"Feelings versus Doings"
Sermon by the Rev. Matt Kennedy
Proper 21 year A
The Church of the Good Shepherd
Matthew 20:1-16

I got up early yesterday, looked out my window and noticed that the yard looked absolutely horrible. I started to feel like I should mow it. It was a strong feeling. I felt it in the morning. I felt it around lunchtime. I felt it in the afternoon. Heck, I felt it all day long. I imagined how nice it would be to sit outside with the grass cut. The thought gave me a warm fuzzy glow. I love mowed lawns. I love the feeling of having a nicely kept yard. It’s a great feeling. Now, if you were to take a drive past my house after church, you might notice that in fact my lawn has not been mowed. In fact it looks the same as it did yesterday. You see, I really, really felt like I should mow and the thought of mowing gave me warm fuzzy feelings, but I never actually really got up and mowed. I never acted. I just felt. And because I didn’t act a whole day during which I could have done what I should have done was wasted. My feelings didn’t mean a thing because they didn’t lead me to act. Today we’re going to talk about how the same thing can and often does happen in your relationship with Jesus Christ.

Open your bibles to Matthew 21:28-32 and let’s look at today’s gospel. Jesus is teaching in the outer courts of the Temple in Jerusalem. And, up in verse 23 you’ll see that Jesus has been confronted by “the chief priests and elders of the people.” The elders were members of the Sanhedrin; they were Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes on the highest Jewish decision making council. The priests are, well, priests; ministers trained to make sacrifices and lead worship in the Temple.

These people gave Jesus guff throughout his ministry. In this particular case they’re angry because Jesus has claimed the authority to forgive sins and surrounded himself with people who’d lived lives steeped in sin; former adulterers, fornicators, idolaters, liars, money grubbers, you name it, they’d done it; the low-life’s of the world. They flocked to Jesus because he promised them that if they repented of their sins, left their old way of life, and followed him, he’d forgive them.

What’s wrong with that? Right, only God can forgive sin. If only God can forgive sins, how can Jesus forgive sins? Right, Jesus is God. We know and accept that. But the religious authorities did not and would not. They recognized, as we do, that when he forgave sins he was claiming divine authority. And they hated him for it.

So here they demand to know where Jesus gets the authority to forgive sins. And Jesus gives a clever answer in verses 23-27. He says, “I’ll answer you when you tell me whether John the Baptist, who called you to repent, was really a prophet?” The religious authorities had rejected John the Baptist’s call. They considered themselves so holy that they’d nothing for which to repent. But the vast majority of the people believed John was a prophet. So when Jesus challenged them to say, in front of all the people in the Temple courts, what they thought of John, they fell speechless. They couldn’t condemn John publicly or they themselves would be condemned. They came to question Jesus’ authority and they found their own authority called into question. And now that Jesus has turned the situation around, he begins to question them

“What do you think,” he says in verse 28, “There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first [son] and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ How does the son answer his father’s request?

“I will not!” Imagine a sharp intake of breath from the crowd around Jesus. No Jewish boy would ever answer his father this way. In a Jewish family the father had absolute authority and that authority was only questioned by sons who wished to be disinherited; kicked out of the family. Even now, even today, this kind of bald-faced defiance is seldom heard. I remember saying “no” like this to my dad twice as a boy. My dad made sure I would. A Jewish father, of all fathers, would never let this kind of defiance stand.

But notice that Jesus says nothing about what the father does. The father doesn’t force his son into the vineyard. He doesn’t cajole him into the vineyard. He just lets him go. That’s a lot like what our Father in Heaven does isn‘t it? When someone chooses to live a defiant and rebellious life, a life that says no to God, God doesn’t zap them. He doesn’t, generally speaking, strike them down. He lets them go. He lets them follow their own desires and inevitably they punish themselves. God’s wrath is most often seen when he allows someone to follow their own desires all the way down; down to depression or misery or addiction or hard-heartedness or even destruction. When they die, there’s a different sort of punishment that awaits them in hell, but here, in this life, God is generally willing to let them choose their own punishment. And sometimes when a person to follows their own desires into the pit of misery and despair and depression and brokenness, they realize something’s wrong. God gives them the grace to see that there’s only one way to find fulfillment and satisfaction and joy in this life, and it’s not by living a defiant “no” to God, but a humble and contrite yes to Jesus Christ. That seems to be what happens to this first son. The father lets him go. And then after a time he sees that his own way is not the way, he changes his mind and does what the father asked him to do.

