Promises, Promises

I walked into Dr. Stanphill’s office this past Monday for my semi-annual checkup and cleaning.  It was the first time that Mom and I had ever gone to the dentist together and, to save time, I had asked them to schedule our appointments at the same time.  That meant that I would have a new dental hygienist.  Terri, my new hygienist, is a lively, energetic woman.  One of Terri’s first questions of me, as a new client, was “How often do you floss?”  I looked at her, quizzically, and asked her whether she ever got an honest answer to that question.  She looked at me, grinning, and said, “Hardly ever.  But I ask it anyway.”  I told her that I had the same expectation whenever I asked new people that I meet how often they go to church.  With that, she burst out laughing and our friendship was sealed.  For the next hour, as she picked… scraped… and polished my teeth, we compared flossing to church attendance… and rarely stopped laughing.  Try it with me for a few minutes and see whether you can find the similarities that we found.  I think you’ll see that they have more similarities than you would ever guess!

Both flossing and church attendance are things that people make promises about to others… and those promises are often broken.  I know this is not true of those of you who are here today, but, in general, while most people have good intentions about flossing and church attendance… many people only actually do them twice a year.  That’s why our highest church attendance is on Christmas and Easter… and I would guess that the highest flossing activity happens the night before our semi-annual checkups.   Most teenagers can’t be bothered with either… while most older adults embrace both… mainly because one group does not see the value of these things and the other group has learned… sometimes the hard way… the value of both of them.  The residual effect of either of these activities does not last long unless we do the activity regularly.  Keeping deterioration at bay… whether it is deterioration of our teeth and gums… or deterioration of our spiritual life and our relationship with God… depends upon our making a habit of these activities… and, frankly, they are habits that are difficult to establish.  And missing one opportunity to engage in them often does not seem like a big deal to us.  Still, in our community, it is politically correct to claim to do both of them regularly… while all of us know that there is sufficient evidence to convict us if we are caught lying about either one.   Would anyone like to add to the list of similarities we found?

All of us are torn apart by conflicting demands on our time.  We are constantly being asked to choose between two or more activities… when there is only time… money… or energy to accomplish one of them.  It is not that we intend to let people down… whether the people we let down are our pastor… our spouse… our dentist… our children… our colleagues at work… or, heaven forbid, God.  We make promises to the person standing in front of us… and hope that, by some miracle, we will be able to actually keep those promises this time.  That’s when we often hear the skepticism in the voice of the one to whom we have just made this commitment.  “Promises, promises,” they say… which is another way of saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”   Sometimes, those words are said in a lighthearted, teasing way… but more often, the sarcasm is heavy and there is the sense of an unspoken threat that accompanies those words… a threat that hangs in the air… and the echo of questions unasked, such as: “How many more times will I be disappointed by you?” “How many more times will I get my hopes up… only to have them dashed by you?”

All of these things are present in the “Parable of the Two Sons” that I read from our text today… even though they are not written there.  This failure to act is such a very human trait that even those who heard this story two thousand years ago felt the father’s disappointment in his sons.  But, I am getting ahead of myself, so, let me go back and set the scene for you.  Jesus has just come from his cleansing of the Temple courtyard, where he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and accused the merchants of turning the Temple of God into a den of robbers… rather than a house of prayer.  The chief priests and the elders… for that read Pharisees and Sadducees… confront him, asking him by whose authority he has done these things?  Those businesses are under the control of the Pharisees and Sadducees, after all.  Rather than answer, Jesus asks them the source of the authority for baptism of John, a popular prophet and preacher… now a martyred Jew.  Was John’s baptism a heavenly thing or something done by human authority?  The chief priests and elder are afraid to answer because one answer leads to a commitment of faith on their part and another answer could easily lead to a confrontation with John’s followers.  So, they plead ignorance… which then leads Jesus to say that he feels no compulsion to share with them the source of his authority either.

