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.
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