Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

 Matthew 25:13-30

Listen to the self-description of the Master in this story.  “You knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?”  And then think, does that sound like the God Jesus talks about?  And consider the fact that a talent was a huge amount of money -- equal to 20 years worth of average wages in those days.  It wasn’t a bank check, either; it was bags of silver and gold.  The man who had one talent to invest could barely carry it around; the man with ten talents needed a horse and a trailer.  In fact, the word “talent” in English means something entirely different from what it meant in the time of JEsus.  So while it’s not a bad thing to preach about how we should use our talents wisely, it may not be what Jesus was actually talking about here.  

And when we hear about the servants who go out to invest the money they’ve been given, they didn’t buy stocks and bonds.  It was something like this; they would go to a farmer and offer a loan and expect to be paid in part of the crop; if the farmer couldn’t pay, he’d lose the farm.  We’ve seen that happen in some of Jesus’ stories.  Last Sunday you heard about the servant who was dealing with his master’s creditors in just such a way.  They would also set you up in business, expecting part of the profit you made, usually a significant share.  There were no other ways to multiply your money.  IF the third servant had given the money to the bankers to invest, those bankers would make money the same way.  It was a zero-[sum game.  If someone got rich, someone had to get poor.  You reap what you did not sew, you gather what you did not scatter.  And the system worked,despite the occasional rebellion, like we heard about with the tenants in the vineyard, because rich people bribed the authorities, and had their own enforcers -- servants who were handy with clubs and knives.  In fact first century Palestine was probably a lot like some parts of 20th century Chicago.  

So in this context, you can see what’s going on.  The Master has piles and piles of money.  He picked out three servants that he would like to train to be good stewards.  This is a test.  Go out and do what I did, reap what you have not sown , gather where you have not scattered seed.  Be like me, and I’ll make it worth your while.  There’s a story in Luke like this where the reward is not more money, but getting to rule over villages -- more opportunity to exploit the poor.  

And there is one man here, one individual who refuses to be part of this system.  He simply buries the money and waits.  Do you think he didn’t know what was going to happen?  I’m pretty sure he did, and he was willing to take the consequences.  He was willing to be cast out and become part of the people who were preyed upon, who were exploited.  He was the third servant.  

It’s a different way of looking at the parable, isn’t it?  And it’s not original with me.  There have been others who heard these words of Jesus differently than we usually hear them.  And who is this third person?  Maybe it’s Jesus, and maybe, by extension, it’s what he means for his church to be.  

The central idea in Christianity is that God had pity on us and became one of us.  God left his throne of glory and became an embryo and a fetus and a baby and so on; God did not put on a meat suit and pretend to die, God truly became a human being and truly died a horrible death.  Jesus spent his ministry siding with the poor, the exploited, the people who had to beg for a living.  He opted out of the system, and paid the consequences.  Standing before Pilate he made it clear that he didn’t have to be there.  Pilate seemed even to offer Jesus a way out, a way to save his life.  Just like at the beginning of his ministry Satan offered him riches and power if only he would bow down to the ways of the world,  

To opt out of an evil system seems to be another Christian thing that appealed to some saints.  Saint Anthony of the desert and the other desert fathers left civilization partly because they found it distracting to their spiritual life.  Saint Francis of Assisi chose to live a life of radical poverty in a society where the rich were really rich and the poor very poor.  He opted out, even though he could have been one of the rich.  But we don’t have to go too far back to find people who were like the third servant.  Franz Jagerstatter was a farmer in Germany, married with three children.  He was very devout, and used his rare spare time to read about his Catholic faith.  When war broke out he refused to participate and was imprisoned, during which time he wrote several letters to his wife and children.  In 1943 he was condemned to death and beheaded.  He became one of the people that the Nazi government had wanted him to kill.

Today let’s think about this parable in a new way.  Is the third servant the real hero of the story?  If so, does that mean that there is an unjust system in which we participate that we should opt out of ?  

