Once
upon a time, long, long ago in a galaxy –
well, a country,
anyway –
far away, there lived a man with two sons.
Not
unusual, of course –
there are lots of people who have two
sons, my daughter does.
But these two boys, and their dad,
feature in several of Jesus' stories.
Daddy was a
wine-grower, we are told, and one morning at breakfast-time, he said
to the boys, “Right, lads;
busy day today, grape harvest
starting.
Either of you free to come and help?”
The
younger boy shakes his head.
“Sorry, Dad;
I'm booked, I'm
afraid.
Told Sammy I'd go round to his today.”
“Not
a problem,” said his father.
“What about you, Joe?” to the
older boy.
“Yes, I can come!” says Joe.
“What
time do you want me?”
“Oh, make it about 09:30, we'll
be able to use you then.
Great.
See you later!”
All
very well and normal, you might think.
But then what
happens?
Joe, in the hour or so between the end of breakfast and 09:30, when he said he'd be at the field, begins to have second
thoughts.
It's a horribly hot day, he could go swimming with his
friends;
Dad wouldn't really mind, there were plenty of other
helpers.... and eventually, his brother sees him heading off with his
trunks and a towel under one arm, obviously not heading for the
harvest-fields.
So the brother does a bit of thinking
himself.
Yes, Sammy was half-expecting him, but harvest was
harvest, and it was pretty sure he'd be wanted to help his Dad,
too.
So he grabs a passing servant and sends him round to
Sammy's with a message that he couldn't come, after all, and heads
off down to the field.
Well, that's the story Jesus
told.
And one of the reasons he told it was to tell us that it's
never, ever too late to change your mind, not in this life.
If
you've not been quite sure about God, about being Jesus' person, you
can still change your mind.... it isn't too late!
Main Sermon: Doing it God's Way
You know, I feel very sorry for Moses.
There he is, doing his
best to lead his people to the Promised Land,
and what
happens?
They do nothing but grumble!
They keep telling him
they'd rather be back in slavery in Egypt, thank you very much,
quite ignoring the fact that when they were in slavery, they
hated it!
But first of all they didn't have anything to eat,
and then, when God provided manna for them –
and nobody
knows what manna was, exactly, only that it was edible and tasted
good –
they got bored of it, and wanted meat, so God sent
quails for them.
And now here they are grumbling because
tonight's camping place doesn't have any fresh water for them.
Moses
is very fed up, and also slightly afraid of a riot and stoning,
so
God intervenes and tells Moses to hit a certain rock with his staff
and water gushes out.
And the people of Israel stopped
grumbling, until the next time!
They were never
contented.
And nor, in many ways, were the Pharisees from our
Gospel reading.
They were not bad people, of course;
they
really did want to follow God,
but they had misunderstood what
was wanted, and thought that in order to be God's person, you simply
had to follow the law absolutely exactly.
To
help them do that, they had added some incredibly detailed “what
ifs” and “in this case yous” to the Law.
The Law, as
interpreted by the Pharisees, provided for every single detail of
life,
and if you failed to keep it absolutely perfectly, then,
they thought, God wouldn’t want to know you.
Well,
that was all very well.
The Pharisees meant well, of course, but
they were, quite without realising it, imposing impossible burdens on
people.
It was quite impossible to keep the Law in their
way.
And the Pharisees themselves made one very big mistake
they
rated keeping the Law more highly than human relationships.
They
were more concerned about the way people obeyed, or did not obey, the
Law
than they were about who people were, and how they were
hurting, and why.
And, of course, somewhat inevitably, they
tended to be rather proud if they managed to live as they thought
right,
and then they looked down on those who didn't live as
they did, believing God would exclude them.
And
they find Jesus' teachings very unsettling,
especially when he
starts telling them they're being totally hypocritical, fussing about
how many mint leaves to tithe but ignoring people who are in
need.
Unsettling and disturbing.
So they ask Jesus by whose
authority he is speaking.
Now this was a trick question,
of course.
If he claimed a human source for his authority, they
could and would
discredit it.
If he said it was just his own thoughts, or,
worse, if he claimed it came from God, they could, and
almost definitely would,
stone him for a heretic.
It could be that some of them genuinely
wanted to know, but many would have hoped he'd blunder.
But he
didn't.
He turned it back on them –
okay, who gave John
the authority to baptise?
And that, too, was a trick
question.
If they said John's authority was from God,
Jesus
could legitimately ask why they hadn't believed him,
and if
they said it was merely human, well, what would the people think
–
they believed John was a prophet sent from God,
and
weren't going to stand for the Pharisees telling them different!
And
then Jesus tells them the lovely little story to show how it's not
always the obvious people who are first in line for the kingdom of
God.
The two sons, one seemingly more than willing to help his
father in the vineyard, the other with some excuse or other not
to.
And then the role reversal, the first son failing to go,
despite having said he would;
the second son finding he was free
after all and going to help.
And he was the one who found favour
with his father that day.
“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.”
And if you didn't
believe John, Jesus implied, you aren’t going to believe me,
either!
So what do these readings have to say to us this
morning?
I think it's very much about our
expectations.
What do we expect from God?
The people of
Israel expected God, through Moses, to provide for their every
want.
Not just their every need –
which he manifestly did
–
but their every whim.
