Patrick Comerford
Next Sunday, 27 September 2020, is the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVI).
The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland, are in two groupings: the Continuous Readings and the Grouped Readings:
The Continuous Readings: Exodus 17: 1-7; Psalm 78: 1-4, 12-16; Philippians 2: 1-13; Matthew 21: 23–32.
There is a link to the Continuous Readings HERE.
The Paired Readings: Ezekiel 18: 1-4, 25-32; Psalm 25: 1-8; Philippians 2: 1-13; Matthew 21: 23–32.
There is a link to the Paired Readings HERE.
Introducing the Readings:
Black or white?
Dog or cat?
Land or sea?
Wet bob or dry bob?
Paris or Rome?
Wine or beer?
It’s the sort of game we all play in our families at one time or another. I loved playing ‘Matching Pairs’ with my sons when they were at the early learning stage.
For adults, there are similar jokes about two kinds of people we compare or contrast: ‘There are two types of people: those who divide people into two categories, and those who don’t.’
For the mathematicians: ‘There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.’
And for those with a more subtle sense of humour: ‘There are two types of people in this world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.’
The readings for next Sunday give us contrasting pairs:
In the first reading (Exodus 17: 1-7), we see contrasts between adults and children; water and wilderness; testing and thirsting; obeying and quarrelling; responsible freedom and slavery without responsibility.
The Psalm (Psalm 78) contrasts images of ancestors and children, day and night, rock and river, and so on.
In the Epistle reading (Philippians 2: 1-13), the Apostle Paul gives us the stark contrasts offered in Christ of slavery and freedom, deity and humanity, fear and trembling, heaven and earth.
This helps us to prepare for the matching pairs or clashing contrasts we find in our Gospel reading (Matthew 21: 23-32).
Exodus 17: 1-7:
The freed people continue their long from Egypt to the Promised Land, from slavery to freedom, through the wilderness and the Sinai Peninsula.
God has shown his power during their slavery, winning their freedom from Pharaoh and his forces. But he tests their faith in him, as provider and ruler, ten times. This reading is about one of those ten tests. But, we might ask, who tests whom? (see verses 2, 7).
Earlier, at Marah, the people had water – but it was bitter. Now, at Rephidim, an oasis in the Negev or Sinai, there is no water at all. The well at the oasis has run dry.
The Israelites challenge Moses. The Hebrew translated as quarrelled in verse 2 is a legal term. The people bring a case against Moses. No wonder that this challenge is seen by Moses for what it is: their charge is against God. The names Massah and Meribah (verse 7) come from the words for test and quarrel.
The people doubt that God can feed them, that this God can be their god in this hostile desert.
God responds as he responds to their other tests. God simply grants the people’s request, without rebuking them. He orders Moses to take some of the elders of Israel, representatives of the people, to the rock at Horeb.
There, the elders see God show his power. The parallel with Egypt continues: the staff Moses uses to bring forth water is the same rod Moses used to poison the Nile.
In giving manna or bread from heaven to eat earlier, and now water from an earthly rock to eat, God shows he is the Lord of creation.
Psalm 78: 1-4, 12-16:
Psalm 78 was used at major festivals. This psalm tells the story of the people of Israel from the Exodus to the reign of David. It serves to teach that God has continued his saving acts in history in spite of the unfaithfulness of his people.
The Hebrew word translated as ‘parable’ in verse 2 has a wide meaning. Here, it means wise instruction, based not only on knowledge but also on long experience of God’s ways. It is important that coming generations know about God and his marvellous interventions in human affairs, his wonderful works and marvellous things, so that all may live by his Law.
The field of Zoan in verse 12 refers to Ramases, the city where the Exodus began.
The psalm then recalls God’s presence in the wilderness – how he divided the sea and led the people by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
The reading from this psalm concludes by recalling the events described in the first reading, when God gave water from a rock so that they might drink and know the promise of life.
Philippians 2: 1-13:
In this epistle reading, the Apostle Paul offers the Christians in Philippi ‘encouragement in Christ.’ He prays that through this, and moved by God’s love for them, they may ‘be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord ...’
