Which One Am I?

Can you believe that it is now seventeen Sundays since Pentecost? Seventeen Sundays since we began using green liturgical colours. Green is the colour for living and growing. That means, for hundreds of years, church people have spent most of each year identifying themselves as “Greenies”. 

So, it’s not a new thing for church people to have a focus on Creation as many denominations choose to do in the month of September. This is our fourth Sunday thinking about Creation and this week the focus is on water. Our bodies need us to drink water; plants need water to grow and we need water for washing. In science at high school, I was taken by water being called the “universal solvent”. Water dissolves most things. Even most of our Alstonville red mud.

Our lectionary today has chosen for us, in addition to the Gospel, a most appropriate reading from Exodus Chapter 17. In Exodus, God’s people were learning a lesson. After years of slavery where they needed the Egyptian leaders to look after them, they are now in the desert learning that they needed God to look after them.

For Jewish people, it’s important to regularly retell their history stories. (I was impressed by one New York rabbi who encouraged positivity by writing that it was necessary to think more of the Exodus from Egypt than the horror of the 1940s Holocaust.)   In Exodus today, there’s one of the many murmuring stories. The people were thirsting and complained against Moses. Can you imagine Church people complaining about their leader? Well, when Moses did as God asked him, water flowed from a rock. God provided life-giving water. We are not able to thank God enough for the gift of water that we seem to take for granted as we turn on our taps today. We can show God our appreciation by our careful conservation and management of this gift of water.

So, it’s helpful in this month of Creation, and this Sunday of water, to have Exodus give us something to think about. But, you know, we only scratch the surface of what’s in the Bible. We only scratch the surface in our regular Sunday readings. There’s so much to think about and so many different ways of looking at the messages God gives us.

Last week we heard Matthew telling about Jesus’ parable of the workers in the vineyard. Some workers spent the whole day in sun in the vineyard, others worked half a day and others just a short time late in the day, but they all got the same pay.  

I told the Friday congregation that this was a good example of how generous God is. Our generous God giving people things they are not entitled to and probably don’t expect.

And then I came to Church on Sunday and Desiree explained this same lesson, seeing it from a different angle. I went wow! Isn’t that interesting! Isn’t that good! Desiree made a lot of sense to me when she said, “My reading of the parable is that Jesus evokes debate about justice and economics”.  That’s what being God’s people is all about. Being involved in the welfare system. How are the people around us coping and being treated? That’s why we have Anglicare (where Desiree got the figures she gave us) and St Vinnies and the Salvos). God’s people are to debate and to be outspoken about the way Kings and Governments lead their people.

Today’s Gospel reading has skipped quite a bit of what Matthew has to report since the story of the workers’ pay. We’ve skipped over the very important events of the triumphant entry to Jerusalem and the cleansing of the Temple. (Jesus overturning the money changers’ table and setting the animals free).

Now, today, we have Jesus’ brilliant response to questioning of his authority. Jesus answers a question with a question; “was John’s baptism from heaven or was it of human origin?” If it was from heaven, then surely you should have believed him? If the answer is no there will be trouble with the people who follow John.

Then Jesus began another parable by asking the question “what do you think”. Jesus is being similar to a teacher preparing students for HSC indicating this is important. Make sure you know this!

Jesus tells the chief priests and the elders of the people a parable of two sons, one of whom says to his dad “I am not going to work in the vineyard”, but eventually does. And the other son who is full of promises to go, but who disappears and never gets to do any work.

Jesus wants people to consider the issue. To think about something pretty straight forward. This is a multiple-choice question with only two answers to choose from. Which son did the father’s will? Of course, they rightly choose the first son as the one who 'did the will of his Father'.

This is excellent teaching technique. Jesus has led his audience, so critical of what he has said and done, to actually own their answer.  Jesus has led his audience to make their own decision about the way to do the Father's will.

It is not a question of saying the right words and going through the right rituals. We are actually called to do what the Father wants. It’s the way we live that counts; not the things we say.

Jesus is attacking the so-called 'religious people' who go through the motions of being God-directed people, mouthing the right words and performing the right rituals, but not putting their lives where their words are.

Then, what Jesus says after this is probably the most difficult thing for people to hear and to accept. A statement which doesn’t seem fair to the people who always come to church. Jesus says to these good religious people, “I tell you; tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (Tax collectors and prostitutes were considered as sinners absolutely beyond acceptability. They were pagans.)

So, is this the most annoying thing that Jesus ever said? “Bad people are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you!” Jesus is being very challenging, but he is actually asking people to reflect and decide; well which of these two sons is me?  Which do I personally think is the way of righteousness?

In the Western world, over centuries, Christian morals and ethics had gradually become the accepted values of the nations. However, in our rapidly changing and increasingly secularized world, Christian values no longer play this important role in society at large. It’s interesting that even atheists have argued that society will suffer without religious morals and values. Our society is in danger of losing its soul and Christianity has the opportunity to prevent that when we demonstrate lives that show evidence of God’s kingdom. We pray “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. When we show that we are striving to do God’s will; if we Church-goers, who listen to the Gospel, are doing what we are saying, things can change. When we don’t; when the so-called sinners of our day don’t see any example of the right way to go about things, where can they put their hope and trust? Where can they learn?

So, there’s big messages in today’s readings but, as always, there is good news. The good news is that change can really take place. No matter what that first son said to his father, he can do the right thing. What we have done in the past does not have to guide what happens in the future.