Occam’s Razor
Matthew 21:23-32
A parable of doing God's will
21:23 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?"
21:24 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.
21:25 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?'
21:26 But if we say, 'Of human origin,' we are afraid of the crowd, for all regard John as a prophet."
21:27 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.
21:28 "What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.'
21:29 He answered, 'I will not,' but later he changed his mind and went.
21:30 The father went to the second and said the same, and he answered, 'I go, sir,' but he did not go.
21:31 Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.
21:32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him, and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.
Choices can be a trap. My wife, who tips the Enneagram scale at “One,” regularly says she can be paralyzed by “too many choices.” Now that we are living in a bit more “rural” of an area, I often turn to Amazon Shopping to look for some gadget I “need,” and am absolutely mesmerized by the plethora of choices that confront me. I can get my widget in any color, size, or price I may want, and then can choose how fast it gets here, and by whom, in many cases. Our grocery stores paralyze us with ten different “styles” of yogurt, an entire aisle-full of breads and rolls, and at least seventy-five types of breakfast cereal. Have you shopped for a good bottle of wine, recently? (I’m also amazed that, in spite of the HUGE offering of differing beers available, including enticing craft brews, the most popular one is “Coors Light.” If anything summarizes the intelligence malaise we are in as a nation, this fact might.) Most “guests” to America from other countries are stupefied by our wide variety of choices, at the supermarket, on the boob tube, and even at the carwash. When it comes to having to choose, we are a decadent people.
While my personal concern (shared by many with more than three synapses firing) regarding our national governance is the current administration’s tendency to apply overly simplistic “solutions” to the highly complex problems facing our nation and the world, the average American faces an almost opposite challenge. The explosion of choices facing us when it comes to buying snacks or sneakers takes a simple problem and turns it into a complex, confounding, and often constricting array of options. I need a new pair of size 12 (yeah, I know, a five-foot-eight man with giant feet; at least I’m steady in high winds) sneakers to wear on my daily walks, and I’d be quite satisfied to find a pair that fits nicely in a simple color like black or white, but NO, I am entranced by a menu of fifty-thousand shoes, manufacturers, styles, treads, and ways to keep them on your feet. My wife actually just got a pair that mimic the shape of your toes! (Maybe if we had just stayed at the “ape” stage of evolution, things would be easier? We could even take the present crop of politicians back with us, for they would rule a race of simians just as effectively, I’m sure.)
We are far from the days when it was said about Henry Ford’s boast: “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Some psychologists have indeed suggested that they see patients so confounded by the explosion of choices surrounding us that they have turned pathological about it. When we turn to the scriptures, we get a very different picture of what choices may govern our lives at a critical level beyond our palates or our piggies. Remember Joshua telling his people, “Choose this day whom you will serve,” contrasting the worship of Yahweh with the “shopping list” of foreign gods that had become popular among many of the folk? Contrary to some popular streams of theological thought that suggest that God is fully “in charge” and “pre-ordains” the outcome of human events, the Bible makes clear we humans DO have choices to make. Deuteronomy 30:19, Moses, speaking for God, urges Israel to “choose life.” This seems like an obvious choice, but not a day goes by that we don’t witness persons—even collections of them—denying this choice. How very sad.
In today’s text from Matthew, Jesus himself brings “choice” to the fore, employing a kind of “Occam’s Razor” thinking to a question asked of him by the chief priests and elders. Also known as the “law of parsimony,” Occam’s Razor says that if two competing theories explain an event or what happened, the simplest explanation is most likely the best. Otherwise, “keep it simple, stupid,” as we said in my earlier days. Now, we know that simple is not ALWAYS best, and in the case of more complex problems, there often IS no simple solution. However, Occam’s Razor suggests that simple explanations should be investigated first, as adding too many layers early on may multiply what may already be a complex scenario. In the case of today’s text, these chief priests and elders who are already plotting to “trap” Jesus to an answer to their inquiries that will be self-indicting, throw this one out to him: “By what authority are you doing these things?” (miracles, healings, and attracting hundreds to hear his teachings), and “Who gave you the authority?” I’m sure these ecclesiastical geniuses figured that they “had” him, regardless of how he answered. If he said it was “his father, God” who gave him the authority, they would nail him as a blasphemer. If he said he did it on his own authority, they would brand him either a crackpot or a sorcerer, if not both. They saw their inquiry as a “win-win” for them. Their “trap” reminds me of what was called “yellow journalism,” when I studied communications in college. The “yellow journalist” would structure questions to “trap” a public figure into giving an answer worthy of a headline. “Have you stopped beating your wife yet, Senator?” is an example of this heinous form of inquiry. It’s unanswerable, without “stepping in it,” as they say. Obviously, crafty yellow journalists could form more nuanced questions than that, but their aim was to garner a headline, not a truthful report. The chief priests and elders in today’s text were yellow journalists, indeed, but were after far more than an “above the fold” headline.
