In Jesus’ parable of the two
sons (Matthew 21:28-32), the first son refused to work in his vineyard when
asked but later changes his mind and went there. On the other hand, the
second son said, “I will, sir!”, when the father asked him to work in the vineyard
but never went there. Jesus addressed this parable directly to the chief
priests and presbyteries to address their hypocrisy. Through this parable,
Jesus was telling that they are like the second son. These religious leaders made
themselves look ostentatiously pious in the public and love to garner public
respect to themselves (i.e. Matthew 6:5). These hypocrites conducted themselves
in public as if they had sworn their loyalty to the Lord of Hosts, but what
they do in the name of God is quite contrary to the will of God. That is why they made the Temple corrupt (Matthew
21:12-17). Jesus spoke this parable in the Temple area, on a day after Jesus
entered triumphantly in Jerusalem and cleansed the Temple.
So, what does this parable
mean to us, Christians today? To reflect on this question, we need to assess
ourselves – in regard to how faithful we are to Jesus’ commandments, especially
to love one another (John 13:34) and to carry our cross daily upon denying
ourselves (Matthew 16:24). These commands of Jesus are about will of God for
us.
According to the Pew Research
Center’s 2015 survey, there are approximately 2.3 billion Christians in the
world. But how many of them are truly faithful to the will of God? In other
words, how many Christians in the world really stick to the Covenant? I am
afraid that a significant portion of Christians are more like the second son
rather than the first son of the parable. Otherwise, Mahatma Gandhi would not
have said, “I like your Christ. I do not
like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ”.
This problem of us Christians
is that many of us make empty promises to our Lord and to one another. The
hypocrites that Jesus challenged with the parable of the two sons are a shadow
of this problem of ours. Thus, the second son, who said “Yes” to his father’s
will but never did it, is our image.
All couples who marry say, “I
love you”, to each other. They say “I,…, take you, ....,for my lawful husband/wife , to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer,
for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part” in front of God,
witnessed by the officiating priest and others to tie their knot. As they make
this matrimonial covenant with these words, they must reflect Paul’s words on
love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Thus, this covenant is meant to make their love
to remain standing and withstanding.
However, why do many of Christian couples who have exchanged the vow with these
words fail? Does it mean that love actually fail? No, as Paul says, love never
fails (1 Corinthians 13:8) because love always endures all challenges (1 Corinthians
13:7). Their marriages fail because the vows they exchange are with empty
words, just as how the second son to his father’s will in the parable.
So, what lesson should we
draw from the parable – unless we would not mind being like the second son in
the parable or like the religious hypocrites whom Jesus challenged with the
parable? How can we become more like the first son, even though our will may at
first reject God’s will?
It is to turn our heart from
our will to God’s will. We need to learn the spiritual art and discipline to
synchronize our will to God’s. If we
made no efforts on closing a gap between our will and God’s because our will
initially did not like what God wants us to do, then, we would become and
remain hypocrites like the second son and the religions leaders in the parable.
In the lectionary for the 26th
Sunday in Ordinary Time for Cycle A, the parable (Matthew 21:28-32) echoes
Ezekiel 18:25-28. In the Ezekiel narrative, an emphasis is on turning away from
sinful life and turning back to God’s will (focusing on the Hebrew verb, “שׁוּב”(shub) used in vv.
26-28. To reflect this, the Gospel parable of the two sons is to teach us the
importance of turning away from our problem of empty promises to keep our
promise to do God’s will.
In the Gospel parable, the
verb “μεταμέλομαι “(metamelomai) is
used twice (v. 29, v. 32) to indicate changing mind from what disappoints the
Lord to his will. This Greek word has a connotation to repentance and painful regret, leading to transformation of mind upon compunction, “μετάνοια “(metanoia). Metamelomai is not a Greek equivalent to
the Hebrew word, shub. Nevertheless,
it is important to understand that an important lesson from the parable of the
two sons is to learn how we can turn our mind from our own will to God’s will
whenever these are not identical.
There is no one-fits-all kind
of formula about how we can close a gap between our will and God’s will to
ensure that we do God’s will faithfully, even though we may not always do God’s
will right. That is why we just need to surrender to God – to His will, so that
His grace can help us. This humble surrender of ourselves to the care of God
actually reflects a nuance of metamelomai,
as it is a change in what we are concerned about. We surrender our self
concerns, which reflect our will, to what God cares in His will. After all,
this surrender is the kind of self-denial Jesus asks us to do so that we can
carry our cross daily. As we become
better carriers of cross, we can live as authentic Christians. There will be no
gap between our will and God’s. There is
no discrepancy between what we promise and what we do.
Let us attain metanoia through metamelomai so that we can enjoy anakainosis of the covenant between God and us.
