Beyond Good Intentions

BEYOND GOOD INTENTIONS Matthew 21:28-32 Theme of the Month Life Together: Church and Community

Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Sharp

Lead Pastor, English Congregation Vancouver Chinese Baptist Church, Vancouver, British Columbia

Sunday Sermon for 1 August 2010

Scripture Passage Matthew 21:28-32

“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

28

29

“ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

30

“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

“The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

31

BEYONDGOODINTENTIONS 1

A sick man endured a long hospitalization. His doctor told him, “You are very sick, but you’ll pull through.”

However, the patient was scared for his life. “Please, doctor,” he said, “do everything you can. If I get well, I’ll donate $10,000 to the fund for the new hospital.”

The man recovered and several months later the doctor met the patient on the street and asked him how he felt, and the man told the doctor that he felt great. “Good!” the doctor said, “because I have been meaning to speak to you about that money for the new hospital.”

The man said, “What are you talking about?”

The doctor told him, “You said that if you got well, you would donate $10,000 to the new hospital fund.”

The man shook his head. “If I said that, doctor, then I must have really been sick!”

Making a promise is easy; keeping a promise can be tough.

In today’s gospel lesson we have the simple little story of how two young men responded to their father’s request that they go to work in the family business. The parable of the two sons is a very human story. There was a man who owned a vineyard and there was work to be done. He had two sons and went to the first of them asking him to go and put in a day’s work in the vineyard.

He flatly says: I will not”; but afterwards he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second son with the same request. He politely responds: “Certainly, I will go, sir”; but instead he went away and did nothing about it. Jesus asked: “Which of the two did the will of his father?”

And the hearers respond: “the first” even though he had initially refused.

Now, if we try to situate this parable in the context of Jesus’ ministry, the original meaning is clear. The first son stands for the tax-collectors and sinners. To most people their lives looked like a blunt refusal to have anything to do with God; and yet when Jesus came they listened to him and changed their lives to fit his message and meet his demands. The second son stands for the religious leaders, the Scribes and the Pharisees. Their whole life was one long profession, promise that they would serve God and obey his commandments and yet when Jesus, Son of God, came they refused to have anything to do with him and in the end had him put to death.

If you look back in your Bible to the larger context of this parable and passage you see it comes in the midst of a very heated argument that Jesus was having with the religious leaders—the chief priests and elders of the people (Matthew 21:23) and in effect Jesus was saying to them, “All your lives you have been making a great profession/claim of your devotion to God and now your attitude to me contradicts your whole profession. The people you label as ‘sinners’ have all their lives seemed to be turning their backs on God; but now they have changed their minds and have found a place in the Kingdom of God which you have thrown away.”

In this passage, Jesus doesn’t put on this little quiz to see how smart his listeners are. He is making a crucial point with them about their relationship with God; whether or not they are doing the will of God. It’s about entering into God’s kingdom and having a relationship with God and BEYONDGOODINTENTIONS 2

joining him in his mission in the world. The bottom line is this: It isn’t what you say, it isn’t what you promise, it isn’t what you sing or teach that matters most; it is what you do that matters. Jesus is making clear that words can never take the place of deeds—even nice, pious, socially and culturally acceptable words.

There is a difference in the way the two sons answer their father’s request. The first answers with almost contemptuous bluntness. The second says all the things which politeness demand, even adding “sir” to his response. But neither verbal courtesy nor surface politeness can take the place of deeds. Good intensions are not enough. Because in the final analysis, it is only by what we do that we really prove who we are and that we love someone. This is true in all of life and it is especially true in the Christian life.

Francis Bacon said that it isn’t what we preach or pray, but what we practice and believe that makes us Christian. This is what Jesus is a saying in this parable: it is what we DO, and not just what we say that ultimately makes the difference in our loves.

When you look at the New Testament it is interesting that the earliest description for Christians was “The Way” (e.g. Acts 9:2). It was a reminder that following Jesus was never simply learning facts or reciting certain creeds or having good intentions. It was/is a way of life which proves its truthfulness and reality by its deeds. It is not enough to say that we believe in Jesus. If our actions don’t back up our words, then our words are meaningless. The book of James puts it this way: “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead” (James 2:26).

Sometimes we forget that. It is interesting that if you do a little digging into the interpretation of this passage in some commentaries that they point out that there are actually New Testament Greek manuscripts that have variations on this parable; and quite a few of them say that it wasn’t the first son (who said “No” an then later went) but the second son (the one who said “Yes, Sir” but didn’t go) who actually did the father’s will.

