When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?’ Jesus said to them, ‘I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, ‘If we say, “From heaven,” he will say to us, “Why then did you not believe him?” But if we say, “Of human origin,” we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.’ So they answered Jesus, ‘We do not know.’ And he said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’
Matthew 21:23–27
Jesus is in the business of radical transformation. From when we first encounter this man Jesus in the Gospels, we are made aware of a magnetic figure who seeks people out; who meets them in the everyday affairs of their own lives and sets about — through a relationship with him — fundamentally altering their realities. He heralds this quality of his mission at the wedding in Cana when he changes the water to wine; water for the ritual purification of sin is transformed into the best wine for the celebration, and this ‘sign’ is echoed in everything Jesus does.
He approaches the brokenness of humanity — in the blind, in the lame, and in the sick — and he meets with our weakness — in our sinfulness and in our failings — and he affects an inward and outward transformation that penetrates to the very depths of who we are. Jesus is not interested in treating symptoms. He is not interested in patching us up so that we might fight on for another day. No, for Jesus the cure is total. Nothing about us is left unchanged after an encounter with this man from Nazareth.
Radical transformation wouldn’t be radical if it wasn’t stepping on someone’s toes. Only the upstarts are described as ‘radicals.’ Jesus was an upstart, and those in power — those who assumed a monopoly on righteousness — wanted to know by what authority Jesus did what he did. But this is the power of the doing of God’s work: When God calls Moses to act, to lead the people of Israel through the sea, there is no doubt who is doing what. ‘You shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians (Exodus 6:7).’ When people are transformed by an encounter with Jesus they are left in now doubt of the authority that just moved through them.
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