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Our Gospel lesson this morning seems at first glance to set before us a very simple, very straightforward, binary, either/or choice: Who do we want to be like? Which of the brothers in the parable will we take for our role model? Do we want to be more like the chief priests and elders, or more like the prostitutes and the tax collectors?

That either/or choice is what Jesus puts before the chief priests and elders in the parable he tells them. They have come to Jesus to challenge him, to ask by what authority he does the preaching and teaching and healing and discipling that he’s been doing. And Jesus responds by challenging them, by challenging their very idea of where authority in God comes from. “What do you think?” Jesus says to them: a man has two sons, and he goes to each of them and says “Go and work in the vineyard today; go do the deeds that are part of your family responsibility and part of your family inheritance.” One son says, “Of course I’ll go work in the vineyard. I honor and obey you, father, and it is a privilege to me to do the work that you have given me to do”—but as soon as his father is out of the room, he goes back to what he was doing before, and ignores his father’s summons, and never goes out to work. His words to his father say Yes, but his actions say No. The other son, meanwhile, responds to his father’s call to the vineyard by saying, “No way! I’m not going out to work today; I have things to do, I have people to see, I have my own agenda, I have my own life, and I’m not going to you or any ‘family responsibility’ get in the way of me doing what I want to do. Just forget it!” But later, after his father has gone away, he changes his mind, and he puts on his work clothes and he picks up his viticulture tools and he goes out to work in the vineyard. This son’s words say No, but in the end his actions say Yes to his father’s will for him.

“Now,” Jesus says, “which of these sons would you want to be like? Which of these sons does what his father wants?” And the chief priests and elders, probably seeing the trap they’re walking into but having no idea how to get out of it, say, “Well, the one who went out and worked in the vineyard did what his father wanted.” And that’s when Jesus lets them have it: “You priests and elders,” he says, “you’re just like the son whose words say Yes but actions say No. You claim to honor God; you claim to follow God’s teaching, God’s Torah; you claim to obey all the commandments God has given for purity of life—but when it comes to the things God really wants, when it comes to justice and righteousness and peacemaking and mercy and forgiveness and love—these things you ignore. And even when God sends you a messenger like John the Baptist to call you back to repentance and righteousness, even then you don’t believe him, you don’t follow him, you oppose him and challenge him and you’re glad when he’s imprisoned and executed. You priests and elders,” Jesus says, “you say Yes to God, but what you do is No.”

The tax collectors and the prostitutes, on the other hand, Jesus says, are like the other son: they say No to God at first, but later on their actions say Yes. And the tax collectors and prostitutes do say No to God; they openly flout God’s commandments, they openly refuse to participate in their people’s faithful inheritance. The tax collectors handled a lot of Roman money, and Roman coins had the image of the emperor stamped on them, and the genius of the emperor was considered a divinity in Roman religion—so Roman money was an idol, and dealing in idolatry is against the Second Commandment, so the tax collectors say No to God. And the prostitutes traded in adultery, and “No adultery” is the Seventh Commandment, and so the prostitutes say No to God. We must not romanticize the tax collectors and prostitutes if we really want to get the point of Jesus’ parable: they were not nice people, they were not faithful people, they were not doing what God wanted them to do. But when John the Baptist came, and offered them repentance and a new chance for righteousness, they recognized how important that was, and they believed. And that made them like the son who says No but does Yes; that made them, paradoxically, more righteous than the chief priests and elders.

And that turn in the Gospel puts the question back to us: Who do we want to be like? Which son will we emulate? Do we want to be more like the priests and elders, or more like the tax collectors and prostitutes?

At least, that is the choice the Gospel seems to put before us. But I have to admit, the more I look at this choice, the more carefully I read over this Gospel, the less satisfied I am with these two options. We can say Yes and do No, and that clearly is not pleasing to God; or we can say No and do Yes, which is more like what God wants, but still has something missing, still is not entire obedience to God’s Word. The whole parable leaves me feeling like there ought to be something more, there ought to be a third option, there ought to be a third son in the story, there ought to be a way that we can respond to God’s call by saying Yes and by doing Yes. The parable itself doesn’t resolve that, the parable itself kind of leaves us hanging, until we can make the leap of faith to see in it a new option for responding to God’s call.

