September 28, 2008
(Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 21)
Being Moved by God
by
The Rev. Joe Behen, Clergy Assistant
Exodus 17:1-7 • Psalm 78:1-4,
12-16 • Philippians 2:1-13
• Matthew 21:23-32
(From
The Lectionary Page)
Soren Kierkegaard once wrote a story about a man who wanted to become an ocean pilot. This man underwent the necessary learning from such books as were relied upon for knowledge of the sea. He was taken onto a ship, which he learned to steer in and out of the harbor. He took all of the required exams, and was then granted a license that declared him to be an ocean pilot. This man, for example, could tell you all about what is to be done when steering a ship through a storm. “…but he has not known,” writes Kierkegaard, “how terror grips the seafarer when the stars are lost in the blackness of night; he has not known the sense of impotence that comes when the pilot sees the wheel in his hand become a plaything for the waves; he has not known how the blood rushes to the head when one tries to make calculations at such a moment; in short, he has had no conception of the change that takes place in the knower when he has to apply his knowledge.” [Kierkegaard, Soren. Parables of Kierkegaard. Thomas C. Oden, editor. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978)] It is the last line of the story that I think has feet in following today’s parable of the two sons and the vineyard. “…he has had no conception of the change that takes place in the knower when he has to apply his knowledge.”
Today’s gospel from Matthew suggests that there is a difference between saying that we believe in something, and doing what is consistent with such belief. What is not said in the parable can leave the reader with the feeling of its overt simplicity. However, what is only suggested in this parable, can also leave room for a very nuanced teaching on human spirituality. Sometimes, I think, we are unaware of whether we actually believe what we profess to believe. In declaring himself to be a sea pilot after gaining his license, the man in Kierkegaard’s story was not “lying.” He was simply suffering from a kind of delusion of which he was unaware. Never having navigated a ship in a storm, he was ignorant of the change that such an experience would render in him. Jesus’ parables, however, tend to require us to think backwards, to think from the end to a parallel beginning. Rather than asking what we believe, he implicitly asks, what do your daily actions show your beliefs to be? This is a very different kind of question, and this is not an isolated occurrence of his asking it. In the very next chapter of Matthew Jesus will teach that “…the tree is known by its fruit.” We have no choice but to think backwards, to look at the fruit that we bear, or else we remain at risk of living in a delusion.
We are not told, but we can imagine, what went through the minds of the two sons. I find it useful to consider at what point each of them actually made a decision of some kind. The first son seems to have been in some kind of conflict prior to the father’s command. He refuses the command, suggesting that perhaps he was perhaps at a difficult place in his relationship with the father, or that the labor itself presented some unknown conflict for him. This son’s reply to the father comes from this place of conflict. His action, however, reflects further thought. Did he reach some resolution to his conflict, even if only temporary? What if this first son reflected now not only on his prior conflict, but also on this clash with his father? What if this interaction revealed some truth to him about what had been eating at him? Something had marred his relationship with his father, and this conflict may have revealed a more important question to him: Was he a person who would risk relationship with his father over what was bothering him? Is my response of “no” to my father, helpful to our relationship, or does it rather further impede both of us, straining the bonds of relationship yet further? My guess, then, is that the point on which the first son balances his decision on is relationship.
The second son shows no immediate signs of prior conflict. His discord only becomes apparent when we are told that he doesn’t do what he said he would do. The reader of Matthew’s gospel is made aware of a discord that the second son lives within, while he may be completely unaware of it himself. We don’t know that he ever actively decided not to go, he just never went. So, at what point was a decision really reached for him? It may be that he never decided anything. This son would assert, like almost everyone that has ever drawn a breath, that he is a good person. He is a person who believes in doing good. He simply doesn’t equate all of the individual actions of each day with his general “goodness” in which he believes, and in which the chief priests and elders would say that they believe. His belief, then, stands alone, isolated from his decisions.
By refusing to engage his belief in daily life, he never really follows the one that he thinks he is following. To say that we are followers of someone means that we try to live how they live. What is important to them is important to us. Following is itself an action word. To follow someone means that we go where we would otherwise not have gone. I talked a few weeks ago about making ourselves available to be changed by God. I wonder if this is the place in which God does this kind of work. This movement of following Christ is the act of engaging our lives with the question, “Which of these two did the will of his father?” Real engagement with this question does not include a justification of our actions. That is what the chief priests and elders do by trying to discredit Jesus’ authority. Real engagement, real following, necessarily means that we will come to a place other than where we began. We will be changed by our following. Returning then to Kierkegaard’s parable we could say that it is the application of one’s belief that changes the believer.
At a lock-in last week, the youth watched the film, Batman Begins. At one point Bruce Wayne’s closest friend says to him, “It’s not who you are inside, but what you do, that defines you.” He is then left to consider not only what truth there is in this statement, but also the ways in which it applies to his own life. The thing is, that it really is who we are inside that defines us. Jesus would say it a bit differently. He teaches in Matthew’s gospel that, when what we do doesn’t match who we say that we are inside, we are, in fact, deluding ourselves about who are inside. When what we do doesn’t match who we say that we are, we are deluding ourselves about who we are.
Jesus quite often concluded a teaching with statements like, “Go and do likewise.” On another occasion he said, “You have given the right answer; now do this, and you will live.” It is in the doing that the truth of the teaching is evident, and it is in the doing that God acts in us, that God changes us. Jesus is a painfully difficult person to be a follower of. Following him requires self-sacrificing love of those that we don’t know, and of those who don’t appear to us to deserve our love. Following him requires such extreme forgiveness of us that it pulls at us in our gut. Following him requires such giving of us that it hurts. Jesus is not an easy person to follow. But Jesus is the person that we as a community have said that we will decide daily to follow. When we do this, and when it becomes so painful that we wonder if we can continue, that is where Jesus is working in us. He is changing us to be inside who we say that we are. May we all this day be changed by him.
I want to finish today with a Franciscan benediction that Bishop Howe shared at a recent clergy conference.
May God bless you with discomfort….
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger…..
At the injustice, oppression and exploitation of people
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears…..
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn
their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness….
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
Amen.
