A Tale of Two Brothers

September 26, 1993

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Scripture: Matthew 21:23-32

It’s a story of contrast, of course, a parable of conflicting responses... two boys, two sons, two brothers... and two divergent paths.

From one brother, a curt refusal, initially; from the other, a cheerful acceptance.

From one brother, a blustering, rejection at the outset; from the other, a willing compliance.

From one brother, a flat-out declination in the beginning; from the other, a ready agreement.

When the call was issued to go to work in the vineyard, the two responses couldn’t have been more opposite--- NO… YES…

But the No-sayer did go, finally, repenting of his initial negativity...And the YES-sayer, in spite of his upfront enthusiasm, never got to the field.

It’s a vivid, clear-cut story of contrast in discipleship---the game you say, and the game you play.

It’s not hard to figure out who the hero is in the parable, which brother Jesus is commending. AND THE SETTING SHOWS US WHY HE TOLD THE STORY. Let’s start there and then we’ll try to bring it up to date.

The context is an attack on Jesus’ AUTHORITY. The place is Jerusalem, and the time is right after the Triumphant Entry. (I don’t know why this story was chosen as the Lectionary reading for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, but it was.)

Jesus has just ridden into town to the exultant cheers of the multitude. His coming has sent tremors across the face of the city, not only because of His growing reputation, but because His entrance was on the back of a donkey, the old, traditional symbol of kingship.

WAS IT AN ANNOUNCEMENT THAT HE WAS MESSIAH?

Something was up---He swept into the Temple and raised havoc, overturning the tables of the money changers, and driving them out into the street....

He delivered a rip-snorting sermon on the theme of misplaced priorities, not only calling them to task for the improper use of religious facilities, but quoting their great prophet for corroboration.

AND THEN He had the effrontery, in that same location, on that very spot, to respond to the needs of some blind and lame people by healing them.

IT WAS TOO MUCH....too much for the authorities to stomach. They choked on it.....loss of income, loss of control, loss of prestige...the very things vested interests always fear.

Naturally, they had to do something. They couldn’t let this go without reprisal. SO THEY COUNTERATTACKED BY CHALLENGING HIS AUTHORITY. They had to be careful because the people were watching, and the people, at least at that point, were on HIS side.

But they figured, I suppose, maybe, if they could subvert His authority, if they could show Him to be acting as an independent, loose cannon, if they could show Him to be outside their customs if they could show Him to be operating beyond the fringe of orthodoxy...show Him to be hostile to traditional values...maybe they could discredit Him and get Him out of their hair.

WHEN YOU CAN’T QUESTION COMPETENCE, QUESTION CREDENTIALS, one of the oldest tricks in the book.

They had to do something. The Man was a threat.

So, they fretted and schemed and the next morning when HE came back into the Temple to teach, they confronted Him. Not even bothering with the normal amenities, they just took Him on.

Earlier when others had challenged Him, they had at least greased the approach with a hint of courtesy, even if it was contrived.... “Good Master”, they would say, or something like it before popping it to Him....

NOTHING LIKE THAT HERE...no warm up, no deference, no attempt to soften the blow. If you had been there you would have felt a tension thick enough to cut with a knife. Even from this distance you can feel it.

“Who gave you permission for this kind of stuff? Who do you think you are? By what authority are you doing these things?” There was no smile on any lip, and no tenderness in any eye.

But Jesus refused to be flustered. He answered their question with a question with a question of His own. If He hadn’t had bigger things to do, what a premier debater He would have made.

“You ask me for my authority.... Answer me this first and I’ll tell you. Remember ol’ John, the one called the Baptizer...who used to preach and baptize down by the Jordan before Herod lopped off his head? Well, was His ministry from heaven, or merely human?”

Ahhhh. Be careful. They withdrew to huddle. Better spend some time on this. How shall we answer?

If we admit it was a divine origin, He will say, THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU JOIN IN? But if we say it was NOT, we face both the wrath and the contempt of the people, to whom John was a popular hero. We’re in trouble either way. SO THEY TOOK REFUGE IN IGNORANCE, a long standing and sometimes effective clerical tactic.

“We don’t know”, they finally replied. Not very creative, but at least it was safe.

And Jesus said, “Listen, if you don’t even know that, then you’re in no position to evaluate the meaning of true authority, which has a self-authenticating power of its own. I WON’T TELL YOU BY WHAT AUTHORITY I ACT, EITHER....THERE’S NO NEED TO.

