame were allowed entry, but because of this teaching, their position was tenuous, and for the most part, they just stayed outside the temple gates begging.
The children who came in, children were allowed in, but children were not regarded as religious authorities. They were not authorized to decide who should receive God's praise or claim. So when the priests come to Jesus asking him basically, "Who do you think you are? By what authority do you do the things you do? Who do you think you are?" He's both talking about who Jesus has driven out and also who Jesus has invited in. And they ask this question and then Jesus has this trap. He answers the question with a question. He lifts up the baptism of John as his example. And it is a trap, but it's more than a trap because the baptism of John, his disagreement with the priests, everything that they disagree about can be read through John's baptism.
It's auspicious that we have a baptism, two baptisms today. It would always be auspicious, but it just happens that this is the lesson the church assigned for this day. And the fact that we get to do some after we talk about it is a great blessing and helps us understand what we're going to be doing in a few minutes for Elizabeth and Catherine. Baptism here reveals the difference between Jesus and the priests. So what is that difference? Let me give just a little bit of historical context for John's baptism. So ritual bathing was common among first-century Jews. Larger houses might have a ritual bath in their home. There were ritual baths at the temple, but it's important to state that the ritual bathing didn't have a moral dimension. So when I visit my family in Japan, and I go to a Buddhist temple, there's always running water outside the temple, and you wash your hands before you go in.
Not because your hands are evil, but because they're dirty, right? So you just wash your hands before you go in. You should enter the place of God clean. And that's what ritual bathing was like for first-century Jews. When you got dirty, you cleaned yourself before approaching holy things. John, in his baptism, added another element. He said, "It's not just your hands that are dirty; it's your heart. Rend your hearts, not your garments," echoing the prophet Joel. He said, "Repent, repent, repent." Now, I think we're inclined- I'll speak for myself— I'm inclined to think about repentance as a shameful thing. And John has a tendency to shout when he's talking about repentance, and so we can read it as a shameful thing. And in fact, if someone's shouting at you to repent, you can feel ashamed. But I don't think that's what's at stake actually in the way John was talking, albeit shouting about repentance.
Because if you're not the person shouting at somebody else to repent, if you're the person seeking repentance, then repentance is just the other side of faith. A person who can come before God without shame and offer their shortcomings to God is a person who trusts that God's love can handle it. A person who comes before God just as they are and offers themself just as they are to God is a person who knows that God loves them as they are and can forgive them. We repent because we have faith that we'll be forgiven because we have confidence in God's love. And this is what was at stake in John's baptism because John was not at the temple. John was out in the river, and everyone was welcome.
No one who wanted to step into that river with him was turned away, not the tax collectors, not the prostitutes, not the blind or the lame, not the shouting children. Everyone came as they were to John and he received them. And then Jesus self-consciously takes up John's ministry and preaches the other side of this coin. He preaches forgiveness. Jesus says over and over again, "You can bring your whole self to God because God loves all of you." Jesus preaches that nothing you have done or could do will ever change how much God loves you. Jesus preaches that no one is left out, not the tax collectors, not the prostitutes, not the blind, the lame, not the shouting children. So Jesus says, "Enter the place of God without shame, without fear. Go into God's courts with praise." And in this moment in the gospel, he is making that teaching literal.
He is standing in a temple, and he is inviting in, inviting in everyone who has been turned away, and he's asking all of them to rejoice in the promise of God's love. This is the difference between the priests and Jesus. This is what is brought into relief by the example of John's baptism because, despite John's baptisms, the priests don't really believe that God could love people like tax collectors or prostitutes. They didn't believe that God had time for beggars standing outside the temple doors or for children shouting hosannas. And maybe we shouldn't be surprised they didn't have time for that. As the driving out of the money changer shows, there was a whole economics of exclusion, a whole politics of exclusion that the temple economy depended upon. But because of John's baptism, the tax collectors and the prostitutes knew the truth. They did believe that God loved them.
Because of Jesus, the blind and the lame and the little children all realized that they belonged in the house of God just as much as anybody else did. And here was Jesus standing right there demanding that the priests and the money changers make room for them. It's an irony, a tragic irony really, that for 2000 years, priests like me have spent so much of our time making exactly the same mistakes as priests back then. So much of the energy of the Christian church throughout history has been about drawing boundaries, tightening rules, determining who's in and who's out, which Christians are not the right Christians, which people are not worthy of dignity, what's holy and what's not, who belongs and who doesn't, who's lovable and who isn't.
Maybe now as then we should not be surprised because still today, whole economies of power rest upon this politics of exclusion. Read the front page of your newspaper or turn on the TV and you will see it. But the promise of baptism, the righteousness of John, and the love of God and Jesus all proclaim the same thing: that no one stands beyond the reach of God's love. And all the political and economic implications of that teaching are directly stated in any line of Jesus' teaching. The dwelling place of God will be a home for all people.
In just a moment, we're going to do about the most holy thing that people can do. We're going to invite Elizabeth and Catherine forward because nothing will separate them from the love of God and Christ, not even a nor’easter. They're going to come up here with people who love them, and using ancient words and ancient acts, we will repeat those ancient rites. But as you watch what happens in a few moments, I invite you: please don't be fooled by the choreography, because as their mom and godparents stand behind this font here, it might look like they are promising something to me or they are promising something to us.
In fact, something else, something far more special and far more beautiful will be happening. In fact, all of us, every one of us will be enacting a promise that John already proclaimed 2000 years ago. All of us will be enacting a promise Jesus has already fulfilled. All of us will be enacting a promise that God has already vowed to Elizabeth and to Catherine and to every one of us from before all time and before all creation, that each of us is beloved, that everyone belongs. And then when the girls have received that promise from God and when we have signed it on their precious little foreheads, then we, all of us, are going to do one more thing. We're going to promise to give over our lives to making that promise true.