Willing to change - Rev. Jonathan Warren

And we may embrace the never hold cost the lesser hope of our which you have forgiven us, our Savior.

The first scripture reading today is from Exodus chapter 17, verses 1 through 7.

Exodus 17:1–7

Let us listen to the word of God.

From the wilderness of sin, the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded.

They camped at Rifedim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

The people quarreled with Moses and said, Give us water to drink.

And Moses said to them, Why do you quarrel with me?

Why do you test the Lord?

But the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?

So Moses cried out to the Lord, What shall I do with this people?

They are almost ready to stone me.

The Lord said to Moses, Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you.

Take in your hand the staff which you struck the Nile, and go.

I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb.

Strike the water, strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.

Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.

He called the place Masa and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

This is the word of the Lord.

When Jesus 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?

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.

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?

But if we say of human origin, we are afraid of the crowd, for all regard John as a prophet.

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.

What do you think?

A man had two sons.

He went to the first and said, Son, go and work in the vineyard today.

He answered, I will not.

But later he changed his mind and went.

And the father went to the second and said the same.

And he answered, I go, sir.

But he did not go.

Which of the two did the will of his father?

They said, The first.

And Jesus said to them, Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

It's an especially interesting grouping of words to pray.

Now, this prayer was originally written by Thomas Cranmer, the first archbishop of the church in England, after splitting from the Catholic Church.

So we're talking 1500s.

It was a time when not everyone had access to a Bible, not long before, had only heard it read in Latin.

There were quite a few roadblocks in understanding scriptures in the 1500s.

As one person says, for the first time, people actually had access to all scriptures translated in a language they could understand.

And as literacy increased throughout the 16th century, they could even read them.

It's not simply a reminder that scriptures are a nice thing that we have, it's a revolutionary argument that we have a responsibility to engage with them, to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.

Now I don't know about you, but there are times I understand scriptures.

And then there are other times when scripture is really confusing.

I know I have a master's degree in it.

I'm supposed to know what it means.

Sometimes I read commentary after commentary and I still don't really get it.

And while we listen and read and mark them, do we learn and inwardly digest them?

There are times when I eat and my stomach feels happy with what I eat.

And other times when I eat something, it might make my stomach churn.

And the same thing can be said of scripture.

Sometimes it settles our stomach, it gives us peace and joy and hope.

And other times it might make our stomach churn.

When we inwardly digest scripture, it can convict us, make us feel unsettled.

Now I know I get paid to study scripture and to figure out what it's saying.

Sometimes I get stumped.

Sometimes I don't always get it.

And sometimes scripture is just really hard to understand.

So if I don't make a lot of sense, then maybe next week I'll get it.

It's part of the reason we give out Bibles so we can help each other figure out what it's saying.

In today's scripture, Jesus tells a parable about a father and two sons.

I got this one.

It sounds simple enough.

The first son says he can't help, but he changes his mind and he goes back to the vineyard and helps his dad.

And the second son says he can help, but he doesn't end up showing up.

He's a no-show.

As I've aged, I personally prefer if someone tells me if they can't make it, they know their schedule.

I'm not depending on them to make it, and I can make alternate plans.

Now, if someone tells me they're coming, but bails the last minute, or is an o-show altogether, that can feel pretty aggravating.

Of course, if that's all there was to the scripture reading, then we'd get it.

No problem.

Like this.

When Hannah was in kindergarten, we lived in Tennessee, it was pre-COVID, and parents were allowed to join their children at school for lunch.

It was fun to join her and her friends to eat in the school cafeteria together.

And one day before school, I told Hannah that I'd meet her for lunch.

But that day, a pastoral emergency came up and I couldn't get away.

And there wasn't any way I could let the school know I wasn't coming.

So Hannah was just sitting and waiting and waiting for her no-show dad.

I knew I was late, and I finally arrived in the last few minutes of lunch.

But by that point, it was already too late.

My poor kindergartner was absolutely devastated that I missed uh our lunch date together.

I told her I would come and I didn't.

There was no amount of explaining my job that could fix it.

And I broke my little six-year-old's heart.

After that, I vowed to never tell Hannah when I'd come to lunch that day.

I would just show up and surprise her.

Because I never knew what would come up.

Then I wouldn't break my promise.

This scripture isn't that easy.

