Yes, no, maybe so. Yes, no, maybe so. Each and every day we’re faced with dozens of decisions – things or people or places or events that we must say yes or no to.
Yes, I’ll have chicken for dinner tonight. No, I won’t have beef.
Yes, I’ll go to work this morning. No, I won’t stay even a minute after 5:00.
Yes, I’ll call my sister today. No, I won’t have time to eat lunch with my brother.
Yes, no, maybe so. Dozens of times a day. Big decisions, little decisions, major decisions, mundane decisions.
It’s part of what makes our free market economy so great, isn’t it? We can walk into Dominicks or Marshall Fields or Circuit City or Sears and we find thousands and thousands of products just waiting for us to say yes or no to them.
And it’s something we learn when we’re still pretty young. Yes to chocolate cake. No to lima beans. Yes to playing boardgames. No to washing the dishes. Yes and no are among the first words a child learns!
This morning we are learning from one of Jesus’ parables about saying yes to God. Two sons are asked by their father to work in the vineyard. The first son defied his dad by saying he would not go. But later, he had a change of heart and he ended up going to work in the vineyard as his father had requested. The second son quickly agreed to his dad’s request, but he didn’t follow through on his promise and he never went to the vineyard.
So we see one son who said yes with his words but said no with his actions. The other son said no with his words but said yes with his actions. But whether they say yes to God with words or they say yes to God with actions, both are possible because God first said yes to us.
The very act of God becoming human in the person of Jesus Christ was the amazing act of God saying yes to humanity. And this act of God saying yes to us has been understood and celebrated since the very earliest church gathered. In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we find the very oldest part of the New Testament. Paul is quoting a hymn that was sung by the early church in the years right after Christ’s resurrection. Even in the English translation, we can hear the song-like qualities of the hymn.
So from the earliest times in the church, the amazing act of God becoming human was celebrated and sung with joy – this act of God saying yes to humanty. That God would come and breathe and thirst and sweat and bleed and grow tired and feel lonliness and frustration and sadness and fear and all the rest of what we know as human life – what an amazing God we serve!
And what an amazing way for God to say yes to us. To want to know us and know our pain and our struggles that we have to suffer in world that has fallen away from God, and to want to know it so much that God would become one of us to feel the suffering firsthand. Because God certainly knew what humanity was like when we were created – the Creator knows intimately the Creation!
But in the fallen, broken world which we made for ourselves, God didn’t recognize the things we had brought into the world – death, pain, suffering, sin, illness, jealousy, violence, war. Until God made the ultimate step of saying yes to humanity by becoming one of us – discovering firsthand what we had done to the Creation.
If God had stopped at this point – becoming human just to see what it was like – we would not have the good news to share today that we do. Because once God became human in the person of Jesus Christ, Jesus turned right around and said yes to God – Philippians says he humbled himself and was obedient to God, even to the point of death on a cross.
So God said yes to humanity when Jesus came. And Jesus said yes to God when he was led up to be crucified.
And in that point of the crucifixion, we see both of these – God saying yes to humanity, humanity saying yes to God. Because we were not able to say yes to God on our own accord, Jesus, being who He was, said yes to God in our place.
Which was remarkable in and of itself. For among the very people who Jesus was trying to save were the ones who were crying out, “Crucify him!” and the ones who strapped the cross to his back and the ones who led him up the hill to Golgotha and the ones who swung the hammer to nail him to the cross.
Even in spite of humanity’s horrible actions against him, every step along the path must have had the divinity of Jesus saying yes to humanity.
And by bearing the suffering of the crucifixion, the humanity of Jesus said yes to God on behalf of all humanity in a way that we couldn’t do for ourselves. We couldn’t say yes on our own.
Because of this moment, when God said yes to humanity, and Jesus said yes to God, we are now able to say yes to God by accepting Christ’s sacrifice for us and allowing Christ into our hearts. We and Christ together can say yes to God in a way we couldn’t by ourselves. And then as Paul goes on to say in Philippians, we are able to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. We can say yes to God because God first said yes to us.
Which brings us back to the parable of the two sons – one who said yes with his words, but said no with his actions, one who said no with his words but yes with his actions.
