Isaiah is my favorite prophet. If I haven’t told you this yet, you should be aware that throughout the course of our ministry together, you will probably hear a lot of sermons on Isaiah, because I love the book of Isaiah.
So a little background before we begin. The book of Isaiah is actually three books written at three different periods in Israel’s history that were sort of cobbled together to become one book. The beginning is from the prophet Isaiah himself before the fall of Israel to the Babylonians, the later sections were probably composed by people in the Isaiahic school during and after the exile. This was totally acceptable practice; the ancient near east had very different ideas about plagiarism and authorship than we do. After a religious leader died it was considered totally appropriate for that person’s followers to continue to write and prophesy in their name. Sort of like how a ghostwriter would function now, except way more commonplace and expected. This is especially important in Isaiah because from this practice we get this beautiful prose narrative of the history of Israel, from the corruption of the heights of power, through the downfall and exile, and into the freedom of the restored Jerusalem. It is a book that, more than any other, tells how God stays with God’s people throughout all darkness and leads them into freedom.
Isaiah can mostly be read chronologically, with the beginning the warnings before the fall, the middle the period of exile, and the end the restoration of Jerusalem. But because centuries of editors have played with the text, throughout each of the sections are these snapshots of the promised reign of glory, moments of hope amidst the chaos. Our first reading for this morning is one of those moments.
This beautiful pronouncement of hope, of how the Lord is a refuge to the poor, a shelter in the storm, a doer of wondrous things. Of how the Lord will set a feast of rich foods and well-aged wines, and how death will be swallowed up forever. All of this comes in the middle of a pronouncement of judgment upon the earth. If you read chapter 24 you’ll notice that this reading stands out as in sharp contrast with the doom and gloom that surround it. Things will be dark, the book of Isaiah says. Things will be dark and hard and scary. Israel will fall. Violence will reign. But don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid when you look around and God seems very far away. Don’t be afraid when the world seems out of control and all you see is darkness. Don’t be afraid, because God has done wondrous things. Don’t be afraid because God is preparing a feast. The day we have waited for will come, and on the mountain of the Lord we will rejoice in this promise. So, the book of Israel proclaims, “let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
The beautiful feast imagery in Isaiah, “of rich foods [and] well-aged wines, of rich foods filled with marrow, [and] well-aged wines strained clear,” a feast at which God “will wipe away the tears from all faces [and] swallow up death forever” seems to both compliment and challenge to our gospel this morning, this very strange parable Jesus told the chief priests and elders. So to see what these two readings might be having to tell us, let’s first take a look at some of the absurdities in this parable story.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a banquet for his son.” Now that seems to line up alright. The kingdom of heaven as a banquet feast, “a feast of rich foods,” of foods fit for a king. But here’s where the parable gets strange. The king sets the feast, but no one will come. Here’s the thing, when the king invites you to a banquet, you clear your schedule. You don’t not go the king’s banquet, you just don’t. But these guests, they don’t go. So the king again sends messengers to tell the guests, look, everything’s ready, the food’s set, come to the party. But still the guests won’t come. So the king burns down his own city. Ransacks it, destroys it, leaves it in a heap of smoldering ash. I’ve read enough fantasy novels to know that storybook kings sometimes do weird things, but burn their own city to the ground? Seems like some pretty poor decision-making.
So then, now that the city is destroyed, the king sort of nonchalantly sends the messengers back out to find anyone who survived the rampage to invite them to the party. Two things strike me about verses eight and nine here. First the callousness of the king in verse eight, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.” Such an offhand remark to explain the destruction of a city. And second, the surprising openness of verse nine, “Go, therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” In sudden sharp contrast, now the feast is open to all. Suddenly we see a banquet that sounds like the elaborate feast described in Isaiah. The oxen are slaughtered, the dinner is prepared, and everyone, good and bad, is invited. The doors are flung wide, the party is at hand, come and taste the feast prepared. Which is some pretty great news. The kingdom of heaven is open to everyone. All are welcome at the banquet feast of the Lord.