He urges them to ‘regard others as better than [them]selves’ and to behave without selfish ambition or conceit, in humility and with respect for others.
In verses 5-11, we hear an early Christian hymn, into which Saint Paul inserts verse 8b.
The ‘Christ-Hymn’ in this reading is the earliest extant material underpinning later Christology and the New Testament’s most explicit exposition of the nature of Christ’s incarnation. The closest approximations are found in: Colossians 1: 15-20; I Timothy 3: 6; and I Peter 3: 18-22 (see also John 1: 1-5).
Saint Paul urges us to be like Christ, who was ‘in the form of God’ and shared in God’s very nature. Even so, he humbled himself ‘emptied himself,’ making himself powerless, in the same way as a slave is powerless and without rights.
It is so easy, too often, to forget the pre-existent Christ. Yet, this is he who became human like us, with all that entails, including death. Becoming human, he lowered or humbled himself, and throughout that life he was fully human and totally obedient to God, even to the point of going through death.
Saint Paul adds here that Christ did this even to point of experiencing the most debasing form of death – crucifixion was a punishment reserved for slaves and the worst criminals.
God actively responded to this total denial of self, Christ’s complete living and dying for others, by honouring him exalting him above all other people making Lord of all creation, above and below. This authority had previously been reserved for God the Father.
Saint Paul then recalls God’s words spoken through the Prophet Isaiah (see Isaiah 45): ‘From every corner of the earth [all are to] turn to me and be saved; for I am God ... to me every knee shall bow … to me every tongue shall swear, saying ‘In the Lord alone are victory and might … all Israel’s descendants will be victorious and will glory in the Lord.’
The Philippians shall declare that ‘Jesus Christ is Lord,’ proclaiming the victory and might of God. The ultimate goal is to give glory to God the Father, reclaiming God’s sovereignty over creation.
If we take Christ’s example of obedience and lowliness, we can continue to look forward to salvation, for God is at work in us to bring about what he pleases.
Matthew 21: 23-32:
In the final week of his earthly life, Christ has just shown the importance of faith in understanding God’s ways. Now, as he teaches in the Temple, representatives of the Sanhedrin, the chief priests and the elders, ask who has given him the power and authority to say and do all that he has said and done in his ministry.
However, Christ declines to answer them until they first answer his question, one that will show whether they have the faith needed to understand his answer.
Those who come to question Christ are skilled in the Law. But this is of little help when to comes to deciding whether a prophet is genuinely from God, in this case Saint John the Baptist.
If they say that Saint John the Baptist was from God, they ought to have repented as he urged them.
If they say John was not from God, they risk losing face and credibility with the crowd who are now following Christ.
The Sanhedrin judged such issues, but their answer shows their incompetence.
In the second part of this reading (verses 28-30), Christ tells a parable about admission to the kingdom. Like the first son in this parable, people once regarded as disobedient and having lived evil lives, such as tax collectors and prostitutes, have turned to God. But people like the second son, who have given lip-service to the law of God, have not lived out what they say they believe.
The second son in the parable addresses the father as κύριος (kyrios), not merely Lord, but in the Septuagint a way of addressing God, yet remains disobedient.
However, there is still time.
Reflecting on the Readings:
The Gospel reading is set in the immediate aftermath of Christ’s entry in triumph into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and his cleansing of the Temple.
When he returns to the Temple the following day, he is confronted by the religious and civic leaders, the guardians of belief and tradition, who challenge and question him about his power and authority.
The ‘chief priests and the elders of the people’ are the leaders in the Temple hierarchy, and also at the apex of society in Jerusalem – questioning Jesus about what gives him authority. In particular, they ask what gives him the right to behave as he does, and especially the right to claim he is acting in God’s name when he is behaving like that.
