The Third Son

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday.]

Matthew 21:23-32

When I look back on the messages I’ve preached about today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 21:23-32, through the years, I’ve mostly gotten it wrong.  My sermons have basically gone like this: “Be like the first son in Jesus’ parable and not like the second son. Amen.”

Now, that’s godly law, of course. It is right to honor our fathers and mothers and others in authority over us, which is what the fourth commandment tells us to do. Both sons failed to do this, whether initially or later.

It is right to not bear false witness, which is what the eighth commandment tells us not to do. The first son violated this command by saying yes to his father’s order to work in the field and then not doing so.

We certainly need to hear these and the rest of God’s Laws given in the Ten Commandments:

You shall have no other gods;

You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain;

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy;

You shall not kill;

You shall not commit adultery;

You shall not steal;

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, spouse, workers, livestock, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

These commands are still God’s will for us and as people born into sin, each of us is liable to the fire of hell for our violation of God’s Law.

The problem, of course, is that we all know the Law and the will of God is–it’s summarized by Jesus as “Love God with all your being and love your neighbor as you love yourself”--but we don’t obey God’s Law.

“In my inner being I delight in God’s law,” the apostle Paul confesses in the New Testament book of Romans, “but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” (Romans 7:22-23)

Knowing God’s Law informs us of God’s will for us human beings.

It may even lead us to regret our sin.

But knowing God’s Law or even having regret will not fit us for life with God.

Only the righteous will be fit for eternity with God. Jesus says, “Unless your righteousness [meaning, your innocence of sin, your perfect submission to God, your complete selflessness in relationship to others] surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:20)

So, what’s to become of us?

How can we possibly be that righteous?

That innocent and pure and sinless?

The chief priests and the elders of Jesus’ day were sure they had cracked that code. They thought they could make themselves righteous by obeying God’s Law.

They were so certain that they had made themselves righteous that when John the Baptizer had called people to repent–that is, to turn from sin and to turn to God for forgiveness–in order to prepare for the coming of the Savior, Jesus, they refused to repent or receive John’s baptism of repentance.

Like the second son in Jesus’ parable, they claimed to say, “Yes” to God; but when God’s call to repentance and faith came to them, they said, “No.”

Meanwhile, prostitutes, corrupt tax collectors, and other notorious sinners who had been saying, “No” to God all their lives, like the first son in Jesus’ parable, heard John’s call to repentance, recognized and turned from their sin and turned to faith in God.

All of this lay in the background of today’s gospel lesson.

It takes place on the Monday of what we call “Holy Week,” the day after Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. On that day, you’ll remember, Jesus had turned the money-changers, extortionists authorized to be there by the chief priests and the elders, out of the temple, overturning their tables and loot and freeing the sheep and birds they were selling on the temple grounds.

The next day, when Jesus and His disciples show up at the temple, they ask Jesus, “By what authority are you doing these things?...And who gave you this authority?” (Matthew 21:23)

Jesus wasn’t a seminary graduate. Nor was He ordained by them. Where did His authority, not only for His Palm Sunday temple tantrum, but for forgiving sinners, healing, casting out demons, and raising people from the dead, come from?

Jesus’ exchange with them is well known. Jesus tells them that before answering their question about where His authority came from, they needed to answer His question to them: Did John the Baptizer’s authority to repent people, that is, to turn them from sin and turn them to God, through water and the Word, come from? Was it from God in heaven? Or had John simply authorized himself?

If they said John’s ministry had come from God, they would have to answer why they had rejected John; if they said John was a loose cannon with no authority from God to preach or baptize repentance, they would anger many who had valued John’s ministry.

So, the chief priests and the elders refused to answer Jesus’ question. “We don’t know,” they said.

Jesus then says if they won’t answer Him, He won’t answer them. To these hard-hearted men, sure of their own righteousness, Jesus used what we call the binding key of the Law, instead of the loosing key of the Gospel.

He let the chief priests and the elders stand in condemnation for their sin because they refused to acknowledge what is true for all of us: They were sinners in need of God’s forgiveness.

But Jesus doesn’t give up easily on sinners. So, he tells the priests and the elders the parable of the two sons we hear in our lesson. The first son is like the chief priests and the elders, and maybe like you and me, saying yes to God, but then turning away. These are the people of good intentions: their spirits are willing but their flesh is weak. I can certainly be like this.

The second son is like willful sinners, and maybe like you and me sometimes, saying no to God, but then, when God’s Word works on us, calling us to turn to God and to God’s way, for forgiveness and life with God, saying yes to His grace and forgiveness.

But, friends, there’s a third Son in our Gospel lesson for today. This son, unlike the other two, isn’t a fictional creation of Jesus. This Son is very real.

This is the Son Who said to His Father after His Father told Him to go to a cross to offer His sinless life on a cross so that sinners like you and me can be forgiven and can have life with God, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup [of suffering and death] be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39)

This is the Son Who, though without sin, insisted that John the Baptizer baptize Him in the Jordan, where He took on the condemnation of our sin and our death in order “to fulfill all righteousness.” (Matthew 3:15)

Jesus gave up His righteousness to us, becoming sin who knew no sin, so that in the only perfect act of love and obedience this world has ever seen, rendered on the cross, He could take our guilt and give us His innocence.

He could overcome our selfishness with His selflessness.

He could take blame for our rebellion against God’s Law of love by submitting totally to God.

Jesus is the Son Who says “Yes” to God’s call to die and rise for us and then, despite the pain, the humiliation, and sorrow of it, does just that.

It’s because of Jesus and through Jesus, the faithful Son, that you and I, fickle and often faithless sons and daughters of God, can daily turn to Him, unloading our sins onto Him at the cross and be justified, made righteous and clean and eternally new in the eyes of God.

This is Christ’s promise to you, friends: the repentant receive God’s yes through Christ, no matter how many times we may have previously said, “No” to Him.