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 25:1 - 13

Most of us who have listened to Jesus’ parables over the years could probably name a favorite; The Prodigal Son, the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Good Samaritan -- I guess one of them would get the highest number of votes.  But what is your least favorite parable?  The one about the ten virgins is one of mine.  When we hear it read, we usually see it as another effort Jesus makes to wake us up and be prepared.  But there are some things about it that kind of put me off.  The wise virgins seem kind of mean when they send the foolish ones off -- in the middle of the night, no less -- to buy more oil. The groom that they have all waited for for quite a long time slams the door in the faces of the five foolish virgins, saying “I don’t know who you are”.  He was at least partly responsible for them running out of oil, wasn’t he?  It seems kind of mean and petty not to let them in to the party.  And Jesus tells his hearers to “stay awake” for you know neither the day nor the hour.  And yet both the wise and foolish virgins had fallen asleep.  If it hadn’t been for the person who shouted “Behold, the bridegroom!” he would have caught them all sleeping.  

Now you know that I like to pick apart Jesus’ stories.  I think you should do that as well.  Because most of the time you can find something more than just what seems to be the main point, something that can be summarized in a single sentence.  I don’t think Jesus told his stories so we would remember a single point; I think he wants us to think about them, ponder them, and see what we can make of them.  So these are some of the things I got when I did this. 

First, there is going to be a wedding.  If the wedding is the union of God with his people, as it seems to be, Jesus is reminding us that this is going to happen, and Jesus doesn’t lie.  The whole point of his becoming human, his life, death and resurrection, is to make it possible for us to attend the wedding.  And I think we forget that much of the time.  The first Christians lived in breathless anticipation of his second coming; and for us the default is that he is not going to come during our lifetimes, or those of our children.  And whether his coming is to me on an individual basis -- he did tell his apostles that he was going to come for them -- or on a communal basis -- as Saint Paul seems to imply in the second reading, we have to switch our perspective back to that of the first Christians -- it could happen at any moment.  Because that completely changes the way we live.  We don’t sit up on a mountain top waiting, we make sure we are prepared every waking and sleeping moment.  

Second, we have to remember that sometimes doors close, they close for good.  We put things off.  I ought to call that old classmate of mine; we were so close when we were kids.  I’ll do that, maybe next week.  When I have more time.  Then I discover he has passed away.  See, the only way Jesus’ message will get out is if we do it through our relationships, and in order to do it well, we need to nurture and strengthen those bonds.  It’s a win-win because we profit as well.  We’re meant to be in strong positive relationships with each other -- but we don’t work at it like we should.  And doors close.  

Third, the foolish virgins are really foolish not because they haven’t brought enough oil in case the bridegroom came really late, but because they equate their worth with the worth of the oil they go out to buy.  If they had stayed, even without their lamps -- if they had greeted the bridegroom along with the five wise virgins, would he not have overlooked the fact that their lamps were not lit? If the bridegroom was that petty, I wouldn’t want to go to his party anyway.  But if the bridegroom is Jesus, we know that he wants us to come to him with all our faults, with all our imperfections, because that’s the place where he can make things right.  The last thing Jesus wants is for us to hide and avoid him until we are perfect.  Then we would be the foolish ones. 

Lastly, the wise virgins who come across to me as selfish, are forgetting that in God’s world there is no such thing as scarcity.  One of the great sins of our society is that we are consumers; we want to have more and more, better and better.  And the reason is simple, we are afraid of running out.  No one will forget the panic buying of toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic; and even today, as I discovered recently, its very hard to get parts for your bicycle.  They are on back-order because for some reason, the world-wide demand has skyrocketed.  If we ever learned to really live those words we pray every day -- give us this day our daily bread -- if we paid attention when our Lord reminded us that if he took care of the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, how much more would he care for us -- we would enter into the world of God where there is enough, enough for everyone to be satisfied.  

So there are a few things buried in this story that speak to me.  I am sure you might be able to find a few more.    

