One afternoon a fox was walking through the forest and spotted a bunch of grapes hanging from over a lofty branch. "Just the thing to quench my thirst," said he.Taking a few steps back, the fox jumped and just missed the hanging grapes. Again the fox took a few steps back, ran, jumped, and tried to reach them but still failed.Finally giving up, the fox turned up his nose and said, "They're probably sour anyway," and proceeded to walk away.The moral: It is easy to despise what you cannot have.1
If it weren’t so sad it would be funny that in our time – at this moment right now – people who have so much despise so much. It is like we live in a world where people always seem to be looking for sour grapes.
If you don’t like who is going to appoint the next person to an important position, change the rules. If you like the person doing the appointing, change them again.
If it looks like you might loose an important vote resort to character assassination and never mind if innocent people get hurt.
Don’t like the people in the next neighbourhood, pick up arms to defend your turf but beware because they are plotting the same thing against you with little regard that innocents might be caught in the crossfire.
Remember what Maria asked at the close of “West Side Story”?
“How may bullets are left? Enough for you? For you?” she says as she points at each one of the members of both gangs, “All of you? You all killed him. Not with bullets and knives! With hate!”2
Some use bullets. Other people use words but “no matter how sophisticated packaged, human authority is a matter of raw power. If you have enough people behind you or guns with you, you have it, and what you say goes, period.
“But there is still another authority at work in the world. It is divine authority and it has to do with truth, the truth of God, the truth about who God made us to be.”3
These two have been in conflict since the beginning of time and they are readily apparent in today’s confrontation between Jesus and the rulers of his world.
The day before, Palm Sunday to us, Jesus had ridden into the Temple in a peaceful protest that became a small scale riot when he turned over tables and drove out the money changers as a rejection of the regular activities of buying and selling replacing them with his own business of restoring people to wholeness. He stands at the very intersection of religion and politics which, in our day, is a very dangerous place to be.
I’ve always wondered how Jesus got back in. Why in the world would the leaders who saw someone cause such commotion one day to give him free access to the place the next? Why didn’t they call out the guards and have him arrested? Why didn’t they build barricades to keep him and his followers out? Why didn’t they try to do something to stop his reentry?
Maybe it was because overnight they had thought up a question. It was a trick question but it was surely a question that would bring him down. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”4 they want to know.
Dr. Brian Blunt, President of Union Presbyterian Theological Seminary, lays the scene and the predicament out for us perfectly.
The point of the question is to make him confess that he doesn’t have any authority. At least not the right authority. Unless he has forged himself a really good fake resume, he’s got nothing. How do they know for sure he won’t be able to produce any credentials? How can they be so certain? Because they are the ones who give out the credentials.
But the chief priests and the elders also know that Jesus thinks that he speaks for God. They just want him to say it. Out loud. That is the trap behind the question. If we didn’t authorize you to do the crazy new things you’re doing, Jesus, who did? Say it, Jesus. Say it! Say what you believe. Say God authorized you! Tell everybody loudly and clearly that you think you are working for God. That’s the trap behind the question.
In our day, you say you speak for God, people mock you. In Jesus’ day, you say you speak for God? They kill you.5
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.”6
You can always tell if somebody isn’t interested in the truth when they are afraid of public opinion.
We don’t know” is the lazy answer of students who haven’t studied and believers who are afraid. The chief priests and the elders are afraid. They know the answer, they just don’t want to give the answer. They treated John like a fool because they thought John was a fool, but they are afraid to give that answer in the circumstance they find themselves. “We don’t know,” is the answer of people who don’t have the courage of their convictions.7
The people who knew who Jesus was and where his power came from were the ones who were not in power. They were the sinners, the tax-collectors, the ones whom society shunned. They were the ones who were open to having “the mind of Christ”
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,”8 encourages Saint Paul. Or, as it has been paraphrased: “Let Christ himself be your example as to what your attitude should be.”9
How would that look? How would that effect how we treated each other. How would that end the “sour grapes” cycle of hate and violence.
I can think of no better example than the life of the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsberg and her good friend and ideological opposite Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
Scalia’s son Eugene would say of them:
They had a bond, I think, in that they both grew up as outsiders – to different degrees – to the elites who had ruled the country: she as a Jew and woman, he as a Catholic and Italian American.10
They bonded over opera and travel and they both fought for what they believed in. She said once to a Harvard University luncheon: “Fight for things you care about but do in a way that will lead others to join you.”
But if you go onto the internet to explore the endless array of RBG-themed tchotchkes — mugs, T-shirts and even face masks — you’ll find that many of them omit the second part of her comment. All we need to do, apparently, is fight for what we believe in. Getting others aboard isn’t as important.11
Justice Scalia, who could be as acerbic as anybody, had this maxim which I may have embroidered on a pillow: “I attack ideas. I don’t attack people. Some very good people have some very bad ideas.”
Its all “sour grapes” when we label each other as evil or stupid and believe the best we can do is bring them to heal. However, the grapes loose their edge when we begin to believe that while their ideas may be “off the wall” it doesn’t make them a bad person.
Maybe there is another way, a better way. Maybe there is a way that more clearly reflects “the mind of Christ”.
I posted this little story, parable on my Facebook page. It was an encounter between Judge Scalia and Judge Jeffrey Sutton.
As Sutton prepared to leave Scalia’s chambers, Scalia pointed to two dozen roses he was planning to deliver to his friend “Ruth” for her birthday. Sutton was surprised: “So what good have all these roses done for you? Name one five-four case of any significance where you got Justice Ginsburg’s vote.”
Scalia’s reply? “Some things are more important than votes.”12
When civility becomes more important than votes and deep affection overcomes hate maybe bridges can begin to be built once again. When “Christ himself is our example as to what our attitude should be” toward each other we’ll be on the right road to recovery of our spirits.
May the day come soon when our “sour grapes” are turned into God’s good, sweet wine.
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1. “The Fox and the Grapes,” Aesop's Fable: The Fox and the Grapes, accessed September 26, 2020, https://aesopsfables.org/F258_The-Fox-and-the-Grapes.html.
2. Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, and Stephen Sondheim. “West Side Story.” at The Lyric Opera of Chicago. May 2019.
3. Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 21.23-32 Proper 21 - Year A,” Matthew 21.23-32, accessed September 26, 2020, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt21x23.html.
4. Saint Matthew 18:23. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
5. Brian K Blount, “What Do You Know?,” A Sermon for Every Sunday.com, September 22, 2020), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Brian-Blount-Jesus-Authority-Questioned.pdf.
6. Saint Matthew 19:25-27. (NRSV)
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