And as a preacher, it would be so nice if Jesus stopped talking here. But he didn’t. The story takes one last weird turn for us. Because then we discover that the king came into the party and discovered one of his guests was not wearing the proper clothing. Which, considering all of the guests were just picked up out of the rubble of a destroyed city and brought with no prior information to the wedding, seems not all that unlikely. It actually seems pretty amazing that only one guy was not properly outfitted for a wedding, that the banquet wasn’t entirely made up of people in sooty, smoke-stained street clothes. Then the king has the man bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness, “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” a phrase that Matthew’s Gospel is uniquely focused on. For, says the end of the parable, “many are called, but few are chosen.”
This parable has a hard edge and takes a dark turn. Read like we often read parables, with God playing the role of the king, it’s hard to quite know what to do with it. I think part of what’s going on here is strife within Matthew’s own community. The struggle between Jesus and the religious leaders over authority is the same struggle between the religious leaders and the followers of Jesus that the people of Matthew’s community saw lived out day after day as they tried to make sense of the world after Jesus death and resurrection, after the Temple had fallen. Stories such as this one reminded them that Jesus too had struggled with close-minded religious leaders, and that Jesus had harsh words for such people.
And there is wisdom and guidance in that. But we read this parable from a different place than Matthew’s community. We read it not as an oppressed minority reeling from the destruction of the temple. We read it as Jesus disciples hear it, as a radical promise that God invites everyone to the banquet, good and bad, because God is a God of radical welcome and expansive love. So, because we read it from a different place, I want to wonder with you for a bit about what this parable might mean for us from the point of view of different characters. How might it change how we understand the banquet feast?
What if the king is not God, but the religious leaders? What if the feast is set, the banquet is thrown, but because of the king’s exclusivity, he still ends up dining alone. Yes he threw open the doors to everyone, but still there were hidden restrictions, laws and codes in place for who was welcome. Eventually, such barriers will end in the same place, a banquet set for an empty room. How does this parable then challenge us to question our own hospitality? What barriers might we still have up in truly believing that the feast is set for all?
Or what if the failure of the man dressed incorrectly was not his inability to wear the proper clothing, but his hesitation to enter fully into the joy of the feast. After all, if everyone else was dressed in wedding robes, clearly the possibility was out there that he too could have become properly attired. What if his problem was a failure to party? And so, by standing arms crossed at the edge of the party, afraid to truly let his guard down and have a good time, lest he look the fool, he missed out on the celebration entirely? How might this parable challenge us to consider our own joy? Is our faith fun? Something we engage because it brings a smile to our faces and a dance to our steps? Or to we approach a life of faith more as a life of obligation? We’re here to check the box off of “good person,” to fill the slot of our resume, but in doing so we forget that in the end this is a banquet, and we are called to dance. How might we be being challenged to bring more joy, more laughter, more downright silliness into this world?
This parable asks hard questions of us. It ends in a place with no clear answers and frightening challenges. But here’s the good news, sisters and brothers, even in the midst of our questions, in the midst of our shortcomings, and failures to welcome, still the feast is set. So come to this table with your questions. Come feeling unwelcoming or unwelcome. Come overfull or underdressed. Come filled with joy or cautious in fear. Come to a foretaste of the rich foods, of the well-aged wines strained clear. Come with your questions unanswered, knowing that such questions and wondering can only bring us closer to the heart of God, who promises in the midst of all our fears and doubts, to rest God’s holy hand upon this mountain. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, October 13, 2014
Monday, October 6, 2014
Amazing in our Eyes: A Sermon on Matthew 21:33-46
Here we are in the second of three parables of Jesus response to the chief priests and the elders questions about authority. Last week, we heard about how the chief priests and elders would be second into the kingdom of God and this week it seems like maybe they aren’t getting in at all. I confess I don’t love preaching parables. Preaching always seems like a bit of a bold endeavor, and parables even more so. Here’s a lesson that Jesus himself chose to teach using a story, and now I’m going to try to explain it out to you in ten to twelve minutes. Seems a bit ambitious if you ask me.
