SEPT. 25, 2005 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
EZ 18:1-4, 25-32; PS 25:1-9; PHPS 2:1-13; MT 21:23-32
Liar, Liar
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we believe and in believing we obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In the movie Liar, Liar, funny-man Jim Carey plays Fletcher Reede, a smooth talking attorney whose life is marked by double speak, half-truths and flat out lies. After repeatedly breaking promises to spend time with his son, the boy soon finds himself celebrating his birthday…without his father present. Preparing to blow out the candles on his cake, he works up a wistful wish. I wish, says the youngster, that for just one day, Dad could not tell a lie.
His prayer is granted and so begins Fletcher’s experience of unlearning how to deceive. It’s a plot that appeals to all who are tired of our society’s ease with spin control, insinuation and falsehood. Wish granted, the lawyer suddenly finds himself unable to say anything but the truth.
Think about that for a moment. How do I look in this new dress? Can you notice my bald spot? Is that your best offer? Tell me what you really think.
Well, in scene after scene, the lawyer, too, is cornered by both the little white lies we tell to be nice as well as those big bold ones we tell when the stakes are high. Needless to say, he soon finds himself unemployed, unappreciated and… alone. One final episode of lying reduces Fletcher to the shell of the man he used to be. Pathetically he speaks the lies he wants to utter, even as his body betrays the truth: yeeees he says as he shakes head no and nooooo he says as he nods his head yes.
In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus tells a story about two sons, both of whom lie to their father. When the first son is told to go work in the fields, he says No! Later he repents and goes to do as he was asked. When the second son is told to go work in the fields, he tells his dad, Sure!, but never does. Asks Jesus of the self-righteous Pharisees, Which son did the will of his father? Their own answer condemns them: The son who eventually obeyed.
Exactly, replies Jesus, which means that the prostitutes and tax collectors will go into heaven before any of you.
Now at first glance, Jesus seems to be saying that our beliefs are not as important as our actions. The first son says No, but acts Yes…the second son says Yes, and acts No…and all agree that the first son is blessed. Why? Well, we say, because “the proof is in the pudding” or “actions speak louder than words.”
But a closer look shows us something a little less predictable and a lot more startling. Let’s look at the Pharisees. What was good about them, what kind of people were they? Very good people: gave a minimum of 10% of their income to God’s work in the world, strove to live by God’s holy word, absolutely serious about interpreting life as a gift from heaven…
When Jesus wrangles his answer out of them, when they admit that the son who said No but did the Yes was blessed, he sets us all up for a fall. The people we expect to be praised by Jesus are those who were disgruntled with the institutional church but who went ahead anyway and did what God wants us all to do.
Kind of like some Good Samaritans I heard about down in New Orleans. Going in to check out a friend’s home, a pastor ran into three guys on an air boat who were saving people out of the area where there was some shooting.
Armed to the teeth with guns themselves, they’d zip in, load up as many scared people as the boat could hold and get back to safety. A news crew wanted to interview them because they weren’t being paid and weren’t part of any disaster response team. But they simply shook their heads, said There’s work to do, and disappeared for another run into the line of fire.
Those are the type of people we expect Jesus to praise. But whom does he single out as the first recipients of God’s grace? Tax collectors and prostitutes…not FORMER or REFORMED or even FORGIVEN tax collectors and prostitutes, just plain ol’ cheats and whores.
Why? Certainly not because of what they DO! But simply by virtue of in whom they BELIEVE. Everyone treats them like scum on the water or dog doo on the shoe…everyone, that is, except Jesus.
In his book Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, Robert Capon cites St. Augustine and his short confession to God, I will distrust myself, I will trust in you. Says Capon about our two liars, The first son has the grace to distrust his own first (denial of)…his father, and to eat crow, turning his self-regarding NO of works into an other regarding YES of faith.
And for that faith, he is commended as having done the will of his father… And that will is one thing and one thing only: believing. It is trust in God – anytime, anywhere, anyhow. But, says Capon, the second son turned Augustine’s prayer around. I will trust myself, I will distrust you. He kept scores where his father kept none, books where his father had stopped making entries; and for that reliance on (his own) works…he is condemned.
Last week Pastor Tim Carnahan did a wonderful job of walking us through the parable of the workers in the vineyard: where Jesus tells us that the owner puts people to work all throughout the day.
At quitting time, he instructs his manager to pay everyone starting with those hired last. And in a huge surprise, the owner pays the same amount to all, regardless of whether they worked one hour or twelve. Needless to say, that doesn’t sit too well with those who had slaved the day away under the sun.
And the point of Jesus’ parable? In short it’s that God is not fair, but good, better even than we can imagine. Then Tim shared part of his faith story, that he was baptized here at Gloria Dei just six years ago this week…and now is a pastor. Tim said that he was one of those who came to work late, yet delights in getting as much from our heavenly Father as anyone who has been at work in God’s vineyard their whole life long.
Our son, Mark, was just old enough to flirt with the notion that words can be manipulated to accomplish one’s goals. Keenly aware that I usually answered his outlandish requests with a NO, one day he latched on to what he thought was the perfect solution.
Right before asking me if he could have some ice cream while waiting for dinner, he pronounced a change in the rules governing our conversations. Yes means no, he said, and No means Yes…O.K.? O.K., I answered. Then he asked, Dad, can I have some ice cream?
My answer left him a little disconcerted: I said Yes…but then I gave him some anyway, not because he deserved it, but because I loved him. So it is with God toward us, only so much more than we can even imagine. Amen.