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22:34 - 40

Today’s gospel is taken from the section of Matthew that describes Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his confrontation with the leaders of the people.  It would seem that as long as Jesus stayed up in Galilee, he didn’t trouble the chief priests and the Pharisees and Scribes all that much.  In fact Matthew makes it a point that during that part of his ministry Jesus had relatively cordial relationships with many of the Jewish leaders out in the provinces.  But Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a confrontation -- the leaders see it as hostile, and Jesus does nothing to dispel that. He begins with prophetic signs, the cleansing of the temple being the first.  In addition to this action being a condemnation of the money changers, it’s indirectly a condemnation of the leadership who allowed this to happen.  Jesus makes that more clear when he curses the fig tree for not bearing fruit. The next section contains more criticism.  He tells them the parable of the two sons, of the faithless tenant farmers, of the wedding feast -- and the refrain is there -- “They knew he was speaking about them”.  And doing it in front of a crowd of people who had come to Jerusalem for the passover, and seemed to be transferring their loyalty from the Jewish authorities to this prophet from Galilee.  It was unacceptable.

So they test him.  They ask him about paying taxes.  They try to trip him up about the afterlife with the question about the woman with seven husbands.  And finally they come to this, the last such question.  To those of us who have heard it so often, Jesus’ answer seems straightforward and not very exciting; but when the people first heard this confrontation, it must have been mind-blowing.  Because this was a question everyone had an opinion about.  And for a devoted Jew, it was important to keep the commandments, but keeping all 613 was a real challenge.  Everyone could see that there were greater and lesser commandments -- there was one that said if you came across a mother bird sitting on her eggs, you could take the eggs but you could not harm the mother bird.  And there were a lot like that.  And there were some that you kind of looked the other way about; there was one that said if you had a son who constantly defied you, he should be executed.  Or another that said every fifty years all the land that had been bought and sold had to be returned to its’ original owner.  And to make matters worse, this seemed to be the whole work of the Pharisees -- how to carry out the commandments.  How do you keep holy the Sabbath day?  It doesn’t say, so using logic and precedent and really hard thinking, some Pharisees decided that it meant you didn’t prepare food on the Sabbath; others, that you could only walk a certain distance.  If you read the gospels you can see how some of these rules irritated Jesus.  So for their confrontation, the leaders thought they had a bombshell. Which is the greatest commandment?  Because there was no right answer; Jesus was trapped.  

And Jesus neatly slips the trap.  He simply quotes the prayer that every good Jewish man recited in the morning -- the first thing out of his mouth -- Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord with your whole heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  And he tosses out the second one, like the first, straight out of the book of Leviticus - you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  And the last point is why he won the argument -- those were real commandments, and all the other commandments were particular examples.  Honoring your father and mother had to do with loving your neighbor.  Avoiding pork had to do with God’s rules, and if you loved God, you kept his rules.  And so forth. 

But these two commandments contain three, and the  three are really one.  Because we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, which must mean we are to love ourselves.  And if we are to love ourselves, we need to love God with our whole being, because the greatest thing that can happen to me, or to my neighbor, is to be taken up into God’s self, to be united with Him; and if we are to love God with every fiber of our being, we must love our neighbor, because God loves him.  

And one final note; the Greek language has four different words that could be translated into English as love.  But Jesus uses the word, “agapios”.  It means the kind of love that empties itself out, that gives until there is nothing left, the kind of love Jesus showed on the cross, the kind of love that leads to resurrection.  Are you and I capable of that?  I hope I never have to find out.  But as Saint Paul remarked in more than one place, it’s a goal, it’s something we have to constantly measure ourselves against.  And if we keep working to love with that self-emptying love, Jesus has promised that he will make up what is lacking in our efforts.  

So this week look around and see whether there is an opportunity to practice the kind of  love Jesus is talking about.  There will be if you and I open our eyes.  Will we be up to the task?   

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22:15 -21

The story in today’s gospel is always brought up when someone wants to show how Jesus was in favor of the separation of church and state.  You will hear echoes of it every time we have a presidential election, each side accusing the other of crossing the line, one way or another, between the religious sphere and the secular sphere.  Of course we also get this quote thrown at us everytime tax season rolls around, but that’s another story.  But if we look at the gospel carefully we might get more out of it. 