And this parable seems like an especially funny one for explaining. Not funny, ha-ha, but funny as in confusing. So there’s a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a fence around it, dug a wine press, built a watchtower, and generally did all the things one would do to have a successful crop. Then the landowner leased the vineyard to some tenants to care for it while he was away. This was standard practice in first century Palestine. Wealthy landowners would often find others to work their land for them in exchange for a portion of the crops. What’s odd about these tenants is that they seem to get too attached to the property. Like the way my friend’s two-year-old firmly believes that any toy she is playing with is her toy, the tenants seem to think that the land they are working should belong to them. So when the landlord sends his slaves to gather up his portion of the produce, the tenants seize the slaves, beating and killing them. Again the landlord sends slaves; again the tenants kill them. Finally, the landlord sends his son, thinking, “surely they will respect my son.” Now let’s pause here for a second and think this decision through. On one hand, Jesus is telling this story to a patriarchal society. One’s entire social status is based around one’s alliance to the patriarch. So to assume that the son would have the weight of the landlord is a totally legal and reasonable belief. But the tenants have thus far not shown any great concern for the legal or rational ramifications of their actions. So why he would think that his son, a much more valuable commodity than any of the servants he’d thus far sent, would have the effect he is looking for seems sort of unbelievable.
And of course, the tenants don’t respect the son. They kill him as well, thinking that with the son out of the way they can have the inheritance.
So what, Jesus asked the chief priests and the elders, will the landowner do to those tenants? They say to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” This seems like a harsh, but possible rational response to the problem at hand. One might even wonder why the landlord took so long to send in a stronger force to deal with his unruly tenants. It would seem after the first set of slaves were killed like it was past time to get rid of that group and go with tenants who were a little less possessive.
And of course, because we’ve read enough of these parables, we can see the trick Jesus has pulled on the chief priests and the elders here. The landlord, obviously, is God. You can hear the echoes of the creation story in the creation of the vineyard, how in the beginning, God filled the universe with everything necessary for life, just as the landlord filled the vineyard with everything needed for the harvest. And then God/the landlord turned the vineyard/earth over to tenants, who would care for God’s creation and bring it to fullness. But what did the nasty tenants do? They killed the prophets, over and over again. What is the Old Testament but the story of God’s people turning away from the messengers God has sent them. So finally, the landlord sent the son. And the tenants killed the son, so great was their desire for power. But then what happened? [Pause]
Jesus followed up their call for vengeance by quoting the book of Isaiah, asking, “Have you never read in the scriptures?” Here’s where we have an advantage over the chief priests and the elders to whom Jesus addressed the original question. Because the chief priests and the elders don’t yet know what’s to come. But we do. We know just how true this story is to our story. We know that the landlord did indeed send the son, God’s only Son, our Lord. And that in just a short time from when Jesus had this conversation in the temple, the parable would play out just as he had described it.
But what happened after Jesus was put to death? He rose again. And in doing so, he defeated death. And the words from Isaiah would ring true in a way that no one could have guessed, no one could have imagined. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”
This parable paints for us a story of the indescribable vastness of God’s love. God’s relationship to God’s creation is not a tenant/landlord relationship. A landlord, someone more interested in the production of product than the prospects of the tenants, would certainly have turned those rotten, violent folk out at the first sign of disloyalty. But God the good landlord puts relationship with the tenants above production of the harvest. God so desperately wants to be in relationship with God’s people that no matter how many times they turn away, God sends another messenger. Even to the point of sending God’s own son.
And when God’s own son is put to death, even that becomes life-giving, becomes an opportunity for redemption, for relationship, for God to claim us as daughters and sons, heirs of the promise of the kingdom of God. God’s greatest gift of life, came through death on a cross. Hope came out of despair. Light out of the deepest darkness. The incredible, paradoxical foolishness of the cross is the apex of God’s love song to creation. A song so powerful that it draws everyone into its power. So powerful that power is transformed into mercy. This truly is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls. The cornerstone that is Christ will crush you with its mercy. I don’t mean that in some sort of trite, all trials come from God, sense. I mean that so powerful is the grace and the mercy of God that you will find yourself broken in God’s presence. You will find your guilt broken, your shame broken, your greed broken, your need for self-control. All the things that hold us captive, all the things that keep us separate, all are broken to pieces, all are swept away by the power and the mercy and the grace of God. And in that breaking, in that letting go, you will find yourself put together again, stronger, deeper, new, refreshed, restored, in the nearness of Christ.
God can make us new. God does make us new. With the strong and steady hands of the master vintner, God breaks away all that keeps us captive and we find ourselves renewed, recreated, in the light of this new relationship. The stone that the builders rejected breaks away our brokenness so that we stand with Christ at the cornerstone of God’s harvest.