It has layers and twists and turns, making it much more challenging to understand.

In fact, if chief chief priests uh are are challenging Jesus' authority, uh so we have to dig deeper.

There's a clue about what's happening in the first verse we read.

Matthew 21, 23 says, When Jesus entered the temple, so we have to go uh a bit ahead to find out what's happening.

Uh before this, Jesus entered the city uh of Jerusalem on a donkey, and it was Palm Sunday.

And right before this scene, Jesus had just overturned the tables in the temple.

There's our clue.

God has given his authority at the temple to the chief priests.

And the only other authority is God and the coming Messiah.

And since the chief priests don't like Jesus coming in and just overturning the tables and stirring things up, they're asking Jesus questions.

They're trying to trap Jesus.

Yet Jesus pushes back.

But Jesus' goal isn't to trap them or to knock them down.

Little do they know that Jesus isn't trying to be powerful or strong.

Jesus desires the opposite of authority, opposite of influence, of strength and power.

In fact, Jesus is the first to t to say how what the kingdom of God is like, and it works the opposite way that the world does.

Like when James and John want to sit at Jesus' right and left hand in glory, Jesus says, Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.

And whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.

For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

And in just a few days, Jesus will surprise his disciples when he washes their feet.

Jesus says in John 13, 14, So if I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.

And very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.

Jesus' goal isn't to win an argument.

Jesus is seeing if they're willing to change.

Jesus doesn't want to dominate.

Jesus is trying to say that everyone is on an equal playing field.

And then another layer in this scripture reading is that's kind of confusing is Jesus books bookends it with John the Baptist.

How why did he come in?

We know that John the Baptist was a prophet who welcomed all tax collectors, prostitutes, even chief priests.

He welcome them to receive a baptism of repentance.

A willingness to change our ways receiving righteousness through repentance.

Is an attempt to put everyone on equal ground.

God's mercy isn't just for a select few chief priests and elders, but Jesus is changing the paradigm and welcoming everyone.

And who's coming?

Tax collectors and prostitutes.

Dr.

Paul Farmer says it this way.

The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.

Some matter less.

That's wrong.

That's not God's way.

And this isn't easy to digest because Jesus is turning the tables on how we live in this world.

We're called to love one another, to serve one another, to wash each other's feet, to be kind, to be willing to change.

One pastor says, uh sometimes obedience to God to God blends with obedience to earthly authority.

Sometimes obedience to God means disobeying to earthly authority.

A few quiet saints who never made the headlines to show us what responsible civil disobedience looks like.

During the Second World War, a young Polish social worker named Irina Sendler walked into the Warsaw ghetto with nothing but a satchel and a fierce conviction that every child was precious to God.

Nazi law said she must leave those children to die.

Her conscience said otherwise.

So she smuggled them out in ambulances and toolboxes, potato sacks, and buried their names in jars so families could be reunited someday.

She broke the law, but she obeyed love.

A decade later, in Montgomery, a 15-year-old schoolgirl named Claudette Colvin refused to surrender her seat on a segregated school bus.

She wasn't famous.

She wasn't part of a movement.

She simply knew that the image of God in her was not second class.

Her quiet no helped prepare the way for a larger no, the world would eventually hear.

His commanders ordered him to authorize a nuclear torpedo.

And two officers agreed.

Arkopov refused.

He broke military protocol, but he obeyed the deeper command to preserve life.

His refusal may have prevented a global catastrophe.

And then in New York City, a writer named Jane Jacobs watched bulldozers line up to flatten neighborhoods full of families, shopkeepers, and children playing on studios.

So she organized neighbors, uh blocked bulldozers, and insisted that people mattered more than plans.

And she disobeyed.

But responsibly, peacefully, and with a vision for human flourishing.

Four different people, four different eras, four different kinds of courage.

Each broke a human rule to obey a higher one.

Jesus here is turning the tables on how we're supposed to live.

And as we inwardly digest scripture, it certainly might make our stomachs churn.

It might convict us.

It might make us feel unsettled.

Because we might have to change.

We're not called to dominate.

We're called to serve.

To welcome the unwelcomed.

To show up when we say we will.

We're called to wash each other's feet.

And we might have to break a human rule to obey a higher one.

Whether we understand the Bible or not.

That's why we pray.

So grant us to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

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Jacksonville, Illinois.

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