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.
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