Pentecost Seventeen

Pentecost 17 [Proper 21] September 27, 2020 | Matthew 21.23-32 | by Richard O. Johnson |

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?” Jesus said to them, “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. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.  

“What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.  (Matthew 21.23-32 NRSV)

One day at the post office I saw a young man wearing a T-shirt that made me smile. You’ve all seen bumper stickers or other items with the motif “I love . . .” (with “love” simply symbolized by a heart) “I love New York,” or “I love my wife,” or whatever the slogan might be. This fellow’s T-shirt had in big, unmistakably bold letters, “I love my attitude problem.” I guess it made me smile because I immediately started making a mental list of people I thought should have a personal copy of that shirt, maybe starting with myself. But it’s true, isn’t it, for most of us when we get caught up in a bad attitude: we do rather enjoy it! We get a lot of mileage out of it if we can. And that occasional bad attitude is pretty epidemic among human beings.

“What do you think?” Jesus asks. “A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” What do you think?

Both had an attitude problem

Well, what I think is that both these boys had an attitude problem! Neither one of them gets my award for son of the year. And maybe that’s part of the point. In the way we human beings respond to God, there’s not one of us that does it perfectly. We all fall short. And in this story, I suspect we can see our own attitudes reflected pretty clearly.

Let’s start with the second son, since he’s probably the one most of us resemble more. This son is only too willing to please Dad. He is polite—notice he calls his father “sir.” He is agreeable. He commits himself to doing what he is asked. Only trouble is, he doesn’t do it. Jesus offers no explanation, but maybe you can fill that in from your own life. What are the reasons we find for not doing what God asks? Perhaps we simply get too busy with other things. We know Christ asks us to take up our cross, to give freely of our time and talents and material goods; but other things come up, and somehow our commitment to Christ takes a back seat. Worship is important, but this morning there’s an even more important football game. I know I should be willing to serve on that committee, or make that temple talk, or work at the food ministry, but, well, I’ve done it before; let someone else take a turn. I travel too much. I need my time free. Yes, I know that in my baptism I was marked with the cross of Christ, and I know that as his child I’ve been given a task to do—but really, others are better qualified than I. Let someone else do it. I won’t be missed. Sound familiar?

Of course, the other son is not much better. He is surly and abrupt with his father. “No, I won’t do that.” He doesn’t seem to have learned his catechism lesson on the fourth commandment very well! Yet there’s a difference between the two sons. The first one, the surly one, later has a change of heart and goes out to the vineyard. Not the best of responses, but at least he gets it together in the end.

The mind that was in Christ Jesus

There’s another kind of attitude—one we don’t see in either son, but one we’d like to see, one that Christ would like to see. It gets expressed in our lesson from Philippians 2: “Have this mind among yourselves which you have in Christ Jesus.” The Greek word here translated “mind” could easily be translated “attitude.” “Have this attitude which you have in Christ Jesus.” Then Paul goes on to describe the attitude: it is one that causes one to humble oneself, to be concerned more for others than for self; an attitude that pours out oneself for others, empties oneself. Quite a difference from the boys in the parable! And probably quite a difference from our usual attitude. Being a servant? Being obedience? “Emptying oneself?” These are concepts that are a bit foreign to us who like to be in charge of our lives, to be the master of our fate and the captain of our soul!

Of course, Paul’s point is that fulfillment really comes in this paradoxical way by having the attitude of Christ. Fulfillment comes precisely by emptying oneself. Our needs are best met when we think not so much about ourselves but about others.

“What do you think?” Jesus asks. Well, I think the real miracle comes when somehow the selfishness and self-centeredness that’s in me gets transformed into something else. I guess maybe that’s what happened to son number one. He wouldn’t go out in the vineyard, he had too many other things to do, selfish things. But then something got hold of him and changed his mind. Dare we call it grace? Dare we call it anything else but grace? Can anything but grace take selfish, self-centered people like us and change us into folks who have the mind, the attitude of Christ?