Jesus, in possibly one of the earliest examples of the Occam’s Razor principle, turns it around on them with a simple challenge: I’ll ask YOU a question, and if you answer it correctly, I’ll tell you by whose authority I do these things. And then he drops a simple interrogatory bomb on them: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?" Seems like a simple question, but hiding in it is the same self-indicting flaw their question to Jesus had. They recognize this, arguing among themselves. If they said “from heaven,” Jesus might say, “Then why didn’t you believe him?” If they said of human origin, they feared how the crowd might react, as they saw John as a prophet. Suddenly, Occam’s Razor had painted THEM into the corner they had designed for Jesus. Now, normally the answer, “I don’t know,” is an honest one, and should be employed by more people than is currently the case. There are so many things we just don’t know, especially when we are being questioned randomly. We pastors are wise, when asked complicated theological or biblical questions by a parishioner, to be honest, when we don’t know. “Let me look into that and get back to you,” is a legitimate answer by someone who understands her or his position as a spiritual leader with a working brain. To try to fake one’s way through such questions, especially if it is just to look “learned,” is never a good approach. However, in the case of the chief priests and elders here, their “We don’t know” answer is a copout, and Jesus calls their bluff and tells them he will not answer THEIR question of him regarding authority.
That’s not the end of it, though. Jesus tests them again with the little “two sons” story. It’s easy to miss what is going on here. The first son tells the father he will not go to work in the vineyard, but later acquiesces, and goes. The second son says he WILL go to work, but never does. Jesus asks the chief priests and elders which son did the will of the father, and when they answer correctly that it was the FIRST son, Jesus indicts THEM for knowing the answer to such a simple moral question, but missing the importance of the ministry of John the Baptist. Some have been confused by this narrative, thinking that Jesus believed they answered wrongly that it was the first son who did the will of the father, but that is not the case. Again, Jesus is using a simple question to shut down a plot to trap HIM, and instead, traps the chief priests and elders in front of the crowd, in order to demonstrate that their religious leaders were “straining gnats and swallowing camels,” so to speak. They missed the prophetic word that John the Baptist, and now the Son of God, were trying to bring to them.
As a pastor, I confess to often missing something “simple” the Holy Spirit of God was trying to do right in front of me. While I laud my theological studies as giving me great depth and breadth of understanding of serious biblical studies, theological reflection, ethics, pastoral care, and relevant preaching, it also often caused me to miss the simple stuff God was either doing or was trying to do, especially when it was bubbling up through a parishioner who had little to no theological sophistication. I worked so hard to combat this tendency, as I have always loved and respected the people God called me to serve, but many of us are prone to a kind of premature elitism born of academic proficiency. Thankfully, God has a way of cutting to the quick and disarming this usually temporary pomposity on the part of us modern religious leaders. God takes the Occam’s Razor approach, and the wisest of us admits our stunting faults. The Holy Spirit is the great equalizer in the Kingdom of God, indeed.
Let me suggest one more way that the Occam’s Razor principle can be helpful to you in nourishing your faith journey, especially when it comes to understanding the Bible. Believe me, the Bible is a wonderful book—the story of God and humanity, inspired by the Spirit, but filtered through human experience and recollection, both of which can be flawed. When we read it, it is best to keep things simple, but this does NOT mean “taking it literally” or coming to the belief that it needs “no interpretation.” Taking a simple approach means asking these questions: “Why is this [story, text, rule, command] here? What is God trying to tell us?” This investigation may unlock more meaning than taking the text at face value. Such was Jesus’ question to the religious leaders about which son did the will of the father in his little parable. The “right answer” was not as revealing as the fact that the leaders demonstrated that they could GET the right answer, all the while missing the “big picture” God was trying to give them through John and Jesus, himself. We fall prey to the same error, Dear Ones.
The moral of this sermon is that we should keep Occam’s Razor handy, if it can help us get the profound, simple truths that nurture our Spirit, and “cut out” the chaff and crap we couch in empty doctrines, rules, and “scriptural authority.” The authority of scripture needs no more defining and defending that what the Holy Spirit is already doing with it in the church and in the “simple” lives of the people we serve. Occam’s Razor can be a wonderful scalpel in the hands of the Great Surgeon, instead of producing a “close shave” when wielded by someone looking for a “winning” answer. Amen.
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