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Freakonomics was a fun book from the early 2000s that sought to point out that the causes behind certain effects in this world are not always what they seem. In the final chapter, they talk about names, particularly how names go in and out of prevalence from one generation to another.
One of the stories in that final chapter discusses the names of two brothers, one named Winner and the other named Loser. Once you get past the horror of parents who would even do that, you might think you know where this story is going to go.
Turns out, the names of these two boys didn’t quite have the expected effect. Winner ended up in jail after a lifetime of crime. His brother Loser, who goes by Lou now, became a cop. In other words, Loser was actually pretty successful by society’s standards while Winner was not.
Now last week we had the theme of complaining, and in a sense we continue that today, especially with Exodus, were we see the Israelites once again complaining against God and God once again providing what they needed. More particularly, the theme of our readings this Sunday is about obedience, specifically the consequences of our lack of obedience to God.
Yet who is obedient to the Lord? It’s not always who you think it is. This is the reason I share the story of Loser and Winner. We might think Winner would have gone on to do well and Loser might have lived up to the horror of his name. That did not happen. In fact, their fates were, in a way, reversed.
We cannot expect to know who is really following the Lord from the surface of things. Those who seem like they would follow God’s will often aren’t while those who seem like a disgrace to God are really the ones who, in the end, are the Lord’s greatest servants.
That’s really what our Gospel is demonstrating to us today. The son who does God’s will isn’t the one who says he will go work the vineyard and then doesn’t. It’s actually the rebellious one who at first says “no” and then later changes his mind.
What Jesus is saying with this parable reflects what we see with the chief priests and the elders. On the surface, these are the ones who God favors. They are the upright, upstanding members of society and religious life. They are the “winners”. Of course we might think that God would love them. Yet when they have God standing right there expounding His wisdom to them, they refuse to listen. Keep in mind, this reading is shortly after Jesus chased the money lenders and sellers from the Temple. Continuing shortly after this passage, these same chief priests and elders will orchestrate Jesus’ death on the Cross.
Then you have the “losers” of society, those everyone else hates. These are the tax collectors and prostitutes. These are the people living in sin and in the case of the tax collectors, living off the gains of everyone around them with the protection of the Roman law to do it.
Yet these are the ones who flock to Jesus. These are the ones who realize that they need to change and that they need Jesus’ help to do it. These are the ones who know their status and seek out God to change that.
Ultimately it is the tax collectors and prostitutes who do God’s will. Even though they first said “no”, they now say “yes”, realizing their initial response was a grave mistake.
Coming to Jesus is realizing the Truth Paul speaks to the Philippians. It is realizing the gift God has given us in Christ Jesus. It is, in Paul’s words, realizing that for our sakes Jesus humbled Himself, becoming like us and dying for us so that we might live and do God’s will by exalting His Name, the Name of the One who sacrificed His life for us, even though with all our complaining we do not deserve it.
The Philippians are living into the obedience of God’s will, just as the tax collectors and prostitutes did in Jesus’ time on earth. They do so through humility, as Paul tells them. They are humble because they realize how much God has given them through Jesus, and in doing so they follow the example of Jesus’ own humility.
We are called to be humble too. It is not our reputation and outside appearance that will save us. It is by realizing our own rebelliousness and complaint, the same we’ve seen in the Israelites the past two weeks in their march from Egypt. It is by knowing how much we need our Lord Jesus, and our willingness to turn back to Him. Don’t be caught up in pride in the false image that you are an upright person of God. Realize that answering “yes” to God’s will means knowing just how many times we have said “no”, and be humble in recognizing that we need God’s help to even be able to say that “yes”.