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A father announces to his teenage sons that he needs help mowing the grass and clearing some brush for the last free brush pick up of the season.
The first son virtually explodes, "Are you serious? Don't you know this is the worst time for my allergies? Besides I have plans that I don't intend to change. Talk to the hand, for I am not listening!" But later he changes his mind and attitude and joins his dad in the garage.
The second son responds, "Sure Dad. I'll be right there." But he takes a phone call and disappears.

A mother asks two of her children to come to a program that is going to be put on at her retirement center.
The first responds, "Now Mom, we've talked about this before. You know how busy my schedule is. Besides Maggie and the kids really do not like to sit through the programs here. We'll have you over real soon."
The second replies, "Sure Mommy, what ever you want."
The day of the program the first child appears, with one of the grandchildren, to go with her to the program. The second child never arrives.

The story Jesus tells is of a man who had two sons who asked them to go work in his vineyard.
The second one said: "Yes. Oh, certainly. No problem," but he never went to do any work at all. The first one said, simply and curtly, "No, thank you. No time. I am not in the mood." But afterwards he thought to himself, "Shouldn't I go?" and he went.

John J. Pilch reports that when this story was shared with a group of Middle Eastern villagers and they were asked, "Which was the better son?" the vast majority answered that the son who said yes to his father even though he did not go to work in the vineyard was without doubt the better son. The son's reply was honorable and respectful. It was what the father wanted to hear. That he never went to work in the vineyard is beside the point, which in the Middle East is always honor. You see if honor is a core value of such a culture, and the dialogue between the father and his sons takes place not in private, but rather in public, within view and earshot of many villagers, then Middle Eastern villagers, ancient and modern-day descendants will favor the respectful but disobedient son over the disrespectful but obedient son. Honor is a public claim to worth. The father gives a very public command to two sons. His claim to honor is that the sons will respond with respect. The public watches the responses. One son responds honorably, and in the judgment of the crowd the father's claim is valid and affirmed. The other son responds shamefully, he publicly humiliates his father, and the crowd's immediate judgment would deny the father's claim to honor in this instance.
Jesus, however, did not ask which son behaved honorably. He asked "Which of the two did the will of his father?"

Jesus addressed this parable to the chief priests and elders who approached him while he taught in the Temple and asked for his credentials: "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?" "We, the legitimate Temple authorities, didn't commission or license you." They challenge Jesus' honor. Who was he to welcome the prostitutes and tax collectors, and sinners of all sorts--those who had said "no" to the commandments while they, the "righteous" had been hymn singing all their lives.

So Jesus tells this story. They had to be stung by this. They were the 'Yes' men, he told them, who said all the right things, believed all the right things, stood for all the right things, but who would not do the right things God asked them to. Is this just one more story and lesson about hypocrisy? The way people, particularly religious people, say one thing and do another?? You know the charge: promising to love each other while we are in church on Sunday and finding a dozen ways to slander, cheat, or just plain ignore each other on Monday. But I imagine most of us can dodge the charge of deliberate religious fakery just to gain advantage.

I was struck by a description of the more subtle divide between what we say and what we do. Let me quote it to you: "I do not know how it starts. Maybe we have such good imaginations that we actually believe we have done things we have really only thought about doing. Never mind God for a minute. Consider everyday life. Have you ever thought about visiting a sick friend, rehearsed what you wanted to say, decided on a card instead, thought about what a nice gesture that would be, congratulated yourself on your thoughtfulness, and let it go at that? I hope I am not the only one here who has done that. I have even had a hard time later remembering whether I ever sent the card or not. I believe in doing things like that. I even believe I am the kind of person who does things like that, but sometimes I do not do them. I just roll the ideas around in my mind until I have sucked all the sweetness out of them and then I swallow them." (Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Yes and No Brothers”)
Do you remember the song that Eliza Doolittle sings to Freddy in My Fair Lady?
Words! Words! Words! I'm so sick of words!
I get words all day through; First from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do?
Don't talk of stars burning above;
If you're in love, Show me!
Tell me no dreams filled with desire.
If you're on fire,
Show me!
We usually think of words as positive and actions negating the words. I believe it is possible to be put off by words (the no of the first son) and miss the good actions. We who are on the liberal wing of the Christian faith wince at many of the statements of the conservatives and fundamentalists and risk missing behavior of goodness. My first philosophy professor, in a Southern Baptist school once said that he thought Baptists should preach what they practiced. Did you get that reversal? They should preach what they practice. He had heard the preaching, and read the literature, that denounced, condemned, and excluded. But he had seen the people in the churches in Oklahoma who were loving, accepting, supportive, forgiving and inclusive–genuinely Christian. Their actions were better than their words.

Not only do actions speak louder than words. (A truism we are so familiar with that it is difficult to be confronted anew with it.) But sometimes actions replace words as in the case with the first son in the parable.
In academic circles and academic writing rigorous skepticism is a prevailing professional attitude. ( I have a sign on my office door that reads "All answers questioned.") The risk is that skepticism will slip into cynicism. In an Op Ed piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently Roland Merullo, a writing teacher at Amherst College pointed out this "idolatry of cynicism" which led many of his academic friends to think that belief in the existence of inherent decency, nobility, and hope was just a delusion reserved for the uneducated or the naive. Then 9/11 happened and it was obvious that firefighters, police, some survivors in the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, some passengers and crew members aboard the hijacked plane that went down in Shanksville, Pa.--in the hour of terror, those men and women located themselves clearly in the territory of bravery and goodness.
"In our smartest circles," he writes, "we fancied ourselves beyond goodness, above the idea of it. And so, as it always does, life reminded us what true evil looks like, so that we might have some clearer standard by which to measure ourselves. So that we might understand all over again that goodness is always imperfect, always subject to exaggeration and abuse, but nevertheless real."
Actions not words made goodness and heroism real to us.
How about us? Do we act on what we say we believe and hold dear? One author suggests that we look in a mirror and see what is moving--our mouth or our feet.
In Isak Dinesen’s book Out of Africa she tells the story of a young boy named Kitau who appeared at her door in Nairobi one day to ask if he might work for her. She said yes and he turned out to be a fine servant, but after just three months he came to her again to ask her for a recommendation to Sheik Ali bin Salim. Upset at the thought of losing him, she offered to raise his pay, but he was firm about leaving.
He explained that he was trying to decide what religion to join. So his whole purpose in coming to live with her had been to see the ways and habits of Christians up close. Next he would go live for three months with Sheik Ali to see how Muslims behaved.
"Good God, Kitau," she exclaimed, "you might have told me that when you came here."
What would our ways and habits reveal?
Amen

Joe Dunham

Copyright © 2002 by Joe Dunham. All rights reserved.

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