This sermon was preached on October 5, 2014 at Grace Episcopal Church in Medford MA. The texts for this sermon were: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 , Psalm 19 , Philippians 3:4b-14 , and Matthew 21:33-46 . In the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus asks the elders a pretty simple question. In fact, he makes it even easier by giving them two answers to choose from. Is John the Baptist a real prophet or is he just a wacko spouting off his own opinion? Does his authority come from Heaven or from human origin? The right answer is already in there—it’s one of the two. So why is the question so hard that the elders refuse to answer? I like that we get a chance to get inside the Pharisees’ heads in this passage. We get to hear their debate. And it’s not actually about what the right answer is. They’re instead fighting over which answer has worse consequences for them. If we say, “from heaven,” one of them points out, he will say to us, “why then did you not believe him?” But if we say from human