And that new option, of course, is Jesus himself. Jesus is the one who says Yes to God, and who does that Yes in his teaching and his preaching and his healing and his living and his dying and his rising to life again. Jesus is the “third son,” of the parable, the true Son, who shows all of us the way that we can faithfully respond to God in word and in deed. That’s what Paul is talking about in our Epistle lesson today, when he says: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”—the mind of Christ, that pours himself out in humble obedience to God, the mind that says Yes and does Yes, can be in us too, can empower us and inspire us and enlighten us to believe in God’s call and to behave in ways that live out that call. The mind of Christ gives us the third option, so that we can “work out our own salvation,” and we can work it because “it is God who is at work in us, enabling us to will and to work for God’s good pleasure.”

So the real message of the Gospel to us today is not just to choose which brother we want to be like; the real message is that we must let our words about God and our actions for God measure up to each other. The real message is that if we say God calls us to justice and righteousness and peacemaking and forgiveness and love, then our actions must be all about justice and righteousness and peacemaking and forgiveness and love.

That message of the Gospel is true for us Christians in all times and places; but I think it has a special urgency for us in this time and this place, right here and now. In our time, as we in America continue our international campaign against terrorism, as our country appears to be preparing for a military invasion of Iraq—in our time far-reaching decisions about justice and peace are being made by our government and governments all around the world. Those decisions are complex, and complicated, and have many dimensions to them, and are not reducible to simple black and white answers. There are people around the world who wish to see our nation harmed, and we have an obligation to defend ourselves; but there are also innocent people around the world who will be harmed if we go after “the bad guys” with too much vengeance and too much force. There are governments around the world who scoff at the power of international law, and they must be restrained; but what happens to our international credibility if our nation sets aside the rule of law when it seems to fit our national interest? The quest for justice and peace in this moment seems particularly precarious—and so at this moment it seems important to me that we, as citizens and as people of faith, stand up to say that our words about justice and peace and our actions for justice and peace must measure up to each other. If we as Christians in America believe that God calls us to build up right relationships, personally and communally and nationally and globally; if we believe that God’s will for us, for all of us, for all humanity, God’s will is well-being and wholeness of life; if we believe that what God wants for us ultimately is that we be creative and not destructive—if we believe these things, then we ought to behave in such a way that these things become possible. And we can behave that way, because the mind of Christ is in us, because it is God who is at work in us, enabling us to will and to work for God’s good pleasure.

That still means there are no easy answers. There are plenty of different opinions about what we should do in the international situation and how we should conduct our national politics; there are different opinions in our community, in our circles of friends, right here in our parish family. I would not presume to tell anybody how to think and feel and vote in this post-9/11 world. But I would say that as people of faith we have a particular role to play in our national debates, we have a particular message to share with our lawmakers and leaders, we have a particular ideal to hold up for our national and international life. We have the Good News that God in Christ calls us to believe in the power of justice and peace and mercy and love, and God in Christ empowers us to behave with justice and peace and mercy and love. And that Good News, I believe, is meant for our political life every bit as much as it is for our personal life.

In our Gospel today Jesus calls us to say Yes to God and do Yes for God. Let it be our prayer today that we may answer Jesus’ call: that we may believe deeply in God’s promises, and behave faithfully for God’s purposes.

In the Name of God: the Holy One, the Holy Word, the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Readings For Sunday, October 6th, 2002

The First Lesson                        Isaiah 5:1-7

 Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!

The Second Lesson          Philippians 3:14-21

I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.

Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

The Holy Gospel                                                                               Matthew 21:33-43

 Jesus said, "Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance." So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.  Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."

Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.