27 th September: 17 th Sunday after Pentecost

#1 Mismatched aspirations

Frank Worrell was the first non-white full-time captain of the West Indies cricket team. During the 1963 tour of England a deputation of players approached him. Why was Garry Sobers allowed to stay up late when the rest of the team had to observe a 10 p.m. curfew? Worrell replied ‘Ok, you give me five wickets, take two brilliant catches at short leg and score a century, and I’ll let you go out as long as you want to.’ ² The truth was that Sobers had problems with sleeping and the curfew was counterproductive for him. The encounter reveals a fundamental difference in aspirations. Frank Worrell had vision and determination that West Indies cricketing success would undermine the legacy of racial prejudice. The players’ deputation just wanted to stay up late.

#2 Testing and quarrelling

Moses was driven by a God-given vision of releasing his people from slavery and leading them to the promised land. In Exodus 17:1–7, the people themselves could see no further than the water supplies for the end of the day. They were making their way through the wilderness in stages. They camped at Rephidim, but it was a dry staging post. The people quarrelled with Moses, demanding water. When Moses argued back, their angry reaction was: ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?’ From a relatively small beginning the argument had already spiralled. Moses, exasperated, asked the Lord what he should do with this people, then added some hyperbole of his own: ‘They are almost ready to stone me.’ Monty Python illustrated how an almighty quarrel can arise from small beginnings in the famous sketch which opened: ‘Is this the right room for an argument?’ ‘I’ve told you once. . .’

Exodus 17:1–7 is so dominated by the heated argument that its narrative of the miracle of water from the rock is subdued. It is left to the psalmist, later, to celebrate water streaming from the rock, and drinking with abundance (Psalm 78:15–16). The writer of Exodus includes no description at all and ends the account with the naming of the place ‘Massah and Meribah’, meaning testing and quarrelling (or challenge and strife). Water, which was the whole point of the argument, seems to have been forgotten by the end. Only the sour taste of the quarrelling remained, the place names a lasting reminder of the damage done by a bitter argument.

#3 Too much water

Whenever it rains in our village a huge puddle forms, covering the road and several front gardens. For several years, engineers have been tackling the problem but to no avail. A local man, Richard, has approached them more than once to explain the cause: a blockage in the downstream drainage pipe where it diverts under an oak hedge. We can imagine the engineers, with their qualifications and hand-held computers, ignoring Richard’s challenge, politely or otherwise. But now they have finally got to the bottom of the problem. This summer the downstream drainage pipes are being replaced and rerouted away from the oak hedge. Richard was right. His knowledge, passed down by word of mouth, derived from when the pipes were laid, long before formal records.

#4 Challenge and strife

In Matthew 21.23–32 a deputation of chief priests and elders interrupted our Lord’s teaching in the temple. In their challenge we see mismatched aspirations, bitterness and a failure to recognise deeper wisdom in their midst. ‘By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?’ The words shout from the page. Jesus answered them with the wiliness of a politician. His own question about the authority of John the Baptist exposed the limitations of the control they treasured. For them to recognise John’s authority now would be a humbling admission of their failure to believe his divine vocation. To deny John’s authority would bring the anger of the crowd on their heads. ‘We do not know’ was the only way out and a humiliating climb-down that would be paid for in blood at Golgotha. In Matthew’s Gospel this is the first in a series of clashes with the leaders in the last week of our Lord’s life, forming an intrinsic part of the passion narrative. The strain of these confrontations is no small part of the suffering that Jesus bore for us.

#5 Free at last

Our final challenging encounter is in the parable (Matthew 21.28–29) that flows from our Lord’s conflict with the authorities. A father approaches his two sons to ask them to work in the vineyard. One says ‘Yes’ but fails to turn up. The other says ‘No’ but changes his mind and there he is, striding along the road to work. In that about turn, he takes us one huge step away from the bitter world of challenge and strife and into the world of second thoughts, or repentance. This is the path that leads from narrow aspirations to expansive vision, from slavery to freedom, from dry thirst to refreshing water. This is the ‘way of righteousness’ (Matthew 21:32) that leads from death to life. It is signposted ‘repentance and grace’.

We may caricature and criticise the protagonists in today’s readings: the people of Israel grumbling in the desert; the sinister chief priest and elders playing power games. Doing so, we risk failing to recognise the shallowness of our own aspirations, our awkwardness, our clinging to control of our own lives. Often unspoken and hardly noticed, these are our internal challenges to God’s will and call upon our lives. The parable of the two sons causes us to stop and check. Have we said ‘yes’ to God but failed to turn up? Probably. Through the story, Jesus gives us a prompt to recognise our deficiencies, have second thoughts, and turn again.

In explaining the parable (Matthew 21.31–32), Jesus made it plain that our companions on the way of righteousness are second thought people. It is tax collectors and prostitutes who are leading the procession towards the kingdom of God. Their qualification and impetus? That they had changed their minds and believed.