“For,” as Saint Paul writes, “ no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1:20)

Jesus, the obedient Son, has said yes to the Father and in doing so, has said yes to you!

Because of that, you can turn to Him and live forgiven and free, today and always. Amen

Choosing the Right Kingdom

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, 667 Miamisburg-Centerville Road, Centerville, Ohio, yesterday. We have worship on Sundays at 8:45 and 11:00 am.]

[Here's the audio of the message.]

Matthew 21:33-46
In last Sunday’s gospel lesson, you’ll remember, Jesus told a parable about a father and his two sons. The father asked each to work in the vineyard. One son said he wouldn’t and did. The other son said that he would work in the vineyard and didn’t. Jesus asked His original hearers which of the two sons had obeyed their father. The answer, of course, was the one who obeyed despite his earlier refusal.

As mentioned last week, that parable works for us as a reminder to live out the faith we confess on Sunday mornings. But it also would have had a far more pointed meaning to Jesus’ first hearers. In case they missed it though, Jesus tells another parable on this Monday of Holy Week, which comprises the bulk of today’s gospel lesson. It has a similar pointed meaning for us.

So, let’s look at our lesson, Matthew 21:33-36: “[Jesus says] Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place.”

Every one of Jesus’ fellow Jews would have been familiar with the Old Testament scripture to which Jesus refers here. He borrows from Isaiah 5, which is where our first lesson for this morning comes from.

It starts: “I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.” (Isaiah 5:1-2)

In Isaiah’s song, the “loved one” is God, Who had called His ancient people Israel into being and showered them with grace, provision, and love, only to find that the people sinned, rebelled against God, and treated their neighbors unjustly, failing to love God or neighbor. In other words, they produced bad fruit. This all lay in the background of what Jesus is about to say.

He continues the parable at verse 34: “When the harvest time approached, [the landowner] sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.”

Just as God had sent prophets to the people of Israel to tell them to turn from their sin and turn in faith to God so that they could live, the owner of the vineyard in Jesus’ story keeps sending representatives to collect the good fruit that they should be willing to give to the owner, in simple gratitude for all that the owner provided for them.

This is not a parable about giving offerings, by the way. While it's the aim of every Christian disciples to give a percentage of their income--a tithe of 10% is the Biblical model--to God's work in the world, that's not what this parable is about. The God we know in Jesus Christ isn't interested in just 10% of any part of our lives.

And the aim of every Christian disciple is to give 100% of their lives--100% of their time at work, 100% of their time at home, 100% of their whole selves--to God.

As God the Son gave Himself unstintingly for us on the cross, the response of faith in Christ is to give ourselves back to God. God's grace in Christ, saving us from sin and death for all eternity, deserves our total surrender to God in return!

You’ve heard me tell about the couple we knew in Cincinnati who, when asked why they joined a congregation that seemed to have little to offer them, said, “We were looking for a place to serve.”

The tenants in Jesus’ parable were looking to take the whole vineyard for themselves and get the owner completely out of their lives. Like Adam and Eve, they wanted to be their own gods. That’s why they decided to kill the landowner’s son, just as the whole world, Jews and Gentiles alike, decided to kill the Son of God on the first Good Friday, just four days after Jesus told this parable.

Jesus continues in verse 40: “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

Jesus, at this point, has the chief priests and the elders right where He wants them. He wants them to make a judgment about the proper punishment for the tenants in His parable, people who represent the priests, the elders, and all of Jesus' fellow Jews in their rejection of God's authority over their lives...in their repudiation and murder of the landowner's son, who clearly represents Jesus.

The chief priests and elders respond: “He will bring those wretches [In the Greek in which Matthew writes, the word translated as “wretches” carries the meaning of “people as totally evil as is possible.Think, Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Mao Zedong, Stalin, Putin, that evil, that wretched.] to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”

To understand what comes next, we have to delve into another passage from the Old Testament, Daniel, chapter 2.

Here's the situation: It’s seven centuries before the birth of Jesus. Daniel, a Jew, is held in captivity in Babylon. Babylon had conquered God’s people, Israel, and taken some of Israel's best and brightest in chains back to Babylon. The king of Babylon has a dream. Relying not on his own cleverness, but on God, the imprisoned Daniel tells the king, Nebuchadnezzar, both the content of his dream and its meaning.

The dream, in a nutshell, was this: At the dream's outset, there was an enormous statue made of iron, silver, clay, and gold. It was spectacular. Nearby, a rock is quarried from the ground close to the statue. The rock is small at first.

Then this small rock strikes the statue and the statue crumbles into tiny particles that blow away.

The rock meanwhile, becomes a huge mountain and fills the entire earth.

The meaning, Daniel said, was simple: The great kingdom of Babylon was doomed to fail, as were later kingdoms built by human beings. Superpowers come and superpowers go.

But the kingdom of God, represented by the rock in the king’s dream, endures forever!

God will have the last say over the life of this world: not kings, not presidents, not corporations, nor the arrogant, or not even you and me.

If we set out to oppose God or His kingdom of love, we will be on the wrong side of history for all eternity! We will be fools!

All of this lay behind what Jesus says next, starting at verse 42, quoting Psalm 118:22-23: “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

The prophets of ancient Israel came to understand the stone in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream not just as the kingdom of God, underestimated in this world, but also the One Who would bring the kingdom of God into this world, the Messiah.

Like the son in Jesus’ parable of the landowner and the tenants, the Messiah would be “the stone the builders rejected,” Whose power and importance would be disdained and underestimated, but who was and is the King of all kings.

And, by the way, this is exactly how Jesus understood Himself. We try to turn Jesus into a wimp we can control, a kewpie doll we can pull out of our lives' back pockets when we need Him to do our bidding, but stash away when we think that we've got things under control. But the Savior Who overcame death can't be so easily manipulated or taken for granted!

