"YES and NO" (given on "YES and NO" (preached on September 28)

          Have you heard about the dear sister who came to her pastor for counseling?

          "Reverend, something has to be done about my Willie. He no longer comes home at night to me and our eight kids. Instead, he's all over town

drinking, gambling, and running around with wild women."

          "You have my deepest sympathy, Mary." replied the preacher. "Your husband is a miserable sinner."

          "Sinner, yes; miserable, no. He's having the time of his life."

          Jesus must have been quite a puzzle-- and more than a little bit of an embarrassment to the Scribes and Pharisees. After all, those miserable and not-so miserable sinners and  drunks and beggars and hookers and peasants and other assorted riff-raff were listening to Him. They were following Him. Worse yet, they were actually being healed and finding their lives changed because of this Jesus! The truth of it was, this Jesus actually  somehow or other, seemed to be from God.

          And yet, the priests and rich Pharisees and lawyers who had been so piously studying in their nice quiet synagogues while the common herd was out there living and sinning in that noisy, dirty world-- were being ignored by Jesus.  And the crowd, the ones who were too busy working and eating and laughing and crying and raising families-- were the ones getting all of Jesus' attention!  And this was not an oversight on Jesus' part.  It wasn't ignorance on Jesus' part.  He was deliberately ignoring the Scribes and Pharisees and High Priests.

          He even told them so!  He told them He had come for the sinners-- not for them. He told them He had come-- not for those who said yes to the Laws of Moses-- but for those who were too poor, too trapped, too beaten down, too busy surviving in the world to say anything else but no. The religious establishment must have been more than just envious-- they must have been furious at Jesus.        So one day they confronted Him.

          "What is the source of these teachings of yours? By what authority do you say these things and perform these healings?"

          But Jesus was too smart for them. He saw their trap. So, Jesus turned the question around on them. He asked them if they knew from whence had come the authority for the baptisms of his cousin, John—from God or from humanity. 

          Recognizing the trap Jesus had laid for them, the Scribes and Pharisees and Priests refused to answer.  So Jesus in turn, refused to speak of the source of His authority.  Instead, He told them this crazy parable about the son who said YES and did NO, and the son who said NO and did YES.

          And then Jesus asked the Scribes and Pharisees and priests the 64,000 drachma question. Which son did as the father wished? The answer was obvious. They all knew what the father wanted. Maybe they didn't exactly get what Jesus meant with this saying NO stuff. But if this was intended to be a comparison to them, that was okay.

          They knew they had followed the laws of Moses.  They prayed five timnes a day. They kept the Sabbath. They worshiped daily. They spent their days studying the Laws. They kept kosher. They kept themselves ritually clean.  They weren’t sinners.  They were righteous. They were the holy ones. 

          So they were fairly comfortable in their answer. The second son, the son who went and worked in the vineyard after all, did the father's will.  And that was them.  They were the ones who did the will of the Heavenly Parent.

          And then Jesus threw his zinger.

          "You aren't that son at all! You aren’t doing God's will! You aren't working in the vineyard. Those very tax collectors and prostitutes who you so freely condemn heard the teachings of John the Baptizer and were converted. They repented. They changed their lives.

          They gave up embezzling taxes. They gave up unwholesome and exploitive sexual practices. They gave up grudge holding and anger and hate and apathy and jealousy and snobbery. They gave up their sins. 

          And now they will enter into God's Holy Realm ahead of you.  Those who said NO once, and then changed their minds and repented. They began to live lives of YES and are holier than you who say YES and continue to live out lives of NO."

          It would be fairly easy for me to preach the rest of this sermon on the sins of hypocrisy and self-righteousness. It would be easy and even kind of fun for me to stand here and point my finger at those in God's house who don't get involved-- the pew sitters-- those who pray the prayers and sing the hymns on Sunday without giving any more than the same amount Sunday after Sunday, year afdter year, without volunteering, without changing their lives on Monday through Saturday.

          As I was preparing this sermon, I was indeed tempted to preach on that very note. I was tempted to rant and rave about the way some folks say YES to God with our mouths and NO with our lives.  Hypocrites are always an easy target for a sermon.

          They're almost as easy a target for preachers as they are for people who claim they stay away from church because “it’s full of all those hypocrites ".  Anyone ever tell you that? Next time they do, tell them it's okay, they can come in anyway. There's always room for one more.

          But then I got to thinking. If hypocrites in the church are the modern day equivalent of that first son, who is the other son--the son who first said No,  and then went out and lived a YES? Who are the modern-day drunks and hookers and publicans who will enter the Divine Realm?  Who in our world says NO, and yet does YES?

          And then I realized I was missing the point about the other son in the parable. Both sons had been raised and nurtured by the father. Both had seen the father's example in their own lives. Both knew what the father expected of them. Both heard the call. Both struggled with a response.

          Both responded--one YES--one NO. The one son's response was just words--no care, no commitment, no sharing with the father. Just a face- saving lie and a quick exit--stage left. The other son's response was an insult to the father. The best you could say was that he was honest about it.  Frankly, neither are particularly praiseworthy.

