For the parents here…do either of these sons remind you of your own children? Whether they remind you of children of your own, which son do you want? If these were responses to your direction as a parent, one son would likely leave you frustrated with their strong-willed defiance (though they may occasionally do what you ask of them in the end), and the other would leave you disappointed with their failure to live up to commitments. This is a strange story for Jesus to tell to illustrate faithfulness and obedience to God’s will. Because, let’s be honest, neither son is a particularly good model for us. They both fall short and they each have their faults; they just come at different points in the story.
In our common, cultural assumptions and judgements about actions we often say one of two things. On the one hand, we might say it is intentions that matter. If we or someone else means well, then the action is not evaluated by the outcome, but rather the intent. Perhaps the first son in Jesus’ story really did intend to go out and work. But then something else came up that took his time and attention. So, should we give him the benefit of the doubt the same as if he had kept his word? On the other hand, we might say that actions speak louder than words. Despite intent, what matters most is what one does. In this view – and in Jesus’ short story – it was the second son who did the will of the father despite the earlier refusal.
As I sat with these two sons and the ways we evaluate actions, I had trouble landing on either with which to make a good point in a sermon. Neither seem to capture the fullness of what we aspire to as people, let alone are called to as followers of Jesus. Perhaps there is something beyond the binary choice of son one or son two – beyond intentions and actions evaluated independently. Because don’t we want our intentions and the outcome of our actions to match? Don’t we want to be faithful from the start? And isn’t that what we are trying to do here as followers of Jesus and as the church?
I was looking back at my sermon from a few weeks ago where I said, “the church is where we learn to deal with conflict” and that line jumped out at me while sitting with this sermon. So, let’s call this a mini, two-part sermon series, separated by a few weeks, titled, “The Church is Where we Learn____.” If part one was The Church is Where We Learn to Deal with Conflict, part two is: The Church is Where We Learn to Practice What We Preach. Because that is why we’re here. To have our lives, our hearts, our minds, and our hands be so transformed by the love of God and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that our beliefs about God, ourselves, others, and the world are manifest in our actions? Isn’t the point that we begin to look and act more or more like Jesus. Before we unpack that, though, I want to take a moment to put this reading and Jesus’ conflict with the religious leaders in more context.
This interaction comes at the end of Jesus’ ministry, after he returned to Jerusalem just before his death. Jesus had entered Jerusalem to the cheers of the crowd – the triumphal entry we remember on Palm Sunday. Then he went to the temple and confronted those who had chosen to live out their faith building power and wealth, causing a scene by flipping tables and chasing them out of the temple. And then, with a lot of audacity, we find Jesus back in the temple the next day. That is the backdrop to this question from the temple authorities in the opening of our reading, “By what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority?” The authority of the religious leaders was well documented and unquestioned. It stretched back to Moses and the beginnings of the people of Israel. The religious leaders had the credentials and the right words and religious rituals, but they didn’t translate into actions that reflected God’s kingdom.
Jesus, on the other hand preached about a God who cares more about what is in the heart than ritual. He healed the sick because God cares even about the outcast and those forgotten by society. He fed the hungry because God provides for all, not only those deemed worthy or worthwhile. He forgave those labeled the worst of sinners because no one is too far gone for God’s love. And that upset those who insisted upon the path to God being narrow and defined by those with power and control. Flipping tables in the temple because people were getting rich off of people’s desire to worship God was just another affront to the status quo of religious life as defined by the authorities. So where did Jesus’ authority come from? It came from the God whose character he embodied. What Jesus said about God matched what he did to show God. Together, Jesus’ words and actions point us to what truly matter and call us to live our lives the way Jesus teaches and shows us.
What does it mean to live like Jesus? Feed the hungry, be instruments of justice and peace, embrace the outcast, practice forgiveness, proclaim Good News…the list could go on. These are all right and good acts…things we are called to as Christians. But it is not just the actions that matter. It is also the belief, the faith, and conviction behind them. God calls us to not just to do the right thing – to check the right boxes – but to do so as a means of living out our faith. To have our intentions match our actions. To practice what we preach. In the words of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”… and then to live like it. And that is why we need the church: the church is where we learn the story of God working to put a broken world back together again and then become a part of it. It is where encounter Jesus in bread and wine and are shaped by that encounter, becoming more and more like Jesus to go back out into our world and live the good news we say we believe. Put differently, the church is not only where we learn how to live…it is where we learn why we live that way. Both of those matter.
Here, though, is where the story of the sons comes back. Because I don’t always do this perfectly. My beliefs and convictions don’t always match my actions. Sometimes, if I’m honest, not even my intentions are good. Yes, God calls us to faithfulness – to practice what we preach – but that doesn’t necessarily mean perfection. As I said earlier, neither of the sons in Jesus’ parable is a particularly good model. But Jesus’ commentary after the story gives us the biggest clue about the point he was making.
None of us live faithfully like Jesus all of the time. In those moments and actions that miss the mark, Jesus calls to repent – literally to turn around – and try again. In Jesus’ exchange with the religious leaders, he pointed to the tax collectors and prostitutes as the models for righteousness. Not because they got it right from the beginning, but because they heard about and saw God’s kingdom emerging around them and they changed direction. Unlike the religious leaders who thought they already had it all figured out, the tax collectors and prostitutes came to believe there was a different way – a way of wholeness and relationship with God – and so they began to follow Jesus. The belief came before the action…and it shaped everything that followed.
Our beliefs matter. They shape us and, as a result, they shape our actions. This life of faith that we live is not simply a matter of following a rule book of what to do or not to do. It is knowing who we are, who God is, and what God’s dreams for the world are, and because of that, those beliefs being manifest in our actions.
This is true for more than just our faith. It is something I think about as a parent. Ever since my kids were little, I didn’t worry too much about the terrible twos or sending them off to school for the first time. What has worried me the most is who they will be and the choices they will make as they get older…which is coming much sooner than I would like with a daughter in middle school. Who will my kids find as a partner in life? What choices will they make with drugs and alcohol? What impact will their choices of friends have on them? I certainly have hopes for those things. But I also realize I have a choice. As parents, my wife and I can focus our attention on the actions themselves – we can put rules in place we expect them to live by – or we can work on developing character and identity and beliefs in our kids that lead them to healthy and life-giving actions.
You see, I am not going to be the father cleaning a shotgun when the first boy arrives to pick up my daughter for a date. While there will most certainly be a part of me grieving the young girl that will be no more, I hope that I can watch her walk out the door with confidence, knowing who she is. A list of “right actions” – whatever those might be for my kids – carry less and less weight as they group up. What carries weight will be knowing that they are beloved children of God whose lives have infinite value. That their parents love them and trust them. That they have the tools and the character to make good choices. When they walk out to door for school, or friends houses, or dates (eventually), or college, I hope they walk out the door, believing that their lives are worth something and they have something to offer the world – and because of that, life-giving actions come naturally.
What God desires from us is not simply duty or following rules. There could have been a third son in Jesus’ story – one who said “yes” to the father’s direction but did the work grumbling the entire time. As much as God desires to see actions that align with God’s priorities, what delights God even more are actions that come from consciously following Jesus and patterning our lives after his. If it is in church we learn to practice what we preach, we can never lose sight of Jesus. Because that is what we preach: God come among us to remind us that we are beloved, that we have been redeemed, and we are called to live like Jesus for the healing of our world. May that reality seep so deep within us that we proclaim to our world – by word and action – the Good News of God in Christ. May we practice what we preach.
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