Jesus often told simple stories to make complex points. The parable we are considering this week, about a man and his two sons, is no exception. This one is bare bones. We're told who’s involved and what happened. No characterization, dialogue, insights into motivation; just the facts, ma’am.
They’re easy to tell: a man has two sons. He asks each one to go work in his vineyard. One says, “No way,” but then he goes and does it. The other says, “Sure, Dad,” and doesn’t go. Jesus asks, “Which did his father’s will?” The religious leaders answer, “The first.” Easy A. Seeing the work get done matters more than the intentions of the would-be workers. Isn’t that obvious?
Snap! They walked right into Jesus’ trap. For they had built their reputations and their power base on being the “right people,” and on judging who else was a “right person.” For them, the “who” mattered much more than the “work.” The scruffy, the poor, the sick, the lame, the divorced, the sinful need not apply. These guardians of Israel’s purity kept temple life shut against the unrighteous.
But they couldn’t keep Jesus out – his ideas flowed under the doors and through the walls, empowering all those spiritual “have-nots” to repent and be healed, to call God himself their “Abba.” And these, Jesus goes on to say, like those late-day workers, will enter the Kingdom ahead of the professionally holy. Even tax collectors and prostitutes, he says. Look out!
In real life, though, people are not so easily reduced to one kind or another, are we? We’re both of those sons, ready to commit at one moment, easily distracted and derailed the next. Some people's detours away from God’s vineyard are decades long, through other religious explorations, deep into consumerism, to the worship of other goods and gods - or simply into dells of doubt or despair.
Others of us hew closely to the way of Jesus and his church - and might find our enthusiasm siphoned off to managing buildings and accounts, worrying over empty pews, and lining up cooks for the next church supper. Is one more “right” than another? Church folk often decry the lack of interest in church and faith among so many people they know, rolling their our eyes over those who consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious.” But our churches contain many who are religious but not spiritual – that saps our vitality too.
Is there room in the Life of God for both types – and for us, when we are both types? For, in fact, these two sons Jesus talks about are really two parts of one person, two ends of a continuum. Some of us are closer to one end than another; some hug the middle. If you’re an over-promiser or an over-deliverer, are you able to love those on the other end of the spectrum? Today, might you bring to mind someone who irritates you because they don’t come through, and someone else who refuses to commit, but gets it done anyway… and pray for each one to be fully blessed? Even if that person is you? Especially then?
Jesus leaned toward the under-achievers in his parables – maybe because he knew the over-achievers didn’t need as much encouragement, or because he knew how easy it is for the righteous to judge others and he needed to remind them that it’s up to God, not us, to love whom God chooses. Jesus doesn't suggest that the father in the story loves one son more than the other – one just helps him out more. That’s the one I want to be.
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