The first thing to notice is that the Pharisees and Herodians are working together.  This is probably why Jesus immediately recognized this as an attempt to trip him up.  The Pharisees believed in life after death, but they also believed in a Jewish state completely independent of outside influences; they believed in following 613 rules derived from the first five books of the bible; they had as little to do with the unclean as possible, and the unclean included non-Jews and several professions that even Jews might enter, such as tanning hides, being a soldier, collecting taxes, dealing with anything that might expose you to human blood.  And much like those of us living through Covid, they were always washing their hands.  The Herodians, on the other hand, were closely related to the Sadducees.  The premise was that there was no life after death.  The logical extension was that it best to live an untroubled life, which means going along with the ruling powers, forgetting about all those strange rules the Pharisees were always preaching about, and realizing that there was nothing special about being Jewish; it was just another tribal designation, like being a Persian or a Greek. 

Now Jesus exposes their hypocrisy.  He asks for a tribute coin.  Someone pulled one out of his pocket.  Jesus holds it up and asks, whose image and whose inscription is on the coin?  If we had the coin, we would answer as they did, “Caesar’s” but the inscription is not given in this passage from Matthew.  It would have been blasphemy to even say the words:  “Tiberius, the son of Divine Augustus”.  And for a Pharisee to carry around this coin would have been against their principles.  So either a herodian provided the coin, or a Pharisee who was sort of clueless.  

And finally we come to those widely quoted words, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”  

If the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears his image, how can we tell what belongs to God?  What is stamped with the image of God?  You are right -- you and I, and every human being is made in the image and likeness of God, even Caesar.  In fact, if you are to believe the mystics like St. Francis, God’s image is all over nature as well, but especially in human beings.  We, according to the first book of the bible, bear his image and his likeness, which aren’t quite the same thing.  The image of God is how we appear.  We resemble Jesus as human beings.  A dog or a flower does not look like Jesus, but there is some hint of the divine even in them.  On the other hand, likeness is more to do with how our appearance and actions call to mind someone else -- If I say a particular grandson is a lot like his dad, I am not only mentioning the way he looks, but also the way he walks and talks, what he’s good at - those  things as well.  And human beings bear a likeness to our Father.  Again, if you look at Jesus you see how God would act as a human being.  

So what do we give God?  Everything, including ourselves.  There is no separation between Church and State, both belong to God.  There is no separation between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, as Saint Paul says, all are one in Christ.  

And that’s what the Church, what you and I are really all about.  God’s plan for mankind was clear at the beginning; we were to tend to the Garden of Eden; we were given powers over the animals; the plants served us effortlessly.  The image of Eden keeps recurring in scripture -- Ezechiel talks about trees that bear all year long and their leaves are medicine; Isaiah talks about God’s Holy Mountain where you can eat and drink without paying; the book of Revelation describes the heavenly Jerusalem -- all images of how God meant things to be.

Humans, of course, didn't cooperate and introduced division into the world.  Or perhaps they had help -- after all, the word “devil” comes from a Greek root which means “to divide”.  Anytime you see someone trying to divide human beings from each other, you see echoes of original sin, you see the hand of the devil.  And that seems to be happening more and more these days.  

But Jesus, who gives us the power to make the world over to become what God has in mind for it, did pray that all would be one, just as he is one with the Father.  The Church is meant to unite all people, not into some totalitarian community, but into a world where all the good humans are capable of can be exercised -- we will be in Christ then as Paul describes this state.  So Jesus is reminding the Pharisees and the Herodians and you and I that everyone belongs to God, and whenever we meet another human being, we need to remember whose image is on that person. 

