Actions Speak Louder than Words by The Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
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Matthew 21: 23-32
Unless you haven’t been paying attention or have been very, very busy, you know we’re only 5 weeks away from what’s known in this country as the mid-term congressional elections. For Connecticut folks, it also means we’re 5 weeks away from choosing a governor and other state officials. All of which also means that it’s hard to escape the endless media interviews of would-be office holders.
These interviews are frustrating at so many levels, aren’t they? Not least because no matter what the question is, the answer is bound to be one of the talking points they want to get across. “How are you?” “The taxes are too darned high and my opponent is a liar!”
Still, on occasion, it happens that talking points are successfully challenged. One method is to challenge an answer with a video tape of the candidate saying the opposite of his present platform. It’s what’s known as a “Gotcha” moment.
For example, the interviewer asks, “Do you support gun control?” And the candidate responds “no.” Then the interviewer might say, “Very interesting. But on such and such a date you said otherwise. Let’s play that clip.” Then the video tape would show the person on the hot seat saying on another occasion that he thought gun control was a good thing.
In response, of course, the guest would hem and haw and try to convince everyone that his views on the subject had really never changed, that the quotation was taken out of context and yada, yada, yada.
The take-away from such gotcha moments is that it would seem there is nothing worse for anyone running for political office than to have to admit that they have ever, ever changed their mind about anything. From gun control to national health care to abortion to marriage equality, you name it: for anyone to be on record as having changed their minds – well, they might as well abandon all political hope.
Changing one’s mind. Is it really that bad?
The religious leaders in our gospel lesson this morning clearly thought that changing one’s mind was akin to self-immolation. To briefly reset the scene, the leaders were trying to trap Jesus into saying his authority came from God. This answer would then give the leaders enough warrant to denounce Jesus as a heretic and destroy his growing movement.
In response, Jesus posed a question about John the Baptist. Long story short, the leaders knew that no matter how they answered Jesus had them. So, they disingenuously said, “We don’t know.”
Jesus then told them a parable of a man who had two sons. The father asked one to go work in the vineyard. He said no, but changed his mind and went and did the work. He then asked his second son to work in the vineyard. He said he would, but didn’t.
Jesus then asked the religious experts: So, then, who did what his father wanted? It was a “Duh” question. “The first son,” they replied.
And Jesus said, “Gotcha!” You, he said, are like the son who said he would go and work but didn’t. You claim to be so close to God, but yet you refused to pay attention to John the Baptist who was God’s prophet.
In fact, Jesus went on, you think you’re better than the so-called worst people in Palestine – the tax collectors and prostitutes – but you’re not. They, he said, the socially marginalized, although not included in your definition of people acceptable to God, will in fact enter the kingdom of God before you because in the end some did respond positively to John the Baptist.
In sum, these religious experts had many of the right answers about God. But right answers alone aren’t enough when it comes to listening for God wants.
So, point number one for us this morning – the obvious: It’s not what we say with our lips about God that matters, but what we do as a result of what we say we believe.
To be very sure, one of the most regrettable things about Christianity is that many of us have been taught that Christianity is basically a belief system. That if we hold to orthodox beliefs about such doctrines as the virgin birth, the resurrection, the trinity, etc., then we’re a Christian, a disciple of Jesus.
Jesus, of course, never said any such thing. He was, though, quoted several times saying, in effect, the fruits of our lives will reveal the sincerity of our claimed love for God and neighbor.
Now, it’s not that beliefs don’t matter. Obviously, to come to the conclusion that God was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth who revealed truths about living a life most pleasing to God is a core belief for anyone who would go out of their way to call themselves Christian. And there are other doctrines of the faith that help us understand God and how we are to act lovingly and justly in the world.
But, to Jesus’ argument, one can get straight A’s on the Bible and churchly doctrines, and still miss the point of what God is doing in the world and what God wants from us.
Point number two from Jesus’ parable: What would seem an advantage in relating to God can, in fact, be a great disadvantage.
