Jesus the Storyteller: Parable of the Two Sons

Christian Community Presbyterian Church
Bowie, Maryland
October 8, 2023

Jesus the Storyteller: Parable of the Two Sons
Matthew 21:23-32

[Video can be found at https://youtu.be/1lZppmfr3Wo?si=R3d34fMITdAYJMZe]

A pastor visited a parishioner who lived by herself in the family home where she had been born 97 years earlier. They had a pleasant talk about things she had experienced in her near century of life: births and deaths, disappointments and celebrations, leavings and returnings. The conversation turned to the church and its history. Seeking a sense of the woman’s faith, the pastor asked if she ever thought about the hereafter. She replied, “I think about it all the time. Every time I go into a room I ask myself, ‘What am I here after?’”

I see heads nodding. She’s not alone, is she? I can remember details of things that happened decades ago. But if you were to ask me what I had for dinner Friday night or what I did on Thursday, I would be hard pressed to tell you. You’ve been there, right? Isn’t memory a wonderful thing? Paula will ask me to do something when I’m done with whatever I’m involved with at the moment. I continue to train myself to stop what I’m doing and do her task right then because if I don’t, I’ll forget to do it. I see more heads nodding. It’s not just me.

I can identify with the sons in today’s parable. I should say at the outset that while Jesus, appropriate to his culture, used sons in his vignette, the two characters could just as easily be daughters or a son and a daughter. Who of us hasn’t said yes to doing something and didn’t do it (forgetfully or on purpose) and who of us hasn’t said no to a request and later thought better of it and did it?

Many sermons have been preached about this parable. Most could easily be summed up in one word: obedience. However, Jesus’ parables are not one dimensional. He never told a simple parable. Obedience is just the veneer of this parable. When I dig deeper, I think that this is a parable about quitting.

Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi is credited with saying, “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” Stirring words, but not always right. Throughout history winners have quit one thing and moved on to win another. Matthew tells us that Jesus quit Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum to begin his ministry (Matthew 4:13) and that Simon and Andrew quit fishing and followed Jesus (Matthew 4:20). Luke tells us that Zacchaeus quit gouging the tax payers and gave refunds (Luke 19:8) and that Saul quit “breathing threats against the disciples of the Lord” and became an apostle (Acts 9.1). 

Quitting has a long tradition. Our country was founded by quitters. They quit England and then they quit paying the tea and stamp taxes and quit letting the British billet troops in their homes. Abraham Lincoln quit owning a general store and entered politics. Julia Child quit being a OSS intelligence officer and became a world-famous French chef. “Grandma” Moses quit selling potato chips and began to paint at age 80. Harrison Ford quit being a professional carpenter to take a part in a little movie called “Star Wars.”

Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Insanity is a failure to embrace quitting. Quitting may be the best thing that anyone can do.

The context for the parable of the two sons was a question designed to trap Jesus. The religious leaders wanted to catch him in a heretical claim about the authority for what he did. Wise to their scheming, Jesus offered to answer their question if they would answer one of his own. “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”

The leaders discussed among themselves the possible answers and knew that it was a no-win situation for them however they answered. They didn’t give any credit to John but they feared the crowd who revered John, so the learned leaders feigned ignorance about Jesus’ question: “We don’t know.” Jesus had backed them into a corner.

Jesus then engaged in a teaching moment which further embarrassed the leaders. He told a parable about a man who had two sons whom he wanted to work in the family vineyard. The father approached the first son and told him to go work in the vineyard. We don’t know if this was the older son or just the first one he came upon. This young man had a full schedule and didn’t want to change his plans, so he said that he couldn’t go. Later he changed his mind, cleared his calendar, and went to the vineyard to work. The father came to the other son and told him to go work in the vineyard. This son obediently said “Yes,” but he never showed up at the vineyard. 

Jesus asked, “Which of the two did the will of the father?” There was no way to avoid the obvious answer. The first son, even though he had at first refused to go and then had a change of heart, was the one who obeyed the father.

“Well, guess what?” Jesus told the religious bigwigs. “Tax collectors and prostitutes, crooks and call girls are beating a path to God’s kingdom and will get there long before you will.”

As they all gasped, he said, “Pay attention! John came pointing out the righteous road – the repentance route – and you all thumbed your noses at him. But the sinners believed him. They saw the truth of what John said and they did exactly what they needed to do. They quit their old habits.” As Jesus saw it, the religious leaders ignored the change that took place in the sinners. The religious elite saw no need to quit what they were doing, no necessity to change their minds and believe John’s message. If they hadn’t believed John’s message, they were not going to be moved by anything that Jesus said to them.

