Perspective: Lessons from a Family Vineyard

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Lessons from a Family Vineyard

Hypocrites!  Isaiah really knew what he was talking about when he prophesied about you, This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me.

Matthew 15:7-8 (CEB)

To live the way that you believe
This is your opportunity
To let your life be one that lights the way

From "It's Your Life" by Francesca Battistelli

My personal Scripture reading plan tends to be rather repetitive.  Sometimes, when I look back in my journals, having encountered a particular passage or story numerous times over the years, I find that I have collected a number of different lessons from it.

One day, amid a rather heated argument with some religious leaders, Jesus told a story about a vineyard owner who had two sons.  He asked one of his sons to go out and work in the vineyard, but the son refused.  The son later had a change of heart, and he went out to work in the vineyard, despite what he had said to his father earlier.  The father also asked his other son to go out and work in the vineyard.  This son said, "Yes, sir," but he never actually did what he told his father he would do.¹

Jesus asked the religious leaders which of the two sons was obedient to his father.  They replied that the first son, the one who initially refused but later changed his mind, was the obedient one.

There are number of lessons we can glean from this relatively short parable.

One surface-level lesson we can learn from this parable is that it is better for a person to say no and then change her mind than to say yes and then fail to follow through with what she agreed to do.  We should always adequately think through commitments before we make them.  Perhaps sometimes we need to start at no in order to arrive at yes.

I think this parable is also a reminder that we need to be true to our word and to actually do what we say we will do.  Jesus once said, "Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no."²  In other words, we should strive to be people whose words can be trusted without our having to swear on a proverbial "stack of Bibles."  If we want to be people whose words are trustworthy, then we must take care that we only agree to do something if we actually intend to do it.  A sincere no is always better than an insincere or halfhearted yes.

Jesus, after telling His parable, said to the religious leaders, "I assure you that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God's kingdom ahead of you."  In the parable, the vineyard owner represents God, and working in the vineyard represents doing God's will.  The son who said that he would work in the vineyard but failed to do so represents the religious leaders to whom Jesus was speaking.  The son who initially refused to work in the vineyard but later changed his mind represents the so-called "sinners" who were apparently entering the Kingdom of God ahead the religious leaders.

When the vineyard owner asked the second son to work in the vineyard, the son answered, "Yes, sir."  This son might have given the right answer, but his actions did not match his words, rendering his answer meaningless.  Saying yes with one's words is not the same as saying yes with one's actions.  Religious types love to have all the right answers, but far too often our words amount to little more than lip service.  This parable reminds us that having the right words to say ultimately amounts nothing unless we follow them up with the right actions.  In the words of St. James, "faith is dead when it doesn't result in faithful activity."³

On another occasion, Jesus borrowed a saying from one of the ancient prophets of God to describe a group of religious people: "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me."  Hypocrisy is one of the most common criticisms lobbed at modern-day Christians, and sadly this criticism is not unfounded.  Far too often one's religious beliefs get stuck in one's head, never making the journey to one's heart.

Jesus said that people who were typically labeled as "sinners" were entering the Kingdom of God ahead of the religious leaders.  The religious leaders put up a godly facade before the masses, but they did not listen to prophets of their day like Jesus and his predecessor John.  What would such crackpots have to say to people like them?  On the other hand, the tax collectors and prostitutes of whom Jesus spoke had no pretensions since everyone had already written them off as the scum of the earth.  For some reason they were drawn to Jesus and John, and because they listened to them and took their words to heart, a change had begun within them - a change that had brought them closer to God than even the religious leaders.

Probably the most important lesson this parable teaches us is that God values repentance over pretense.  Perhaps what is most insidious about pretending to be something we're not is that we actually start believing we are who we claim we are, regardless of whether or not anyone else is buying what we're selling.  Taking on holier-than-thou attitudes, we forget that we too need to repent and receive God's transforming grace.

Saying the right thing is no substitute for doing the right thing, and acting like we're close to God is no substitute for actually drawing close to God.  May God give us the courage to drop the act and face ourselves, and may God give us the strength to do what God is calling us to do.


Notes:

1. This perspective is based primarily on Matthew 21:28-32.  Quotations are taken from the Common English Bible.
2. Matthew 5:37a (CEB)
3. James 2:17 (CEB)

The photograph of the grapes was taken by Wikimedia Commons user Dragonflyir and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.