The harvest is ready, prepared for those who bear the fruit of redemption. A broken feast, for broken people, a holy feast, for God’s own people. So, come to this table. Come and taste the fruit of the vineyard. Bring your brokenness to be broken away by God. Come because this is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes. Amen.
And this parable seems like an especially funny one for explaining. Not funny, ha-ha, but funny as in confusing. So there’s a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a fence around it, dug a wine press, built a watchtower, and generally did all the things one would do to have a successful crop. Then the landowner leased the vineyard to some tenants to care for it while he was away. This was standard practice in first century Palestine. Wealthy landowners would often find others to work their land for them in exchange for a portion of the crops. What’s odd about these tenants is that they seem to get too attached to the property. Like the way my friend’s two-year-old firmly believes that any toy she is playing with is her toy, the tenants seem to think that the land they are working should belong to them. So when the landlord sends his slaves to gather up his portion of the produce, the tenants seize the slaves, beating and killing them. Again the landlord sends slaves; again the tenants kill them. Finally, the landlord sends his son, thinking, “surely they will respect my son.” Now let’s pause here for a second and think this decision through. On one hand, Jesus is telling this story to a patriarchal society. One’s entire social status is based around one’s alliance to the patriarch. So to assume that the son would have the weight of the landlord is a totally legal and reasonable belief. But the tenants have thus far not shown any great concern for the legal or rational ramifications of their actions. So why he would think that his son, a much more valuable commodity than any of the servants he’d thus far sent, would have the effect he is looking for seems sort of unbelievable.
And of course, the tenants don’t respect the son. They kill him as well, thinking that with the son out of the way they can have the inheritance.
So what, Jesus asked the chief priests and the elders, will the landowner do to those tenants? They say to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” This seems like a harsh, but possible rational response to the problem at hand. One might even wonder why the landlord took so long to send in a stronger force to deal with his unruly tenants. It would seem after the first set of slaves were killed like it was past time to get rid of that group and go with tenants who were a little less possessive.
And of course, because we’ve read enough of these parables, we can see the trick Jesus has pulled on the chief priests and the elders here. The landlord, obviously, is God. You can hear the echoes of the creation story in the creation of the vineyard, how in the beginning, God filled the universe with everything necessary for life, just as the landlord filled the vineyard with everything needed for the harvest. And then God/the landlord turned the vineyard/earth over to tenants, who would care for God’s creation and bring it to fullness. But what did the nasty tenants do? They killed the prophets, over and over again. What is the Old Testament but the story of God’s people turning away from the messengers God has sent them. So finally, the landlord sent the son. And the tenants killed the son, so great was their desire for power. But then what happened? [Pause]
Jesus followed up their call for vengeance by quoting the book of Isaiah, asking, “Have you never read in the scriptures?” Here’s where we have an advantage over the chief priests and the elders to whom Jesus addressed the original question. Because the chief priests and the elders don’t yet know what’s to come. But we do. We know just how true this story is to our story. We know that the landlord did indeed send the son, God’s only Son, our Lord. And that in just a short time from when Jesus had this conversation in the temple, the parable would play out just as he had described it.
But what happened after Jesus was put to death? He rose again. And in doing so, he defeated death. And the words from Isaiah would ring true in a way that no one could have guessed, no one could have imagined. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”
This parable paints for us a story of the indescribable vastness of God’s love. God’s relationship to God’s creation is not a tenant/landlord relationship. A landlord, someone more interested in the production of product than the prospects of the tenants, would certainly have turned those rotten, violent folk out at the first sign of disloyalty. But God the good landlord puts relationship with the tenants above production of the harvest. God so desperately wants to be in relationship with God’s people that no matter how many times they turn away, God sends another messenger. Even to the point of sending God’s own son.
And when God’s own son is put to death, even that becomes life-giving, becomes an opportunity for redemption, for relationship, for God to claim us as daughters and sons, heirs of the promise of the kingdom of God. God’s greatest gift of life, came through death on a cross. Hope came out of despair. Light out of the deepest darkness. The incredible, paradoxical foolishness of the cross is the apex of God’s love song to creation. A song so powerful that it draws everyone into its power. So powerful that power is transformed into mercy. This truly is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls. The cornerstone that is Christ will crush you with its mercy. I don’t mean that in some sort of trite, all trials come from God, sense. I mean that so powerful is the grace and the mercy of God that you will find yourself broken in God’s presence. You will find your guilt broken, your shame broken, your greed broken, your need for self-control. All the things that hold us captive, all the things that keep us separate, all are broken to pieces, all are swept away by the power and the mercy and the grace of God. And in that breaking, in that letting go, you will find yourself put together again, stronger, deeper, new, refreshed, restored, in the nearness of Christ.
