“No-Yes,
Yes-No”
Matthew
21:23-32
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
September
25, 2011
Many Presbyterian pastors often quote
the exalted poetry of Robert Burns, the esteemed and eloquent Scottish poet.
Your pastor, however, quotes the late American comedian, George
Burns, who once offered this free bit of advice to preachers, saying, “A good sermon should have a good beginning and a good ending, and
they should be as close together as possible.”
I am going to count that as a good
beginning today and as our text is a pretty succinct parable, it won’t be long
‘til we find our way to a good ending!
Today’s parable is almost as
difficult as last week’s which, for those of you who were not here, was the
story about the one-hour workers in the vineyard getting paid the same as those
who had slaved in the hot sun all day. None
of the parables of Jesus are easy, though. That
is because Jesus meant by them to turn our lives inside out and upside down, to
help us to move from a worldly consciousness to one embracing the mind of Christ
so that we may live toward becoming fully and truly human.
The context of the parable is outlined
in the first half of our reading. Authorities
always have questions about authority, especially when theirs is threatened, and
double-secret especially when it is threatened on their own turf.
Jesus had entered the temple and was teaching there when the temple
priests and elders confronted him, questioning his authority, wanting to see his
credentials. They were more
concerned about who authorized Jesus than about what he was teaching and doing.
Once Jesus healed a man’s withered arm on the Sabbath and the religious
leadership who witnessed it asked Jesus, “Who gave you the right to do this on
the Sabbath?” They could have
said, at the very least, “Nice arm.” But
they never really saw the arm but only one who was infringing on the religious
“rules and regs” and on their authority.
In this encounter with Jesus, the
temple priests and elders were trying to “trap” him.
If Jesus says that he is teaching and doing his ministry on his own
authority, he appears to be a rogue, a maverick, without any legitimation from
his faith tradition. If he says he
does them on God’s authority, then he is stepping into the presumed domain of
the priests and elders because they
are the supposed guardians of the law and the official interpreters of what
comes authentically from God.
Jesus, however, baits a trap of his
own:,
Jesus said, “First, let me ask
you a question. You answer my
question and I’ll answer yours. About
the baptism of John –
who authorized it: heaven or humans?”
They were on the spot and they knew it.
They pulled back into
a huddle and whispered, “If we say ‘heaven,’ he’ll ask us why we
didn’t believe John, then; if we say ‘humans,’ we’ll be up
against it
with the people because they all hold John up as a prophet of God.”
They decided to concede that round to Jesus.
“We don’t know,” they
answered. To which Jesus
said, ‘Then I will not answer your
question.”
But he wasn’t through with them.
Jesus went on:
“Tell me what you think of this
story: A man had two sons.
He
went up to the first and
said, ‘Son, go out for the day and work in
the vineyard.’ The son
answered, ‘No, I don’t want to.’ (Any
parent here ever get that response from
their child?)
Later on the son thought
better of his answer and went out to work.”
“The father gave the same command to the second son.
That son
answered, ‘Sure, glad
to.’ But he never went.”
“Which of the two sons,” Jesus
asked the priest and elders, “did
what the Father asked?”
“They replied, ‘The first.’”
“Jesus said, ‘Yes, and I tell you that crooks and whores (this is
Peterson’s paraphrase in The Message…you know I’d
never
use language like that on my
own in the church!) are going to
precede you into God’s
kingdom. John came to you to show
you the
right road.
You turned up your noses at him (because he was not a
member of your club), but the
crooks and whores believed him. Even
when you saw their changed
lives, you didn’t care enough to change and
believe him.’”
That was the typical ploy of a prophet
– to tell a story and then ask the listeners to make an evaluation of the
characters in the story. The hearers
usually are quick to respond because they have firm opinions and fast judgments.
What they do not know is that by judging the people in the story they
really are judging themselves.
They said the first son did the will of
the father because he actually changed his
mind and went into the fields. The
crooks and the whores also, when they heard the preaching of John the Baptist,
responded to it and changed their minds about their lives, shifted their
consciousness, and thus they entered into the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of
God which is not some celestial paradise but a union with God and God’s design
for life. They woke up!
They came alive!
It was understandable that the priests
and elders were wary of John at first. He
was more than a bit eccentric and outside the tradition.
But when they saw the power of John’s words and work to lead people
into the way and ways of God, they should have changed their minds and followed
him and supported him themselves. They
were the second son, saying that they would do God’s will, but then they do
not actually do it, preferring the stale wisps of tradition to the fresh wind of
God’s Spirit.
The Danish philosopher and theologian
Soren Kierkegaard wrote a little treatise on this parable of the two sons called
Under the Spell of Good Intentions.
Kierkegaard had a lifelong quarrel with the state
Kierkegaard wrote that when we so
readily say “yes” as the second son in the parable did, when we make a
promise, we can deceive ourselves into thinking we already have done at least
part of what we have promised to do, as if our promise has any value in itself.
He says that we can keep saying “yes” with good intentions even as we
back farther and farther away from actually carrying through on our word.
A church can prattle on proudly about its commitment to mission but then
make it the first cut in a tight budget. A
spouse in a marriage can keep saying “yes” to a promise once made even as
she or he wilts in the present dryness of it.
A person running for office can make principled promises in the heat of a
campaign but then abandon them in the name of pragmatic politics.
Yes, in fact, becomes no.
Better, sometimes, Kierkegaard
contends, to say “no” as the first son in the parable did than to make a
promise that we are not going to keep. Since
saying “yes” usually is a sunny delight that makes us feel good, as if in
saying yes we actually are doing something good, it is easier to say yes than
no. But
since much or most of the reward of saying yes is derived in the moment of
saying it, it is easy down the road to lay aside the promise and not to do
what we said we would do. The
promises we make when becoming a member of the church, for instance, or when we
are ordained as an elder or a pastor, require vigilance if we are going to keep
them over the long haul. The
headiness of saying “yes” easily can give way to inaction or inertia that
becomes a “no.”
But saying “no,” oftentimes hard to
do in the moment because it may cast us in a disagreeable light, sometimes has a
way of working on us and in us to make us re-think the directions and substance
of our lives and our commitments. The
honesty of saying “no” that can be painful in that moment sometimes can lead
to a life more rich and real than all of the well-meant promises we make and
then vacate.
In the parable, Jesus told the chief
priests and elders that the crooks and whores would enter into the
So, what for us to do?
We can allow the parable to infiltrate our lives and to cause us to
ponder whether we are more like the first son who said no to his father’s
request to go and work in his vineyard, but then repented of his decision and
did so. Or are we more like the
second son who readily agreed, but then did not go?
The same parable sticks its nose into our life together as a church as
well. In consideration of the life
to which the gospel calls us and to which we have said yes, to what extent is
our “yes” really a “yes”? Are
we like the first son or the second?
Okay, Mr. Burns, George Burns, now for the good ending:
I had a friend in seminary who came from
Amen.
Copyright
© 2011 by First Presbyterian Church