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22: 1 -14

When I read what others have written about this story of Jesus, the king in the story usually stands in for God.  The wedding guests who at first humiliate the king by claiming they had something trivial to do and then the later ones who react with violence to his invitation nowadays stand in for people who reject the Church; either because of indifference or because of actual opposition.  Of course in the olden days, the ones who rejected were the Jewish people.  Maybe we’ve made a little progresso.  And then we come to the actual guests, who are rounded up from unlikely places; when this story is told by Luke, the king has to send his servants out a second time to the hedgerows and the alleys -- and we are those guests, we gentiles, we who are in the church, we who take our religion seriously or at least semi=seriously.  

But maybe there are problems with this standard interpretation.  One of them is that the king is certainly not like the God that Jesus preached about.  He is vain, easily offended, given to violence -- after all he burns a city down because of a few people who treated his servants violently.  And then after he finally fills his banquet hall, he kicks out one of the guests because he isn’t wearing a wedding garment -- not only does he kick him out, he does so after binding his hands and feet.  Is that how you imagine God?  And yet, I think that’s the way my grandparents imagined Him, and that wasn’t so long ago.  The idea that God is hot tempered, violent, and easily offended lurks in the back of our minds, I think.  

As I said before, we tend to see ourselves as the wedding guests who have been rounded up and brought to the banquet, wearing a garment given to us by the king.  But who else might we be?

I ran across an article about Amy Comey Barrett who has been nominated for the Supreme Court.  The article began with the statement, “I am a Catholic” and went on to say that her views were not Catholic; she was against abortion and euthenasia, and more than 50% of Catholics are not’ she opposed artificial contraception; 70% of Catholics see nothing wrong with it.  She believed that marriage was between a man and a woman; and about 50% of Catholics think that same-sex marriage is not a problem.  He went on to list a number of other Catholic ideas she had that many Catholics don’t.  Of course anybody who is adequately catechized could see how ridiculous this serious person was.  The beliefs of the Church, derived from it’s founder, from scripture, from tradition, and from the teaching authority of the Church which we believe is protected by the Holy Spirit, are not based on polls.  And maybe those who ignore the king’s servants, or do violence to them -- maybe those people and you and I have a bit in common.  We don’t mind being subjects of the king as long as we don’t have to do what he tells us to do. 

Or maybe we are the king.  Maybe we are easily offended because our self-image is fragile, or perhaps misguided.  We all start out life thinking we are the center of the universe, and some of us never move beyond that point.  But even if we do, it’s easy to give in to our instincts, which still tell us that.  And when we are offended, when we are dissed, or disrespected, maybe we resort to violence, perhaps only in our minds, but violence nevertheless.  And when we are disrespected we tend to overreact, just like the king who burns down the village, or throws out the man who refuses to wear a wedding garment.  Maybe we still need to work on virtues like humility and charity even toward our enemies.  

Or maybe we are the man who has been bound and cast into the darkness because he is not wearing a wedding garment.  Or maybe that is Jesus, who ultimately was stripped naked and nailed to a cross because he did not conform.  He resisted the authorities of his time, not in a violent way, but by pointing out where they were wrong.  He stood up to power and didn’t concern himself with the consequences.  He spoke the truth people didn’t want to hear.  And I guess I am not that person; I’m not brave enough.  But at the same time, maybe Jesus tells us about this man because he hopes that some of his followers will imitate him, even to accept martyrdom.  Because truth needs to be spoken, even when everyone else is lying. 

When Luke tells this story, there is nothing about the man who is thrown out.  The king does not commit violence.  It’s very different and seems to have a different point.  And I think that when Jesus told his stories, he wanted his listeners to think about them.  Our reaction to these stories is usually to grasp what we think is the point and go on from there.  But when you carry one of his parables around with you all week long, you come up with many different ideas.  So I am sharing some of mine with you.  

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

 Matthew 21:33 - 43

In the early part of the summer of my sixteenth year I had no job and time hung heavy on my hands. I asked my uncle, who owned a farm, whether he had any kind of job for me. It so happened that he was short a worker and offered me the job of plowing a field. I knew how to drive a car so it wasn't a big leap to run a tractor; and with the plow you just raised and lowered it. And since there was no traffic out on the field I couldn't run into anything. So off I drove. When I got about half-way around the first pass, the plow caught a large rock which kept the blade from turning. I stopped the tractor and after much effort managed to get the rock out of the works. Then I noticed the plow was bent and still wouldn't turn. I walked back to the farmhouse and informed my uncle, and we went back to the tractor and ended up bringing the plow back to his shop. I drove the tractor home. As I took my pay for the day I asked when he wanted me back the next day. He told me that his hired hand was returning and my services wouldn't be needed. The vineyard was taken away from me and put in the hands of another!