God can make us new. God does make us new. With the strong and steady hands of the master vintner, God breaks away all that keeps us captive and we find ourselves renewed, recreated, in the light of this new relationship. The stone that the builders rejected breaks away our brokenness so that we stand with Christ at the cornerstone of God’s harvest.
The harvest is ready, prepared for those who bear the fruit of redemption. A broken feast, for broken people, a holy feast, for God’s own people. So, come to this table. Come and taste the fruit of the vineyard. Bring your brokenness to be broken away by God. Come because this is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes. Amen.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
90s Pop Music, the Present Perfect Tense, and God's Consistent Yes: A Sermon on Matthew 21:23-32
My friend Kristin is visiting this weekend. And Kristin, among other things, reintroduced me to the band Sister Hazel. I share this with you because this week I was reading commentaries on our Gospel reading and one of them actually quoted “Change Your Mind” by Sister Hazel. This had two effects on me. 1) It seemed like a funny coincidence since Kristin would be here for this sermon, and 2) it caused me to have “Change Your Mind” by Sister Hazel stuck in my head for the better part of this week, along with another similarly themed classic, “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson.
But back to “Change Your Mind.” If you’re not familiar with this turn of the century cult classic, the chorus goes: If you want to be somebody else, if you’re tired of fighting battles with yourself. If you want to be somebody else, change your mind. As someone who came of age in the 90s with a bit of an, independent, shall we say, streak—my grandmother would tell you stubborn, but I’ve always felt “independent” sounded better—this song was kind of a mantra for me. It spoke to my desire to do things on my own, to forge my own path, to make a difference. Yeah, I would think, hitting rewind on my tape player, that’s right, if you want things to be different, the person you’ve got to change is you. It was right up there with Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” on my favorite self-empowerment mixed tape.
So it was, I confess, a little jarring to read Change Your Mind quoted in a commentary on our parable for this morning. Because the song always felt like what the parable seemed to be stressing. That our actions matter more than our words, that we are the only ones who can change our situations. Just do it, both the song and the parable seem to be saying. Just live the way you’re supposed to. Change your mind.
But that, as you may already be aware, is way easier said than done. Just change your mind, lead singer Ken Block crooned. If you don’t like something, just change it. This was a good soundtrack to my adolescence, but now that I’m aware that I in fact do not know everything, it’s a bit less successful. See, what I’ve come to realize about myself, and what you may feel about yourself, is that I relate a lot more to the first brother than I do to the second. I am more apt to change my mind and do the wrong thing than to change my mind into becoming a person of great virtue and work-ethic.
So I struggled with this parable, as a preacher, as a theologian, and also as a follower of Christ. It’s nice, I guess, that actions speak louder than words, but I’m still not totally confident I want to be judged by my actions. There are too many times when I’ve done the wrong thing, too many times I’ve walked away, too many times I’ve said one thing and done another. This parable seems to focus on the sort of decision theology, the sort of “make yourself right with God” ideas that make me so uncomfortable, because they seem so unreachable. Just do it is a great mantra for sports or pop psychology or adolescent angst. But when my soul is on the line, trusting in my own ability to just do it seems like a frightening and, quite frankly, foolish gamble. So, where is the good news in this parable?
Parables, as I’ve mentioned, are a tricky teaching tool, and the first pass over is rarely the full story. So yes, actions speak louder than words is a true and important lesson for us, but there’s more to this one. So as I wrestled with what else might be going on in this one, I tried something a little different. I backed in; starting from the end, from the explanation of the analogy that Jesus made and I noticed a surprising thing. The difference between the prostitutes and tax collectors and the chief priests and the elders was this, the prostitutes and tax collectors were willing to let go of their past in order to enter into the future that Christ was offering while the chief priests and the elders were not. The so-called “sinners” walked away from the life they’d had before, whereas the “righteous” hung onto that past as proof of their righteousness. Each was set free from the sins and brokenness that had defined them, but only the tax collectors and prostitutes, only the brother that said no, had hands free to accept the gift. The truth is that both brothers, the chief priests and elders, the prostitutes and tax collectors, all of us, have all said No to God at one point or another. And what set the first brother and the prostitutes and tax collectors apart was that the answer was able to change from no to yes.
