After Pentecost Devotional - Day 40

“'Which one of the sons obeyed his father?' 'The older one,' the chief priests and leaders answered. Then Jesus told them: 'You can be sure that tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you ever will!'” Matthew 21:31

We are quick to make comparisons with one another. We are quick to judge and misjudge people, determining who is worthy and unworthy, who is right and wrong, who has value and who does not. The problem is that all too often our definitions are completely out of sorts. We miss the greater perspective regarding a whole host of internal issues that are not visible to our prejudices.

In Jesus' parable, we find two sons who hear their father asking them to work in the field. One says “Yes,” while the other says, “No.” In the final analysis, however, neither followed through on their words. The expectations of those words did not match the reality. The verbal claims or protests lay empty because their actions did not match them.

The distinction Jesus seems to be making was that the religious often claim to belong to God, while those who are more aware of their failures must cling to grace alone. As grace is the path Jesus taught us to travel to God, that is more effective than a dependence upon religious traditions or mouthing the correct words. Jesus was looking for something more than verbal pronouncements and ritualized actions. He was calling for a renewed understanding of what God desired of us.

While the religious elite proclaimed their status before God, there were whole classes of people they kept at arm's length. These did not fit their established molds of acceptability. They were undesired by the elite and relegated to a lesser status by that society. At the same time, Jesus claimed that many of those same excluded people were in appropriate relationship with God. Many were closer to God than those celebrating their religious credentials.

It is all too easy to decry categories of people as unworthy of God. Realistically, we are all unworthy of God. When grace enters the picture, however, those definitions fall by the wayside. The good news is not about being worthy. The good news is about grace, a grace that transforms us into the very people God wants us to become. It is this grace that takes sinners and places them ahead of those we cast as religious.

Like the older brother, all too often those things that would commend us in terms of status, position, and importance are the very things that keep us from becoming the people of God. We allow our religiosity to interfere with actually living as God would have us live. We allow it to keep us at arm's length from those we should be influencing for God. We allow it to maintain too much distance from those we should be loving into God's reign.

When we become too enamored of status and reputation, we forget the purpose for which we are called. As Jesus, we are to be on the margins of society, reaching those in the greatest need of grace and teaching those within to break outside their comfort zones. God's reign is not about keeping us clean and safe. It is about taking grace to those who are in need.

Do your attitudes reflect the elder or younger brother most? Be an agent of grace.


"Lord, help me associate and understand the needy around me to minister your gospel."


—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
My latest books can be found here on amazon

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