Late to Work
Late to Work
By Keith D. Herron Senior Pastor
Holmeswood Baptist Church, Kansas City, MO
Sermon Text: Matthew 21:23-32
There’s a lot of talk these days about the coming clergy shortage in this country. Our CBF leaders generally recognize there are more good churches than there are good ministers to lead them. It has a lot to do with the pervasive undermining of trust in religious institutions, the emergence of post-modernism in our culture, and the general malaise that’s saddled traditional denominationalism of the past.
Most seminaries are down in enrollments and seminary students themselves are often skeptical of a career in parish life. The wine of God’s love is still good, but the wineskins of the past are being cast off by the younger generations.We live in a time where the tectonic plates of the church are shifting.
What if Jesus was a seminarian today? What if he had felt the calling of God to become a minister? How might he be received?1 The typical Minister Candidacy Committee might have made this report on his application to the seminary:
The candidate, Jesus of Nazareth, seems to have trouble with authority figures conflicted by his own sense of self-granted authority. We recommend he be sent to a therapist to work on these issues before he goes any further in the process of admission. There are repeated instances of this problem in his autobiographical materials. Notable is the experience the candidate described of his self-reported impudence to his elders at the age of 12 when he confronted the theological faculty in the Temple.
The candidate claims in delusional language to have personally encountered and battled with the devil. Characteristic to that kind of thinking, the candidate recognizes he was adversely affected by wandering in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights without food resulting in a severe break from reality. The candidate’s first attempt at preaching resulted in declaratory statements about his mission from God. Delusions of grandeur evident. Further reality testing is advised.
Jesus never answers questions directly but his answers contain questions of his own. He also tells short, analogous stories with hidden meanings. Jesus uses inappropriate humor with authority figures demonstrating his derisive feelings toward the leadership of the church.
In conclusion, Jesus of Nazareth should be admitted cautiously with a program of direct supervision from the leaders of the church to monitor his progress. Success in ministry is cautiously optimistic and ultimate failure is predicted.
I
The question stuck in Jesus’ face was, “By whose authority do you do these things?” Skim the stories just before this and you realize it’s the Tuesday after entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. It’s two days before all hell breaks loose between him and the Pharisees and they orchestrate his crucifixion. He’s in the eye of the hurricane and it’s tense and testy.
Jesus and the Pharisees are arm-wrestling for the truth and checking each other about the authority by which they claim their power. The Pharisees have all the Establishment credentials and yet they feel threatened by this One who stands before them bearing his credentials in his own skin. He stands confidently before them because his power is borne within rather than what others might think of him. Credentials or not, Jesus stands before the Pharisees in his own power and calling and they’re clearly afraid of him.
Jesus answers their question with a question of his own and proves how adept he was at their rabbinical gamesmanship. He offers no arguments in response to their questions because he’s not trying to get them to recognize he’s right and they’re wrong, he’s simply trying to get them to believe.
Even Jesus must have known his actions upon arrival in Jerusalem would prompt a reaction from the religious leaders in Jerusalem that would be harsh and punitive. Who knows? Maybe that was his goal. Maybe there was something so clearly defined within him that he was counting on his actions provoking a reaction against him. Maybe Jesus felt that he had to give his final week a verifiable nudge in order to see that they couldn’t ignore him any longer.
Jesus was not content to make belief mindless and empty. His motivation was to call us all to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a follower in our day. And so Jesus told them this story. “A man had two sons . . .”Whenever Jesus needed to paint a contrast between faith and unfaith he told his listeners a story.
Earlier in his ministry, he told a story of two sons who each approached life differently. One wanted his father’s inheritance and when he got it, he struck out on his own. He lived extravagantly and wantonly until it was all gone. His rich resources depleted, he resorted to doing work that signified he had lost contact with his identity. He had so lost his dignity that he came to the point of recognizing he could go home to his father who treated his servants better than the treatment he was receiving. The surprise of that simple story was the profound response of the waiting father who forgave him and restored him as his son.
But the story was also about the obedient second son who never left home. When Jesus told them the story and began it with, “A man had two sons,” we are invited to conclude that the two sons are examples of faith and unfaith. Both sons are needed to complete the picture.
