25 September 2011

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
Psalm 25:1-9
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-27

Jesus tells this story about the two boys, the two sons.  Not good news at all.  Dad goes to the first and says, “Son, get out into the vineyard.”  The son, probably the first born, says, “I go, sir.”  But he never went.  Thinking the first son needs help in the vineyard, Dad comes to the second son and says, “Go today and work in the vineyard.”  He gives dad the lip: “No, sir!  I won’t!”  Then he changes his mind and goes.

Sound familiar?  We’ve been there as parents, as kids, students, employees.  Too readily agreeing, then backing out.  Backing out, then changing our minds, and going.  St. Paul knows and echos this with a theological tint: “For what I do is not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing!”  In this 10:30 Mass today, little Samuel John Calderone will be brought to receive the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.  And by now, little Samuel, if you are listening, if you even have the slightest inkling of what is going to happen, if there is a modicum of understanding of what this means, you are starting to think like the sons sent to the vineyard, asking, screaming, “What have I gotten myself into?”  Or like most of us who point the finger, “What did my parents get me into??”  “Let me out!  No, Sir, I won’t go!  You got me wet!  Now get a towel and dry me off!”   

Well, it isn’t you, Sam, who got you into this predicament nor is it Jeff and Jenni, your parents.  The real question the baptized need to ask is, “What has God gotten me into!? “  That’s what Paul hints at in the Second Lesson: “It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”  The news for this morning --- brace yourselves, all you dear baptized ones,--- is that God ain’t going to get a towel and dry you off!  He’s going to keep on dunking and plunging and dipping you into the baptismal waters!

And this dunking and plunging is God’s way of washing out.  So things change.  In Baptism we are clothed with Christ.  We are a new creation.  The old paradigms and structures of sin don’t hold.  “For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”  

So what happens?  Once we’re wet, God sends us, daughters and sons, out into the vineyards to go to work.  Maybe we say, “Yes,” and maybe we do go.  But being who we are, we’re poised to say, “No, Sir!”, because we know there are no free lunches and we want to know what’s in it for us.  So we glance out of the corner of our eye at this guy, Jesus, who does go the vineyard.  And what do we see out of the corner of our eye?  What we see is something that leaves us screaming, “Get the towel!  Dry me off!”  For as we peer into the vineyard we see a son who did say, “I go, Sir,” who had the integrity to match word with deed.  What makes this offensive to us and eggs on our negative response is the life that Jesus, the Son, models: it is work and life that is often counter-cultural, counter-intuitive, counter to my “me, myself, and I” style of life.

Christ emptied himself, St Paul, says.  He laid aside the trappings of power on prestige.  Though rich, Paul tells us, for our sake he became poor.  He was counted among the outcasts.  He forsook the temptations of earthly power, modeling the kingdom he came to establish.  He loved without conditions.  He dirtied his hands by touching the leprous and the unclean.  He ate with sinners, with tax collectors and prostitutes.  He associated with Samaritans, crossing boundaries of race and class and gender.  He confronted religious hypocrisy and embedded interests.  He spoke God’s prophetic truth without fear.  He prayed that not his will, but God’s will be done.  He gave of himself to deliver the poor and the oppressed out of their bondage.  He delivered himself into the hands of sinful men, rather than retaliate to their evil.  And he was crucified as a common criminal, dying so that we might have life.  He proclaimed the emergence of a new kind of kingdom – one ruled not with sword and gun, but with a justice that seeks the wellbeing of the city.  He called those who followed him to build that kingdom by living as a new community of God’s people.  To those who followed him, he said that the first shall be last, and the last first; that we must lose our lives in order to find them; and that greatness consists of the most humble acts of servanthood.

These readings explode with verbs of “doing.”  Jesus is not just words; he is the doer, the obedient son who does go.  He models the nature of God, and God the ultimate “doer” exalts this son, giving him the name above every name.

The baptized are the daughters and sons who are summoned and respond with a “I go, Sir.”  God takes shape in human history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  He works in us “to will and do according to his good purposes.”  Then our lives, in whom Christ lives and works, take on the Christ-like shape in human history, in human work, in human relations.  Whether butchers, bakers, or candlestick makers, as God’s drenched and sopping wet daughters and sons our lives drip with the quality of Christ’s life.  

Faithfulness to this call totally transcends any requirements of ‘success’ posed by our vocations or the conforming opinions of society.  At a seminar I attended a few years back, we were asked to go around and introduce ourselves.  Well, we each rattled off our positions, dropped names, totaled up our accomplishments.  Only one person there knew what was the central core:  “I’m a child of God,” he said.  “And I’m an architect to pay the way.”  “It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

The baptismal summons is to faithfulness as daughters and sons rather than to power.  Roger Lovette tells of his son who visited Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia.  One Sunday he stood in a long line of visitors to listen to Jimmy Carter teach Sunday School.  He stayed for the worship service and sent his father the program for the day.  In the announcement page of the bulletin was this one: Rosalynn Carter will clean the church next Saturday.  Jimmy Carter will cut the grass and trim the shrubbery.  Our call is to faithfulness, not to position.

The more we learn about Jesus, the more we will find he summons people to places that are uncomfortable, indeed counter-comfortable, contra-indicated for human nature.  We will find ourselves not wanting to go where the Holy Spirit calls.  We will prefer the places where we are most comfortable.  Even more so we will be tempted to mouth, “I go, Sir,” but then go off to our own parties.  There will be the times when mouths say, “I will go, sir,” but our actions l say, “I won’t.”  Know that even then, the Father still waits in love for you.   

God keeps working.  He emptied himself to make room for you in his heart.  The baptized life, as Luther puts it, is a daily drowning the Old Sinful Person within who keeps popping up, and letting the new person in Christ come forth and arise.  There are those days when we scream and kick when we’re plunged into the water.  We want to rise up and shout, “No, Sir.  Get the towel and dry me off!”  But God keeps plunging us in.  

But God keeps dunking.  Forgiving.  Calling.  Summoning forth.  The clue is recognizing that.  Note well, little Samuel, the kind of company you’ve gotten yourself into: God’s kind of company:  “Even the tax collectors and prostitutes” enter into the kingdom (what are Mom and Dad going to say about that!).   God’s kind of company are those who know that there can be course corrections.   This is the fellowship of the forgiven, the fellowship of the broken and the stumbling, ones who have been picked up and patched up by Jesus.  It’s not those who have memorized the right dogma or argue with Jesus about who has authority to do what.  Words alone don’t cut the mustard.  God keeps coming.  Know that even when you are like the son in the day’s Gospel who says he won’t go or the one who doesn’t go, God is one who still works with you and loves you.

“For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure”.  The news for this morning is scream all you want.  God got you into this, and God ain’t going to get a towel and dry you off.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The homily was delivered by guest Pastor Arnie Voigt persiding at the Sacrament of Holy Baptism of Samuel John.