19 Pentecost A Matthew 21:23-32 29 September 2002
Rev. Roger Haugen
Do you remember what happened 30 years ago this week? 1972. Does the name Paul Henderson help out? Yes, 30 years ago this week Paul Henderson scored arguably the most famous goal ever scored in the history of hockey. It is the eighth game of the Canada – Russia series, the series is all tied up after a less than glorious series. The Canadians were expected to dominate, yet here they were back in Russia after losing two and winning one and tying one in Canada. Unknowns like Tretiak had taught us a lesson or two about our game. The mood is ugly and the final game is 34 seconds from the end and Paul Henderson puts the puck in the net and we won.
If you talk to Paul Henderson, who is more famous for that goal than for anything he did before or since, he will tell you it was a garbage goal. One of those goals that result from a pile-up in front or a fluke deflection. Not a pretty goal that you think of when you think of the likes of Wayne Gretsky. It was a garbage goal and Henderson is the first to admit it. But you know what, the goal counted, Canada won and that was all that mattered. I don’t remember the goal going in, but I certainly remember the image etched in my memory of the Canadian team gathered around Paul Henderson with his arms in the air. A garbage goal but it counted, and we won. All that mattered was he put the puck in the net.
Jesus tells a story. There were two brothers who were asked to go into the vineyard to work. One said, “Oh, sure” but never went. The second said, “Not today,” but later changed his mind and went to work. Jesus asked those around, “Who did the will of the Father?” and they all answered, it was the second son. The older son knew all the right words but did nothing about them. It may not have happened the way that the Father would have liked, but the work got done and that was all that mattered in the end.
We just know that Jesus was talking to the religious leaders who were gathered around to catch Jesus and John doing something against the Torah. The leaders knew the words of the Torah so well, but that was where it ended. Very soon in the story, we know that Jesus caught their attention and their inaction, because they soon gathered to crucify him.
Jesus was also talking to the tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners who hungered for all his words, his healing, grace and love. Here were a lot of people who hadn’t lived lives anywhere near what we might call “righteous”. They were the outcast, the scum of society and they knew it. They had made a lot of bad choices in their lives, but they heard the words of Jesus and wanted to turn their lives around. They were not to be bound by their past, what mattered was that they had decided, now, to follow Jesus. Jesus’ words of grace and hope to them in this story were that they need not be bound by the past, forgiveness was theirs and more than that, they were invited to live in the kingdom of God. They were restored to a relationship with God, that which they craved so dearly. That which they saw in the life of Jesus.
Jesus also speaks to us. Sometimes we are the first brother, knowing all the right answers, hanging out with the right people in the right place but forgetting what Jesus has asked us to be about. We forget that we are to go to others with the good news that Jesus has come to restore our relationship to others. We forget that our real work is outside of these walls. We say the right words but forget to allow them to change our lives.
Sometimes we are the second brother. We may have made poor choices in our lives, we have ignored what Jesus asks us to do. We might feel as though we do not deserve anything from God, let alone the right to ask. Yet, sometimes we turn back to God asking forgiveness even if we do not believe we can rise above our past. It is to us, as the second brother, that Jesus speaks telling us to not let the past destroy us, it is far more important how we respond today. We may not know eloquent words of confession, but the confession of our deep longings and actions is all that counts. Remember Paul Henderson’s garbage goal. If we are to live gracefully into our futures then we need to live gracefully with our pasts.
As we live gracefully with our pasts we can also live gracefully with others and their pasts as well. We need to recognize our times in the role of the first brother. Times when we have been too quick to determine who belongs and who does not. Times when our actions speak so loudly that people cannot hear our words. Times when we are only too quick to identify the tax collectors and prostitutes around us, and shut them out.
Bishop Steve Bouman of the ELCA tells the story
We began to find our power as a congregation in New Jersey as a matter of being a place where you can go when there’s no where else to go. When you invite the poor and the homeless, they do come such as Edgar. He is by anybody’s standards a strange character. He lives alone in the nearby welfare motel better known for drug addicts and prostitutes than for the righteous. For some reason, he adopted our church and there are times when he pushed our understanding of what we mean when we say that all God’s children are welcome. I mean he would sit in front of me in the first pew and if he didn’t like what I was saying in the sermon, he’d kind of laugh, "Ho, ho, ho! You don’t mean that, do you?" And I’d have to tell him, "Edgar, chill out!" He was rough around the edges. Some of the social graces had been rubbed raw from years of trying to survive in an inhospitable world. To those who do not know him, he can be kind of scary. On occasion, he got loud and demanding and if the truth be told, my heart sank on Palm Sunday when he was waiting in the sanctuary for me after a full day of liturgies, first communions and pastoral intensity. I know that when he’s waiting for me he wants something--a ride, some of my time--and he’ll often complain about this and that.
And this is my confession to you. I was the first son in the parable. Okay, Lord, but I didn’t want to go. I wanted to go home. But by the grace of God, I became the second son. On the drive to the motel, he talked my ear off and I prayed for patience. Yet something strange and wonderful began to happen as I pulled into the parking lot of the rundown motor inn by the George Washington Bridge. A door opened and an elderly woman emerged. She knocked on another door and another elderly woman emerged. They limped toward our car. Others waiting at the edges of the parking lot followed. They had been waiting for us. I was in someone else’s church now. For the first time I noticed that Edgar Lee Hill’s hands grasped a bunch of palms. He had promised them that he would bring them palms from our Sunday liturgy, tangible evidence of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, which is the context of our story for today.
Well, mothers and their children, addicts, prostitutes, the mentally ill, those who came to the temple after Jesus cleansed it, gathered around the car. The first lady was by the door. Soon the car was surrounded. I looked at Edgar. Jesus said to them, "Truly, I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you for they believed in Him."
I looked at Edgar. This man was the only one who has ever passed for a pastor in this backwater parish of broken souls. There could be no more fertile soil for church growth, spiritually understood, than this concrete parking lot and its waiting children of God. He gave her a palm through the window. This lady knew her pastor. She just clutched her palm as if she had been given the most precious gem and called the waiting group over to the van. "Get out of the car," said Edgar. I could only watch in awe. He thrust the palms in my hand. "Give them the palms!" And I distributed them among those waiting. “Bless them," Edgar demanded. I blessed their palms. I placed my hand on each forehead and pronounced the benediction. If I would have had bread and wine in my possession, I would have fed them right there.
As I pulled out of the parking lot, I caught a glimpse out of my rearview mirror of this continuation of our Sunday morning Holy Week liturgy as a grumpy old man walked back to the motel with a group of children of God who are mostly forgotten and despised.
Our hope lies in the second son. We have no hope of convincing God of our worthiness by the good words of the first son. We may fool ourselves with rules and traditions, all the right words in worship, but if we do not have the actions to match, actions that do the will of God, we are lost. Our hope comes in knowing that, no matter how much we have messed up our lives, we are able to act like the outcasts of today’s gospel and respond to Jesus’ love and acceptance. They deserved to stand with the Lord because they had responded to his choice of them and had in turn chosen him. We cannot let out past, with its bad choices, destroy us. We must simply give up our flimsy excuses for why Jesus should accept us, and accept the fact that Jesus loves us for just who we are. In response we seek to live as he would want us to live, doing the will of the Father.
To do the will of the Father is to watch for ways in which we are the first brother, classifying others as belonging or not belonging, saying the right words but not matching them with action. As we remove the attitude of the first brother, we become like the second. We become open to all those whom God loves and seek to find ways to love them.
Then we discover that we are acceptable to God, we are loved, forgiven and showered with grace. This is most certainly true.