If you remember the gospel from last week, Jesus was talking to the priests and elders of the people. Today he addresses a second parable to them. You remember how it all started: Jesus asked about whether John’s baptism was from God or from man and they replied, “We don’t know”. Then Jesus asked about the two sons, one who said he would not work in the vineyard for his father, but changed his mind and did; and the second, who agreed to work for the father, but did not. Jesus asks, “Which one did the will of the father?” This time they know the answer and reply that the first son was doing the will of the father. Jesus has indirectly criticized them for not believing John the Baptist even though sinners were being converted by his preaching. And then we come to this story.

In Jesus’ time, people knew that the scriptures often portrayed the nation of Israel as a vineyard. You see that reference in the psalms and in the prophets, particularly Isaiah. And you heard the first reading, which can be roughly summarized: God has done everything he can for his people, but they still aren’t bearing fruit, and that’s the reason he seems to have abandoned them. But last week and this week Jesus turns our focus away from the nation of Israel and toward the people who are supposed to be leading the nation.

Now when I look at this gospel, I am impressed by foolishness. The tenant farmers believe they have the right to the harvest, even though they are under contract to return a certain part of it to the one who owns the vineyard. When the landowner sends servants to gather his share, the farmers beat one, killed another and stoned a third. They must have let one get away, because the landowner decided to send out another delegation -- who were treated the same way. I wonder if the farmers ever stopped to think about who might be coming the third time -- perhaps a delegation of Roman legionaries with swords and spears. So they have shown themselves even more foolish.

And of course when they decide to kill the son, what did they expect? And Jesus’ audience catches on right away, as you can tell by their answer to Jesus’ question. “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end!” A very human reaction to Jesus’ story.

But pay attention. Jesus asks the question, but does not really answer it. Jesus’ answer is to quote the prophet Isaiah: “The stone the builders rejected will be the cornerstone. This came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes”. And he goes on to say that the kingdom of God will be taken from the current leaders of the people and given to those who will bear fruit.

We’ve mentioned the foolishness of the tenant farmers. But there is even more foolishness going on. The landowner, having had his legitimate requests not only denied but punctuated by lethal violence, sends his son. What did the landowner expect by then? Isn’t his thinking strange? That after what they’ve done, they will respect the son?

But in the apparent foolishness of the landowner, I think Jesus is telling us something about God the Father. He will not bring those wretches to a wretched end. Instead, he will simply move on, hiring new farmers and taking the vineyard from the old ones, and keep doing so until he finds some who will bear much fruit, who will honor the covenant.

God does not condemn; he doesn’t have to. We condemn ourselves. We are given everything -- first of all, life, then relationships, then all the natural world -- That’s God’s commitment. Then we are expected to use all we are given to bear fruit. The story even tells us that God only wants some of the fruit. It’s perfectly legitimate for we tenant farmers to keep some of the fruit we cultivate using the gifts God has given us. But to refuse to bear fruit for God, to use his gifts and our talents which he’s given us as though these belong to us and he doesn't have a claim on them is to take part in the killing of the son and to risk having the vineyard taken away from us.

The wonderful thing about being a human being is that God turns over the task of building the kingdom to us. We participate in God’s great work -- the making over of the world he’s given us to resemble the ideal that was in the mind of Jesus and is being carried forward by the Church. And the kingdom will come, that’s a promise. But if I don’t help build it, I’ll have no claim on it.. And my whole life will lose all real meaning.