It is a question that Christ might have expected, under the circumstances. The exchange takes place when he enters the Temple. The day before had been an eventful day: when Christ enters Jerusalem and the crowds hail him as king. He next goes into the Temple courts, he overturns the tables and the seats of the money changers and the dove sellers, and he speaks about the destruction of the Temple.
The Temple authorities have been offended. Quite naturally, they have to confront him.
Who does he think he is?
What gives him the right to force his way in and stir things up?
What authority has he to behave like this?
But, in a clever manoeuvre, Christ answers their questions by asking his own question.
A clever manoeuvre, indeed. It was acceptable then, but every bar room lawyer knows now that you are not allowed to ask questions that allow only a choice between two convicting answers, loaded questions like: ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’
Loaded questions are loaded with presuppositions, often with built-in fallacies and false dichotomies.
And the chief priests and the elders fall into a trap that every sixth-form debater would know how to set and how to escape.
There is a great deal of humour here. Those who are skilled in the Law failed to see the flawed legal trap. And in doing this they display their innate inabilities, their incomparable incompetence, their own failures in judgment.
In this Gospel reading, Christ answers with a two-part question. And once again, he turns the tables on those who confront him. They are taken aback; they are caught in a dilemma. If they answer one way, they are caught out; if they answer the other, they are still caught out. It is a dichotomy. And either way they cannot win.
As they are left mulling this over, Christ tells the parable of two sons and a father. The second dichotomy, the second comparison, the second either/or choice, is posed when Christ tells this parable about a father who sends his two sons, a willing son and an unwilling son, to work in the family vineyard.
It is a sharp contrast between being and doing.
The two sons remind me once again of the T-shirt I have joked about for years and that eventually I bought a few summers ago in the Plaka in Athens with these words:
‘To do is to be’ – Socrates
‘To be is to do’ – Plato
‘Do be do be do be do’ – Sinatra
The American publisher Cyrus Curtis (1850-1933) once said: ‘There are two kinds of people who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told, and those who can do nothing else.’
But the two sons illustrate a serious dilemma:
Those who respond negatively to what they are asked to do, may eventually do it … and recognise their initial wilfulness.
Those who say they are going to do something they are tasked with, but then refuse to follow-up, to deliver, to do, refuse to recognise their own wilfulness yet persist in their sinfulness.
How often have you responded to people because of their words rather than their deeds and found you have completely misjudged them?
The two sons are asked to go to work in the family vineyard.
One son says: ‘I will not.’ In a Mediterranean village culture, in which there is no such thing as personal privacy, this son’s reaction to his father shames the father publicly.
The other son says: ‘I go, sir.’ In public, he appears to be what a good son should be.
But the tables are turned when we learn that the son who mouths off actually goes to work in the vineyard, while the son who seems at first to be good and dutiful turns out to be disobedient.
So, those who say they are compliant and say they are doing the right thing have headed off to do things their own way, while claiming they are doing what God wants.
On the other hand, Christ tells all present that even prostitutes and tax collectors who appear to be disobedient might actually end up with a true place in the vineyard. In today’s context, who are the people I keep excluding from the kingdom yet are being called in by God?
Paradoxes aside, most of us are not like one son or the other … most of us are like both sons, and wrestle with their responses and their approaches throughout our lives.
Have you ever received an invitation to a party, a book launch, a wedding, with those four little letters at the end: ‘RSVP’?
Have you ever been one of those people who, anxious not to offend, sends back a reply saying yes, I’ll be there, and then … and then something else crops up, and I fail to turn up?
It has happened to me. I have been invited to parties and book launches, ignored the RSVP line in the bottom corner, and then, at the last moment, turned up. And, I have to confess, I have, at least one or twice, accepted … and not turned up.
On which evening do you think I was most appreciated, most welcomed?
An obvious answer, I think.
It is more forgivable to be socially awkward than to be wilfully rude.
When we strive with the demands of Christian living, with Christian discipleship, it is easy to be like one of these sons.
There are times when we may find it difficult to do what God is asking you to do. We wait, we think, we ponder, but eventually we answer that RSVP and seek to do God’s will.
