Turning around

O God, who is the source of all consciousness,

We come together because we need you,

We need each other,

And we need to hear your word.

And if we hear it here,

May we be so possessed by it

That we become servants of it out in your world.

In Christ who was and is and is to come. Amen

What if—we disagree with Jesus?

It happens more often than we may admit, especially if we take account of our intentions. In today’s gospel, Jesus schools the elders yet again, with what seems like a parable but really isn’t:

“What do you think., he asks; A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ The son answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” The elders said, “The first.”

This conclusion is not ambiguous, and not surprising—what you do, Jesus makes clear, is essential, and what you say is not, because talk is cheap and human beings are a fickle species; we change our minds easily and frequently. Both sons in the story change their minds; they turn around. The story gives no indication of the sons’ intentions, but what the sons mean when they answer their father is what makes this story interesting, because we, who of course are the sons by analogy, are so good at shimmying our way towards justifying whatever we really want to do by invoking our good intentions. Sometimes we’re even pretty good at excusing our fellow humans when they mess up, because, you know, their hearts were in the right place. But the word this morning is that all of our bobbing and weaving makes not one bit of difference in aligning our choices with what God requires of us. And yet we bob, and we weave: 'really, we say, I just wanted to keep from hurting his feelings,' or 'really, I’ve got some serious time-sensitive chores to do and I’ll get to the vineyard when I have time,' or 'really, I’ve done my share and it’s my sister’s turn to go to the vineyard, and I’ll go, I promise, when it’s actually my turn.'

Jesus makes clear that it’s always our turn, and yet we persist in thinking that our reasons for acting, or declining to act when action is called for, will keep us in the good graces of whatever authority we answer to.

As some of you know I teach an introductory humanities class at Gogebic Community College. In recent semesters I have punctuated my syllabus with "thought experiments," little rhetorical workouts with lower stakes than the regular assignments. One of my favorites is as follows: I ask-- is it better to do the wrong thing for the right reason or the right thing for the wrong reason? And I require that the students take, and explain, a definitive position. Of course I know that we live perpetually in the gray areas between right and wrong, andthat large sections of our criminal law are explicitly structured on the premise that intent really does matter—you can get long time in the Big House for demonstrating the intent to kill or defraud your fellow citizens; it's intent that turns manslaughter into murder. But for the purposes of clarifying our thoughts on the matter, it helps to frame a black and white proposition. So, is it better to do the wrong thing for the right reason or the right thing for the wrong reason?

We have Jesus’ position on this question. The students’ responses on the other hand are passionate and divided. Some are quite clear that the moral bottom line is what you do, but many—slightly more than half last semester—argue strenuously that what you intend-- where your heart is-- is the  is the thing to measure, regardless of how things turn out. Most of these students profess to be Christians, and they often invoke their faith when they respond—and they do so on both sides of the question.

They are in good company, as it turns out. TS Eliot wrote a magnificent play called Murder in the Cathedral, which depicts the power struggle between King Henry II of England and his archbishop Thomas Beckett 900 years ago. The archbishop—now canonized as St Thomas of Canterbury— at a key moment in the struggle is warned that the king might have him killed. Becket sees this chance at martyrdom as an epic temptation, and is painfully aware of how attracted he is to the glorious possibility of appearing to occupy the moral high ground for all eternity. He says:

Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:Temptation shall not come in this kind again.The last temptation is the greatest treason:To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

TS Eliot was a devout Anglo Catholic and he put those words in the voice of a sainted Archbishop of Canterbury. Even in our own liturgy we are offered this same temptation—in our General Thanksgiving, which we say in every service, we thank God for all the blessings of this life, including “the means of grace and the hope of glory”, which is exactly what seduced St Thomas Becket in his face-off with the King of England.

The point here is that we humans work surprisingly hard to make a virtue of our weakness, to make a compelling and moral motivation out of our desire for safety and freedom and comfort and power. The Way of Christ is a response to this signal aspect of our humanity. Jesus says: “For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him;” and from this unambiguously comes the glory—the kingdom of heaven—for the tax collectors and the prostitutes, and not for the elders of the church, who are caught up by the compromises that their human reasoning, their human weakness, allow into the conversation.

This human weakness as it happens, also makes possible our way forward. The human heart is unreliable, and changeable. If the human heart were not capable of turning around—of repentance—if the mind were not capable of transformation—then the baptism of John the Baptist and the ministry of Jesus the Christ wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. The Way of Christ is a response to human fallibility, and changeability.

So we go ahead, we disagree with Jesus, we put forth our reasons, we do as we see fit. And the vineyard is there and there is work to do, when we turn around and decide to go to work.

Amen