So, where does this authority come from?  According to long-established Jewish rabbinic tradition… within the community of faith, the authority to teach the faithful and the authority to make binding decisions for them were conferred upon the priests and the elders of the Jewish people through the laying on of hands… or shemikhah.  This tradition of ordination of ministers and elders is still held in the church today.  We believe that the laying on of hands confers the authority of God to act in behalf of God for the community of the faithful following the covenant established in the taking of ordination vows. That’s why the office of elder in the church is a lifelong commitment… not simply a three-year tour of duty.  When the chief priests and elders question Jesus about his authority to act… they are subtlely reminding him that he has not been ordained as a rabbi.  Jesus’ question of them regarding John’s baptism reminds them that John’s authority as a prophet came directly from God… without human intervention.  Even though they refused to answer the question about John’s baptism, they know from Jesus’ reply that he is claiming authority that flows straight from God… which is a difficult thing to challenge unless you have all your ducks in a row.

Then, Jesus tells them this parable about the two sons… one who refused to work in his father’s vineyard, but later repented and did work there… the other who promised he would work in his father’s vineyard, but never went.  “Which one of them,” Jesus asks, “did the will of his father?”  The chief priests and the elders knew the right answer: the one who initially rebelled, but later repented and went to the vineyard.  It was the story, after all, that had been repeated many times in Israel’s rebellious history with God. But, then, Jesus added these words: “The tax collectors and the prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you”… connecting the Pharisees and Sadducees with the lazy son… not the rebellious one.

What?!?!  I am sure that the Pharisees and Sadducees were stunned by this pronouncement of Jesus.  The tax collectors and prostitutes would enter the kingdom of God before the chief priests and the elders? No way! The chief priests and the elders had been chosen by God for their profession.  They had been ordained by the people of God and there had been a laying on of hands to confer God’s own authority to them.  There is no way that these sinners would get into heaven first!  Why they were unclean just by the very nature of the work that they did!  What the heck was Jesus talking about?  All he had to do was go back and read the scroll of Leviticus and he would see that there was no way that these people would ever be considered righteous by God.   But, just in case, we’d better make sure that we have all of our bases covered and take a closer look… don’t you think?

There are two sons: one rebellious and independent… unwilling to listen to his father’s guidance at all… and the other seemingly obedient… certainly saying the right things at the right time… but, in reality, only giving lip service… in reality, lazy and complacent.  The second son… the one who said all the right things… represented the Pharisees and the Sadducees, according to Jesus.  He pointed out that all their ritual practices… their formal authority and their pretended devotion to God and the Temple… meant nothing to God, for they were not doing the work of God.  The moneychangers and the merchants in the Temple courtyard were visible evidence of their efforts to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor.  The tax collectors and prostitutes, on the other hand, were rebellious against God now, but when their hearts were touched by God and they repented of their rebellion, they were more true to God’s word and more deeply engaged in God’s work than the Pharisees themselves.   And, like the sinful people of Nineveh, God would receive them into his kingdom without reservation once they repented.

The question that the text forces us to ask ourselves today is simply this:  Which of these two sons are you?   Are you the one making empty promises to God about the things you will do?  Or are you the rebellious one who has repented and is actually doing God’s work today?  And, lest we think these questions are only questions that the elders of the church need to answer, let us remember that we have all been commissioned by Jesus Christ himself and sent into the world to do God’s work.   Are we really doing the work that God has given us to do… or are we just paying lip service to it?

When was the last time that you flossed?   How often do you floss?   And how often did you promise your dentist you would floss?   Terri told me that we might be able to get some “two-for-one” action going if everyone would come to church and floss while listening to me preach.   She said that if I would remind all of you to floss, she would remind folks to go to church.  I told her I would do it. I promised that I would nudge all of you all toward healthier teeth and gums by urging you to floss if she would provide the floss… and she did.  So, consider yourselves nudged.  As for me, I’m waiting to see how more of her clients show up in church.

Why does it take reminding for us to do the things that we know we should do… things that not only build the kingdom of God, but move us toward a more spiritual life and Christian action?  Have we just gotten lazy and complacent like the Pharisees? Or are we simply rebelling against God’s authority in our lives?   Either way, I believe we can do better as the people of God.    Take the little container of floss home as a reminder of the promises we have made to God… and to others… that we have not kept.  With God’s help, we can do better in the months ahead.  Amen.

Matthew 21:23-32