You’ll remember that, after telling the teacher Nicodemus that because God so loved the world that He sent His Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish--will not be crushed by their rebellion against God--but have everlasting life, Jesus also said: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:18)

According to Mark’s gospel, Jesus brought a simple message, that with Him, the Kingdom of God, had arrived: ““The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

Jesus is the Rock on which eternity is to be built. 

We must either embrace Him as our God or be crushed by our own arrogance. There are no other choices.

At the end of our lesson for today, we’re told that the chief priests and the elders knew that Jesus was talking about them. (Duh!)

That’s because they had built their own kingdoms in which they reigned over the spiritual and civic life of Judea, apart from God. They worked hand-in-glove with the Romans and had cushy lives at the spiritual and economic disadvantage of the people. Jesus was warning them that their days were numbered.

They needed to receive God when He came in their midst--Jesus--or be crushed by their own insolence.

It’s at this moment that the chief priests and elders decide, not to follow Jesus, but that they have to kill Jesus.

So, what does this all have to do with you and me?

Just this. We all have a tendency to work at building our own kingdoms.

We build our careers.

We get the nice house.

We work to get stuff for our kids that they may or may not need.

We pile our 401k’s and 403b’s with reserves.

We guys build our man caves.

Intentionally or not, we find ourselves working to live in and protect our own personal “kingdoms of me.”

But, in truth, the kingdom of me, no matter how big it gets, is destined to crumble. 

Our caskets may be lined with silk and gold. Yet we'll still be just as dead when our bodies are set inside of them.

But there’s another kingdom, the kingdom into which Jesus invites us.

These days, it may seem to have been supplanted by the kingdoms of this world: nations, ideologies, religions, sports, politics, leisure activities.

We may see all of these things and think that Christianity is on its way out and that no one will ever revere Jesus again.

That would be a mistake.

None of the kings or kingdoms of this world has ever done or will ever do what Jesus has done for us.

None can do for us and in us what Jesus can.

Jesus, God and sinless, became human so that He could bear the weight of our sin and death on His humble shoulders. When He died, He took the punishment we deserve for sin. When He rose, He made it possible for us to live with God forever. All who turn from sin and trust in Him with their whole selves have life with God, now and always.

Jesus makes all who trust in Him new!

This world may grind us down. The kingdoms of this world in which we may be inclined to trust will be reduced to powder.

But Jesus, the stone which the builders rejected, is the cornerstone on which our eternal lives can be built.

Only He can make us whole.

Only He can give us life.

Only He can give us purpose.

So, today and every day, ask the Holy Spirit to help you build your life on Jesus Christ alone.

• Every single day. 
• Every time you read God’s Word. 
• Every time you receive the sacrament. 
• Every time you pray. 
• Every time you go to work.
• Every time you make a decision.
• Every time you're with your spouse or child or friends.
• Every time you go to a ballgame, a party, or a concert.

Every time you and I dare to veer away from the dead paths of the devil, the world, and our sinful selves, may we follow Jesus.

Always follow Jesus. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Don't Miss the Obvious!

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 21:23-32
When I was a kid, I heard a recurring phrase from my dad.

Dad would be working around the house, as he always did--fixing a car, remodeling a room, painting the house, doing a home repair--and I would be doing what I always did, nothing. Dad would tell me to look for something--say, a “⅜ widget-whats-it-majiggie”--and I would be unable to find it. Then, Dad would get out from under the car or climb off the ladder or whatever, then go right to the thing he wanted, then tell me, “Mark, if it was a snake, it would have bitten you.” Dad was right because I seemed to have a knack for not seeing the obvious. (I often still do.)

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus encounters people who either don’t see or refuse to see the obvious.

Let’s take a look at the lesson, Matthew 21:23-32. As we prepare to do so, let’s set the scene. The day before this encounter, Jesus had entered Jerusalem on what we now call Palm Sunday. People hailed Jesus as the Messiah or the Christ, the Hebrew and Greek versions, respectively, for God’s Anointed King, the Savior that Jews had been awaiting for centuries.

On entering Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and civic life, Jesus had gone to the temple. There, He overturned the tables of the money-changers who took advantage of the piety of simple Jewish folk, charging them exorbitantly for temple currency and for sheep and doves for temple sacrifices. As one scholar has written, Jesus acted like He owned the place. (Which, of course, as God in the flesh, He did.)

As today’s lesson begins, Jesus is approached by the men who think of themselves as the ones in charge of the temple, as well as of Jewish religious life, and the final judges of what was right or wrong, godly or ungodly. Take a look at the lesson, please.

“Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. ‘By what authority are you doing these things?’ they asked. ‘And who gave you this authority?’” Their question basically, is this: “Who said that You could and say the things You’ve been doing and saying, Jesus?”

In English, the word authority is related to the word author. Authors, of course, are people who, with their words, create worlds, characters, and events. We believe that the God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the, as Peter says in Acts 3:15, “the Author of life.”

It’s this God Who, with the mere power of His Word, made everything that exists. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” and “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness” and humanity came into being (Genesis 1:3, 26).

We believe, by the power of the Holy Spirit Who makes faith possible, that Jesus was and is the very Word of God, Who took on our human flesh so that He could die for our sin and rise to give eternal life with God to all who see Jesus for Who follow Him.

But the chief priests and the elders of the people, who were experts in God’s Old Testament Word didn’t see Jesus in this way at all. And it’s not as though others weren’t seeing that Jesus was the Author of life. They were!

Remember the Canaanite woman, a foreigner to the Jews, who had called Jesus, “Lord, Son of David” (Matthew 15:22)? She had seen who Jesus was.

And remember how Peter told Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).

And just the day before these “leaders” came to see Jesus, the Palm Sunday crowds had welcomed Him as Messiah.

Jesus once scored the temple authorities, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees as “blind guides” (Matthew 15:14). In their blindness, they challenge Jesus.

Verse 24: “Jesus replied, ‘I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?’” (Matthew 21:24-25).