We say ‘No’ countless times, and then realise how worthwhile it all is: labouring in the vineyard should be hard work, but it leads to a good harvest and good wine.
I have to be careful to distinguish between God’s will and my own will. When they coincide, there are countless blessings. But when they are in conflict, I need to beware of pretending that one is the other, that I am answering the Father’s call and doing his work, when in reality I am doing what I want to do myself, and telling others what I want rather than what God wants.
In the words of the Collect of the Day, we pray that we may all, each one of us, that we may ‘both perceive and know’ … but these two are not good enough on their own; instead, we pray that we may ‘both perceive and know what things’ we ‘ought do’ … so that with God’s grace we actual do them.
Being and doing come together; we know what to do, and we do it.
In The Great Divorce, CS Lewis claims: ‘There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done”.’
And we encourage one another to do God’s will and we find that when we do God’s will, it is God’s will for us, when in the Church, as Saint Paul encourages us in the Epistle reading, we are ‘of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind’ (Philippians 2: 2).
Matthew 21: 23-32 (NRSVA):
23 When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?’ 24 Jesus said to them, ‘I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. 25 Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?’ And they argued with one another, ‘If we say, “From heaven”, he will say to us, “Why then did you not believe him?” 26 But if we say, “Of human origin”, we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.’ 27 So they answered Jesus, ‘We do not know.’ And he said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.
28 ‘What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” 29 He answered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went. 30 The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “I go, sir”; but he did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?’ They said, ‘The first.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax-collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.
Liturgical Resources:
Liturgical Colour: Green (Year A, Ordinary Time)
The Collect of the Day:
O Lord,
Hear the prayers of your people who call upon you;
and grant that they may both perceive and know
what things they ought to do,
and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil them;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Collect of the Word:
Grant, O merciful God,
that your people may have that mind that that was in Christ Jesus,
who emptied himself,
and took the form of a servant,
and in humility became obedient even to death.
For you have exalted him and bestowed on him
a name that is above every name, Jesus Christ, the Lord;
who lives and reigns with you in unity with the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God of mercy,
through our sharing in this holy sacrament
you make us one body in Christ.
Fashion us in his likeness here on earth,
that we may share his glorious company in heaven,
where he lives and reigns now and for ever.
Suggested Hymns:
Exodus 17: 1-7:
607, As pants the hart for cooling streams
606, As the deer pants for the water
645, Father, hear the prayer we offer
646, Glorious things of thee are spoken
647, Guide me, O thou great Jehovah
431, Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendour
435, O God, unseen, yet ever near
557, Rock of ages, cleft for me
Psalm 78: 1-4, 12-16:
254, At the Lamb’s high feast we sing
262, Come, ye faithful, raise the strain
647, Guide me, O thou great Jehovah
557, Rock of ages, cleft for me
Ezekiel 18: 1-4, 25-32:
638, O for a heart to praise my God
Psalm 25: 1-8:
17, Lead me, Lord, lead me in thy righteousness (Treoragh mé, treoragh mé, a Thiarna)
652, Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us
712, Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord
Philippians 2: 1-13:
250, All hail the power of Jesus’ name
684, All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine
218, And can it be that I should gain
630, Blessed are the pure in heart
496, For the healing of the nations
454, Forth in the peace of Christ we go
91, He is Lord, he is Lord
523, Help us to help each other, Lord
211, Immortal love for ever full
94, In the name of Jesus
275, Look, ye saints, the sight is glorious
168, Lord, you were rich beyond all splendour
636, May the mind of Christ my Saviour
228, Meekness and majesty
102, Name of all majesty
392, Now is eternal life
173, O Jesu so meek, O Jesu so kind
285, The head that once was crowned with thorns
112, There is a Redeemer
114, Thou didst leave thy throne and thy kingly crown
117, To the name of our salvation
116, To our Redeemer’s glorious name
Matthew 21: 23-32:
86, Christ is the King, O friends, rejoice
593, O Jesus, I have promised
136, On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
The hymns suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)
Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.
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