Persistence, Not Perfection

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
September 27, 2026
Proper 21, A
Ezekiel 18:1-4,25-32
Psalm 25:1-8
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-32

So, which is the one who was obedient, Jesus asked, the one who said, “Nah, I ain’t doing what you asked,” but then went and did it anyway, or the one said, “You bet, Sir, I’m happy to,” and then blew it off? Obviously the one who screwed up at first but then actually decided to do what he was asked, as opposed to the one who sounded all perfect, and nice, and wonderful but did nothing.

Obvious question on Jesus’ part, obvious question still today, how do we follow God? By saying the right things, by worshipping in a real pretty manner, but then kinda blowing off all of Jesus’ teachings the rest of the time? Or, what if we don’t worship all that well, or we don’t worship at all, or all of the other things that we are taught to do, but then we realize, “That’s actually a pretty good way of life, I think I’m going to follow that.” 

What if we end up turning away and going down a totally different path than what Jesus wants us to go down, but we realize that and turn back again and say, “You know what, I’m going to follow you now.”? Well, Jesus seems to be pretty darn happy about that, cause we don’t follow a faith of perfection. We follow a faith of second chances, and like, third, and fourth, and nineteenth chances.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ,” Paul wrote, looking at the idea of obedience, that Christ became obedient even to the point of death. Now, with that, I’ve heard, ever since I was a little kid, I’ve heard folks talk about if someone had a gun to your head and said, “Deny Jesus,” would you deny Jesus? That was our test of faith, right, if we could see ourselves staying true and saying, “No, I believe in Jesus, even if someone’s gonna shoot me,” well then I’m a faithful person. 

Lovely, but not likely. The biggest challenge to that idea is that is simply isn’t very likely for us, and on the other hand, if that unlikely event were to happen and you deny Jesus, you’re in really good company. That’s what Peter did when he had a proverbial gun to his head. He was probably going to be killed if he told people, “Oh yeah, I know Jesus” when Jesus was being arrested, and Peter denied him. Then, later he turned around again and followed, became the rock upon which Jesus founded his church. 

Peter said, “No, I will not go work in your vineyard,” and then he went and did it anyway. Peter’s faith, Peter’s following Jesus wasn’t perfect, but it was persistent, and he continued on with the second and third chances. 

We get to say “Yes” after we say “No”, because our is a faith of repentance when we mess up and striving again. To be fair, we’re expected to mess up. Otherwise, what’s the point of Jesus? God knows we’re going to mess up, so we’re not supposed to be perfect. We’re encouraged to try again, to turn around again when we realize we’ve been messing up. 

That’s what Jesus was talking about with the religious leaders when they were asking him, “Who the heck are you in here preaching and teaching? You’re not one of the religious leaders here. You’re some carpenter’s kid from that sparrow-fart town of Nazareth.” Jesus basically responded, “Well, is my teaching bad?”

So, Jesus asked them about John the Baptist because there was a challenge that they hadn’t been reaching the people that John was reaching. They hadn’t been reaching the people Jesus was reaching. They seemed to maybe be writing them off, instead of continuing to try to reach them. 

John came with this baptism of repentance, and the religious leaders weren’t having any of it, because it wasn’t part of their faith. It wasn’t part of their tradition. This was some new upstart thing, and they weren’t going to go and be baptized by this dude named John just because he said to do it. Who the heck was he?

What they saw, however, was people from all over coming to be baptized. What they saw was people from all over who wanted to draw near to God, who wanted to follow in God’s ways, and they were seeing this as an opportunity to turn around, to start over, and do that. 

So, what the religious leaders could have done was say, “Even though this is not a part of our religious tradition, it seems to be doing something good, so let’s see where this leads. Maybe let’s even go and, whatever, I’ll get baptized. That’ll be fine.

Instead, they wrote it off, they pushed it away, and they continued to push away, it seems, all the people who had gone for that way of repentance. So, in this way, they were leading some of the people, but they weren’t leading the people who weren’t perfect enough. They needed to be leading the people to this way of repentance, and say, “No, you’re not perfect. Yes, you’re screwing up, so let’s try again. Let’s see if we can turn things around again.”

That’s what John was doing. That’s what Jesus was doing, and that’s what the religious leaders seem not to have been doing. 