Jesus is not engaging in any trickery here. He is trying to help these blind guides who, from their study of Scripture, should know where His authority came from because of Who He is, to see.

The question that Jesus asks them is also about authority. Who had given John the authority to call people to repentance and to point others to Jesus, the Messiah of Whom God the Father said in John’s presence, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17)?

Look at what happens next, starting with the second part of verse 25: “[The chief priests and the elders] discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, ‘We don’t know.’ Then he said, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’” (Matthew 21:25-27)

I suspect that the calculated response of the temple leaders betrays an important fact: They weren’t as blind to the obvious as they claimed to be. They knew that John the Baptist’s authority came from heaven, that is, from God. And they knew that Jesus’ authority came from the same place; they even knew, I think, Who Jesus was.

They had heard or seen that Jesus was raising dead people, curing diseases, casting out demons, calming storms, feeding masses of people, speaking God’s truth.

They saw, but refused to publicly acknowledge that Jesus’ authority came from His being the Author of life.

Their aim in asking the question about authority was to discredit Jesus so that they could get Jesus crucified and be rid of Him. They want Jesus dead and gone to protect their own supposed authority. They’re like the tenants in a parable would tell shortly after this encounter who said to each other, “This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance'” (Matthew 21:38).

It’s after the temple leaders’ refusal to answer Jesus’ question that Jesus tells a parable. A man has two sons. He asked them, not to find a “⅜ widget-whats-it-majiggie,” but to work in his vineyard. The first son refused, but then “changed his mind” and got to work. (The word translated as "changed his mind" in Matthew's original text, written in Greek, is one of the common New Testament words for repented. To repent is to change one's mind about walking away from God and His will and to instead, seek to walk with God and in God's will.) The second son told his father that he would work in the vineyard, but then skipped out. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” Jesus asked those crowded around Him. Obviously, it was the son who changed his mind and did what his father asked of him.

The chief priests and the elders couldn’t have escaped understanding what Jesus was saying. They loved being seen as men of God, people who knew God and followed God. When they saw God face to face in Jesus though, they refused to follow Him. They refused to repent for sin. They refused to put their faith in Jesus and so have the life with God that only Jesus can give.

But when notorious sinners like tax collectors and prostitutes, people who had been saying no to God all their lives, heard John the Baptist’s call to repentance, did repent, heard Jesus’ call to surrendering faith and believed in Him.

Which of these two groups of people did the will of God?

Which of them saw that Jesus was and is “the way, and the truth, and the life”: those who honored Jesus with their mouths or those who gave Jesus their lives?

The answers to those questions are obvious.

But let me tell you the questions this gospel lesson forces me to ask myself.

First: Is there a disconnect between the faith I profess on Sunday mornings and the life I lead the rest of the week?

Second: If I really see Jesus as the Author of my life and the only One Who can give me life with God, life as it was meant to be lived, why do I so often live as though I didn’t see?

Here are some of the reasons I ask these questions:

I worry when I should pray.

I keep sinning when I should repent.

I observe when I should serve.

I lament over others’ sorry spiritual estate when I should be telling them about Jesus.

I watch TV when I should be reading God’s Word.

The chief priests and the elders talked a good game, but in truth, they preferred having authority over their own lives, rather than yielding authority to God. The second son in Jesus’ parable talked obedience, but he lived differently. Sometimes anyway, I can be just like them!

Our commitment to obedience to God is the measure not only of whether we see Jesus rightly, but also whether we will live in God’s kingdom.

If we see and follow Jesus as our Messiah King, we will seek to obey God. 

If we don’t see nor follow Jesus as our Messiah King, we will refuse to obey God, no matter what creeds, prayers, and songs we mouth on Sunday mornings.

A man once told me, “I believe in Jesus. But I have things I want to do that God doesn’t approve of. I’ll get right with God when I’m older.” Really?

When our congregation's friend, Carl, went to bed this past Monday night, he had no idea that he was close to drawing his last breaths on this earth. But, thank God, he went to bed that night believing in Jesus, seeking to follow Him faithfully, seeking to serve faithfully in His name. And the grief of his family is lightened in the knowledge that Carl is with the Lord in Whom he trusted.

Tomorrow on this earth is promised to nobody. The time to follow Jesus is now!

Jesus is calling us to hold nothing back from His lordship.

If we think that God’s rules for our marriage and sexual lives, our finances, our attitudes toward those who are different from us, or the ways we use God’s name apply to others, but not to us, we walk away from God. 

If we think that Jesus has only set super-saints free to believe in Him, love their neighbors, move mountains with mustard seed prayers, or fight for justice, then we really don’t see Jesus as our God and Messiah.

Faith is seen in our willingness to obey when Jesus says to repent and to obey too, when Jesus says to believe in Him and trust in His grace.

In this life, our obedience will never be perfect. That's why it's so important to live in a relationship of daily repentance and renewal with the God revealed in Jesus. We don't want to wander from Him, allowing sin to capture us and drive a wedge between our saving God and us. We want to have His forgiveness, grace, and power working in our lives today. We want to be ready to face eternity and live in His kingdom always.

I was struck this past week during my quiet time by 1 John 2:3-5: “We know that we have come to know [God] if we keep his commands. Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them…”

Let’s not lose sight of the obvious: That the Lord Who died and rose from the grave can give us new and everlasting lives and He alone deserves to have full authority over our lives.

May our lives be marked by faith in and obedience to the God we know in Jesus. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Living Water is a congregation of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

Seeing What God Can Do

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 21:23-32
Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregen tells about receiving a telephone call one day at his office from a woman he’d never met. She was a member of a nearby church and wondered if she could share something with Stoffregen and get his opinion. For years, she’d been active in her church, she explained. Her husband hadn’t. In fact, he’d had little use for Christian faith.