The perceived losers – tax collectors, prostitutes, sinner of every ilk – were willing to change their ways. They quit sinning and did God’s will. They were leading the way into the kingdom of God.

At this point many preachers might face their congregations and ask, “What is God asking you to do?” I’ve done that. The question seems more appropriate for discussing in small groups. That said, very few people would be willing to admit publicly, or privately, to getting a direct request from God to go and do something. The ask is a lot bigger than picking grapes, which is only backbreaking. God knows when we are giving a lip-service yes. Our failure to follow through won’t cut it with God. God calls us to quit yessing and not following through. God calls us to turn our nos into yeses.

Most of the time God’s commands are not short and simple like the father’s “Go work in the vineyard.” God’s commands often have a broad brush quality about them, like “Love your neighbor.” Like the lawyer who prompted Jesus to tell the parable of the good Samaritan, we look for loopholes. We want to hold our heads high while avoiding the hard work which affirms the humanity of other persons. We seek excuses to call them losers and sinners not worthy of our care, thinking that God shouldn’t care about them either. That was the attitude of the religious leaders who failed to give dignity to the people who heard and accepted the Baptizer’s call to repentance. For a long time the people cast out and deemed worthless by the religious elite had said no to God’s call to live righteous lives. But they quit saying no, quit their old habits, and said yes to the grace of God.

We are not standing in the crowd in the Temple that heard the discussion between Jesus and the religious leaders. We are seated comfortably in Christian pews two thousand years away. As the smoke from Canada’s summer wildfires blurred our temporal vision, so twenty centuries of church and secular history have blurred our spiritual vision of the realm of God’s rule described in Jesus’ parables.

In many ways the Church – capital C – has acted and continues to act more like the son who said “yes” and reneged than the son who said “no” and thought better of it. 

Many parts of the Church are very good at affirming the commands of Christ. There is an eagerness to cite the words of Micah, “do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God” or to bask in the glory of the Matthew 25 picture of the righteous servants ending hunger, slaking thirsts, welcoming strangers, clothing nakedness, visiting sick and imprisoned folk. Yet doing those things, not so much. The explanations flow: too busy, too idle, too young, too old, too far away, too near, too poor, too rich, too similar, too different, too wrapped up in Bible study, too tied up in keeping the church parlor immaculate. 

Church assemblies adopt profound statements of missional purpose. Some congregations or members pay no attention to them because that’s not who they are, or they don’t have any of those situations around them, or they don’t have the resources. The church can be so like the son who says yes and then goes about his own business. Too often The church enjoys the privileges of faith, as did the religious leaders who tried to cast doubt on Jesus.

We are used to thinking that sinners need us religious folk. Someone has to tell them what they are doing wrong. The reality is that good religious people need sinners. We need them to jolt the comfort of our faith which otherwise becomes calcified to the realities of life. We develop a theological sclerosis in the arteries of our faith. Our physical bodies have arteries carrying oxygen-rich blood to the capillaries where oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide to be delivered back to the lungs and heart through the veins. Grace is the oxygen that we constantly need in the arteries of our faith-bodies. Grace needs to circulate from heart and mind to hands and feet and back again.

We need sinners to keep our spiritual blood flowing unhindered through a healthy God-created cardiovascular system. Sinners are the continuing reminder for each of us that there is only a hair’s breadth difference between a saint and a sinner. Jesus observes that the people who have traditionally said no are the ones who quit their sinful ways. Isn’t that another way of saying that they repented? Wasn’t that Jesus’ initial message: “Repent and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15).

As individual followers of Christ, as a community of shared faith in the grace-filled purpose of Creation, the redemptive power of the risen Christ, and the abiding presence of the Spirit, we can quit saying yes and not following through. We can figure out how to stop avoiding what God wants us to do, and how to start working in God's vineyard. We can turn our nos into yeses.

Conversion is not one and done activity. It’s not a quick process. Quitting is an ongoing process that takes a lifetime. Sometimes, we have to live with a sense of restlessness as God pushes us in a new direction. At other times, we might feel peaceful about a decision but then discover that our serenity is really laziness in disguise.

When we quit doing the things that keep us from God, we are in a position to start doing God’s intended work, and to change our lives for the better. If we feel that we're avoiding what God wants us to do, it’s time to stop what we're doing, examine our goals, define anew what it means to have a loving relationship with God, and make changes which will bring glory to God.

May it be so. Amen.