Unwilling Helper
Matthew 21:23-32

September 29, 2002

I keep hearing that the Bible is no longer relevant to our situation in the modern world. It speaks about issues and cultural values we no longer recognize or care about. For the most part, I listen sadly to such rants, knowing that few critics of the Bible understand that the Bible indeed is quite specifically talking about their situation. Nevertheless, here is a parable of Jesus that we may no longer understand or possess the cultural experience to recognize.

My father came from Georgia, and I have talked with a few other people who had Georgia-raised fathers and we have lots of common ground. Our fathers’ world was a no-nonsense patriarchal society. What he says, goes and goes extremely quickly. I was expected in every situation - in public and at the dinner table - to address and answer to my father as “Sir.” There was no questioning when he asked you to do something, and so one did it. Whether I am better or worse off for this I cannot yet tell, 28 years after my father died.

Jesus tells about two sons and a father. The father asks both to go work in the vineyard, but neither respond properly according to the standards of Georgia. The first refuses to go, insults his father, scandalizes him. Later on, however, he changes his mind and goes to work anyway. The second is dutiful on the surface with his word, but does not ever go to work, embarrassing the father by not obeying his request.

The father must have been humiliated by these two: the first by his insolence and disrespect; and the second by his disobedience. For those of you from a younger generation than mine, all of this may appear to be much ado about nothing. You may well not feel any of the tension I sense when I hear this story. For those of you are my age and older, you understand and can probably relate much stronger tales.

The answer to Jesus’ parable, a kind of case-study he throws down before you and expects you to decide the verdict, is not a no-brainer. The question is, “Which son did the father’s will?” But the real question behind the question is, “Which son hurt the father more - the one who publicly embarrassed him by contradicting him, or the one who was polite and respectful in words, but devious in his lack of action”?

To demonstrate the dilemma in which we are cornered, the answer would be the first: the son who humiliated his father with words could not really make it up with his actions. Honour and shame were tangible possessions in ancient societies, and still have meaning in this achievement-oriented world.

Jesus does not tell parables in a vacuum. Preachers may tell a story that doesn’t fit, but Jesus’ always emerge out of some kind of confrontation or teaching moment.

The moment here is around authority. The chief priests and elders surrounded Jesus while he was teaching in the Temple, indignantly demanding what gave him the right to do all he had been doing and teaching. The previous day, Jesus’ infamous scourging the temple and driving out the money changers must have stuck in the craw of the elders. Who gave you the authority to act this way?

It usually happens during wedding rehearsals: young children run all over the sanctuary, climb over a pew or two, and their mother or father yells at them to stop being so loud and boisterous, for “this is a church.” The church is a place of tranquility and gentle behaviour. They have never been to a Jewish school and study class.

Arguing loudly and even angrily is the rule in Yeshivas and particularly in Jesus’ day. It starts here about the authority of Jesus, but it ends by laying bare the hollowness of the authority of the chief priest and elders. Authority’s synonym is power. But the real issue comes down to authenticity: is it God who is driving you, or is it your own human interests? Are you really on a pilgrimage with God, or is religion simply a means to accomplish your own self-determined ends?

The chief priests and elders want to know about his authority; Jesus raises the even tougher question regarding the authority of John the Baptist. If you want to raise a similar controversy in the church today, you would ask the faithful about Robert Latimer. To mention his name and situation raises a cacophony of moral, ethical and political perspectives. When Jesus asks about John the Baptist, John had been executed by Herod. The people thought him a prophet, a saint, even the Messiah himself; the elders were quietly happy that Herod had gotten him out of the way for them.

A shrewd question in the finest tradition of rabbinic debate: if his mission was truly from heaven, then why didn’t these executives of the God-business believe in him? If he did his baptism thing like an insincere television evangelist, then the leaders would be probably in physical danger from the common people. People changed their minds and their lives on account of John. No human being could make the racketeers and prostitutes do that about face. It had to be God.

And so the parable of the two sons fits right in. When you profess in worship that “I believe in God...I believe in Jesus Christ”...when you say “I will,” are you going outside this building and working in the field?

It sounds so simple, but you know that it never is. Every time I say, “I believe in God, I believe in Jesus Christ,” I have to change my mind. My mind has its own directions and purposes. My mind wants to accomplish certain goals, my mind wants not to be bothered by certain appeals for help. It is never a academic statement to say I believe in God and in Jesus, because I know God and Jesus exist. I can acknowledge their existence without doing anything about it; it’s what I do about it that weighs upon me when I say “I believe.”

We like to believe that we’ve got our minds straight, that all we have to do is work on the details a little harder. When the racketeers and prostitutes and alcoholics and drug addicts and spouse abusers change their minds, I am in the same boat. I must change my mind and then go out into the field and do the work God has in mind. When we say Amen, it’s just beginning.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan