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Matthew 21: 28-32 | King James Audio Bible | Daily Bible Verses Advent Week 3 Tuesday | Parables Of Jesus
28 ¶ But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard.
29 He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went.
30 And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not.
31 Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.
32 For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.
The parable of the two sons is clearly, and explicitly, an attack by Jesus upon the chief priests and the elders of the Jewish people. In the parable, Jesus places before the Jewish authorities an astonishingly blunt analogy of their rejection of God the Father and of Jesus. There is no room for quibbling or intellectual sophistry here: one son does what his father wants; the other says he will and then doesn’t.
The scribes and the Pharisees boast of their faithfulness to God’s Law. They ostentatiously parade their sanctimony, visibly and publicly adopting the elaborated trappings of the Law, indeed they are sticklers for the ritual observances of the Law, and yet their religiosity is hollow; they serve themselves, they line their own pockets, they relish their status and authority; they are far from loving adherence to God. They say they will go to work in the vineyard, and yet they do not.
The first son whom the father approaches initially refuses to serve him. Then he repents. Having sinned, he experiences a change of heart and goes to do the work his father has asked of him. Jesus is saying to all of us: It doesn’t matter if you have sinned; I came to call you. When we repent of our past refusals of the will of the Father, when we leave behind that past frame of mind and give ourselves to what God wants us to be and do, then God’s forgiveness is ours and it is total.
The prostitutes and tax collectors (publicans) heard the call to righteousness proclaimed by John the Baptist, and Jesus sits down to dinner with them and they hear him. And so then, when they have repented, their past doesn’t matter any more; they are with God and the kingdom of heaven can now be theirs. Not so the scribes and the Pharisees.
It is as if, by hanging out with those beyond legitimate ‘good’ society, by rejecting the social mores of the day and by opening himself up to the accusation of his being a glutton and a wine-bibber, Jesus has pointed a finger at established authorities, at orthodoxy, and has stretched out his arms instead to human-kind. It is as if Jesus has said, when the rules of your society are wrong, when your society is wrong, then reject those rules and reject that society. Perhaps he found those on the edge to be the least contaminated, even as they seemed most to sin, and so most ready for renewal in the Blood of the Lamb.
‘It belongs to God to help us and deliver us from all trouble… God protects the humble man and delivers him; the humble he loves and consoles; to the humble he inclines himself; on the humble he bestows abundant grace; and, after he has been brought low, he raises him up to glory. To the humble man he reveals his secrets, and sweetly draws and invites him to himself.’ The Imitation of Christ
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We Are All Sinners | We Can All Ask: ‘Pray For Me A Sinner’
In the parable, the first son initially refuses to do his father’s will, but he later changes his mind and obeyes his father, while the second son says he would obey but does not.
The parable highlights the reality of human sinfulness. Everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s standards (Romans 3:23), and it is only through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ that we can be reconciled to God and receive forgiveness of sins (Acts 3:19).
Jesus often associated with sinners and outcasts, much to the chagrin of the religious authorities of his time. Jesus recognized the humanity in all people, including those who had strayed from God’s path, and welcomed them with open arms when they repented and turned to Him.
In our own time, this message remains relevant. It is easy to fall into the trap of self-righteousness and to judge others based on outward appearances or actions. However, we are all sinners in need of God’s grace, and it is only through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ that we can receive salvation.
In fact, it is through our acknowledgement of our sins that, as the Prodigal Son, we are called home.