Then, not long before the telephone conversation, the man lost his arm in a work-related accident. His life was actually endangered for a time. While at the hospital, the husband had an encounter with God. God gave him a choice to either remain on the earth, a choice that would impose pain, rehabilitation, relearning basic life skills, and numerous adjustments, or to leave the earth. He decided to stay. His encounter with God changed this man’s ideas about God, about Christ, about the Church, and about having life with God.

Now, this woman explained to Stoffregen, not long before the accident, she had felt led to tell her husband, for reasons she couldn’t explain: “When you see my mother [who was dead], don't go with her." Like her husband, this woman’s life and faith had been, as you can imagine, changed by what God had done and was doing in her husband’s life. But there was a problem.

It turned out that the people at church, even some of her closest friends, didn’t believe that the woman’s husband had really encountered God. They didn’t accept his change of heart. They refused to accept that God had really worked in this man’s life. "God wouldn't do something like that for someone who didn't believe in Jesus," some seemed to tell her. Or, "It must have been the devil speaking to him."

Here were people who regularly confessed that they believed that, in Jesus Christ and the faith in Christ created within them by the power of the Holy Spirit, God had saved them from their sins by His grace alone. Yet now, they refused to believe that God had worked a transformation in someone who, though he had probably heard the Gospel of new and everlasting life for all who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ, had always lived apart from God. They refused to accept the evidence of what Christ had accomplished in the man and dismissed it all as a sham.

What can you say about people like these? That they were self-righteous, for sure. And I think that there’s good reason to suspect that they didn’t really believe in the gracious God they claimed had saved them.

Jesus encountered people like this in today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 21:23-32. They refused to acknowledge what God was doing in Jesus‘ ministry, just as they had refused to acknowledge what had happened in the ministry of John the Baptist. Notorious sinners turned from their sin, leaving their sinful life practices behind--things like sexual intimacy outside of marriage and extorting money from others, and, instead, following God with faith and submission. The religious leaders couldn’t accept that God’s hand was in it. 



The Gospel lesson, I think, is an important antidote for Christians to take regularly, for the simple reason that, after awhile, if we’re not careful, the devil, the world, and our sinful selves will snooker us into believing that our faith and our salvation result from our intrinsic goodness.

Jesus says in Matthew 9:13: “...I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." In truth, saving faith in Christ only comes to those who recognize that they’re sinners in constant and desperate need of the Savior God sent into the world to free them from sin and death for all eternity.

If we ever fall into the trap of thinking God is fortunate to have such good people like us on His side, we need to fall to our knees in repentance and ask God for trust in Christ’s perfect righteousness over against our prideful smugness.

Paul writes in Romans 3:28: “For we maintain that a person is justified [that is made righteous] by faith...” and not by their supposed merits. We need always to remind ourselves and each other of this truth.

Turn to our Gospel lesson, Matthew 21:23-32, please. Just a little background is needed.

Previously in Matthew, chapter 21, Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

He then threw the moneychangers out of the temple for turning God’s house into a place of extortionist commerce. 

Jesus also healed the blind and lame in the temple that same day, signs of His being more than just a true man, but also true God. He also upheld the truth of what children were saying about him.

That night, on the way to Bethany where He would sleep, Jesus saw a fig tree that wasn’t producing fruit. And this is an important prelude to today's lesson.

Now, the ancient rabbis had always said that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from which Adam and Eve at the forbidden fruit was a fig tree, not an apple tree as we often suppose. So, this fruitless fig tree was freighted with symbolism and allusions to human history.

Jesus caused the tree to wither, not because He was having a bad day or was in a bad mood, but because living things should bear evidence of the life within them.

Likewise, people who claim to believe in the God we know in Christ, who claim to be rooted in Him and to “live and move and have their being in” Him, should evidence the presence of God’s life in them by the lives they live, the ways they love.

It’s after all this that our lesson begins. We read:

“And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?’” These were the gatekeepers of first century Judean religious life. They had the authority that goes with human status and human credentials. What they were really saying to Jesus was, “We’re in charge around here. And we didn’t give you the authority to raise the dead, heal the sick, forgive the sins of the repentant, promise life to those who believe in You, or cut into the temple revenue by overturning the tables of thieves who possessed authorized franchises here in the temple mall.”

They said this as though they actually possessed the authority to grant such ministries to Jesus. Yet these were things they’d never shown an interest in doing, let alone evidencing a capacity to do them!

Certain of their own goodness and status as godly people, the chief priests and elders refused to see God at work in the lives of those touched by Jesus.

The lesson goes on:

“Jesus answered them, ‘I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?’ And they discussed it among themselves, saying, ‘If we say, “From heaven,” he will say to us, “Why then did you not believe him?” But if we say, “From man,” we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.’” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.’”

Jesus really wasn’t trying to trap the leaders. It was common for rabbis to answer questions by asking questions that would, in honest students really seeking the truth, result, with the rabbi’s guidance, in their own seeming discovery of the truth.

Besides, John’s authority for his ministry of preparation for the coming of the Messiah came from the same place that Jesus’ authority came from, God the Father. This the leaders wouldn’t acknowledge for fear that ultimately, they would lose their earthly authority.

I’ve known of some people--some pastors--who have refused to acknowledge that Jesus rose from the dead because they didn’t want to look bad to the sophisticates they knew who saw Jesus as nothing but a nice man. How sincere is our own faith when it crumbles in the face of popular opinion?

Jesus told the leaders that if they were unwilling to acknowledge that God was at work in John’s ministry, they wouldn’t be able to see that God was bringing salvation to the world through Himself. By being closed to what God was showing the world, they would never understand His answer to their question.

Jesus then told a parable to the leaders:

“What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. 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 even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.”



Jesus wasn’t being PC in telling this parable. The meaning was clear. All the people who had once said no to God were, through Jesus, now saying yes to Him. It was evidenced in their changed lives.