Notice. The son didn’t just have a change of heart or feelings or an inner realization of a great truth. He had an inner change that moved him to act. He didn’t just say to himself, “gosh I should have gone to the vineyard.” He got up and went to the vineyard! How often do we let ourselves be content with good feelings. “I feel love for Jesus. When I think of him I get all warm inside. So I don’t have to go to church on Sunday even though he says too. I don’t have to pray or read my bible or share my faith or do good to my neighbor or use my gifts in the church or any of that other stuff. I have the love of Jesus in my heart man and that’s all that counts. No it’s not. “Hey honey, gosh I really love you. I love you with all my heart. I’m going to sit here on the couch in front of the TV and I want you to clean the house, take out the trash, take care of the kids, walk the dog, iron my clothes, mow the yard, fix the roof, and then make dinner.” Feelings without action mean nothing. Putting God first in your life is not just about what you feel it’s also about what you do. The son changed his mind and he went into the vineyard and he worked because he loved his father. So should we.

Take a look at the other son in verse 30, “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing, go work in my vineyard.” This son answers, “I will, sir,” But, Jesus says, “he did not go.”

I remember only two times that I defied my dad to his face. But I can’t count all of the times I said “yes sir, I’ll do it” and then didn’t actually do it. I may have wanted to do it, planned to do it, felt like doing it, but I never really getting around to doing it. That’s pretty common isn’t it? It’s so easy to say yes. It feels good. It’s much more difficult to actually do what you’ve committed to do. I fail all the time and I’m sure I’m not alone.

And yet, that’s the problem isn’t it? No matter what we feel or say, it’s what we do that reveals our true love and our real priorities. I may say “I put God first,” but if I consistently choose not to get up and go worship him on Sunday; or day after day choose not to pray and share my heart with him, or take time to hear his voice speaking to me in the bible or study him at bible study, or use my gifts at the church, then my words are just words. If someone, going just by your actions, were to judge the priorities in your life by what you do in a given week, would that person say...“Gosh you really put God first in your life! I can tell that you do by the way you spend your time.” Or would the television be your priority? Or the computer? Or your work? Or a car or a boat or golf or something else? We always find the time to do the things we love to do don’t we? NO matter how busy or hurried we get, we always find time to do what we love. So when you say you love God and yet spend all of your week doing something else, what does that say?

The devout Pharisees and Sadducees and priests were full of flowery words and wonderful prayers to God, but Jesus said they were like the second son. They said yes to God, but they lived lives that said no. They said yes to God and yet when God sent John the Baptist to call them to repent of their sins and come closer to him they didn’t have the time. And yet the sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors who’d lived all of their lives saying no to God finally said yes and went and repented and began to live new lives following Jesus and obeying his words. Like the first son they changed their minds.

Where are you in this story? Ideally believers would be nowhere. We’d both say yes to God and then live lives that say yes to God. But all too often that’s not the case. The wonderful thing about his story is that the Father is patient with children who say no. As long there’s breath in your lungs there is time to change your life. If you’ve lived or are living or have fallen back into living a life that says no to God, you can make your way back to the vineyard. You can say “yes” and then live that “yes” out and do the things the Lord has prepared for you to do. It doesn‘t matter what you‘ve done or where you‘ve been. It doesn’t matter how far you’ve fallen or how long you’ve been gone.. The Father loves you and his hands are open. The vineyard is waiting. Change your mind and come back.

Amen