Growing up, I was a huge fan of the University of Kentucky basketball. I still follow them closely, but nothing like when I was younger. I idolized their players, I knew all their stats, I watched their games on TV like it was a life or death struggle. My favorite player when I was in third grade was Kyle Macy, and I proclaimed myself his younger brother, even if he didn’t know it.
One day, I was shooting baskets at a local playground when a high school boy came over to shoot with me. We started talking, and as my conversations usually went, within ten seconds I was telling him how much I loved the Kentucky Wildcats and Kyle Macy.
“Really?” he said. “I know Kyle Macy.”
“YOU know KYLE MACY!” I said, not believing my luck.
“Yeah, I sure do. In fact, I’ve got some of his autographs at home,” he said nonchalantly.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Would you like one?”
“YEAH!”
“OK, I know your house. I’ll put one in your mailbox later tonight, and it will be there when you wake up in the morning.”
“Cool!” I said, and ran home to tell my mom of this divinely-directed meeting I’d just had.
After a restless night of sleep that would put Christmas Eve to shame, I jumped up out of bed and ran to the mailbox, knocking over tables and various elderly relatives to get to my Holy Grail. And, of course, when I got there, the mailbox was empty. Nothing hurts like a broken promise.
Unfortunately, we experience them all too often today, so often that maybe we’re used to broken promises. Advertisers bombard us with new and improved products that scored astronomically high on taste tests or are recommended by leading doctors or are guaranteed to get that stain out. Politicians are experts at broken promises, from 40 acres and a mule to “I am not a crook” to “I didn’t inhale.”
Promise-breaking has even become the standard for some of our kids. They promise to do their chores or to be home by 11 p.m. or to try harder in school or to stop putting peas up their little brother’s nose…and sometimes they do what they say, but too many times they don’t.
I bet some of us here are even guilty of breaking promises. I’ll call you back. The check is in the mail. We’ll get together soon. I’ll take care of it. We may have good intentions to keep our promises, but sometimes it’s so much easier to say “yes” and get that person off the phone, even when we really want to say “no” or “I don’t want to.”
What’s harder? Telling someone “no,” or telling someone “yes” but then not following through? That’s the dilemma Jesus creates in his parable this morning. The father asks his children to go and work in the vineyard harvesting grapes. The first son says “no,” dishonoring his father in public, even though he changes his mind later. The second sons politely says, “yes,” but then doesn’t do what he says. Even though the Pharisees say the son who eventually goes to the vineyard is the better of the two, I don’t think either of them deserve any awards. Both are guilty of faulty allegiance. The one son dishonors his father, the other son is disobedient. Doesn’t it make you feel better knowing that 1st century parents had to put up with the same stuff you do?
Like most of Jesus’ parables, this story isn’t really about the two boys. It’s about you and me. It’s about two kinds of people in this world. The one kind professes faith in God, but doesn’t live a faithful life. The other does the will of God while saying “no” to belief in God.
I don’t know about you, but there have been times in my life when I’ve uttered nice, pious words about God but showed unbelief through my actions. And there was a time in my life when I wanted nothing to do with God, but tried to live my life with as much integrity and goodness as possible.
When I was studying Interpersonal Communication at Ohio University, I took a class called Diffusion of Innovations, which is just a fancy way of saying the class was about how new ideas get out and get accepted. For example, when the microwave oven was first available, you had the early adapters who bought them right away, then the middle adapters who waited a little while before getting one, then the late adapters who were even more cautious and waited several years before getting one.
And then you had the last group, the group that refused to accept the new idea until they didn’t have a choice. That group was called the “laggards.” The laggards were the ones who said indoor plumbing would never work, or that airplanes were too dangerous, or that cars were a fad. Laggards say you don’t need an answering machine; if it’s important enough, they’ll call back. Laggards think home computers are finicky contraptions that waste time and money…OK, sometimes they’re right. Laggards simply refuse to go with the flow, no matter how useful and obvious the new innovation is.
Jesus’ parable today is a parable for laggards. Jesus is saying, “I know that some of you out there have said you believe in me, but have yet to live that way. And I know there are others out there who live a good life, but have yet to find your true home with me. Maybe it hasn’t been the right time yet. Maybe it’s not the right time now. But I want you to know that I promise to be here waiting for you, when you do come to faith.”
That’s one promise that won’t be broken. In a world where broken promises pile up and clutter our lives, there are some promises that we know we can stake our life on. Promises like, “I am the bread of life,” and “This is my blood, shed for the forgiveness of your sins.” Promises like “I am with you, even unto the end of the age,” and “Where two or three are gathered, I am with them.” Through Jesus Christ, God has promised to love us and be with us. God promises to weep with us, to mourn with us, to endure pain with us, to rejoice with us. God promises to love each and every one of us as if there is only one person to love.
God also promises to make us more than ourselves. Through God, all things are possible. If you could look into the future and see the person God has promised you can become ten years from now, you’d stand up and cheer, and you’d deeply want to become that person. God promises to love us as we are, and to love us into becoming more than we are. And that’s a promise that is never broken.
The only proper response to this is to make our own promises in return. And I think the first promise we have to make is to be honest with God. It is better to be honest about our unbelief and to strive toward belief, than to claim to be believers and not act like it. It’s OK to be honest and say, “God, I’m still struggling with this whole faith thing. I’m working on it, but I’m struggling” I think God would rather hear that than some religiously proper statement that rings hollow. When we are down, when we are struggling, the presence of God isn’t a place to avoid, it’s the only place to be! The best place you can be when you’re struggling to make sense of your faith is this church, a place where you can ask your questions and express your doubts and be prayed for and work it out with God. There are no spiritual prerequisites required to be here. Just be here. That in itself is keeping a promise to God.
There’s another promise we can make to God. It’s the promise to let our faith dictate our actions. It’s the promise to live like believers, to put our money where our mouth is, to treat people in such a way that God’s love isn’t deflected by us, but shines through us. If we make a promise to God to love Him and love our neighbors, and then act selfishly and ignore the needs of others, we’re doing something worse than no delivering an autograph of Kyle Macy to an excited nine-year-old. We’re breaking God’s heart.
It’s not too late, it’s never too late, to make a change, to say “yes” to God and do God’s work. There’s a whole vineyard out there that needs to be harvested; there’s a lot of people out there, some in your neighborhood or even in your family, who need to hear the good news of Jesus, who are just waiting for an invitation to come and see what church is all about. Maybe now isn’t the right time for you to make a change. Maybe you’ve been saying “no” to God in one way or another your whole life, and you’re just not ready to say “yes.” That’s OK. If God is patient enough to accept tax collectors and prostitutes into his kingdom, I imagine there’s plenty of room for us laggards.
In this parable, Jesus describes two kinds of people: those who say they’ll go to the vineyard and do God’s work and then don’t, and those who say they won’t, and then do. There’s a third type of person: the person who says they will do God’s work, and then do it.
