Today our Gospel lesson addresses authority.  By what authority? By whose authority was Jesus teaching?  Now I know this is a topic that normally would go over like a lead balloon at a church like Emmanuel.  But before you get too worried, let me tell you that authority (exousía) – can also be accurately translated liberty, ability, or power.  Who gave Jesus the freedom or the ability to teach what he was teaching?  Doesn’t that sound like a good question to be asking? And we have a question from Exodus that is as alive today at Emmanuel Church as it was for the ancient Hebrew people – “is the Lord among us or not?”  You know, Emmanuel is the Hebrew word for God with us.  So the question in Exodus is Emmanuel or not?

     If you heard today’s passage with the whole Gospel story preceding it, you would have fresh in your minds just how strongly aligned John and Jesus are in Matthew. Matthew’s is not the sweet story of a cousin leaping in his mother’s womb – that’s Luke’s story.  In Matthew there’s no mention of family ties between John and Jesus – rather the ties are political and economic and religious.  John the Baptizer “appears,” calling out “change your mind – change your ways because God’s realm is closing in.”  To the religious leaders, John is even more clear.  He challenges them to “start producing fruit suitable for a change of heart.”  And then he adds “don’t even think of resting on your ancestry, what fruit are YOU producing?”

      In Matthew’s story, Jesus comes to a very surprised John to get baptized.  John says, “you’re coming to ME to get baptized?  I’m the one who needs to get baptized by YOU!”  Matthew’s narrative moves rather quickly through Jesus’ baptism and temptation in the desert so that the hearers don’t miss this:  when Jesus heard that John had been locked up, Jesus began his ministry calling out the exact thing, word for word, that John had been calling out: “change your mind -- change your ways because God’s realm is closing in.”  So that’s the reference in today’s Gospel reading.  That’s what has been seen and not believed – that God’s realm is very near.

      So in today’s passage, Jesus says, “What do you think?  …Even after you saw [baptizing], you did not change your minds and believe…”  And I wonder who among us has seen baptism and still not believed it?  Some of us saw a baptism just a couple of weeks ago.  What does it mean to believe it?  One of my seminary professors used to love to say “I believe in baptism, heck I’ve seen it!”  But you know, even I don’t always behave as if I believe it even when I’ve seen it.

      In our Gospel passage for today, Jesus is in Jerusalem, talking to people in the temple.  He says “What do you think?  A father has two children.  To the first, he says, ‘I need you to go work in the vineyard’ and the first one says ‘I don’t want to’ but later thinks better of it and goes to work.  To the other he says ‘I need you to go work in the vineyard’ and the other child says ‘I will’ but doesn’t move.”  Jesus asks which of the two did what the father wanted.  His audience is smart and faithful.  We too know the answer to this question.  The first one.  We know what it’s like to not want to but then to think again and go do the work that needs to be done.  We want that to embody the right answer.  And we also know what it’s like to say yes to something and then not do it.  (Well I know what that’s like anyway.)

      But notice this.  Jesus doesn’t confirm their answer.  He doesn’t say, “right, smart and faithful people.”  Jesus doesn’t actually say what the father’s will was or which child did it.  Actually, both children shamed and saddened their father – the first by refusing even though he later went, and the second by agreeing and not going.  Notice Jesus shaking his head sadly and saying “you know, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the realm of God ahead of you.”  Ouch.  There probably weren’t any folks more despised and degraded in Jesus’ time than tax collectors and prostitutes.  Tax collectors were considered thieves and traitors.  In Jesus’ time, they and their families were not permitted to hold communal office or to give testimony in a Jewish court1 – they forfeited their civil and religious rights to do their dirty work.  Prostitutes, I’d wager, haven’t changed a whole lot in the last 2000 years, nor has the society’s desire to punish the prostitutes rather than the clients.  I don’t think that Jesus is threatening when he says, “You know, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the realm of God ahead of you.”  I think Jesus is describing a certain reality with some sadness – with some regret.  What could that reality be?

      I wonder if Jesus is sad because Jesus is afraid that we who are smart and faithful (or not so smart but lucky) aren’t really interested in a realm where God’s generosity is without any measure, where God’s grace is scandalous, where the doorway into God’s realm is so wide open you can’t even see the sides.   I wonder if it’s not so much that God won’t let us into God’s realm  all at the same time – it’s that we really don’t want to be seen as equals with anyone who we believe unclean or sinful, or even with people with whom we vehemently disagree.  We don’t want to be equal in God’s eyes with thieves and whores.  We want God to see us as better than thieves and whores because that’s how we see ourselves.  If God doesn’t, we’re inclined to say, “well then forget about it, we’re not interested in God’s realm.”

      What Jesus wants is for us to change our hearts so that we say yes and do yes to God whose love is so big that the differences between us are barely perceptible.  Do you hear that?  God’s love is so big that the differences between us our terms of good and bad are infinitesimal by comparison and we waste precious time trying to measure those differences.   Jesus wants us to say yes and do yes to Love – capital L -- which creates, redeems, and sanctifies life.  That is God’s pleasure – the yes which creates, redeems, and sanctifies life.

      I don’t know how many of you know thieves and prostitutes.  (And I do not need to see a show of hands.)  But whenever I hear this passage of scripture, I cannot help thinking about the many thieves and prostitutes I have gotten to know over the last dozen years.  I probably know several hundred by name.  (You didn’t know that about me when you hired me, did you?) I meet them in prison.  I go there because it’s a tangible way to say yes to and do the Good News of Jesus Christ – it’s a way for me to believe in my baptism.  When I go to the Suffolk County House of Correction every Monday night, with a handful of volunteers, we are, by our presence, testifying to the creative, redemptive and sanctifying love of God.  What we find, is that love magnified many times in the women who are incarcerated.  As with all good mission work, we go to take the face of Christ into what seems like a godforsaken place, and when we arrive we meet the face of Christ in those we came to serve.  It happens every time.

      But what is it about thieves and prostitutes?  Perhaps they’re more able, more ready to recognize the face of God when they see it – perhaps they have the least to lose – perhaps they’re more able, more ready to rely on the grace of God than on themselves.  I don’t know -- but I see heaven in their eyes on a regular basis.  I want to know them so that maybe they’ll take my hand and lead me there.  They are going into the kingdom of heaven ahead of me every day.

      Who are the unlikeliest folks that you know that who might lead you to heaven?  Where are the thieves and prostitutes in your life, hungry for God’s love with little or nothing left to lose in terms of their own self-respect?  They’re certainly around – sometimes they’re even inside of us.  Get to know them – begin to love them – and I mean take the risk to respect their dignity – take the risk to respect the dignity of people you cannot stand and risk letting them love you back.

       In his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes, “If then, there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete.”   Paul pleads “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”  In other words, “Get yourself a new heart and a new spirit. Get yourself a new heart and a new spirit.”  It’s not too late.  “The great novelist E.L. Doctorow once said that writing a novel is like driving at night with the headlights on: You can only see a little ways in front of you, but you can make the whole journey this way. It is the truest of all things; the only way to write a book, raise a child, [it's the only way to] save the world.”2  We have the authority, the freedom, the ability, the power to say yes and do yes – yes Emmanuel -- so that we can experience God’s creative, redemptive, and sanctifying pleasure and we can spread it around and save the world.