Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot; Christ Church, Bulkington, and Holy Cross, Seend
Philippians 2.1-13; Matthew 21.23-32
“…the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you…”
Do you ever catch those little ‘God slot’ reflections on the radio? Things like Thought for the Day on the Radio 4 Today programme? Has any of them ever stuck in your mind?
One still sticks in mine, from decades ago, when I would hear the Radio Ulster ‘God slot’ blearily as I got ready for school. The clergyman presenting it startled me by saying that hypocrisy was a good thing. If you’re a hypocrite, at least you know what the right thing to do is, even if you don’t actually do it. There’s room for God to work with a hypocrite, ran the argument, in a way there isn’t with someone completely blind to what’s right. It was an interesting argument for grabbing the attention of a distracted audience more interested in the Weetabix and the traffic report – interesting enough that I still remember it three decades later.
The problem is that it’s hard to square with what Jesus actually taught, especially in today’s Gospel reading.
“…the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” As attention-grabbing statements go, that trumps even the argument that hypocrisy is a good thing. Any of us would be taken aback, and probably a bit outraged, to have this said to us. And Jesus says it not to a group of randomers, but to the chief priests and elders, on the sacred ground of the Temple itself.
For months our Sunday Gospel readings have been following Jesus around the Holy Land teaching and healing, starting in His home turf of Galilee with the Sermon on the Mount, then into surprising places like the territory of the Syrophoenicians (the descendants of the Canaanites), and finally on Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, where He warned His followers He had to die in the Holy City.
Now Jesus’ journey is over. It is the Monday of Holy Week. The day before, He rode into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, as the Scriptures foretold a mighty prophet would, and the crowds flocked out to see Him, singing His praises and spreading palm branches before Him, also just as those prophecies foretold. The tax collectors and the prostitutes and all the common people of Jerusalem knew a prophet when they saw one.
The chief priests and elders were profoundly worried by the spectacle, and you can see why. Here was a preacher from the countryside arriving to a hero’s welcome at one of the biggest festivals of the year, in a land seething with resentment of Roman occupation, religious zealotry, and conman preachers.
You can’t blame them for wanting to find out exactly what His agenda was. But when Jesus answers them with a question about John the Baptist, their ugly side is revealed. For, just like the common people, they know a prophet when they see one. They knew John was a prophet, but they chose not to believe him. And when it comes down to it, they’re far more worried that Jesus might be a prophet than that He might be a conman or an extremist, because they fear the Romans more than they fear God. Given the choice, they’ll take the path of least resistance – and if that means killing an innocent and genuinely holy man, even a prophet, so be it. Their answer about John – “We do not know” – is a flat, stupid lie that fools nobody, not even themselves.
In case there’s any doubt that hypocrisy is Jesus’ target, He then tells them the parable of the two sons. One son tells his father he won’t work in the vineyard, then changes his mind and goes. The other says, “I go, sir,” and doesn’t. Even the chief priests and elders have to admit which son did his father’s will. The second son is exactly the hypocrite from that radio slot: he knew the right answer, and said it, but did nothing.
The prostitutes and tax collectors are honest in their sin. They know the gap between themselves and a prophet. They know they need saving, and in the topsy-turvy world of Christ’s teaching, it is often they who live out the Kingdom of God more than the chief priests and elders. The clerics think they are especially close to God, and so forget how much they need to be forgiven, how completely drenched in hypocrisy and cynicism they are. Knowing the right thing isn’t what redeems us. Honesty about our failures and a changed mind is.
At its heart, Christianity isn’t a religion of achieving perfection but of knowing we can’t. Of course, Christians must strive to live holy lives – without that, we too become drenched in cynicism and hypocrisy – but trying to be holy isn’t half as important as being humble enough to admit how often you fail.
In our quest for humility, we are called to imitate Christ. Our Epistle reading contains one of the greatest pieces of St Paul’s writing, a poem or perhaps a hymn, which says that Christ did not regard equality with God as something to be clung to, but humbled Himself to death on a Cross.
Cultural distance hides from us how shocking this is. We know crucifixion was brutal, but forget what it said to people at the time. Crucifixion was a horrible punishment associated with the lowest and most despised criminals. Christ, God made human, humbled Himself to a death that wasn’t just agonising but one usually reserved for the lowest of scumbags. Think how different that is from the chief priests and elders, clinging to their comfortable lives as patsies of the Romans, even if it means a prophet dies. Because Christ was willing to sink so low, not only did He save us, but the Father raised Him to the highest state in the cosmos.
God will go to extremes to save us, diving lower than the prostitutes and tax collectors, lower even than the hypocritical holy men. That’s how much you and I matter to God.
And God is already at work in us, driving us towards acting like the first son of the parable, who did the right thing in the end. And what is Paul saying when he tells us to work out our salvation in fear and trembling? He is calling us to labour in the vineyard of our lives – to bring to completion the newness of life which God has already begun in us.
We do that by patterning our lives on Christ – not standing on any idea of being particularly good or special, but humbling ourselves to serve others. And when we fail, we pick ourselves up, ask forgiveness, and try to live a Christ-like life all over again.
Hypocrisy isn’t an asset in that work. It’s baggage. So are delusions of our own superiority. And we should be honest: in today’s Gospel, it’s we churchgoers who sit where the chief priests sat. Little puts our neighbours off taking Christ seriously more than a Church that seems to think itself better than them.
But when we are humble enough to see in others moments of goodness that we could never manage ourselves – even in people who aren’t respectable, and in many ways aren’t good, but who, like us, are flawed children of God, loved as much as we are – then we begin to look a little more like the Christ we follow. And we start to develop the vision to recognise a prophet when we see one.
And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, as is most justly His due, now and for evermore. Amen.