September 25, 2011 - Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
First Reading - Ezekiel 18:25-28
Thus says the LORD: You say, "The LORD's way is not fair!" Hear now, house of Israel: Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair? When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies, it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die. But if he turns from the wickedness he has committed, he does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life; since he has turned away from all the sins that he has committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die.
Responsorial Psalm - Psalm 25:4-5, 8-9, 10, 14.
R. (6a) Remember your mercies, O Lord.
Your ways, O LORD, make known to me; teach me your paths,
guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior.
R. Remember your mercies, O Lord.
Remember that your compassion, O LORD, and your love are from of old. The sins of my youth and my frailties remember not; in your kindness remember me, because of your goodness, O LORD.
R. Remember your mercies, O Lord.
Good and upright is the LORD; thus he shows sinners the way.
He guides the humble to justice, and teaches the humble his way.
R. Remember your mercies, O Lord.
Second Reading - Philippians 2:1-11
Brothers and sisters: If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others.
Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Gospel - Matthew 21:28-32
Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people: "What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He came to the first and said, 'Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.' He said in reply, 'I will not, ' but afterwards changed his mind and went. The man came to the other son and gave the same order. He said in reply, 'Yes, sir, 'but did not go. Which of the two did his father's will?"
They answered, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you. When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him."
Reflection
The parable of the two sons takes place at a point in Matthew’s Gospel when the religious authorities are challenging Jesus’ recent series of public acts. Not only had he been healing the sick and claiming authority to forgive sins, Jesus had just driven the merchants and moneychangers from the Temple, denouncing in dramatic fashion the un-holy commerce that had come to occupy the sacred space. The Pharisees, Scribes, and Priests were the recognized religious authorities of the Jewish people, so who was this common carpenter from a blue-collar town, with no priestly blood (one had to be from the tribe of Levi) nor formal rabbinical training, to carry out so presumptuous a public ministry?
Rather than yield to their interrogation, Jesus takes control of the encounter and tells them a story. One of the primary criticisms of Jesus’ detractors had been that he was violating Jewish law on cleanliness (and thus holiness) by socializing with the likes of prostitutes and tax collectors. The laws of Torah were concerned primarily with who was considered clean and unclean, that they might be fit to worship at Temple, the central act of Jewish religious practice at the time. The Pharisees, therefore, had made it their defining attribute to know every single one of the 613 laws that determined who was clean (holy) and who was not.
Cleanliness, and thus holiness, was viewed not only as an internal state, but as a social standing, that is, as a matter of honor. One could become unclean, and thus lose one’s honor, not only by one’s own actions, but through “guilt by association,” so to speak. A father could become dishonored by the behavior of his children. A husband could become dishonored by the infidelity of his wife. Un-holiness was contagious. (It is for this reason that Joseph tried to divorce Mary quietly; he did not wish for her to be publicly shamed, but he also feared that his own family would be dishonored by the supposed infidelity.)
It is here that Jesus’ parable picks up. The man who orders his sons to go work in the vineyard is presumably a man of very high honor—after all, he owns his own vineyard. For one of his sons to publicly refuse his father in such a way would be a very great scandal. It would be akin to the son of a Senator being arrested for dealing cocaine at his high school. People would not only think the son had done something wrong, they would begin to whisper to each other about how fit the father was for leadership if he could not even control his own son.
Jesus’ analogy would have been obvious to his listeners; the Pharisees and Priests concerned themselves with public adherence to the Law, but behind closed doors, many of them failed to live out its spirit. The tax collectors and prostitutes with whom Jesus associated may have appeared to reject the Law outwardly, but the fact that they then followed Jesus around indicated that they were at least trying to rehabilitate themselves inwardly.
Repeatedly, Jesus calls out the religious authorities for their obsession with the minutiae of the Law, of making it their business to demarcate which individuals were holy and which were not, but that these same individuals seemed to have lost all sense of the underlying point of the Law. The Law, as it was given to the people Israel, was not primarily about who could worship at Temple, and who could not. It was, at its core, about relationships.