If you can’t see God at work in the ministry of John, who poured out His heart calling people to repentance, you’re too far gone to understand anyway.”

AND WITH THAT, He raised the ante on ‘em. Raised the ante. I think that’s a phrase from the world of poker, which may not be an entirely appropriate homiletical image to use, but I figure if I know it, you probably do, too....Jesus raised the ante. He lifted the level of the debate a notch higher.... Slicing through the smokescreen of their rhetoric, cutting straight through all their pompous talk about clerical roles and credentials, He laid bare the heart of the matter....

THE REAL ISSUE WAS NOT WHO WAS AUTHORIZED BY WHOM TO DO WHAT...that was a cover-up to hide something more fundamental, that was a subterfuge for self-protection....

The REAL issue was how one responds to God’s call to repentance and invitation into the Kingdom. DO YOU, OR DON’T YOU? Do you just talk about it, or do you DO something about it?

And He tells them a story for them to wrestle with, this story which is our reading for today, a story so clear, so direct, so sharply etched that even they can’t miss the point.

2 brothers called to work in the vineyard...sent by the Father to engage in productive enterprise.

No, says one, I won’t go.... BUT HE DID. SURE, says the other, I’ll go. Be glad to.... BUT HE DIDN’T.

Which of these did the will of the Father?

When He forces them to draw the obvious conclusion, He spells it out. LIP SERVICE ALONE CAN’T SUBSTITUTE FOR OBEDIENCE...Mere profession can’t take the place of PRACTICE.

Just mouthing the right sounding words is of no particular ultimate value unless it’s backed up by the performance of the right deeds.

You’re so pious in your profession, so smug in your certainty, so entrenched in your self-righteousness, so secure in your self-congratulation that you’ve missed the whole point of Kingdom life. AND THE TRAGIC THING ABOUT YOU IS YOU’RE NOT EVEN AWARE OF IT.

Don’t you see, won’t you see, the tax collectors and prostitutes, those segments of society farthest removed from accepted decency, those disrespectful of the common good, those NO-sayers to basic, fundamental morality, those discredited, outcast, unsavory people in the public eye are often nearer the Kingdom than you are, because they know they have the need for repentance. Where they start from may be lower than where you start from, and their expression of the religious niceties may be inferior to yours, but at least they’re aware of the direction in which they have to turn. YOU’RE NOT EVEN AWARE THAT YOU NEED TO TURN, so they, in spite of their tarnished record, and in spite of the poor quality of their public profession, are better candidates for authentic discipleship than you are.

Now that’s a rough exposition of the parable in its original setting. There’s more, but that’s the gist. It’s a story of contrast...the deadness of religious conformity vs. the aliveness of spiritual commitment; the protection of an institution vs. getting something accomplished; rote formality vs. vibrant activity; shooting off your mouth vs. rolling up your sleeves.

It’s a story of contrast.

AND IT MAKES ITS POINT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE JEWISH, RELIGIOUS CULTURE OF THAT DAY, the culture in which Jesus played out His ministry.

When we read the story, or hear it, in that setting, we are brought face to face with the implacable, deeply rooted obduracy He faced in trying to help people see what was important and what wasn’t in this business of walking with God.

When we hear it, it becomes clearer to us why, finally, they crucified Him, why, finally, they had to get rid of Him somehow. It was either that, or change themselves, and that wasn’t an option they were in a mood to consider.

Surprising in a way, I suppose. He wasn’t crucified by the NO-sayers, the “brothers” who SAID they didn’t want to work in the vineyard. They weren’t the ones who put Him there. They came around after a while....He was crucified by the YES-sayers, the “brothers” who were full of enthusiasm for doing the will of God, but never had the time, or the inclination, or saw the need to get out to the field.

AND MAYBE THAT’S THE POINT AFTER ALL. At least maybe that’s where this tale of two brothers hits us most directly. Isn’t it funny how you can’t lock the stories of Jesus back into the past and just leave them there. They won’t stay locked away back there.

They break out of that confinement and come bounding across the centuries.

A lot has changed from the details of that original setting....Maybe some of the contrast is muted, some of the tension softened....