And the people who had always claimed to speak for God, were saying no to God in human flesh, refusing to accept that, with grace and power, God had broken into the lives of the unlikeliest of people. Faith and eternal life had come to those who laid down their pride.

Cynicism and death were evidenced in those whose pride was in themselves and their own confident self-righteousness.



Jesus‘ words for us today are a call for us to surrender to Him and with repentance and faith, let Him give us what we can never have when we’re turned in on ourselves.

When we turn our eyes to Jesus, we have hope, peace that passes human understanding, purpose for each day, charity for others and for ourselves, a sense that, despite our sins, we belong to God, and a commitment to daily laying our sinful selves on the cross, so that we may be crucified and rise to life with God alongside Jesus.

And, saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, we find it easy to believe that if Christ can save us, Christ can save anybody. Amen



Saying "Yes" to God with Mouths and Lives

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 21:23-32
This morning, my sermon has two points.

By way of introducing the first point, here are two real life experiences. Experience #1: Back in Cincinnati, I was part of a committee appointed by the thirty-three Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregations in the area there to create a united mission strategy. We were to identify common goals and ways we could work together to share Jesus with others and see our churches grow spiritually and numerically.

In this connection, I was invited to meet with the Church Council of an aging congregation whose membership was dwindling. Attendance on any given Sunday was less than thirty and few of the worshipers were actually from the neighborhood. Finances were in shambles and it appeared unlikely that the congregation would keep its pastor for long. “What steps could we take to improve things?” one woman asked me.

“I can’t be certain,” I told her honestly. “But one thing you might try to do is create a second worship service that would interest the people living in the homes across the street and in the next few blocks.” As soon as I said that, you could see a wall go up around this woman. “Why should we give up what we like?” she asked me. “Keep what you like,” I replied. “But try adding something that’ll demonstrate that you care about your neighbors here and want them to know Jesus. And if that doesn’t work out, try something else with the same aim.”

The rest of the discussion was cordial, but curt. The council thanked me for coming to see them. Within two years, with a mission field of thousands in need of Jesus Christ and His love, that congregation closed its doors.

Every Sunday for decades, the people of that congregation had faithfully worshiped, sung God’s praises through the liturgy, prayed, and said the Creed together. By all exterior measures, they were a faithful Christian community. But something was missing.

Experience #2: Consider the story of a Christian organization called Operation Bootstrap Africa. Headquartered in Minneapolis, it was founded by a Lutheran pastor and his wife, who worked as missionaries in Tanzania. They had been telling others about the new life of eternal forgiveness, hope, and peace that comes to those with faith in Jesus Christ. But they came to believe that something was missing.

That’s when they formed Operation Bootstrap. Their mission was simple: to give witness to their faith in Jesus Christ not just with their words, but also with their actions.

For forty years now, Operation Bootstrap Africa has worked in partnership with the people and government of Tanzania to build more than 3200 classrooms. The organization is now also involved in projects, such as providing youth scholarships, teacher support, student quarters, school desks, and primary health care assistance not only in Tanzania, but also in Zimbabwe and Madagascar. The work of Operation Bootstrap has inspired and uplifted all involved, from the teachers who work hard in primitive conditions to the students who find reason to genuinely praise God and live their thankfulness in a tough environment.

These two stories remind me of the two sons in Jesus’ parable we hear in today’s Gospel lesson. A father has work to be done in his vineyard. He goes to one son who says, “No, I won’t do it,” then thinks better of it and goes out into the vineyard to work. The father goes to his other son, who says, “Yes, I’ll get right on it” and then does nothing. Jesus asks, “Which of the two sons did the will of the father?” Even the chief elders and high priests, the leaders of Jewish religious life who so hated Jesus, conceded that it was the son who initially said, "No," had done the father’s will.

But if Jesus had asked a different question, he might have gotten a dramatically different answer. Bible scholar John Pilch writes about a man who told Jesus’ parable to groups of people in a modern Middle Eastern country and then asked, “Which of the two sons honored the father?” To a person, they said that the first son had honored the father. After all, when the father came to tell him what to do, he had very politely said, “Yes, Dad, I’ll get on it right away.” You see, Middle Eastern culture, ancient and modern, so values the outward show of respect that even though this first son was lying through his teeth, having no intention to honor his father’s will, he had said the right words, shown the right respect, gone through the proscribed hoops.

Now, that may seem strange to us, but this reaction is a lot like the Cincinnati congregation that died. The people of that church certainly talked the talk. But they didn’t walk that talk. They weren't interested in being a church that reached out to others with the Good News of Jesus Christ. They wanted a place where they could be comfortable.

And what makes the story of Operation Bootstrap Africa so inspiring is that it shows real people committed to walking their talk, putting their faith in Christ into action in daily life.

Point #1: God is looking for believers who walk the faith they talk. In Old Testament times, God expressed frustration with His people through the prophet Isaiah, when He said, “These people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me…”

At another place in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus warns, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”

Now, we must be careful here. Jesus isn’t saying that if we do good things, we all get into heaven. But He is saying that if He is truly our Lord, if we really have repented for our sin, really do believe in Him, and really seek to follow Him, all of that will be evidenced not just in the words we say on Sunday mornings, but in the lives we lead on Mondays. God is looking for believers who walk the faith they talk.

Point #2: God will show up in the lives of those willing to welcome God into their lives. Remember that Jesus first told this parable to the chief elders and the priests of the temple who indignantly asked Him by what authority He had thrown the religious extortionists whose presence they had licensed out of the temple. Jesus scorned them for not being willing to acknowledge His authority. They honored God with their lips, but when confronted with Jesus, God in the flesh, they wouldn’t say “Yes” to Him. Yet, tax collectors and prostitutes who had spent most of their lives saying, “No” to God did acknowledge Jesus, believe in Jesus, and follow Jesus.

This is sometimes difficult for we good religious people to understand or accept. We can get so comfortable with talking our faith without acting on it, that we’re surprised by the fervor exhibited by people God has touched.