They wanted leeks and onions and
all the delicious food they'd left behind in Egypt.
They wanted
to be free, but they didn't want to pay the price of that
freedom!
They wanted to be in the Promised Land already, without
having to travel there, if that makes sense.
And whenever things
got slightly uncomfortable for them,
they grumbled and moaned
and whined –
on one occasion, you may remember, they even went
so far as to worship another god in the shape of a golden calf.
They
wanted God to do things their way.
And the Pharisees also
wanted God to do it their way.
They wanted God to say they were
doing it right, their tithes and their keeping the law in infinite
detail would make things all right.
God would, they hoped,
accept them because they kept the Law.
Which was all very well,
but not when it turned into that they hoped God would reject those
who didn't keep the Law!
They definitely wanted God to do it
their way!
I have a horrid nasty feeling that we are all
too apt to do this, too.
I know I do.
It would be nice to
be able to manipulate God, to make God do things our way.
In
many ways, it would be nice to be able to take responsibility for our
own salvation.
We can't, of course, any more than the Pharisees
could.
They tried to be saved by keeping God's law exactly
perfectly,
just as we try to assume we are saved because we
have committed ourselves to be Jesus' person.
But they weren't,
and we aren't.
We are saved by God's grace alone, and we can do
nothing to change that.
That sounds as though I'm
preaching about predestination and stuff like that.
I'm not.
As
Methodists, we believe that everybody needs to be saved,
and
that everybody can be saved,
can know they are saved,
and
can be saved to the uttermost.
But the point is, while I know
that God has saved me, whatever I might mean by that –
and I
don't always know, so don't go asking me –
I know that God has
saved me,
but I have no way of knowing about you.
You
know, yes.
You know, and you will doubtless tell me, that God
has indeed saved you,
but I have no way of knowing unless you
tell me.
And you have no way of knowing about anybody else, and
nor do I.
We can't make God do things our way.
We'd
like it if people were only saved if they prayed the sinners' prayer,
or whatever, and then expressed their faith exactly like we do.
Human
nature, that is.
The Israelites wanted God to do things their
way,
to provide all sorts of delicious food for them whenever
they wanted it, not just camp rations.
They wanted to have
arrived in the Promised Land without having to journey there.
We
have to remember that it was the son who worked in the vineyard who
did what his father wanted.
The father still loved the son who
changed his mind and didn't go –
that was never the issue.
He
still loved him, but he wasn't best pleased about it, all the
same.
So what is it God wants us to do?
Obviously
to believe, to have faith.
And to stop trying to manipulate
him!
It really isn't easy.
When they first told us King's
Acre might close, all those years ago,
I remember that I found
myself praying, “Lord, if you do that, I'll never speak to you
again!”
What I should have been praying,
and what God
gave me the grace, eventually, to be able to pray, was
“Lord,
if you want to do that, you're going to have to change me to enable
me to accept it, because I certainly can't right now!”
I dare
say God could manage very happily if I never spoke to him again –
but
I'm not sure I could!
Seriously, though, it can get like
that, can't it?
Another rather silly example –
someone on
Facebook, some years ago now, posted a comment that I considered
judgemental,
and I was going to post “Judge not, that ye be
not judged” on his status, when I realised –
or God pointed
out to me, whichever –
that if I did that, I'd be being just
as judgemental as I was planning to accuse him of being!
Oops!
It
isn't easy to do things God's way,
rather than to try to make
God do things our way.
That is always the temptation –
I
know it's one of my persistent temptations,
and I shouldn't
wonder if some of you share it.
We want our own way;
we
think we know how the world should be run,
and we think God is
very silly not to see it the same way as we do.
Okay, when I put
it like that, it sounds ridiculous –
but isn't that exactly
what the Israelites were doing?
What did God think he was doing,
they wondered,
making them camp here where there wasn't any
fresh water?
Isn't it exactly what the Pharisees were
doing?
What did God think he was doing, they wondered,
sending
this laughing young man to tell them they'd got totally the wrong
idea about God?
And we wonder what God thinks he is doing
allowing a small boy to wander off and drown, as sadly happened last
week;
we wonder what God thinks he is doing allowing such
dreadful floods in Nepal, or earthquakes in South America, or
whatever.
We think – at least I do – that if we were God,
we’d do things very differently!
And we’d like God to do
things our way.
The good news is, of course, that we can
catch ourselves doing it, and repent.
I don't mean having to
grovel and tell God how awful we are –
often, it is enough
just to laugh at ourselves.
“Oops, I did it again!” as the
song says...
And if we can and do commit ourselves to doing
things God's way,
then next time we try and do it the other way
round,
we might catch ourselves just that wee bit earlier.
And
yes, sometimes it isn't at all easy.
If things look as though
they might be going in a direction we would hate –
illness, a
threatened job loss, whatever it might be –
it's not at all
easy to say to God, “do it your way.
Thy will be done!”
Often
we know God's going to have to change us before we can accept
it.
But we do, in the end, have to say “Thy will be
done!” to God.
If we keep on and on saying “Do it my way!”
eventually God might just take us at our word –
and leave us
to get on with it.
And, as I said, I don't know about you, but I
don't think I could cope with a universe without God, could
you?
Amen.
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