Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses the story of two brothers to condemn the chief priests and elders for professing to be children of the covenant, but not proving that they are by their actions.

As Christians, we too are convicted by this Gospel because there can often be a disconnect between the faith and hope we profess in Christ Jesus and the way we live our lives.

Brothers and sisters, too often we confuse ourselves about the meaning of true human freedom and, like the first son in the Gospel, we simply choose to say “No” to the Lord’s invitation. We falsely imagine that what the Lord asks of us is too onerous or too restrictive of our freedom. We falsely imagine that we know better – that what God asks of us is less likely to bring about the happiness we long for in our lives. Like the people that Ezekiel mentions in our first reading, we complain that the Lord’s way is not fair, and so we set off on our own self-determined path to do as we see fit.

At other times, like the second son in today’s Gospel, we can at least bring ourselves to speak a word of “Yes” – with good intentions, we make a choice to do what the Lord has asked of us – but then because of our weakness, we become lukewarm in our commitment. We fail to live out our “Yes” because ego creeps back in, and we never actually do submit ourselves to the demands of the Lord’s work.

Friends, our Gospel story today does not speak of a third son who both says, “Yes, I will go” and then actually “does the work that has been given to him.” But in our second reading, St. Paul describes just such a Son. Jesus is described as the Son who is not afraid to let go of His exalted position, to relinquish His control, His power, His very self in order to do what His Father asks of Him.

St. Paul repeats what is almost certainly an even more ancient Christian text, a crucially important hymn about Jesus, which says: “Though He was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God as something to be grasped at. Rather He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave … He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross.”

And lest we think, as we often do, that so submitting to the will of God will lead only to our suffering and loss, St. Paul makes perfectly clear … “BECAUSE OF THIS God highly exalted Him and gave Him a name above all names, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim to the glory of God the Father that Jesus Christ is Lord!”

It is precisely in emptying Himself that Jesus receives the glory that He is due as Lord of all. So too, it is precisely in emptying ourselves, in answering God’s invitation, and in fulfilling what the Lord asks of our lives that we find the fulfillment and joy we had been seeking all along.

And so, St. Paul pleads with all of us at the beginning of the reading we just heard: if there is to be any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any hope in faith, then be of the same mind, united in heart … “and do nothing out of selfishness or vainglory. Rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves . . .”

Friends, when Jesus offers this parable to the chief priests and the elders, he tells them that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of Heaven before them. It was an intentionally provocative statement. Tax collectors and prostitutes were the most notorious and despised of public sinners – to say that they were entering heaven before the religiously clean leaders of Israel was unthinkable.

But Jesus’ statement was not merely a provocative turn of phrase. It was also an insight into a spiritual truth that we have seen played out in our lives, in the lives of people who know, and even in the lives of the saints. Why were the prostitutes and tax collectors entering heaven before the elders and scribes? Because they had already hit rock bottom! The search for happiness in money and pleasure had already proven itself fruitless for them. They knew, all to well, the emptiness of the illusion that they could achieve any happiness, any salvation by their own merits. Life had already emptied them of any ego that remained – they realized that they were powerless to change their own lives – and so they were finally ready to yield, to give their lives over to God. They accepted the repentance of John’s baptism, and the salvation it foretold.

 The elders and scribes, however, still imagined that they could achieve happiness in this life, and salvation in the next, by their own merit and achievement. Life had not yet emptied them in the same way, and they had refused to empty themselves, and so there was no room, no place left for Christ to enter into their lives. 

Some of us have experienced for ourselves, or through loved ones, the self-emptying that occurs when our lives hit rock bottom. It’s the very premise of the twelve-step program first utilized as part of Alcoholics Anonymous. The first three steps as defined by A.A. are: “We admitted we were powerless; We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us; We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.” This is wisdom rooted squarely in the spiritual lesson of today’s Gospel.

We can see it also in the lives of the saints. Saint Augustine and Saint Ignatius of Loyola famously spent their youths searching for answers to life’s central questions – indeed searching for themselves – in all the wrong places. Only when the faced their darkest hours of doubt and despair were they finally able to give themselves over to God.

But friends, the good news implied in today’s Gospel is that we don’t have to wait for the same to happen to us to give our lives over to God. Jesus says to the elders and the priests: “Even when you saw” tax collectors and prostitutes believing in John the Baptist, “you did not later change your minds and believe in him.”

In other words, we can take as a lesson for our own lives, the hard lessons others have learned. We can recognize, as the priests and elders failed to – but as the conversion of tax collectors and prostitutes was meant to prove – that the search for happiness in money and pleasure, the self-centered pursuit of happiness will be as fruitless for us as it was for them.

Instead, we can – as St. Paul urges us – follow the example of Christ. We can have in us the same mind and heart. We can be emptied of ego, and entirely reliant on God. And if we follow Jesus Christ in His self-emptying, in His fulfillment of the Father’s will, we can be sure too that we will reign with Him as well.