With our faith today, we sometimes may find that we are really excited about Jesus, sometimes even angrily excited about Jesus. We’ve heard people tell us and tell others all sorts of terrible things that are going to happen to us because we don’t believe in Jesus right. They do, but how are they living? Has love entered their hearts? What about encouragement, love, or sharing the Spirit, compassion, and sympathy? That’s what Paul named as the ways of the church when we follow Jesus. Encouragement, love, sharing the Spirit, compassion, and sympathy.

Anger, being really pissed off, putting people down: those aren’t in there. That’s not how we follow Jesus. Those are the things we repent from, and we get to because we’re not meant to be perfect, we’re meant to be persistent in our faith. 

So, Jesus’ example here of saying “No” and then saying “Yes”, that’s kinda our M.O. That’s just kinda how we work. We say “No” to Jesus a lot. When I was on the call with the guy with the customer service, and…this whole situation, and I wasn’t quite shouting, but I was close, and I was definitely cussing, that was me saying “No” to Jesus.

Saying “Yes” to Jesus is realizing I did wrong and I need to do better next time. Saying “No” to Jesus is when we are terrible to each other. Saying “Yes” to Jesus is when we go back to that person and try to fix it. We let that person know, “I was wrong.” That’s saying “Yes” to Jesus.

Saying yes to Jesus is when we’re here at worship, and when we claim to love him, and when we get excited in the Spirit and everything we have here, but then we can be like that second son who said, “You betcha, Dad, I’ll go help,” and then blew it off, when we leave these doors (or go into breakfast), and immediately start being jerkies to each other. 

Saying to doing “Yes” is hard. It’s not an easy thing to do, and so persistence means when we say no again, we end up saying yes again. We offer our apologies, we offer, “I did wrong; I messed up.”

Not perfection, but persistence in saying, “Yes.” That’s the way of Jesus. That’s the way of God throughout scripture, that Gods people try to follow in his ways, the ways of encouragement, they ways of love, the ways of sharing the Spirit, the ways of compassion and sympathy, of caring for one another. Then, turning around again when we screw up, over and over again, because God knows we will, and so we seek persistence, not perfection. 

Who Knew God Was So Snarky? (Compassion, rather than Contempt)

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
September 20, 2026
Proper 20, A
Jonah 3:10-4:11
Psalm 145:1-8
Matthew 20:1-16

Jonah had nothing but the utmost contempt for the people of Nineveh. They weren’t Jewish. They didn’t follow God’s laws. They seemed to be really rotten people. So, when Jonah was told by God to go and prophesy to the people of Nineveh to get them to repent, to change their ways, Jonah flat out said, “no.” 

That’s a pretty ballsy move. I mean, we all say “no” to God a lot, but we’re largely saying no to teachings from the words of scripture. We’re saying no to words that were spoken and written thousands of years ago. I’m not excusing that, but Jonah had God speaking directly to him, and he still said “no” because he had so much contempt for the people of Nineveh. He just wanted to God kill them, but he knew God was merciful, and he knew that if he prophesied to the people of Nineveh that they would repent and God wouldn’t kill them, so he just said no and went somewhere else to force God to kill the people of Nineveh. 

Jonah’s contempt. God’s compassion. 

Kill them all; I don’t like them. 

Eh, they’re human beings; let’s try to help them out.

Contempt. Compassion. 

Jonah’s not the only one to have contempt for others and say no to God. We all do. Bless those who curse you. Forgive your enemies. Love your enemies. I mean, Jesus said those things, sure, but he probably didn’t really mean it all the time. Maybe the writers just got it wrong. Maybe I’ll just wait to forgive them till God sends them to hell. 

In all these and countless other ways, we are all like Jonah, with contempt for others, running away from what God told us because we’d really rather have God just punish those people. 

The thing is, God still might, and he taught us to forgive. Bless, forgive, and pray for your enemies, and it will be like pouring burning coals upon their heads. Ok, this I can get behind. Follow God’s command for forgiveness and still they get bushwhacked. 

Yeah, that’s not quite the heart God calls us to have either. Rather, God calls us to have a heart that cares for and even breaks for our enemies.

