Do you remember Eddie Haskell? For those of you who don’t, he was a character in “Leave it to Beaver,” a popular T.V. show when I was a kid back in the Middle Ages! Eddie was the one who always told the adults what he thought they wanted to hear, in the most saccharine way possible, promising always to be the model boy. Then, as soon as he thought the adults were out of earshot, he would plot to do whatever it was he had promised not to do. His pranks were usually rather harmless, but they always ended up getting Wally and the Beaver into trouble.
Eddie Haskell is the perfect example of hypocrisy—saying one thing and doing another. Of all of the vices of humanity, Jesus comes down the hardest on hypocrisy. Jesus has entered Jerusalem to the shouts of Hosanna and the waving of palms by the crowd. He has cleansed the temple, driving out everyone who sold and bought in the temple, overturning the tables of the moneychangers. And just before he told the parable of the two sons, the chief priests and the elders of the people had approached him and challenged him, saying “By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you that authority?”
Jesus answered by asking them a question, saying that if they answer him, he will answer them. “The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven or from men?” Now remember, these people had not supported John the Baptist and he had actually been beheaded by this time. They realized that if they answered that John’s authority was from God, Jesus would ask, “Then why did you not believe him?” And if they answered his authority was from men, they would lose credibility with the people, who thought that John was a prophet. Jesus had them in a corner, and they knew it, so they answered, ‘We do not know.’ And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” Then he told them the parable we heard this morning, the parable of the two sons.
The father asks one of his sons to work in the vineyard. The son refuses but afterward repents and works in the vineyard. The father then asks the other son to work in the vineyard. By the way, Jesus doesn’t name the sons, but we could call this particular son Eddie Haskell! Eddie, being very mannerly, says, “I go, sir,” and then doesn’t go. As in many of Jesus’ parables, the father stands for God and the vineyard is the nation of Israel. The son who refuses and then works stands for sinners, namely tax collectors and harlots. The son who says he will work and doesn’t stands for the religious people, the Pharisees, the chief priests, and the elders. The point of the parable is that it is not enough simply to say you believe in God and accept Christ as your Lord and Savior; you must then live out that faith in the way you do business daily, the way you treat your wife or husband or children, what you do with your money, and so on. It is much more important to live the faith than simply to give lip service with no action.
This parable is one of those parts of Jesus’ teaching that points so directly to faithful churchgoers that it ought to make us squirm a little bit. You see, we want a Savior, but we really don’t want a Lord. We want what Jesus has to offer us, and we want it when we want it and on our own terms. But we don’t want him to be intimately involved in every part of our lives. We like our lifestyles, and we realize that some parts of our lifestyles do not really square with our profession of faith. It might be enjoying tearing down other’s reputations with our gossip, or it might have to do with our sexual behavior, or with our use of money, or with that grudge we won’t let go of. For each of us it is a different thing, but for all of us, it amounts to the same thing. I want Jesus as my Savior, but not as my Lord.
Gallop did a survey of evangelical Christians that indicates that evangelicals basically don’t allow their religion to get in the way of their living life as they want to live it. This is what they found: “Born again Christians divorce at about the same rate as everyone else. Self-centered materialism is seducing evangelicals and rapidly destroying their earlier, slightly more generous giving. Only six per cent of them tithe. Born-again Christians justify and engage in sexual promiscuity (both pre-marital sex and adultery) at astonishing rates. Racism and perhaps physical abuse of wives seems to be worse in evangelical circles than elsewhere. Christianity Today, which reported these findings a few years ago, then states, “This is scandalous behavior for people who claim to be born again by the Holy Spirit and to enjoy the very presence of the risen Lord in their lives.” Lest we be too hard on the evangelicals, I suspect what they report is basically true of Christians generally in this country.
It is interesting that so far in our prayers and scripture readings today we haven’t used the word Savior one time, but the word Lord, in reference to God the Father or God the Son, has been used no less than twelve times already. And today we heard one of the strongest references in scripture to the Lordship of Christ, that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” In the rest of the liturgy that is still to come we will refer to God as Lord no less than 16 times (22 times in Rite I). The word Savior will be used only twice. And the Lord’s Prayer, which many of us pray at least once every day, refers to this aspect of our faith in the phrase: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
It is so easy to say, “Thy will be done.” It is so easy to say that the goal of our life is to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as our self. The word Lord rolls off of our tongues as easily as a hot knife cuts through butter. What is difficult is putting our actions behind our words—forgiving someone when we would really prefer to get even, recognizing when we need to ask for forgiveness when we would rather let the matter slide, giving more of our time and resources to helping others rather than gratifying our own desires.
There could have been a third brother in the parable—the brother who realized that as the father’s son the work of the vineyard was his to do, and so he did it without even being asked. Which of the brothers are you? Is Jesus truly both Savior and Lord of your life?