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 21:28 - 32

Most of the time when we look at this gospel passage we nod wisely and conclude that it’s better to carry out God’s will rather than say we will but then not do it.  And we can go for that, it’s reasonable.  But there are some deeper things going on here.  First, some context.  Jesus, who has been up north in Galilee for most of his ministry, has come to Jerusalem during Passover week.  At some point Pilate would have marched through town on a horse, accompanied by his soldiers, as a show of force, since with all those Jews coming to town, there was the potential for trouble.  But Jesus begins his visit by mocking Pilate; he rides in on a donkey, accompanied by crowds of people, probably most of whom are visitors to the city.  Jesus has cursed a fig tree as a prophetic gesture, and storms into the temple with a whip and messes everything up.  That’s when the religious authorities approach -- they recognize he is being prophetic -- and ask on whose authority he is doing these things?  And that’s when Jesus asks them whether John’s baptism was something from God or something merely human.  And they refuse to answer, saying “We do not know.”

That’s when Jesus talks about the two sons.  And this time they know the answer -- it’s the son who says he won’t but eventually does what the father wanted, he’s the one who did the father’s will.  What Jesus has done, in a way, is disguise his previous question to which they answered that they did not know, and their answer to this question says that they do know.  And he goes on to point out that tax collectors and prostitutes were reforming their lives in response to John’s preaching -- certainly a sign that he was carrying out God’s will -- whereas the Jewish priesthood who were supposed to be carrying out God’s will were actually creating barriers between God and the people.  Not only did they put a lot of burdens on the common folk, but if you wanted to offer a sacrifice, it could only be done by a certified priest in the temple, and you had to buy the sacrificial animal with temple money.  So you went to a money changer who took a bit off the top and gave you coins that did not have a picture of the emperor on them.  Most people under this situation could only offer a sacrifice on rare occasions.  And of course the passover season saw a tremendous increase in the sacrifice business, so the cost of those things only went up.  

And the chief priests and elders are squirming and go to scheming how to get rid of this trouble-maker, which will happen in a few more days.  

And the story should make you and I squirm a little as well.  Because one of the easiest things for a practicing Catholic to do is to substitute words for actions.  One protestant writer talks about learning to speak Christianese.  We know what words to say, what ideas to agree with, and as for action, well, because we aren’t living in a state of sin and are contributing to the Church and going to Mass on Sunday, we are doing way better than 90% of our fellow human beings, and God grades on a curve, so we are all right.

But Jesus deliberately names the tax collectors and prostitutes, and says that they are entering the kingdom of God before the chief priests and elders.  That is truly insulting, because the chief priests and elders had exactly the same attitude -- they were avoiding sin, praying a lot, tithing, fasting -- they spoke something like fluent Crhistianese, only Jewish.  And they knew God graded on a curve as well.

But Jesus’ point is that those sinners, those people who in the eyes of the Jews were the worst of sinners, had actually repented, and they recognized that repentance is not something you do one day, it’s something you work at all your life.  And repentance does not mean being sorry for our sins.  It starts with recognizing that we are lost, we are helpless, we are around for a few years and then we are gone.  I had an old professor who had accomplished a lot in the field of cancer research.  As we became friends he confided in me one day that he wished he had not wasted so much time on things that didn’t matter.  He wasn’t talking about recreation, family life, or all the many wonderful things that God surrounds us with; he was talking about watching too much TV, spending too much time on the internet, gossipping for hours over the phone with a friend -- even spending all day being so busy you can’t even stop to pray or meditate or ask where you are going with all this?  If you are like me, there is plenty of lostness in your life, and the wonderful thing about Jesus and his church is that there is an answer to this in the sacraments and the graces which are there for us to accept.

Because Jesus is not against people who speak Christianese; he’s against any pretend religion that allows its practitioners to be stagnant, that allows them to substitute words for actions.  Our faith is meant to be embodied; that’s what incarnation is all about.  And Jesus really invites us to be like both sons -- to say yes to God’s invitation and to carry out what he asks of us.  And if we did so, as that old song would say, “What a wonderful world this would be.”  Because the kingdom of heaven is at hand, waiting to break out through you and I.