It has been said that the parable we have heard today is probably both the shortest and easiest parable of all the Gospel, so short and easy that we should be able to know it by heart:
A man had two sons; he went to the first one and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today’, He 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?’
I would add that this parable is so short and easy that a child could understand it, and understand it very well. You obey your parents by actually doing what they ask of you, whether your chores or your homework, not by nodding and saying that you will take care of that later. We would say that actions are more important than words, that words don’t have much weight if they aren’t followed by actions. Easy enough indeed, and surely there is a lot to be said about that. It is actually a theme that is dear to Matthew, in whose Gospel the Pharisees and religious leaders are so often criticized by Jesus for their hypocrisy, the fact that they talk a lot but they don’t accomplish much. It is in Matthew’s that we find also this famous saying:
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.” (7:21)
Now for those who believe that the Gospel wasn’t written only for people who lived a long time ago, this is also a little bit scary. It obviously means that for us as well, we can be Christians with our lips, confessing our belief in God, agreeing with Jesus’s teaching, and yet not being actually doing much to live out what the kingdom is all about. This is the theme of another of Matthew’s parable, the last parable of the Gospel and one of the most frightening: “The parable of the sheep and the goats”, also known as the “Parable of the last judgment” where we hear the Son of Man say to some of the believers:
“Depart from Me, you accursed people, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.” (25: 41-43)
A stern warning that some have translated with humor, maybe to lower some of the pressure: Jesus is coming, you’d better look busy.
Now I don’t know how you feel, but I guess, unless we are completely hypocritical or don’t have a shred of empathy, most of us Christians live indeed with this anxiety of doing something for others, doing in fact as much as we can, and often wondering if what we have done is enough. After all, doesn’t Paul, in the Epistle to the Philippians we have just heard, reminds us that Christ has “emptied himself” and “took the form of a slave”? Shouldn’t we imitate him in giving everything we have when we serve others?
The thing is, as you can imagine, or as you may have experienced for yourselves, this type of reasoning can also become a trap. We want to help others as generously as Jesus did, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner and so on, and we may find ourselves quickly or slowly overwhelmed. So much need and so little time. In fact, the overwhelm is not only for lack of time, or running out of physical energy, we may also find ourselves overwhelmed emotionally and spiritually.
This is actually a conversation we had, or more precisely a conversation we started having but couldn’t finish, last week during our Sunday morning class. Matt Mittelberg, the author of our book, reminded us that we have to share the Gospel by serving selflessly our neighbors. And he says, this is good and right and we also have to be aware that we cannot do it all, and at some point we also need to learn to say no. I really liked it because I’ve known several people in church who have ended up “burned out” in the same way that some people can “burn out” in their workplace. I have a friend who have stopped going to church after having served on every committee for twenty years. She said: I don’t want to go to church having anyone ask me to do again something, and in the meantime I don’t want to be there feeling guilty for not doing anything. I often think of her and wished for her that someone had explained to her she didn’t have to do it all, before she simply renounced to go to church altogether.
But then, during our class, someone asked: There is so much to do, how can we stop or how do we know when to stop and when to say no? And well, that’s when I think that this short and seemingly very obvious parable can help us, especially if we put it back into context. So let’s have a look at that before we answer the question.
If you start reading our passage from the beginning, you may be surprised, as I was, that the conversation Jesus is having with the chief priests and the elders has very little to do, and even maybe nothing to do, with serving or getting busy helping others. Actually, we are not even in a conversation Jesus has initiated. But Jesus has been in the Temple and condemning its practices, and now the leaders of the Temple come to ask him by “what authority” Jesus is “doing those things” and “who” “gave [him] this authority”. And Jesus replies by inviting them to consider what kind of authority John the Baptist had. All of which gives us a clue that the parable that serves as an illustration to this point really isn’t about outreach programs or serving on committees, rather it is about authority and, as a child would have well understood, it’s about obedience. Jesus asks his hearers to do God’s will, and what is the Father’s will? It can be several things but this is what we find in John’s Gospel (6:40):
“For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”
And so my guess is that the parable is about doing the Father’s will in believing, because our passage says that the religious leaders are afraid Jesus is going to ask them why they didn’t believe what John the Baptist was teaching. And indeed, Jesus tells them that actually the tax collectors and prostitutes, for whom they have nothing bust scorn, are “going ahead of them in the Kingdom” because they changed their minds and believed. Actually, Jesus uses the word “believe” three times in a row, so we know the parable is not about doing “works”. It is not a purely mental exercise, a lip service, but it is a doing rooted in a spiritual conversion. This doing that corresponds to God’s will is belief first and then acts of repentance and reparation.
This is really not about doing it all, all the good works we can think about until we are exhausted, all the church work we can take on until we just can’t anymore like it happened to my friend, it is about doing the only thing we actually need to do: Conversion, by saying yes to God’s invitation, say yes to God’s forgiveness, and say yes to let God guide us day after day in changing our behavior and the way we treat others.
And this is also what Paul has in mind when he talks to the Philippians. When Paul invites them to imitate Christ, he does not ask them do all the backbreaking work they can think of, rather he invites them to obedience and humility, which is really the call Jesus has for the religious leaders in this passage of Matthew’s Gospel.
Paul reminds us that Jesus accepted all sort of limitations, renounced his divine privileges, by taking the human form. He was bound by space, and time, he was subject to hunger and thirst, and throughout the Gospels we also see him sorrowful and afraid. What Jesus did though is that he was obedient by following what God asked of him at every step of the way, even if it means, as Mittleberg rightly observes, that sometimes Jesus had to say no to people and go back on a boat to go to a different place, or just spend some time alone in prayer. So how could Jesus expect us to do it all? I think he much prefers when we are realistic about what we have to offer and rely on him for the rest. This is the great lesson of Philippians: Humility and obedience have to come first. If we don’t have that, even our busyness for God can become like an idol, a way to prove ourselves rather than receive God’s grace in the first place.
Now, after saying all of this, I haven’t forgotten the question: There is so much to do, how can we stop and how do we know when to stop and when to say no?
To this, I am afraid I don’t have an answer, except “It depends” (on our circumstances), which I am aware is not much of an answer, but what I have is a story that may help us to do this discernment.
A few years ago, I became interested in a charity called “What If?” founded by Margaret Trost some twenty years ago. She tells the story that she lost her husband while being still a young woman, and being so depressed and having lost her reason to live, she accepted completely out of the blue an invitation to spend some time doing mission in Haiti. This trip, as sometimes mission trips go, ended up being very beneficial to her and helped her rediscover a sense of purpose. So much so that with a few others, she started running programs to end hunger in Haiti, and her program became very successful. And yet, she says that one day, as they were serving food, she looked at the line and, what had made her happy at first, that people would show up again and again, started to make her feel quite gloomy instead. People, indeed, showed up again and again but it was like there was no end to it. Men, women, children being hungry again and again and it was like trying to empty an ocean of needs with a spoon. She said she remembered thinking: There is no way I can save all these people. That’s when she said she heard a voice inside telling her: You’re not here to fix it, you’re here to love.
You’re not here to fix it, you’re here to love. To give love and also to receive love. To be with God and with God’s people and the people who don’t know God yet, and to be a part of God’s creation. I think this is really what obedience and humility can look like, and that could be the words we need to be reminded of when we are tempted to do too much, or when we are discouraged by all there is still to do. This is also I believe the meaning of Jesus’s parables in Matthew’s. Not that we would save the world, but that we would simply recognize him in the needy among us and be willing to reach out in love. It is the beautiful prayer of the Daughters of the King I discovered recently: “I am but one, but I am one, I cannot do everything, but I can do something”.