Maybe we don’t face the same pressures the hearers of His original story faced. BUT OUR CALL TO GO TO WORK IN THE VINEYARD IS NO LESS URGENT THAN IT WAS TO THE FIRST DISCIPLES, AND OUR RESPONSE TO THAT CALL IS NO LESS CONSEQUENTIAL.

The Church is full of people who know the language, who say the right words, who talk the right talk.

It’s not hard to find people who readily expound the rhetoric of piety, and do it convincingly. You hear it a lot in the area of STEWARDSHIP....

I had a fellow in a former church say to me one time, “Preacher, everybody in this church gives until it hurts. I certainly do. It’s just that some of us are more sensitive to pain than others.”

If he wasn’t a younger brother to that second brother, he was at least a cousin.

I heard an interesting story about a research paper done by a doctoral student in one of our theology schools. He wasn’t a Methodist student, I don’t think, but he could have been. He did a dissertation in which he compared the amount of money contributed to a local church, according to the records of the treasurer, with the amount of money people SAID they contributed when they were individually surveyed.

The difference was astounding. If that local church had in fact received what the members said they gave, the report said, they could have added two new staff members, replaced the carpet in the sanctuary, and bought a complete new set of choir robes.

Now, I think it’s worth noting in this parable. The contrast which we’ve been emphasizing

throughout is a contrast between profession and performance, NOT a contrast of worth between the brothers, nor a contrast of abilities, nor a contrast of one kind of work against another.

The parable does not condemn using the language. Nowhere does it imply that it’s wrong to speak out for God, to be pious, to speak piously, to be enthusiastic in our verbal support of God and Church and the cause of Christian living. FROM THE VERY FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS, where God creates through God’s spoken WORD, to the final chapter of Revelation, where the angel of God says, “blessed is the one who keeps the WORDS...of the book”, there is unvarying emphasis placed on the importance, and potency, and validity of SPEECH as having the power to DO things. Language is important. Jesus is not condemning the 2nd brother for what he SAID, only for his failure to follow through on what he said.

What’s more, in praising the FIRST brother for going to work finally, He’s NOT praising his initial refusal. It’s not because he said NO in the beginning that Jesus lauds him. He lauds him because he didn’t stay there.

It’s the same with the tax collectors and prostitutes. Why were they nearer the Kingdom, many of them, than the religious authorities? Because they were better? NO! Absolutely not. They were NOT better.

Any objective, external, quantitative measurement would rank them leagues below the level of the clerical squad.

It was their frank admission of wrong, and their willingness to change He praised. He didn’t lift them up for approbation because of where they started, but because of where they ENDED.

Now, do you notice? It struck me as I was wrestling with this story this week, trying to get a handle on it....

The responses of the two brothers are not the only possible responses that could be given to a call from God. There are at least two other possibilities.

One could say NO, I won’t go...and stay with it. Absolute, complete, total refusal, right down the line. That would at least be consistent, if unforgivably obtuse.

Or, one could say YES, I’ll go, and immediately head for the vineyard and pitch in. That would also be consistent and the best scenario of all. It just wouldn’t leave the preacher with much drama to work with.

Neither of those other possibilities on the two ends of the response spectrum is dealt with here. Our story has to do with the hard cases in the middle, the situations most of who struggle daily with the call to obedience are most likely to face.

And maybe even at the risk of redundancy, it’s worth underscoring---JESUS DIDN’T PRAISE THE FIRST BROTHER’S INITIAL DISOBEDIENCE. Just because oily hypocrisy is wrong doesn’t make its opposite necessarily virtuous.

Sometimes we come across people who justify a disobedient or arrogant tongue to arguing that it’s just the way they are. They are straightforward, plain-talking, usually, who “tell it like it is”, and “let the chips fall where they may”, as they like to put it.

They suppose their arrogance is all right just because they’re open about it. They suppose they’re not sinners just because they’re not hypocrites.

Some of the most cutting, painful, and unnecessarily hurtful remarks that have even been made have been said by people who prided themselves on their honesty, and paraded it unmercifully with no regard for the sensitivity of others.

The alternative to hypocrisy is not ruthless, untampered frankness. A pox on both those houses.... No, in commending the first son, Jesus was not commending his former ways

at all, not his attitude, not his arrogance, and certainly not his disobedience. He commended him precisely because he turned his back on that, and finally went to work where he should have been in the first place.