This chapter in Philippians starts so beautifully, with Paul talking about “encouragement in Christ . . . the incentive of love.” The way that grace works in us, you see, is through encouragement, and through love. When Christ begins to work in us, he also begins to work through us. He shows us, gently, simply, how to have his attitude. Maybe it has to do with how we treat others—how we learn to count them better than ourselves, in humility. Maybe it has to do with how we give—how we empty ourselves, how we become servants. Whatever it may be, he begins to transform us by making us into his own likeness. And he does it! Despite our grumbling, our resisting, our self-assertion, he molds us into his own likeness.

Encouragement

When I went to my first parish out of seminary, they had been through some hard times. They had a big debt and a declining membership. Things were so tight that for the past several years, they had given nothing at all to benevolence, to mission beyond the local congregation. I wrestled with how to change that, and I finally hit upon a plan. Every pay day I would write my check for the offering, but I would designate half of it to be used for benevolence. (Please note that this is not a practice I encourage in ordinary circumstances!) I was tithing, but on a salary of $8,000 a year the checks weren’t very big. Still, all of a sudden at the monthly Council meetings, the treasurer’s report revealed that we were suddenly paying benevolence. What is this, everyone wanted to know. We can’t afford it! The treasurer, who was my co-conspirator, calmly reported that one member of the congregation was designating half his pledge for benevolence. Everyone said, “Oh, well in that case . . . I guess we have to honor that.”

It was a way to encourage them, you see, to give them a glimpse of what kinds of things the church might do if they’d just take their eyes off those big mortgage payments and their fears, and think instead about the vineyard the Father asked them to work in!

After a few weeks, a funny thing happened. A few other checks started coming in that specified a certain amount for benevolences. And before long, the Council decided that maybe they needed just to go ahead and make that a priority for the congregation. Within a few years, they were paying their benevolence commitment in full, and supporting several additional mission projects as well.

Encouragement! You see, Christ works with us that way! He moves into our heart, and says to us, “OK, I know how things look to you, but how about looking at it from this perspective for a while. Maybe your ideas will change—maybe your attitude will change! Maybe instead of looking at yourself and your needs, you can look at others and their needs. Maybe instead of saying, “No, I can’t,” you’ll reconsider!

The end of bad attitudes

And friends, the remarkable thing is that the littlest contribution we make can do such marvelous things! Paul says, “God is at work in you,” and that’s right. God is at work in us, not just encouraging us to give and to pour out ourselves but turning the trickle into a flood.

Maybe you’ve heard the story of the mother who, wishing to encourage her young son’s progress at the piano, bought tickets for a performance by the great master Paderewski. When the night arrived, they found their seats in the front row, just beneath the majestic Steinway on stage. The mother got into a conversation with the person in the next seat and didn’t notice that her son had slipped away. When 8:00 arrived, the house lights came down, the audience quieted, and only then did they notice the boy sitting at the piano bench, innocently picking out, with one finger, “Twinkle, twinkle little star.” The mother gasped and was about to retrieve the boy when out walked the great pianist. He slipped on to the bench beside the boy, and whispered to him, “Don’t quit! Keep playing.” And then Paderewski reached down with his left hand and began improvising a bass line; and his right arm reached around the other side, encircling the child, to add a running obbligato. Together, the old master and the young novice held the crowd mesmerized.

“Encouragement in Christ.” In our lives, unpolished as we may be, sometimes as reluctant as we may be, perhaps as discouraged as we may be, it is the Master who surrounds us and whispers in our ear: “Don’t quit. Keep playing.” And as we do, he augments and supplements until a work of amazing beauty if created. He takes what little we have to offer, and uses it to change our way of thinking, our attitude, our way of doing, to form us after himself. What do you think? I think that with a Master like that, all the bad attitudes in the world and in my heart don’t have much of a chance.

Pastor Richard O. Johnson

Grass Valley, CA

roj@nccn.net