          But-- and here's the heart of the passage for me-- "He changed his mind and went" Two sons-- one YES that really meant NO-- and one NO that turned into YES. Why? Because he changed his mind. And that's when I figured out who the second son is-- and who the first son is, as well.  I realized that both sons are one in the same. They're both in you and they're both in me.

          We're all called to the vineyard in this life. It may be the call to serve as a nurse, or a teacher, or a missionary. It may the call to support God' church with our gifts. It may be the call to parent-- or to foster-parent.  It maybe the call to witness in our neighborhood. It may the call to get involved in reform politics, or to teach school, or sing in the choir, or volunteer at a hospital, a pantry, or tithe, or teach Sunday school, or be a church officer, or organize a prayer chain, or enter the ordained ministry, or to serve the world in some other way.  It may be a call to go back to school, or change careers, or go on a mission trip, or transform our relationships with others.         

          Regardless of the particular nature of our personal call, it's always a call to change-- to leave behind our old self-centered, sinful life of greed or indulgence or anger, or self-pity or lust or self-righteousness or whatever is eating us up inside. It’s always a call to new life-- inside and out. It’s always a call to respond-- YES or NO.

          We all have a call. And we all can hear it. We may deny it, or try to drown it out, or pretend we don't hear it-- but it's there. Just like the father in the parable called his sons into the vineyard-- you and I are being called by our Heavenly Parent into the vineyard of this world.  We are called to make it a gentler and more holy place—beginning in our own tiny corner of it. We are called to re-make ourselves into better and more godly people—beginning with what we like least about ourselves..          

          We are called to bring forth fruits. We are called lives of personal responsibility and integrity We are called to strive for the coming of Christ's realm of Salaam and Shalom in this sad and sin-sick world-- and in our own lives as well-- now-- in our lives at this present moment.

          Too often, we are the son or daughter who says YES, but lives out NO. But sometimes we become yet a third child-- a child who flat says NO and continues to live out a NO.  Too often we fail to even profess our faith.  We get caught up and tied down by circumstances, by other people, by our current and past sins, by addiction or anger, by our flat-out refusal to even acknowledge that we are saying NO.  When that happens, we end up worse than both of the sons in the parable.

          And yet, like the second son, we can change our minds--even then. We can repent, profess faith, and start living that faith out—fully with faithfulness and joy. We can change our lives. We can match up our intentions with our actions. We can hear God's call and respond.    

          We can say YES and live out YES as well.  YES to God-- YES to this world— this community— this life situation— in the midst of these relationships  where God has planted us-- YES to life-- YES to ourselves. That's the note of hope in this parable. That's the message of the parable-- and of Jesus' whole life.

          There is One who showed us that change is always possible. There is one who lived a life of total YES. There is One who showed us how. There is One who did it. And in order to do it-- he made a far greater change than any one of us will ever be called upon to make. Paul writes in Philippians 2:

          He had equal status with God, but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantage of that status no matter what. Not at all.  When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! . Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless obedient death. The worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.

          Paul is telling us that precisely because Jesus so freely said YES, and so fully lived out that YES--  to life-- to the world-- to God-- He was utterly free to change-- to become something new and whole and beautiful and present-- to change from God to human being. And yet, Jesus still remained of God and from God.

          That is what we mean when we say Jesus Christ was truly God and truly man. That was the source of His Authority. That was why the prostitutes and the tax-collectors and the drunks and even the ordinary folks who had sought John's baptism came to follow Jesus.  That's why Jesus hung around with them.

          They had been despised by the religious establishment. They had been told by those in power and authority that they were sinners, damned, outside the Law.  They were barely surviving economically-- they did well to keep their children from starving.  And yet the leaders of their religion told them that unless they essentially became Scribes or rich Pharisees themselves, they were lost, outside their own historic faith.

          And then John, and then Jesus came along and freed them.  They told them that true holiness before God is not linked to public piety or blind, unthinking worship of rules for their own sakes. They told them that prosperity was not necessarily a sign of blessedness. They told them that the Ten Commandments posted on the wall doesn’t mean a thing-- unless those commandments are engraved in our heats and lived out in our lives.

          Just as John had before him, Jesus told these folks that they could lead new lives, that they could change, that they could say YES to life-- and to God. And all those miserable and not so miserable prostitutes and tax collectors and more run of the mill sinners came to see that their life situation was not hopeless.  They were not automatically damned. They were not locked into a life that would only allow them to be either victims or villains.

          In John and in Jesus, they were able to see themselves as worthwhile people, loved by their Creator, and capable of growing and changing and doing GREAT things.  They were able to repent, able to change their minds and say YES to the authority of Jesus and to the new life that HE was offering. They were able to believe that if He could do it, they could live out that YES as well.  And in believing in that YES, and in their own possibility to live it out, they were in fact empowered live it out.

          You and I can change our minds, and change our lives as well.  If, like the crowds who flocked to Him, we can see in Jesus hope and possibility, then we can begin to let go of all the sin and self-centered-ness that we cling to. We will be enabled to say YES to change, YES to hope, YES to new life,  YES to generosity, YES to compassion, YES to integrity, YES to the call of God in our lives-- now—here-- in this present moment. 

          And if we do that, we will find ourselves eager and empowered to begin to live out that YES in this world,  now, here, in this vineyard God has called us to labor in, and eventually inherit.  Praise God! Amen.