At a conference years ago, I heard Lutheran pastor Don Abdon speak of sharing the Gospel with a person he’d never met before. As Abdon told this man more about Jesus, the man became increasingly receptive. (Now, keep in mind, that Abdon wasn't forcing a bunch of Bible verses down this man's throat! The man was, with increasing excitement, asking Abdon to share more with him about Christ.) After a while, Abdon asked the man, “Would you like to confess faith in Jesus right now?” He enthusiastically said, “Yes!” Abdon was so unprepared for that response that he found himself asking the man, “Are you sure?”

And sometimes the unwillingness of Christians to believe that God shows up in the lives of who they deem as unlikely people can be almost nasty. Another Lutheran pastor, Brian Stoffregen, tells about receiving a telephone call in his office one day. Here's some of what Stoffregen wrote about it:

[The call was from a woman I don't know.] She had been active in a church...Her husband hadn't been involved in church. He lost his right arm in an accident at work. While in the hospital, he had a life-changing experience with God, who had given him the choice of going or staying. He decided to stay. His life has been changed. Prior to his experience, his wife had said to him -- and she didn't know where it came from: "When you see my mother (who had died), don't go with her." With hindsight, the wife is certain that such words could have only come from God. Her life and her understanding of God has changed. The difficulty that she is having, and why she called me..., is that people from her church -- even close friends -- [couldn't] buy her husband's experience with God. "God wouldn't do something like that for someone who didn't believe in Jesus," [seemed to have been] the essence of their message to her. [Or,] "It must have been the devil speaking to him." [Or,] "Going with that person must have meant going to hell."

That woman's fellow church members were like the chief elders who, Jesus said were in similar disbelief about the responses of the tax collectors and prostitutes, first to John the Baptist and then to Jesus. They couldn’t believe that these sinners would say, “Yes” to repentance or “Yes” to a gracious, forgiving God! But God always shows up in the lives of of those willing to welcome God into their lives. God will even show up in our lives!

One of the questions I’ve been asking people at the Getting to Know You Dinners here at Saint Matthew is, “How do you see God at work in the life of this congregation?” I can tell you that the God we know through the crucified and risen Jesus is truly present and working among us. I was moved at last month’s dinner, when a certain Homecoming Queen* mentioned that through Saint Matthew, she was learning how to place herself and her life in God’s hands. God really does show up in the lives of those willing to welcome God into their lives.

And who of us knows for sure all the ways in which God wants to show up in our lives? I surely don’t! That’s exactly why I urge you in your prayer time not only to ask what God is up to in Saint Matthew, but also to ask, “God, what are you up to in my life?" And,"What do you will for me in my life and what do you will for Saint Matthew’s life?” After you’ve prayed that prayer, be prepared to be surprised by God. Be prepared to walk the talk of your faith.

And every day, remember those two points: God is looking for believers who walk the faith they talk AND God will show up in the lives of those willing to welcome God into their lives.

*She is a seventeen year old member of Saint Matthew, as is another member of the Homecoming Court.

A Look at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (September 28, 2008)

[Most weeks, I try to publish at least one post dealing with the appointed Bible lessons for the upcoming Sunday. My hope is that I can at least help the people of the parish I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, to prepare for worship. Others may find these explorations helpful because we use the same Bible lessons used by most other North American Christians each Sunday. For information on the Church Year and the plan of lessons called the lectionary, see here.]

The Bible Lessons:
Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Psalm 25:1-9
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-32

The Prayer of the Day:
God of love, giver of life, you know our frailties and failings. Give us your grace to overcome them, keep us from those things that harm us, and guide us in the way of salvation, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen

Comments: Ezekiel
1. A little background on Ezekiel:

The Book of Ezekiel has the most logical arrangement of any of the prophetic books. It contains three sections, each of which addresses a different subject matter. Chapters 1–24 concern the fall of Jerusalem. Chapters 25–39 contain a series of oracles addressed to foreign nations, concluding with a section in which the future of Israel is contrasted with that of the foreign nations. The third section, Chapters 40–48, presents a plan for rebuilding the Temple and reorganizing the restored state of Israel.

Ezekiel was one of the younger men taken to Babylon in the first captivity, which occurred in 597 B.C. He served as a kind of religious counselor to the Hebrew exiles who were allowed to live in a colony by themselves near the banks of the Kebar River. Scholars generally assume that most of what is contained in Ezekiel was written by the prophet himself. For some time, they believed that he wrote practically the entire book while living in the colony of exiles. However, more recent scholarship has pointed out several reasons for thinking that at least a portion of the chapters included in the first section contains speeches personally delivered by the prophet to the people who remained in Jerusalem until the city fell in 586 B.C.

2. There are two ways in which this passage may cause us some confusion. First, is the assertion, repeated in several different ways, found in the first four verses:

The word of the Lord²³ came to me: What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”? As I live, says the Lord God⁴, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die.

But how do we square that with words that appear in the Ten Commandments?:

I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:5-6)

And while we're at it, how can it be squared with the doctrine of original sin, the notion that we are all born into the common human condition of sin, alienation from God and a predisposition to be turned inward and away from God and others?

And, does Ezekiel uphold a highly individualistic view that reverses the communal orientation of much of the rest of Scripture?

These are big questions, not easily answered in so short a space. But a few thoughts...

(a) Ezekiel is in no way saying that the sins of parents and grandparents are unfelt by subsequent generations. Peer into the history of any dysfunctional family (that, in some ways, is all families, by the way) and you see threads running from one generation to the next.

(b) Ezekiel is saying that each of us is able to turn to God (repent) and live new lives. Our inborn predisposition to committing acts of sin--lovelessness toward God and toward others and ingratitude for the life that God has given to us--can only be overcome, as our Philippians text puts it, when "God is at work" in us. God does this when we turn from sin and trust in the Good News of new life Christ brings to the world (Mark 1:15).