As you know, our church will be starting this year’s confirmation classes next Sunday, and we’re hoping to set the bar higher than either of these sons reached! We are hoping to help bring the confirmation youth to a place where they can say yes to God with their words *and* with their actions! When we met last week for our confirmation pizza party we talked about confirmation being a way to say yes to God with our minds, with our hearts, and with our hands. So maybe by the time we get to confirmation Sunday next May, the youth will be able to give a lesson to these two sons in the parable on how to say yes to God.
But we’re not there yet. None of us are, really. Most of us here have said yes to God by accepting the salvation that we’ve been offered, by accepting Christ’s sacrifice for us, inviting Christ to come and reign over our hearts and our lives. But all too often, our actions don’t reflect a life redeemed by God’s salvation. Again and again we must return to God asking for forgiveness. Others do all the right ‘church-y’ things – come to worship, sing the hymns enthusiastically, attend Bible studies, sit on a couple church committees, give generously to missions, maybe even volunteer their time in a homeless ministry or other Christian mission. But they’ve never truly asked God into their lives – while their actions are certainly evidence of the Holy Spirit working and moving in their lives, they haven’t said yes to God clearly with their lips.
And when we’re honest with ourselves, we know there is a part of each son in each of us. There are times we say yes to God with our mouth, but we never follow through on what we say. There are times we say no to God with our words, but the Holy Spirit moves in our heart and we do what God asks of us in the end.
If we think we’re already saying yes to God every time God calls us, we’re probably not listening hard enough! If we think we’re already doing everything God has invited us to do, we’re probably not paying enough attention! If we are honest, we see some of both sons in ourselves.
So I started wondering what would happen if the two sons had helped each other say yes. What if the one who said yes with his words had helped the other one who said no see the wisdom of his father’s request. What if the one who said yes with his actions could encourage the other one who said no to follow through on his word. How would the parable be different then?
Because as we have seen in the other parables which talk about the Kingdom of God being like a vineyard, when God asks you to come work in the vineyard, you know you’re in for some hard work. Even when we find great joy in our work, it is still a difficult thing to do.
We have the Holy Spirit working in our hearts, encouraging us and urging us onward toward more faithful Christian belief and toward more faithful Christian living. And we have always recognized the value of having other Christians around us to encourage us and help us and hold us to the higher standard to which we have been called.
Our Methodist tradition has used this type of encouragement all the way back to its origins with John Wesley. Wesley did not found new churches or congregations. He encouraged people to continue worshipping at their churches, and he established small groups he called “societies” that would meet weekly for prayer, Bible study, to take collections for the poor and sick, to encourage one another in their Christian faith, and for accountability.
This last one – acountability – was at the heart of the Methodist societies. They would hold one another accountable to the calling which God had placed upon their heart. One person would come to the group and tell them, “I have heard God calling me to a ministry of sharing Christ’s gospel with my coworkers at my job. Please help encourage me and be sure I am being faithful to God’s calling in my life.” Another would say, “I have felt God moving me into a ministry of compassion – caring for the sick and needy and sharing God’s love with others.” Another would say, “God has called me to be a good mother for my children and I struggle with the immensity of the task. Please help me bring them up in God’s ways.”
Each week, the societies would meet to report on their discipleship, their growth as Christians, and they would help and encourage one another, prayerfully asking for God’s blessing and guidance for all the ministries they had been called into. Generally, they wished to be more faithful in the ways they said yes to God.
And certainly this continues to be part of the task of the church today – encouraging one another in the ways we say yes to God. Challenging one another to listen more carefully to how God is calling us. Holding one another to a higher standard of faithfulness than we could reach by ourselves.
And throughout the process, we remind ourselves that it isn’t really us who encourage one another, but the Holy Spirit who moves and burns within us and among us, lighting fires of excitement for God’s kingdom, allowing God’s presence to burn within us and to spill out and touch all those around us.
God is calling us right now, inviting us to work in the vineyard. Inviting us to say yes to God with our words. Inviting us to say yes to God with our actions. And always, inviting us to say yes to God because God has already said yes to us. Amen.