So Jesus told this story of a man with two sons as a way of saying that faith and belief are not merely a matter of credentials and authority. At a deeper level, Jesus made a fine distinction between belief and practice.
II
Kyle Childress, our good friend from last winter’s Festival of Faith, sits surrounded in his study by three portraits of Christian belief and courage.2 On one wall is the image of John Bunyan, a dissenting, non-conforming Baptist from 17th century England. In 1660, Bunyan was arrested and sent to jail in Bedford because he refused to be licensed to preach by the state. Even after 12 years in prison, when asked if he was ready to compromise with the state, he replied,
“I have determined, the Almighty God being my help and shield, yet to suffer, if frail life might continue so long, even till the moss shall grow on mine eyebrows, rather than thus to violate my faith and principles.”
On another wall, another non-conforming Baptist, Martin Luther King, Jr., looks down upon him. Kyle has a picture of King as he stares soulfully through the bars of the Birmingham jail. That photo reminds him of the words of Thoreau who said, “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
Behind Kyle’s desk is a third picture of Clarence Jordan, founder of the Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, keeping watch over his shoulder. The power and presence of such a trinity of Christian courage is staggering.
James McClendon tells about the time in the early 1950s when Clarence approached his lawyer brother Robert Jordan, who later served in Georgia as a State Senator and eventually as Justice for the Georgia Supreme Court.
Clarence asked brother Robert if he would represent his Koinonia Farm in a suit designed to discriminate against them based on their interracial farm. Robert replied, “Clarence, I can’t do that. You know my political aspirations. Why, if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I’ve got.”
“We might lose everything too, Bob,” Clarence replied.
“It’s different for you,” his brother answered.
“Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, ‘Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ What did you say?”
“Clarence, I follow Jesus, . . . up to a point.”
“Could that point by any chance be . . . the cross?”
“That’s right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I’m not getting myself crucified.”
“Then I don’t believe you’re a disciple. You’re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you’re an admirer not a disciple.”
Not to be outmaneuvered, Attorney Jordan replied, “Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn’t have a church, would we?”
“The question,” Reverend Jordan said, “is, ‘Do you have a church?’”
You see, surrounding himself with ornery Baptists is Kyle’s reminder to himself that living the Christian faith is a brave proposition requiring courage and commitment. All of us need a cloud of witnesses who call us to a deeper way of living.
III
Jesus the provocateur twisted the knife in deep into the consciousness of the Pharisees who stood before him questioning him about the faith. Faithful talk gets us nowhere if it isn’t backed up by action. It isn’t what we say about the faith that matters. It’s what we do with it. The father’s preferred son wasn’t the compliant son who gave the father what he wanted to hear but didn’t go to work. It was the one who struggled to get the answer right but later woke up to realize he had been called to do something. He was late to work, but he got there.
Being late to work is always better than not showing up at all. Barbara Brown Taylor claims there’s a strange vacuum between what we believe and what we actually do.3
She then goes on to recall a story found in Isak Dinesen’s book, Out of Africa. Kitau, a young Kikuyu boy, showed up at her home in Nairobi seeking work. She was impressed with him and hired him as a servant in her home.
A short three months later, he appeared and asked her to write a letter of recommendation to Sheik Ali bin Salim, a Muslim in Mombasa. Dinesen was so upset at losing him, she offered him more money if he’d stay but he refused her generosity. He explained to her that his purpose of living with her had been to see the ways and habits of Christians up close. He told her he planned to live with the Muslim cleric to see how Muslims behaved and would then make up his mind to become either a Christian or a Muslim, depending on what he observed.
Dinesen wrote about this in her journal: “I believe that even an Archbishop, when he had these facts laid before him, would have said, or at least thought, ‘Good God, Kitau, you might have told me that when you came here!’”
Brothers and sisters of the faith, God wants our words of belief to match in some mysterious way the actions of our belief. Søren Kierkegaard reminds us that Jesus wants followers, not admirers, in this band of believers he’s gathering in our time. Jesus is not so worried about our being late. Grace is a forgiving time clock. The question is whether we’ll show up at all.
© Copyright Keith D. Herron, 20051
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