God taught Jonah this lesson with the tree God made to give Jonah some shade and then killed the next day. Jonah was so upset about the tree, and God understood, “Dude, I get it man. You’re so sad about the tree that you didn’t make and didn’t love that just gave you a little shade, so maybe you get that I’d be sad about the destruction of a whole city of people whom I did make and do love? You get that, Jonah, you little dufus?”

Who knew God was so snarky, right? 

Hey Jonah, try to get your heart to break for the people of Nineveh just like it did for that tree. The healing nature of compassion, rather than the destructive nature of contempt.

We see this same lesson of contempt over compassion in the story Jesus told of the laborers in the vineyard. See, the laborers who worked all day had contempt on those who only worked a few hours and got paid the same. Never mind that what they got paid wasn’t getting any of them rich. They were getting paid what they needed to survive, not minimum wage, which is crap, but a living wage. They had what they needed.

So, they laborers who worked all day knew that if the ones who only worked a couple hours only got paid for a couple hours work, they wouldn’t have enough to live on. If they had only been paid for a couple hours work, they would eventually starve, and the laborers who worked all day seemed ok with that. Once they knew they were getting paid the same, they had contempt on the laborers who were only able to work a few hours. 

“Who cares if they’re gonna die? They don’t deserve what I got.” That’s the destructive nature of contempt. They had contempt for the other laborers; they had contempt for the landowner, just like Jonah had contempt for the people of Nineveh and for God. The laborers didn’t make the vineyard, they didn’t own the land, and yet they were contemptuous of the landowner for his generosity. “I don’t want you to be generous or have compassion. I want those other workers to die rather than get the same as I have.”

The destruction of contempt, rather than the healing of compassion.

Imagine if these laborers knew they were all going to get paid a full day’s wage working for this guy. Contempt would have made them all say, “No one get there to the end of the day and he’ll still pay us all for a full day.” I bet the landowner would have caught wise on that one, but what if the workers had said, “Ok, we’re all going to get paid a full day’s wage, so how about we rotate? Some of us work a full day one week, then others work the full day the next week.”

See, if they had compassion on one another and cared about each other’s’ wellbeing, not just their own, they could have worked together so everyone could have done well. 

Compassion, rather than contempt.

Now, looking at Jesus’ parable, the landowner having compassion, making sure all the workers had enough, rather than the bare minimum not to actually get by, I wish I was preaching this to billionaires and CEOs. However, the lesson of compassion, rather than contempt, is still a lesson for all of us, and like with Jonah and the laborers who worked all day, compassion rather than contempt is not easy lesson to learn. 

I mean, it sounds great and all, and I figure most of us want to live with compassion, but I can think of 4 times in the last week alone that I’ve felt and acted contemptuously toward someone, and that’s just the real people that I interacted with. If we include billionaires and politicians and what not, my contempt is up to like 17 times a day, or an hour? In two of the real life cases, I was able check back with the person, make amends, and tell them I was wrong. Two of the cases, I may not ever be able to. 

In each of these, I will say that I did move from contempt towards compassion. That’s a step in the right direction. We’re not gonna get it right all the time. That’s why God sometimes sends a whale, like he did with Jonah, to swallow us up and take us where he wants us to go when we’ve just told God no to his face. 

“Remember compassion,” God says.

“Yeah, no. I want to hurt this guy.” Sometimes we need a pretty swift reminder. So, remember this: God is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love for all of humanity. We are made in God’s image, so being full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, that is the core of who we are. 

Showing compassion is how God made us to be, and can be one of the hardest things we do. Showing compassion is also one of the strongest things we do. The anger and contempt we have for others feels like strength, but it’s really just our weakness and fear having a temper tantrum. Real strength comes from showing compassion, being slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. 

That takes practice, too, and prayer, like much of anything worth doing, but we’re not practicing something outside ourselves or beyond ourselves. Practicing compassion and mercy is practicing at being our true selves. Practicing being slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love is practicing being our true selves. 

Contempt is when we’re getting outside of ourselves and letting fear dominate. Compassion is a return home, and so, whenever we feel contempt, that’s when Jesus is calling us. “Come home.” Set aside the anger, set aside the fear and contempt, and come home to compassion, mercy, and steadfast love.