J.A. Findlay, a New Testament scholar, tells of a missionary in Palestine who told this story exactly as it is told here in our version of the New Testament. He then asked the question: “Who did the will of his father?” To his great surprise the crowd unanimously answered: “The man who said he would go and did not.” When they were asked why, they said, “A day’s work in the vineyard is a little thing, but to say ‘No’ to your father’s beard is a grievous sin.” That sort of attitude thinks that polite words and saying what one wants to hear or is expected to say is better, more important than true deeds. You might even be able to think of some Chinese/Asian parallels to that. But the teaching of Jesus is precisely the opposite. He makes it clear, over and over again that profession, saying the right things, making the promises can never be a substitute for performance; that words, no matter how polite or pleasant or culturally or politically or theologically correct, can ever take the place of Christlike deeds. In Jesus’ eyes it is far better to move from bad intentions to positive action than to remain locked into your good intentions with no action.

We could say that that these two sons stand for two different kinds of people. Let’s take the second first. He stands for those whose profession is worse than their practice. There have always BEYONDGOODINTENTIONS 3

been people whose words said one thing and whose lives said another, even in the church.

Unfortunately the newspaper and the world like to focus on those kind of people. They point out how their actions contradict their words and because they do, whatever they said about the Gospel or about the Christian faith gets thrown out as well.

This kind of person does a great deal of harm to the church and to the cause of Christ. It’s not uncommon to hear people say that the greatest handicap the church has is the unsatisfactory lives of professing Christians—whether it is clergy who molest children or use their position to make themselves rich or the person in the pew who claims to be a believer but fails to show love to his own family or the people he meets daily at work or on the street.

Henry Drummond, a well-know pastor from an earlier time, used to tell of speaking at a street corner to a group of young men who had no use for the Church. A man passed by and one of the young men said, “That man is the founder of our Atheist’s Club.” Drummond asked in astonishment, “How can that be? He is one of the leading men in the church.” Back came the answer: “Precisely! If a man who lives a life like that is one of its leading people we want nothing to do with the church.” It should humble us and challenge us to remember that our lives every day by our faithfulness or lack of faithfulness to the claims of being followers of Jesus, either attracts people to Christ or repels them.

But then there are people like the first son whose practice/action is better than their profession.

They do the right thing. There is almost an inner compass that directs their life in a good way. It may hurt to say it but it is disturbing to examine the life of Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu leader, and see that his commitment to living according to the teachings of Jesus was much greater than that of many Christians. Gandhi wasn’t a Christian—and he never claimed to be—but he was attracted to Jesus and tried to pattern his life after the Sermon on the Mount. He had a copy of the beatitudes in Mathew 5 hanging on the wall of his home. When we compare his actions, his practice with the actions of many of those who claim to be followers of Jesus,” we see that in many ways this non-Christian man’s behavior was more reflective of the values Jesus taught. His practice was better than his profession One observation from the parable—it is a story about two sons, neither of whom was fully satisfactory. True, the first son was better than the second; but neither was perfect. It is better to say, “No,” and then go and obey, than it is to say, “Yes,” and then go and disobey. But it is best of all to say “Yes,” with courage and then obey with faithfulness. Both sons in the parable hurt their father’s heart. The child who really brings joy to the father’s heart is the one who willingly hears and gladly obeys.

This parable is a lesson in grace and repentance and trust. You stumble, you fall, you hedge, you shift, you fail, you make excuses but God is always there, ready to pick you up - if only you will repent and trust.

Repentance and trust take you beyond good intentions. Repentance is the process of actually taking the steps to become the person God wants you to be. Jesus is offering to anyone who is

BEYONDGOODINTENTIONS 4

interested, the chance to leave yesterday behind forever. No need to blame yourself over-and-over again for your failures and your misdeeds. You may not have kept promises you made long ago, but now you can let go of the mistakes, the sins, the rebellions , the heartaches, the disappointment and you can become a new person by the power of God’s Spirit. The forgiveness, the healing, the new life is here in the gift that Jesus offers to you and it will change everything for you if only you will open yourself up to receive the grace of a loving God. There is a story in the beginning of Luke’s Gospel in which the twelve-year-old Jesus asks Mary and Joseph who have been frantically searching for him: “Did you not know that I must be busy with my father business?” (Luke 2:49. As Christians, as followers of Jesus, we know we are called to be busy in our Father’s work. If we understand the Gospel and the church and the mission that Jesus calls us to, we know that we are engaged in the Christian family business of revealing God’s love to a needy love-starved world. The problem is that we talk about this and we intend to become involved in whatever way God’s Spirit directs us in carrying out this mission, but the reality is that a good many of us get involved in the work God intends for us to do only occasionally, if ever.

