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The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost
O God, who declarest thy almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Mercifully grant unto us such a measure of thy grace, that we, running to obtain thy promises, may be made partakers of thy heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 21)
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Scripture citation(s): Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:28-32
A Sermon by
Fr. Stafford
on
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:28-32
✛
A Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
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…John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not…
Today’s Gospel, from Matthew, is short and simple, a parable about obedience. A father had two sons, each of whom he commanded to work in his vineyard (28). The first son said, “No,” but repented, which, in this particular case, is to say, changed his mind and went to work as directed (29). The second son, said, “Yes, I shall go..” but, in fact, did not appear for work in the vineyard (30), as his father requested. Jesus, then asked the crowd, “Which son did the will of his father?” They replied, “The first son” (31). Obviously, this is the correct and intended conclusion: the first son is obedient, the second son is defiant; the first son is repentant, the second son is willful. I want to talk about obedience this morning: 1) what Scripture intends it to be for the believer; and, 2) our need for it.
The point of the parable and the point that I want to make is that obedience for the Christian is clearly linked with repentance. In fact, repentance is the cornerstone of the kingdom of heaven in the teaching of Jesus. And, if repentance is the cornerstone, then obedience is the bricks and mortar of what is built upon it, a response of faithfulness, if you will, to what is received. Now, we know from the parable of the Prodigal Son (see Lu 15.11ff), a story which parallels today’s Gospel, that what is received in repentance is forgiveness, the mercy and compassion of the father. Thus, obedience, like repentance, is set in the context of life-renewing relationship with God; the mystery of divine love. Furthermore, implicit in Matthew’s parable this morning, is the idea that the repentant son, the one who does the will of his father, is newly alive; whereas, the son who denies the father’s command, who yes-buts him, a mixed message that we must translate in life as “No”, is really spiritually dead. Here again, the vivacity associated with repentance is, also, an understanding paralleling the Prodigal Son, whose change of heart and return home prompt the father to say, “For this my son was dead and is alive again…” ( Lu 15.24). Thus, in each of these parables, new life is discovered by dying to defiance and willfulness. This death is paradoxically an obedience of vitality and faithfulness in the spiritual life that is termed surrender, the giving of one’s heart to the authority and care of God our Father, who reveals Himself as pure and unconditional love. If anything is written on tablets of stone for the Christian, it is this rule: God is love. And, we are commanded above all else to love God, neighbor, and self as one, with the same generosity and faithfulness God loves us. This answers my first question: Obedience is simply walking the way of repentance in daily life, surrendering or being faithful to the mercy and compassion we have been graced to receive from a God who calls Himself “Our Father”. Like repentance, obedience, therefore, is as much attitude as it is action, something more than simply the attempt to eliminate bad behavior from one’s life, which is the trap of moral-ism, whose message is simply “Shape up”, something we cannot entirely do on our own. Again, like repentance, obedience, therefore, is also the way of righteousness in the Gospel witness.
Now, Jesus this morning takes our understanding of obedience a surprising and bold step further than all this with a dramatic and unsettling pronouncement, a judgment upon his listeners that overturns their expectations and exposes their defiance and willfulness. He asserts “that the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you” (31); a reiteration of the Gospel theme of the past few weeks, that the last shall be first. Ka-boom! Publicans and harlots are the very sinners his audience scorns and with whom they clearly dis-identify. Why does he say this? His answer is found in what he says next: “…John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not…” (32). Jesus, therefore, is accusing his listeners of being the second son in the parable; they are yes-butters’, people who talk faith but live disobediently, not because they are bad but because they are sincerely deluded, have the spiritual cart before the horse, as we might say. In their minds, they are the justified, people on the way to heaven because of their righteousness. The shock and outrage of Christ’s pronouncement would be similar to the experience of standing all night outside the Yankee box office to get a ticket to the upcoming game. You wait in line through the darkness and cold, get to the ticket window in the morning, and suddenly the entire line behind you runs to windows that are newly opened. You had done the hard waiting, others had simply shown up late and secured an advantage, a short-cut that could not be foreseen. Yet, all gain entrance to the game. This morning’s crowd has waited long and hard for heaven’s reward. And, they’ve done their best to “shape up.” What they’ve done is set their feet on what could be called the way of self-will, the way of the kingdom of this world. In contrast, is the way of righteousness, clearly identified by Jesus this morning, as associated with John the Baptist and the believer’s walk in the way of repentance. The crowd to whom our Lord is speaking can talk the talk, as the saying goes, but they cannot walk the walk of true righteousness. No one can. The confrontation, therefore, is a criticism of the crowd’s spiritual aridity and pride as opposed to what should be spiritual sobriety, which is the result of a gift. They are like drunks who simply put a cork in the bottle, and because they have stopped drinking, think they have solved the problem and that things are fine. They have shaped-up their behavior, but inside nothing or little has changed, attitudes persist, actions are distorted, because there is no inner healing, no gratitude, no mercy. Human beings are like today’s crowd, we gladly exchange one delusion for another, a yes-but that is little more than a sly disobedience at times and slight of hand that avoids the heart of the matter, like painting over a rusty surface without scraping clean the surface. However, by circumventing repentance, we also miss the transformative experience of the father’s forgiveness, a change that heals the heart, moving it to gratitude, the drum beat of true obedience on the way of righteousness or discipleship with our Lord. The crowd in today’s parable is clearly not open minded or willing to identify apart from themselves, because they will not hear the messenger of repentance in their midst. Unrepentant, they are spiritually dead, closed off from grace. Furthermore, Christ adds humiliation to insult when he says, “…the publicans and harlots believed…[John] (32). Again, the parallel is to repentance as being an act that involves the essence and inner being of the individual marking whose we are, not who we are. The harlots and publicans know whose they are. The crowd has either forgotten or does not know. This is the pivotal importance of the parable and the importance of what I am saying this morning, as well as the answer to why we need to be obedient: so that we may become, by the grace of God, who we really are, our Christ-like selves. Obedience, therefore, is not an obligation but a joy, our Christian discipleship in daily life, the way of righteousness, where the believer is a renewing word of compassion and mercy within an alienating world who worships little more than dust, mistaking it for life. Letting Christ’s life take over our life, step by step, day by day is our bounden duty and service, our obedience unto true righteousness, our means of grace and hope and of glory.