And here’s where this whole thing just gets really good. So the situation that prompted Jesus to tell this parable is a conversation between him and the chief priests and the elders about authority. Who gave him the authority to preach, who gave John the authority to baptize. And baptism is, I think, the key to understanding this whole thing. Because what happens at baptism is that God turn our no into God’s yes. At baptism our hearts, our minds, are changed as we become children of God. And this isn’t like a one-time thing. It’s not like suddenly the second brother had this conversion experience where his no was gone and he never said no again. But continually God is pouring grace into us, turning our nos into yeses, again and again. That I think is the power of this story, that we are always being reformed, being remade into the image of God. That over and over again our sin is taken away and we start again.
I think a few of you are English teachers; baptism is like the present perfect tense of sacraments. It is an event that happened once, but whose effects are continually felt into the present. It’s like dropping a stone in a pool and watching the ripples go out, and then another stone, and then another, again and again, stones dropping into eternity, forever changing the surface of the water and the courses of our lives. It means that we are forever changed, that our minds are forever transformed, and that no matter how many nos we might say, no matter what sins we might make, what brokenness might remain within us, God is continually working and moving in our lives, changing those nos to yeses. We don’t know how long it took the first brother to go back to the vineyard; maybe it was years. Took Jonah two tries to get to Nineveh, and quite a while after that to recognize the power of God’s grace, but it didn’t stop God’s grace from working.
We start every service at the font with a time of confession and forgiveness. We start at the font because baptism and confession and forgiveness are intricately linked. Baptism is the one time event, the first stone in the pond, and this time of confession and forgiveness is the ripples running out, every stone following, the opportunity to remember every Sunday, again and again, that this promise God made to us in baptism is true, is real, and is lasting. That it wasn’t something that happened once, long ago, that maybe you don’t even remember. But it is an event that is continuing to have ripple effects in your life today. Confession and forgiveness is a tricky little rite. We put it at the beginning of the service to remind us of how baptism marked a new life for us. But sometimes this location can have a different effect, can make it feel like some sort of mark of entry, like we have to get right before God before we can come into worship. The truth of it is the confession part is for us. The confession is to help us hear better the words that follow. But the important part is the forgiveness, the important part is God saying not, you need to be forgiven, but don’t forget that you are forgiven. Don’t forget that you are loved. Don’t forget that you are a child of God, precious in God’s sight. So from this Sunday on out, I invite you to focus on the forgiveness section, on the promise that you are forgiven, that you are made new, that every moment is a chance to start again, to try again, to believe yourself to be the kind of person God has made you to be, the kind of person God already knows you to be. Thanks be to God, who made us all new, and who is continually working until we can recognize it too. Amen.
But back to “Change Your Mind.” If you’re not familiar with this turn of the century cult classic, the chorus goes: If you want to be somebody else, if you’re tired of fighting battles with yourself. If you want to be somebody else, change your mind. As someone who came of age in the 90s with a bit of an, independent, shall we say, streak—my grandmother would tell you stubborn, but I’ve always felt “independent” sounded better—this song was kind of a mantra for me. It spoke to my desire to do things on my own, to forge my own path, to make a difference. Yeah, I would think, hitting rewind on my tape player, that’s right, if you want things to be different, the person you’ve got to change is you. It was right up there with Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” on my favorite self-empowerment mixed tape.
So it was, I confess, a little jarring to read Change Your Mind quoted in a commentary on our parable for this morning. Because the song always felt like what the parable seemed to be stressing. That our actions matter more than our words, that we are the only ones who can change our situations. Just do it, both the song and the parable seem to be saying. Just live the way you’re supposed to. Change your mind.
But that, as you may already be aware, is way easier said than done. Just change your mind, lead singer Ken Block crooned. If you don’t like something, just change it. This was a good soundtrack to my adolescence, but now that I’m aware that I in fact do not know everything, it’s a bit less successful. See, what I’ve come to realize about myself, and what you may feel about yourself, is that I relate a lot more to the first brother than I do to the second. I am more apt to change my mind and do the wrong thing than to change my mind into becoming a person of great virtue and work-ethic.