A particular law, such as what one was required to do if one accidentally killed a neighbor’s animal, were designed to make sure that people got along well with one another and that such situations wouldn’t result in an all out feud between neighboring families. The point wasn’t that, if one killed a neighbor’s goat, one was therefore unfit to worship at Temple. The point was, rather, that one had committed an injustice against a neighbor, and before one could go present oneself to the Lord, one had to first make things right with the other person.
Returning to the parable, the Priests and Pharisees were very concerned with keeping up public appearances, but they seem wholly uninterested in using their knowledge of the Law to help people like prostitutes and tax collectors rejoin the community and rehabilitate their relationships with God and others. Instead, they simply wrote these groups off as “unholy,” and left it at that. The purpose of the Law was to help people grow in deeper relationship with God and neighbor; the religious authorities of Jesus’ day were using it to cut people off from relationship. In other words, by proclaiming the Law aloud, they were like the first son, saying, “Yes,” to the Father, but failing to do the Father’s will, whereas the tax collectors and prostitutes were like the second son who, by sinning publicly, were saying, “No,” to the Father, but who by following Jesus and seeking to learn from him, were actually doing what God hoped for them.
This parable continues to have enormous importance for us today, especially those of us who are devout adherents to the public aspects of our faith. Like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, we may come to associate holiness with public gestures like going to Mass and being able to recite Church teaching on various topics. But do we understanding the underlying PURPOSE of those things? Do we see the value of keeping holy the Sabbath on a deeper level, on a level of cultivating our relationship with God and building a community of believers with our neighbors? Or do we simply say, “I make it to Mass every week.”
Do we recite the Church’s teaching on sex outside of marriage because we truly appreciate the dignity and beauty of the sexual act and wish for others to enjoy the fullness of flourishing in human romantic relationships? Or do we simply wield the moral law as an axe to cut off the “unholy” people we know who are having sex and engaging in all manner of sin? Do we say to the tax collectors and prostitutes of our own daily life, be it on a college campus or in an office building, that they are unwelcome from the community until they clean their act up? Or do we, as Jesus did, attempt to reach out to such people and have their first encounter with us be one of love, rather than one of judgment?
We might ask ourselves, in what ways are we the first son, publicly professing our commitment to God, but privately failing to live up to all it entails? When we offer our petitions at Mass and pray aloud for the homeless, the poor, those who suffer violence, do we follow through on our prayer by taking some substantive action to assist those in need? We say during the Creed at Mass that we believe in “the forgiveness of sins,” but do we truly believe that we are forgiven, or do we cling to our guilt and unworthiness, refusing to accept forgiveness?
We might also ask ourselves, in what ways are we the second son, publicly failing to live up to the ideals of our faith, but struggling internally to search for truth and the right path? What have we done that is less than our best selves, but that we sincerely search for what God wishes for us to do, moving forward? Jesus’ words do not only apply to the people of his day—they pertain us now, and their force is not diminished. The good news is—the message that ought to give us great hope—that in Jesus’ other parable about a father with two sons, the whole point is that there is literally nothing we can do to put ourselves beyond the limitless mercy and unconditional love of that father. Even when we are the second son, there is an enormous celebration waiting to be thrown upon our return.
Link to the Google Doc for download: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_siyHCMh5IWjC8J1voK_1_xYQ66blrh6DtwLe6oMysY/edit?hl=en_US
Questions for Reflection
1) In what sense are you the first son, who publicly says, “Yes,” to God, but who privately fails to live out that profession?
2) In what sense are you the second son, who publicly refuses to carry out some particular instruction, but who ultimately tries to make it right in private?
3) How are you called to witness to others, particularly those who might be designated as the tax collectors or prostitutes of your own daily experience? What does your faith compel you to do in terms of relating to them? Does it require anything at all?