(c) Because sin is an inherently communal thing, in that it always involves either sin against God or others or both, repentance is also a communal thing. This is why we offer both public and private confession in the Church. It's why our private relationship with God and our individual confession of sin is to result in restored and renewed relationships with others. Sometimes, we will need to overtly reconcile with those we have harmed (Matthew 18:15-20).

3. A second issue: What about Ezekiel's insistence that God is fair in the face of the exiled people's assertions that God isn't fair? I mean, just last Sunday, I preached a sermon titled, God Isn't Fair. Ezekiel seems to say that God is fair. Who's right, Ezekiel or me?

First of all, my sermon of last week wasn't based on my say-so. If it were, it wouldn't have been worth a thing and I wouldn't have dared stand in the pulpit! The theme of "God isn't fair" was the thrust of both the Old Testament and Gospel lessons of last Sunday.

But the assertion that "God isn't fair" in those two texts came in response to a different question than the one Ezekiel was addressing during the Babylonian exile. Whether it was Jonah's anger over the hated Ninevites being allowed by God to live in light of their repentance or the johnny-come-lately laborers in Jesus' parable receiving the same pay as those who had worked all day long, the answer was that God isn't fair. God affords grace to all who are repentant. In the eyes of the world, that isn't fair.

But Ezekiel is answering a different question. Or, more accurately, if you read the entire eighteenth chapter, a different set of questions. His people feel that they have been devoted to God, for one thing. And they wonder if it does any good to repent, to turn back to God.

In this sense, God is fair. God will not hold our parents' sins against us or even our own sins, if we will genuinely turn back to God. "For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live," Ezekiel reports God saying. Through Jesus Christ, that is a call that God continues to issue today!

Comments: Philippians
1. Philippians is one of the most extraordiary books of the New Testament. It's a letter written by the apostle Paul to the church in the Greek city of Philippi. Paul founded the church, with the help of his traveling companions, during his second missionary journey, recorded in Acts 16:11-40. The letter was written in about 61AD in Rome, where Paul was a prisoner for his faith in Jesus Christ.

In spite of Paul's grim circumstances, the letter is filled with joy. That joy is rooted in Jesus Christ, Paul says.

2. In our lesson, Paul urged the Philippians to interact with one another with humility. Humility is a repudiation of selfishness and conceit, an embrace of mutual encouragement and servanthood. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit," Paul writes in the verses just before those of our lesson appear, "but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others."

This is subversive stuff. We all recoil at the selfishness we see in others. Yet we tend to rationalize that our selfishness is okay. But if everybody always looks out for number 1, chaos ensues, as we see in an American society that puts a high premium on indivdualism.

The call to follow Jesus is a call to think less of me, to think of God and others.

3. And as our lesson demonstrates, in calling us to love God supremely and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, God isn't calling us to do any more than He Himself has done in Jesus Christ.

4. But, here's what is most important to see about this passage. Most religions of the world and most ethical people would agree that selflessness is a good thing, even that Jesus' example is a good thing.

Jesus, though, didn't come to be our example. Jesus came to be our Lord and Savior. What that means is that He doesn't just come up to us like a motivational speaker, urging us to learn from His example. As Paul says, through Christ, "it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure." In other words, our "job" as Christians is to get out of God's way and let God work and do God's will in our lives. If we want to believe and we want to be more like Christ, the answer is found in our jumping through some proscribed hoops. "Sanctification," the process of becoming more godly, is a matter of daily repentance--there that word is again, which allows God to renew us. This renewal is what Paul talks in Romans 12, where he urges believers in Christ "to be transformed by the renewing" of their minds. Here, he asks people to have the same mind that was "in Christ Jesus." Through daily repentance and renewal, we undergo what I call a holy lobotomy.

5. The words of our lesson probably were the lyrics of a song the early Church sang when it worshiped together.

Comments: Matthew
1. As always, it helps in understanding a specific passage of Scripture to look at its context. Chapter 21 is a pivotal chapter in Matthew's Gospel. It begins with Matthew's account of Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered the holy city of Jerusalem, welcomed by the crowds as a conquering king.

Later, Jesus, the Messiah with heavenly authority over the temple, drives the money changers out of God's house. For the chief priests, this action on Jesus' part brought the question of His authority (as opposed to their own) to the fore. This is why they confront Jesus with the question, "By what authority...?"

2. For "the chief priests and scribes," authority is something acquired from other people or by human tradition. Jesus' authority is constantly authenticated by actions that demonstrate His submission to the Father, the sort of submission about which Paul writes in the second lesson. No matter how many miracles Jesus performed or how often He displayed compassion, they wouldn't be convinced--or allow themselves to be convinced--that Jesus was the Messiah.

3. The parable can be read in several ways. First and most immediately, it's a parable about people who seem to say Yes to God versus people who seem to say No to God. The chief priests and elders publicly confessed faith in God all the time. Yet when confronted with evidence that Jesus was God-enfleshed and called on to repent and believe, they asked what hoops Jesus had jumped through to rid the temple of extortionists and religious profiteers. What authority, they wondered, did Jesus have to issue such a call? The tax collectors and prostitutes had made no pretense of living for God. Yet, when confronted with Jesus, many turned from their sin and believed in Jesus.

Another way in which this parable can be read is in the context in which Matthew presented it. He wrote to a church dealing with tensions between Jewish and Gentile believers, a tension addressed in last week's Gospel lesson as well. The parable, I believe, really comes from Jesus. But Matthew included it and presented it in the way in which He did, because it addressed a circumstance with which the church of his day was dealing.

In today's church, we can see similar tensions between longtime and new members, or long-confessing Christians and people newborn in the faith on fire for Christ.

As Brian Stoffregen says, in His parable, Jesus does more than extol the virtues of those who may initially say, "No" to God and then do His will. He commands both public profession and personal surrender.