At the risk of sounding like I am trying to butter you all up, I would like to begin by stating that this is a good church that is made up of good people. Or at least we try to be.
We’re not all perfect, but we’re doing our best. We all know ourselves well enough to know that we are not entirely free of sin or of making mistakes, but we try to do the right thing (at least most of the time).
We’re good people.
The reason that I mention that is because Jesus’ words in today’s suggested reading from the Gospel of Matthew are set within the context of a discussion that Jesus was having with a bunch of good people. As the passage opens, we are told about the context and the characters – “when [Jesus] entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?’”
It is a fairly understandable question. Most of us, as good church people, can probably relate to the frustration and the dilemma that the chief priests and elders were facing. After all, if someone came into this very room, today, and started speaking and drawing a crowd of listeners toward themselves, it is not unlikely that the ministers, or the elders, or most of us might be somewhat confused and perhaps a little bit frustrated by the presence of such a person. We might want to ask them to leave, or at the very least to respect this space and take their conversations elsewhere.
But to their credit, that is not what the chief priests and elders, in this scene, tried to do. Rather than driving him out – that would come later – at this stage they tried to engage him in conversation, to inquire about where he had received permission, or upon what basis, or authority, he was teaching in the temple.
And, as Jesus so often did, he responded to their questions with a question of his own. “I will also ask you one question: if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.” He asked them from whom John the Baptist had received the right to speak and act as he had done – which, as Jesus knew, was a question that there was no good way that the chief priests and elders could answer. If they questioned John the Baptist’s authority, then everyone in the temple who had seen John as a legitimate prophet would wonder about the chief priests and elders perspectives; but if they upheld the legitimacy of John the Baptist’s words and actions, then those same people would wonder why the chief priests and elders had not responded to John’s call for repentance and baptism.
“We do not know” — which did not get them out of their dilemma.
But Jesus – again, as he often did – followed up his question with a story.
He told them a story about a man with two sons, who were both asked to go and work in their father’s vineyard. The first initially refused to go, but then changed his mind and responded with obedience to his father’s request; the second initially agreed to go, but then never followed through on his commitment.
So which of the two did what they were supposed to do?
To this question, the chief priests and elders had an answer for Jesus – and, finally, they got the answer right. “The first,” they said – the one who may not have initially seemed to have been all that obedient, but in the end responded in the way that he had been invited to do.
Their answer was obviously the correct one; but that did not let them off the hook. Rather, Jesus used that little story to remind them that the invitation to enter the kingdom of God; the invitation to experience the joy, the fulfillment, the vision, the love, the grace, the peace of God’s presence and God’s power and God’s reign at work in this world – this invitation had been extended to those chief priests and elders, to those good people. And even though they had supposedly responded, with obedience, to God, they had not yet fully entered into the joy of that existence.
Which was a bit ironic. After all, the dedication of the chief priests and elders, to God, was not in question – in fact, they had given so much of their lives to the study of God, the worship of God, the service of God. And yet, somehow, they were missing the fullness of that invitation. Like the son, in the story, who had verbally responded with obedience, but then had not actually entered the vineyard, the chief priests and elders were dedicated to their faith and to their religious rituals and duties – but were somehow missing the fullness of life in the kingdom of God.
And, just to make his point as clear as possible, Jesus drew out the implications of his story. “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom ahead of you.”
It goes without saying that tax collectors and prostitutes were not highly esteemed in Jesus’ time. They were the financially and sexually dubious; they were those whose moral compasses, in ethical matters and in moral affairs, left a lot to be desired; they were those who did not play by the rules, or who played by rules that were harmful to those around them; they were those whose actions were typically used as examples of how good and faithful people were not supposed to act.
They were those type of people.
And yet, Jesus seemed to be suggesting that those type of people might actually be responding to Jesus’ proclamation of the coming of God’s kingdom in a more exemplary way than the chief priests and elders had been doing.
Like the son who initially resisted his father’s invitation, but ended up working in the vineyard, there were those who – in Jesus’ presence – did not seem to have lived particularly noble or holy lives, yet who had – by this point in the Gospel narrative – joyfully responded to his invitation to forgiveness, to grace, to compassion, to love, to peace — to joyful, abundant life – in a way that the good and holy people were seeming to resist. Which presents the irony of the text – the good people were missing the point and not doing the right thing; while those not-so-good people had realized what Jesus was offering, and were not doing the wrong thing.
We do well to ponder this text, in our own lives and in our own time. After all, most of our lives and experiences find more resonance with the lives and experiences of the chief priests and elders than they do with the lives and experiences of the tax collectors and prostitutes.
Most of us try to live lives that are more in line with the actions and attitudes of the chief priests and elders. They were trying hard to do the right thing, to make the right choices, to obey the rules faithfully, to be good enough to honestly and faithfully try to respond to God’s guidance and claim upon their lives. They were good people, decent folks…but somehow, they had not yet fully and completely come to comprehend why Jesus was there, what he was calling them to experience, and what he had come to offer to them.
And lest we miss the point of the story, the place where we are sitting, right here and now, is the type of place where the chief priests and elders encountered Jesus in today’s passage. After all, where did Jesus encounter those good people? He found them in the temple, in a place of worship and prayer, in a place where the community of faith came to meet, in a place where people gathered in order to ponder and learn and celebrate the mysterious yet wondrous ways of God.
And where are we? In a place of worship and prayer, in a place where the community of faith come to meet, in a place where people gather in order to ponder and learn and celebrate the mysterious yet wondrous ways of God.
So, to draw out the parallel, what would it mean if Jesus stood among us, right here and right now, and asked us some pointed and insightful questions – questions about whether we have fully entered into the joyful experience of God’s kingdom, God’s reign, God’s peace; or whether we hold back? And if we feel that we are, in fact, holding back from the fullness of that joyful, providential, mysterious, divine embrace, might we be wise to look, for inspiration, to those who we might have dismissed as “others”, as “unworthy”, as “not really good enough” – but who, unlike us, have heard Jesus’ invitation to know that they are loved, as they are; they are forgiven of their pasts; they are set free for life; they are embraced by a powerful yet tender and personal grace; and they have let go of the desire to make themselves good enough to be loved, and responded instead to the One who loves them in spite of anything that they have done?
My invitation to all of us, therefore, right here and right now, is this.
As we come to this Table today, and as we chief priests and elders in this place carry these simple elements of wine and bread to you, take a moment to ponder that just as Jesus came to those good people, so long ago, so too does Jesus come to you, here, today.
And what he asks of you is this – are you ready to let go of trying to be good enough to be loved, and instead accept that you loved enough to be forgiven? Are you ready to let go of trying to say the right things and do the right things to demonstrate that you are obedient, and instead respond to, and hear the voice of the One who calls you to come to him and rest? Are you willing to let go of talking about your intentions to live in the love and peace of Christ, and instead actually head into the vineyard of God’s kingdom and know the fullness of that love and peace?
Are you willing to realize that there is always a place for another in the embrace of God’s love – and that place is for you?
