Sunday Talk

Goodness, what a busy week!  I haven't had time to post anything, least of all the Sunday talk prepared for last weekend, based on the set Gospel reading. Here it is, though . . .

“There was a man who had two sons.” With these words Jesus begins a story that can be a bit dangerous for us to read, and here’s why. Because it compares and contrasts two sons, one of whom makes a promise and doesn’t keep it, while the other refuses the request but then does what was wanted after all, we can easily find ourselves reading the story with particular people in mind, and being tempted into doing something Jesus tells us we shouldn’t ever do – sitting in judgement on someone else: “Judge not, so you won’t be judged,” he says.

Of course, the clear message of the story is that it’s what we do that counts, not what we say. Elsewhere, Jesus tells his disciples, “By their works shall you know them” - works, not words. Here Jesus is talking to the religious leaders of his day, the chief priests and their allies. At the beginning of the reading we heard how they came up to ask Jesus what authority he’d got to preach on their patch – for there he was in the temple. He sidestepped that challenge by presenting them with a question they didn’t dare answer honestly.

To me they behaved rather like politicians on Newsnight or Question Time. They scratched about to work out the party line – what will happen if we say this, and what will happen if we say that? Jesus asked them what they thought about the ministry of John the Baptist: were his words from men or from God? And like modern politicians waiting for the text from party HQ or the whips’ office to tells them what they ought to say (our own MP I think being an honourable exception to the rule) there they were, searching for an answer based not on truth, not on what they really thought, but on expediency, on what would play with the crowd.

So Jesus follows up by saying, “Tell me what you think about this, instead,” and he gives them the parable of the two sons. Which of them did what his father wanted? Well, the answer to that was clear enough. A job done is worth a lot more than a job promised.

We’re not told why the first son went back on his promise. He could have had good reason. Things change, problems come up, sometimes you just can’t do what you’d hoped and intended to do. Often we tell the story as though the first son broke his promise out of idleness or because his mates called to take him out for a beer. But Jesus doesn’t say that – so take care: the times when we change our plans for what we claim as good and plausible reasons, they matter too.

In fact, any character defect on the part of either of the sons is completely incidental to the point of the story. The only point of the story is this – that the job gets done by those who do it, and not by those who merely talk about it. Which reminds me of the saying that when all is said and done, there’s usually a great deal more said.

And even those chief priests, they weren’t bad people, or at not for the most part, I shouldn’t think. They were just doing their best to keep the religious show on the road, and maybe to keep their jobs too, but who wouldn’t? And it wasn’t easy, under Roman occupation and with the people themselves often very fractious, and liable to follow any new teacher or possible messiah. Of course, they were very aware of their own status, their high position in society, and the protected and for the most part highly comfortable lives they were able to lead. So maybe they didn’t really have the common touch any more, if they ever did. But I feel sure they were doing their best, even so.

Since it’s these people who clearly are depicted by the first son, the one who promised but didn’t deliver, it’s worth asking just what it was the chief priests had promised, and in what way they hadn’t delivered on their promise. And my answer to that question, I think, has to do with honesty, and is connected very closely with the reason why they couldn’t and wouldn’t answer the question Jesus put to them about John the Baptist.

Fundamental to the role of the high priest or the temple servant is the promise they have made to God, to serve him first and foremost, to give him first place in their lives, to build everything around that prior claim he has, over all else. But it’s so easy for the institution and the way things are done to become more important than the God we’re called to serve and worship, and that’s what had happened here - and the status and security they so valued was also part of the problem. So Jesus had little chance of getting an honest answer, because all they could think of was “What will people think of us if we say this?”

As the religious establishment they had the insiders’ interest in rocking no boats and keeping things as much the same as they could. They were allowing the religion, the cult, to become a business in itself, in which God ends up with a bit part at best, tolerated so long as he keeps to his place within the process. We can see as we read the Gospels how Jesus has much more success with outsiders, with people whose only prayer, like that of the tax collector in the temple, was “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” These guys had nothing to cling to but their honesty, for they were people who knew they’d gone wrong but longed to be right again, they were like the second son, coming to a change of heart and of mind.

But there’s a detail of what Jesus has to say to the temple elite that we mustn’t overlook. They won’t be happy to hear him say that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom ahead of them, but those words ‘ahead of them’ are important. He doesn’t say ‘instead of them,’ he doesn’t say they no longer have a place. For his message is that no-one is excluded. Everyone can have that change of heart and mind that brings them back into the right place. Jesus tells them that unlike the tax collectors and the prostitutes, they did not change their minds and believe John.” But they still could. The door remains open.

Sadly I’s have to say that I have seen churches where God has to know his place, and it’s second place to the organisation and the ritual. Probably all churches have a tendency to be like that sometimes. And I don’t suppose any of us, hand on heart, can say there haven’t been times when we’ve promised, but not delivered; when we’ve promised God, but not delivered; and when that’s happened, we’ve probably had all sorts of good reasons why we couldn’t do it, or had postpone. Life is shades of grey, it isn’t always black and white and easy to decide. So it’s good from time to time to be reminded of our outsider status. We’re saved not by our works, and certainly not by our words, however well meant, but by grace alone; by our Lord Jesus Christ and through the cross on which he bore our sins.

Which takes me back to where we started, I suppose, the danger of this reading leading us into judging others, who perhaps don’t match up to our fine examples, when the truth is, we don’t even match up to them ourselves. This is a story to encourage me into judgement, but I can only judge myself. So I’ll spend a while being honest about the promises I’ve passed up on, and I’ll work at building more transparency and consistency into my life, and I’ll ask my God to help me.