Now we don’t have much time left. That’s not meant to be an eschatological statement,

simply a chronological statement. Maybe it’s both, though. In more ways than one, maybe, we don’t have much time left. As your pastor, I feel constrained to say this to you out of the tale of two brothers...a WARNING, and an INVITATION.

Call the warning, perhaps, “the peril of postponement”. I mean by that, don’t let your initial commitment to obedience fade. Don’t put off carrying your response to God’s call on to completion. It can happen so easily. It’s happened to people whose names are on the roll of this Church.

You wouldn’t be here, in all likelihood, if you hadn’t, somewhere along the line,

made some kind of profession, some kind of promise, some kind of response to the tug of God on your life. Some of those who are joining the Church this morning are starting out now on that journey of going to work in the vineyard. They’ve heard that call. It’s an exciting time. Your motives are high, and your enthusiasm undiluted. DON’T LET ANYTHING HAPPEN TO IT.

I suspect the second brother in the parable felt exactly that way, too, when he heard the

call. He probably was totally sincere then; he probably fully intended to obey; he probably had every expectation in the world of going out to that vineyard and giving it his best shot.

But something intervened between call and consummation.

Something got in the way between invitation and completion. There may not even have been a specific moment he could point to when the change took place. It probably happened gradually.

It usually does, a little bit at a time. When the spiritual life is killed, it’s rarely blasted out of the water; IT’S MUCH MORE LIKELY FOR IT JUST TO BE NIBBLED TO DEATH.

Remember that infinitely sad line in T.S. Eliot’s THE HOLLOW MEN?: “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.”

It’s how it happens with people, too. He probably said, “Next week, I’ll get out there...Next week, I’m gonna get organized...Right after Labor Day, we’re gonna start back to Church....”

But each postponement made it harder to break the pattern....each delay tightened the grip of settled habit until breaking the hold it had on him was virtually impossible.

There’s the real tragedy of the second brother, it seems to me, not a failure of motive, BUT A FAILURE TO EXERCISE THAT MOTIVE, SO that what began as good intention atrophied into unusable and deadly rigidity.

Harry Emerson Fosdick in one of his last books tells of standing one day on the banks of the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State in the early spring when the ice floe was breaking up into huge chunks. He said he saw a fish hawk circle around and land on one of those chunks of ice as it moved down stream. The hawk dug its talons into the ice, using it as a base to fish. It thrust its head into the water and caught a small fish in its beak. And it sat there on the ice and languorously, almost sensually devoured the fish.

Then without moving, it caught another, and the act was replayed. The whole scene was passing by in front of him, Dr. Fosdick said, heading downstream for the waterfall which lay ahead.

The bird was undisturbed. It could fly to safety in time. But when it reached the danger point, with yet another fish in its beak, and spread its wings to fly, it couldn’t get away. By that time the ice had too firm a grip on its claws. Though it beat its wings frantically, the bird was trapped. Hawk and fish alike disappeared into the roar of the cataract.

The warning is the peril of postponement. Don’t let your noble intention to be about the Father’s work fade and die, or settle into hardened habit. Professing your faith is WONDERFUL. LIVING IT AND PRACTICING IT is where it counts.

And Oh! One more thing. I almost forgot. The invitation! There may be a No-sayer here, like the first brother was, a refuser, one who for whatever reason still is holding on in opposition to the Father’s call.

Or there may be someone here whose life up to now has effectively been a saying NO to the Father...you’re tried and failed, you’ve blown it, you’ve been guilty of every sin and conceit in the world and you know you don’t deserve any more leniency.

Hear the message of the parable, the invitational message of Jesus Himself---IT’S STILL NOT TOO LATE. Even now, it’s not too late.

Nothing is clearer in this deceptively simple story than that God’s immeasurable grace and acceptance and the privilege of doing something worthwhile in the vineyard of practical service to people is available, WHATEVER GARBAGE AND STUBBORNNESS MAY HAVE BEEN THERE IN THE PAST.

That’s the Gospel. It’s not what you’ve been or done that God looks at when God starts

filling out diplomas. IT’S WHETHER OR NOT NOW YOU’RE HEADING FOR THE FIELD.

Go work in the vineyard today, said the Father to his sons....I will not, said the first, but he changed his mind and went.

I go, sir, said the second, but he did not go.

Which of these did the will of the Father? Which of these are you?