The men interrogating Jesus about the source of his authority – “Who you working for?” – were good and righteous men, religious leaders. They were pretty sure, as are most righteous folks, that they knew what God did and did not approve of, and weren’t very keen on the way Jesus represented the Almighty. So they questioned him, thinking they could entrap him into saying something blasphemous.
But Jesus is two steps ahead of them. In response to their question, Jesus asks them one, “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” They cannot answer without getting in trouble with one faction or another, and as they are reliant on the people’s approval, they are stuck. Check and mate.
Jesus does not give a straight answer to their question, but he does respond in his sly, elliptical way – with a parable. This one is about a man and his two sons. It's not the one about the Prodigal Son; this is shorter and far less complex:
“What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?”
Before we get into how the Pharisees and Jesus interpret this little story, let’s explore it for ourselves. Many of us have teenaged children; all of us have been teenaged children. It is not difficult to imagine either scenario – the one who, when asked to unload the dishwasher, refuses… and then, when no one is looking, cleans up the whole kitchen. And another, who, when asked to mow the lawn, says, “Sure, sure,” and never looks up from his video game till evening.
But why am I picking on teenagers? A Facebook meme I once saw read, “Ladies, if a man says he’s going to fix it, he will. You don’t have to remind him every six months.” Promising more than we deliver and delivering more than we promise are pretty basic human behaviors. Is one more godly? Is one more fruitful than another?
Which of these two brothers do you gravitate toward? Put another way, which better describes you in your faith journey? Were you raised a Christian and have been half-hearted in your practice? Or did you come to it as a convert, now eager to participate in a life you’d either spurned or not known about before?
And how do we react toward people who fit either of these categories? A favorite charge leveled at churches is that they are full of hypocrites. Have we said or heard that? I always answer that with, “There’s always room for one more.”
None of us gets it quite right, and none of us gets it all wrong. Thanks be to God, we are all sons and daughters of a God who judges with mercy and corrects with love. When we fully integrate that truth, we usually find we want to get out to that vineyard and get to work.
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