In Albert Camus’ novel, The Fall, there is a disturbing scene in which a respected lawyer, walking in the streets of Amsterdam, hears a cry in the night. He realizes a woman has fallen or been pushed into the canal and is crying for help. Then the thoughts come rushing through his mind: “Of course I must help, but ... a respected lawyer getting involved in this way? What would the implications be? ... And what about the personal danger? After all, who knows what has been going on over there? By the time he has thought it through, it is too late. He moves on, making all kinds of excuses to justify his failure to act. But, Camus, in one devastating line, says, “He did not answer the cry for help. That is the man he was.”

This is what can happen to us. This is a challenge for us. We have said “yes” to Jesus’ invitation to follow him, we come here to church with good intentions. We determine to be Christ’s women and men as never before. Then we go back out and we hear the cries for help but we just move on, making excuses as we go. And we stand under the judgment of Camus’ disturbing line: “He did not answer the cry for help. That is the man he was.”

This can happen to us. We come here full of all kinds of promises and commitments. Especially on a Baptism Sunday when we stop to read the church covenant and the promises we have made to God and to one another. We recommit ourselves to live more faithfully for Christ and to find our place of service in God’s kingdom. But then we hear the cries for help—help in the Sunday School, help in the Youth and Children’s program, help in one of the ministry teams, help in the world around us that is hurting so much; we hear the cries and know we should do something, but we just move on, making excuses as we go. If we are parents, we hear the cry to spend more time with our children, but don’t do it because we are too busy at the work; we want to support a missionary, but don’t because our car payment is too high; we want to spend more time reading the Bible and praying, but don’t know how to work it into our schedule; we want to get involved in a ministry or small group in the church, but don’t want to give up some of our free time or

BEYONDGOODINTENTIONS 5

rearrange our priorities to make that possible. And we stand under the judgment of Camus’ haunting line: “He did not answer the cry for help. That is the man/person he was.”

But the good thing about Jesus, the grace of God, is that Jesus doesn’t give up on us. There is a second chance. We saw that is today’s parable. The father doesn’t say to the son who initially said, “I will not!” but who later changed his mind and went—“Wait a minute. Sorry. You had your chance and you blew it. No more chances for you.” No, God is a God of second chances; a God who knows that we sometimes are full of good, but failed intentions; a God who gives us a chance to start over again.

God never intended for Christianity to be a stale, dead religion, and he never intended for our spiritual life to be reduced to good intentions, empty promises and meaningless clichés. His plan is for the Christian life to be a dynamic relationship that we share with him, day-in and day-out; a relationship that enriches and empowers and drives our life.

We talked about repentance and trust earlier. Repentance is recognizing that we are going in the wrong direction; it is changing our mind, it realizing that our good intentions, our promises are not enough. It is admitting that we have failed, that we haven’t always been as faithful or as true or as committed as we said we were going to be; that other things have become more important to us than knowing and doing the will of God. Repentance is acknowledging that and starting out again, trusting in God’s forgiveness and grace and strength and recommitting ourselves to the tasks and ministries and life that God calls us to.

The Christian life has been described like this: I’m not what I ought to be, but I’m not what I used to be, and I’m not yet what I’m going to be. But I am on the way.

Does that describe you? Could it? Should it? It can. You can move beyond good intentions into the fullness of life that God desires for you and you really want. And you can do it today.

BEYONDGOODINTENTIONS 6

Reflection Questions 1. As you reflect on today’s Scripture passage, what thoughts, reactions, feelings, questions come to mind?

2. Can you think back on a time in your life when you made a promise that you didn’t fulfill?

3. Are deeds more important than words, practice than profession?

4. Why is it a temptation to say what people expect us to say or is culturally or socially acceptable to say, even if we don’t intend on doing it?

5. Do you know of someone who professes to be a Christian, yet whose live calls into question that profession?

6. It was said that this parable is a lesson in grace, repentance and trust. Do you agree? Is there a danger in saying that God is a God who gives second, third, etc chances?

7. What questions, thoughts, reactions do you have to today’s sermon?

BEYONDGOODINTENTIONS 7