The religious leaders in fact had a great advantage. They were clearly highly regarded and good godly people, the best of the best: chief priests and elders, roughly the equivalent of our most influential clergy and lay leaders. But, apparently, they were suffering from a malady that might be called religious privilege. That is, they felt they had all the answers about God and were thus entitled to all the privileges. And were hell bent to defend their rules and regulations and system.
Now, to be fair, such assumption of religious privilege sooner or later comes to all movements of faith. We seem almost incapable of helping ourselves in our predisposition to legalize and codify and draw lines of who’s in and who’s out. I mean, that’s the church. Every church, sooner or later.
And, for those of us on the inside – you too - it’s very hard to get our attention that changes in our thinking and behavior need to happen. We fall in love with our beliefs and our customs as if God has, in fact, stopped speaking.
This was precisely what was going on with the chief priests and elders. They assumed God had stopped speaking. That because John the Baptist, let alone Jesus, didn’t reflect their way of thinking, they could be dismissed.
Which was what caused Jesus to retort that even society’s most notorious outcasts are likely to catch God’s new truth before the religiously privileged simply because such folk aren’t so in love with the old religious truths and traditions that they have become blind to God’s new thing.
Point number two again for us: We who are religiously privileged in American Christendom always need to beware that our wonderful system of doctrines and traditions and customs may in fact come to be a stumbling block in following Jesus.
Point number three: Our understanding of truth necessarily evolves as does our understanding of what it means to be Christian.
Why? For one thing, we just grow smarter.
For example, once, as my mother taught me, I believed that eating two eggs, buttered toast, some bacon and a glass of whole milk every day was good for my health. Then I learned it wasn’t. Once I believed the world was created in 6 days. Now I don’t. Once I was homophobic. Now I’m not.
Once, although it’s hard to reconcile, many of us who are 60 and over treated the planet and environment as a commodity solely given for our enjoyment and disposal. We didn’t even begin to link care for the earth with God. Now, we know better, and are rightly ashamed. And so on.
So, in the changing of our minds did the truth change?
No. I, we changed as we grew in knowledge and wisdom and what it means to live truthfully and responsibly and justly as children of God.
Point number three again: Our understanding of truth as well as our understanding of what God is calling us to do and to be changes, evolves, matures and this is a good thing.
Had the religious leaders in Jesus’ time been mindful of this, been more humble about it all, their encounters with Jesus might have been totally different. Instead, they were stuck in old beliefs, in old practices, honoring timeworn customs with hearts and minds closed to God’s new thing.
Now, although I’d prefer to think that this parable has nothing to do with me today, it does. It bids me to look within and check things out. After all, looking back, all my new understandings have come at the expense of previously held, even once professed wonderful understandings of faith and life.
So, might it be so now? Yeah, it might.
And nowhere might it be more obvious for me and possibly for you than in regard to how God might be calling us as Trinity Church for future mission, given as we have been hearing, that status quo simply isn’t an option.
Accordingly, as we look upon the world into which we as a church are even today being sent, a world of neighborhoods, of work places, of schools, of families, and beyond, we must pray to be open to the “duh” questions Jesus is posing to us as we reimagine our place in the mission of God.
Duh questions like:
What do we have as a faith community that our neighbors need most?
How can we be the best stewards of our assets in service to the world?
What unique gifts and talents do we possess that God is calling us to exercise in this time, in this place?
How do we teach each other, support each other to best accomplish God’s mission?
Questions such as these that, if we receive them with open hands and hearts, and not clenched fists of defensiveness will make glad the heart of God who is calling us to exciting though challenging new frontiers.
We can try to stall Jesus by saying “we don’t know” what we’re supposed to do. And, right now that’s actually true: your church’s leaders don’t know exactly what we’re being called to be and to do in these changing times. Our input has been and will continue to be solicited as in the forum today.
But after months of listening, researching, studying and praying, soon enough we’re going to have the options in front of us. Soon enough we’ll know as best we can know what God’s new possibilities for us are.
And then we’ll get to decide which of the two children we want to emulate: the one who said the right things; or the one who, however long it took him, in the end did what his father was asking him to do.