So I struggled with this parable, as a preacher, as a theologian, and also as a follower of Christ. It’s nice, I guess, that actions speak louder than words, but I’m still not totally confident I want to be judged by my actions. There are too many times when I’ve done the wrong thing, too many times I’ve walked away, too many times I’ve said one thing and done another. This parable seems to focus on the sort of decision theology, the sort of “make yourself right with God” ideas that make me so uncomfortable, because they seem so unreachable. Just do it is a great mantra for sports or pop psychology or adolescent angst. But when my soul is on the line, trusting in my own ability to just do it seems like a frightening and, quite frankly, foolish gamble. So, where is the good news in this parable?
Parables, as I’ve mentioned, are a tricky teaching tool, and the first pass over is rarely the full story. So yes, actions speak louder than words is a true and important lesson for us, but there’s more to this one. So as I wrestled with what else might be going on in this one, I tried something a little different. I backed in; starting from the end, from the explanation of the analogy that Jesus made and I noticed a surprising thing. The difference between the prostitutes and tax collectors and the chief priests and the elders was this, the prostitutes and tax collectors were willing to let go of their past in order to enter into the future that Christ was offering while the chief priests and the elders were not. The so-called “sinners” walked away from the life they’d had before, whereas the “righteous” hung onto that past as proof of their righteousness. Each was set free from the sins and brokenness that had defined them, but only the tax collectors and prostitutes, only the brother that said no, had hands free to accept the gift. The truth is that both brothers, the chief priests and elders, the prostitutes and tax collectors, all of us, have all said No to God at one point or another. And what set the first brother and the prostitutes and tax collectors apart was that the answer was able to change from no to yes.
And here’s where this whole thing just gets really good. So the situation that prompted Jesus to tell this parable is a conversation between him and the chief priests and the elders about authority. Who gave him the authority to preach, who gave John the authority to baptize. And baptism is, I think, the key to understanding this whole thing. Because what happens at baptism is that God turn our no into God’s yes. At baptism our hearts, our minds, are changed as we become children of God. And this isn’t like a one-time thing. It’s not like suddenly the second brother had this conversion experience where his no was gone and he never said no again. But continually God is pouring grace into us, turning our nos into yeses, again and again. That I think is the power of this story, that we are always being reformed, being remade into the image of God. That over and over again our sin is taken away and we start again.
I think a few of you are English teachers; baptism is like the present perfect tense of sacraments. It is an event that happened once, but whose effects are continually felt into the present. It’s like dropping a stone in a pool and watching the ripples go out, and then another stone, and then another, again and again, stones dropping into eternity, forever changing the surface of the water and the courses of our lives. It means that we are forever changed, that our minds are forever transformed, and that no matter how many nos we might say, no matter what sins we might make, what brokenness might remain within us, God is continually working and moving in our lives, changing those nos to yeses. We don’t know how long it took the first brother to go back to the vineyard; maybe it was years. Took Jonah two tries to get to Nineveh, and quite a while after that to recognize the power of God’s grace, but it didn’t stop God’s grace from working.
We start every service at the font with a time of confession and forgiveness. We start at the font because baptism and confession and forgiveness are intricately linked. Baptism is the one time event, the first stone in the pond, and this time of confession and forgiveness is the ripples running out, every stone following, the opportunity to remember every Sunday, again and again, that this promise God made to us in baptism is true, is real, and is lasting. That it wasn’t something that happened once, long ago, that maybe you don’t even remember. But it is an event that is continuing to have ripple effects in your life today. Confession and forgiveness is a tricky little rite. We put it at the beginning of the service to remind us of how baptism marked a new life for us. But sometimes this location can have a different effect, can make it feel like some sort of mark of entry, like we have to get right before God before we can come into worship. The truth of it is the confession part is for us. The confession is to help us hear better the words that follow. But the important part is the forgiveness, the important part is God saying not, you need to be forgiven, but don’t forget that you are forgiven. Don’t forget that you are loved. Don’t forget that you are a child of God, precious in God’s sight. So from this Sunday on out, I invite you to focus on the forgiveness section, on the promise that you are forgiven, that you are made new, that every moment is a chance to start again, to try again, to believe yourself to be the kind of person God has made you to be, the kind of person God already knows you to be. Thanks be to God, who made us all new, and who is continually working until we can recognize it too. Amen.
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