Today’s Gospel reading contains a short but very interesting parable which many of us here today have experienced as reality. The truth is that most of us have, at one time or another, been in one or more of the three principal roles of this parable. Maybe we were the individual who was responsible for assigning tasks to others, or maybe we were the one to whom a task was being assigned.
While I was an adult member of the Boy Scouts of America, in the former Adirondack Council, I would on occasion be asked to help with the many spring-time tasks of preparing Camp Bedford for the coming summer camping season. I remember that one time I had said yes, but then for some reason I didn’t show up. I can also remember the several times that I had said I was not going to be able to attend, but in the end I was able to work on those days. And I can also remember the few times when I was asked to organize a work party. It was really amazing to experience the differences between the feelings felt when seeing someone show up who had at first said no and the feelings felt when not seeing someone who had said yes.
And so we do understand the difference between the son who had said, “’I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went”[1], and the son who had said, “’I go sir’; but he did not go.”[2] The reality is that each individual had told his father a lie, because their actions did not match their words! But, there is a sense of reality that allows the first son to experience a “change of heart” in a positive manner, and at the same time does not allow the second son to experience a “change of heart” in a negative manner. Our common sense of “decency” tells us that the second son should have gone to the father and let him know that he was “changing his mind.” When I can not show up to an event that I have said I would attend, I have the responsibility to inform the other party of this change.
Without saying it directly, Jesus implies that the chief priests and the elders are not doing the real tasks that God has asked them to do, and that they had promised to do. At the end of this reading Jesus tells them that they have fallen in the eyes of God far below what these priests and elders would have considered to be the dregs of their own society … they are lower in the eyes of God than the tax collectors and the prostitutes!
In this reading there is still an interesting point to be made; there is the genuine hope to be found in the presence of God! Our responsive reading of Psalm 78 verses 1 to 16 reminds us of the many times that God continued to call to the people of Israel to come back into covenant with God self. Even at the moment of this confrontation between Jesus and the judgmental and sanctimonious individuals he was confronting, there is the clearly implicit opportunity for salvation.
Paul wrote to the faithful community of Philippi, “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”[3] We do not live alone; we live within a community, and we are called to continue to live within a community. We are not to give up hope that any individual is lost to God; rather we are called to reach out to those around us … just as Jesus reaches out to all of us … to all of those who have come before us … and all of those who will come after us.
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