Saint Augustine brings his reflection on prayer to its culmination by turning to the Lord’s Prayer — the model and measure of all Christian supplication. For him, this brief prayer given by Christ contains the fullness of all holy desire. Every petition found in Scripture, every movement of the soul toward God, finds its echo and completion within its sevenfold structure [ … ]
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. Jonathan breaks from the procession to – fire the organ with oomph and dignity: Ride on! ride on in majesty! The angel-squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice. When we’ve done the readings, the Arch holds that tree in his hands to deliver the homily. He rocks quietly on his feet, some few seconds, as if balance defeated it. A way you might affect as the Spirit moves… Copying. Then he says: ‘Our palm fronds may seem to us today rather dry. I mean this not in a literal sense, but by the standards of those who originally lined the roadways in order to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, as they proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, who would be clambering up and ripping their palm branches fresh from off the trees. I think perhaps also our faith is somewhat distant from that of the people there on that highroad into Jerusalem, and something of our sense of the meaning has shifted in vividness from what it was then. And of course the expectation of all those many people is markedly different, but in many important respects the same. There are the same essential qualities to all our faith in God, which springs complete from our humanity, and that is one and the same in value for all of us, and time is consistent on this point. So then, let us renew the fullness of Catholic faith, and let us ask the Lord’s blessing as we embark upon our Holy Week. ‘Our Lord enters into Jerusalem in order to refresh us. He is to die in order that we may have life. There is a living reality here, both spiritual and as entangled in the joy of our daily living. We have Ladies’ Day where I grew up. They still have it, and they close the roads off, and little children parade, dressed-up like spring brides. When I was a boy, there was a May Day festival, and there was a May pole on the field, with the people dancing, like Morris dancers might be one way of visualizing this if you’ve never seen it, with their ribbons tied onto the top of the May pole, and they would weave around each other, dressing the pole, which is what we called it. It was like a dance with red and white and blue ribbons all hung off of the top of the May pole, which stood there all year, only like a telegraph pole, but it was concreted in, and then there was a slide, and swings – one baby-swing and two you could have a go at – terrible health and safety but that’s what it was in those days. ‘There was a round-a-bout – we used to run it round and round to try to get it off its central axis. It were rusty as anything and creaked like mad – on concrete. And climb up where it was all greased up at the top. Ruth, who was big as the next four of us, used to sit there sucking on the lollipops we nicked for her from Raddies, and she’d direct matters. We were trying to destroy it, and get it to dislodge from its central axis, and fly away – roll off into that farmer’s field, which he only ever kept for silage, but we never succeeded. There was a car someone had left there so we spent forever smashing that up, until someone who lived in one of the houses there took exception to our doing that, so he put thick grease under the door handles and gave us a right talking to. ‘It would only be a few stands, hot-dogs and things like that. The man selling the hot dogs would have his records on full blast. There’d be a couple of set-up stalls. Air-rifles – that sort of thing. But we all had them, and we all went shooting, of course, if not with twelve bores then with smaller gauge. Or pay a pound – I have no idea how much it was in actual fact then – it might have only been a few pennies – and we’d get all that time smashing up the crockery the man would put up for us to smash on the dressers. That was my particular favourite thing to do at these festivals, by the way, in case you were wondering. You got a little bucket of so many cricket balls. ‘I dread to think what went into those hot dogs. Probably EE rules would forbid it now. But it was a fair mix in those days. A lot of young people then were C of E. We’ve done a lot to hang onto our young people, which is a tremendous encouragement when you consider how things are, while in recent decades the Church of England hasn’t been so successful. People still want it on feast days and what are essentially now civic celebrations. It’s strange to see, though, how all the little stands there people have are run by the police and people like that along those lines. There’s no May pole. That was a sort of faith that ran and ran beneath all the theoreticals of it in the 1960s and the 1970s and into the 1980s. The May pole isn’t there now in the particular place I’m thinking of. Considering May poles were officially suppressed hundreds of years ago – as a part of the protestant reformation. One or two of you are probably thinking I’m remembering things from that time! ‘I should have liked to say that those processionals were so hardwired into us, that even after the last thirty years, when I became a bishop, they are still with us. They were […]
Psalm 84 expresses human yearning for divine presence. The psalm begins with an exclamation of admiration: ‘How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!’ The term ‘tabernacles’ here refers to the sacred dwelling places of God. The psalmist’s words convey awe and reverence for the sanctuaries where God is believed to reside. This opening sets the tone for a poetic exploration of the soul’s yearning for proximity to the sacred [ … ]