What I have said thus far is rather technical and probably tedious for the listener, so let me illustrate the parable of this morning with two stories from my time many years ago as rector of a parish in a small mid-western town.
One of the regular attendees of the 10 AM Sunday communion was a lady named Veronica. Veronica in Scripture, you recall, is the humble lady on the way of the cross who wipes the face of Jesus with her handkerchief or scarf. The Veronica I knew had flaming red hair and was getting along in years when I met her. During the time I lived in town, I never saw Veronica with another adult when she walked about, as she often did. She was a loner. Life had been hard for her. It showed. Veronica had a good number of children, none of whom resembled one another, and with no reference ever to a husband and no visible sign of employment, one could only assume the obvious. Everyone in town knew her, but not everyone spoke to her or acknowledged her presence. Veronica came into mass at the stroke of the hour and always walked the length of the aisle to sit in the front pew. Her arrival, I noted, made for a certain uncomfortable silence and shuffling-about in the congregation. One day, a lady from the parish came to me and said that I should know something about Veronica, that “…she was from time to time before the judge…” in the courthouse across the street. I was informed that she “…had a history in town…” as I recall it expressed. My response was that I was glad she felt at home in the Episcopal Church, and given the fact that men of the town were probably the fathers of her children, we didn’t have to pass judgment on what we thought.
The second story arose at the parish picnic, an event held early each year in June, and it is a story involving Stephanie, a teenager with Down’s syndrome, who lived in a group home and who, like Veronica, attended the parish on Sundays. Part of the routine of the parish picnic was games for the children. So, Stephanie entered the competition in her age class. Stephanie may have been disabled, but she was a capable athletic competitor and won all the prizes for the games in her age group. This set the teeth of one parent on edge, who came to me saying that it was unfair for Stephanie to win all the prizes, leaving some of the children without gifts, after all, as I was informed, Stephanie was not really a parishioner. Stephanie, I was told, should be made to give back some of the things she won and those prizes given to the other children. I will always recall Stephanie holding the beach ball and all the other objects she won that day. She was beaming, her glorious moment. I remember saying to the parent that Stephanie has nothing in life, the children of this parish have everything. Let Stephanie have and keep the things she won.
I mention these two stories not to say that people are bad but to say that it is easy to be confused as to our true identity and priorities in the kingdom of this world, where the superficialities and vanities of each and all fool the eye and deceive the heart. Everyone has moments and times where we are outside the group and wish to be included. Each heart has its wounds. Christ knows that, and in Matthew’s parable of this morning he has inverted the order of priorities in the kingdom of this world, collapsing meanings and identities, transforming wrongs with forgiveness, and exposing not only religious intolerance but also the subtle undertow of self-righteousness and hypocrisy which can pull a person or group toward violence and evil if we fail to walk the way of the heart, the way of righteousness, in this life. Christ, today, warns against the temptation to define one’s self over and against a marginalized or stigmatized subsection of the population; for example, the publicans and harlots in the parable, Veronica and Stephanie in my illustration of the parish, all examples of persons who could be scapegoats, sacrificial victims or the innocent and powerless we can make suffer more than ourselves. When religion or religious people get involved in this dynamic, and they do, it is sad and tragic stuff, the same dynamic that will nail Christ to a cross, or hack women and children to pieces in cultural war in Africa, or whatever in the kingdom of this world that binds us in blind and insane obedience to fear. Fear is the way of the kingdom of this world. And, from fear, God is calling us to an awakening, to a new obedience and saving happening (Rahner), by the one who “…became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil 2.8), the Christ whose perfect righteousness is none other than the way of eternal life for all who put their trust in him.
Let me quickly summarize the three things I have said this morning: 1) God calls the believer into obedience; 2) repentance is the true beginning of obedience and is inseparable from it; And, 3) in faithful obedience to God’s forgiveness we discover and receive our truest selves, making of us disciples of mercy and compassion in the world.
I conclude with three suggestions for the practice of obedience in daily life, three ways of living this morning’s Gospel. 1) A couplet comes to mind from a hymn by the 19th century Roman Catholic priest Frederick William Faber: “…We make…[God’s] love too narrow by false limits of our own;/And we magnify…[God’s] strictness with a zeal he will not own.” When religion or religious people walk on this narrow path, beware! The way of righteousness is always the way of mercy. Err toward mercy. 2) Ask this question at times of decision in daily life where choice is required, as voiced by novelist Carlos Castenada, “Does this path have a heart?’ The way of righteousness is always the way of the heart. It’s simplicity does not mean that it is easy. And, 3) “Give all to love” wrote the American, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “obey thy heart.” The way of righteousness is the giving of our all to love, our obedience to the God who is our hope, whose identity is love’s perfect sacrifice, Christ’s death and resurrection our victory over dust and fear. It is the victory of the heart, God’s heart. Obey His love!
