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Some say the four hardest words in the English language for many of us to say are, “What is your opinion?” (The six hardest, the same people say, are “I think I made a mistake.”)
In a sense, today, our church is labouring over the same four words as we try to respond to the Holy Father’s call for a more ‘synodal’ church, asking of all God’s people, “What is your opinion?” A renewed understanding of our communion with each other, our participation in the church and the nature of our mission into the era ahead is being sought, from the people of God in the Diocese of Sale. We can expect the deliberations on the Synod on Synodality, beginning in Rome this weekend, will help our efforts.
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And in this weekend’s gospel, we have Jesus posing those four hard words to the chief priests and elders. He wants to know, not just what the leaders of the temple thought, but what you and I think, today. It’s not enough to say “Lord, Lord”, he expected people to act accordingly.
So, what’s your opinion? What do you think of this story that he proceeds to tell about the two sons who are sent out to work in a vineyard?
I was thinking: perhaps you and I are a mixture of both of these sons. At times we’re people who say the right things, follow the rules, believe in God and belong in the church. We try to be good citizens, good family members, good disciples of Jesus. We can say “Lord, Lord” but our religious commitment might remain only words.
Sometimes, we’re can be slow to do what we know to be the right thing. We’re the “I will not go” son in the Gospel who “afterwards changed his mind and went.” At other times we can find ourselves doing things that are out of sync with what we believe. More like the “Certainly, sir” son in today’s Gospel who then “did not go”.
So, we’re a mix. Sometimes saying one thing and doing another. Other times, we refuse to do the right thing, but then repent, make amends, seek forgiveness.
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Where we can stumble is in not identifying with the people that Jesus often claims will be first in the kingdom of God — the people in his time considered unclean; the people who should be avoided at all costs, ignored, shut out from the temple, viewed as impure, unclean, unwanted, unwelcome. We can treat them as though they are unwelcome among us: the homeless, the mentally ill, the imprisoned, the refugees, the addicted, people on the peripheries. And yet, these are precisely the ones Jesus embraced; the ones he allowed to wash his feet with their tears and dry them with their hair; the ones he told us would be first in the kingdom of God.
Jesus cared about the powerless, “emptied” people. Their lives must have been hard, yet what they had in their lives is the very thing Jesus is most looking for — room for God. They have the space for the Spirit to operate, where real transformation can happen.
I wonder if St Paul is on the money for us today, as we consider our way of being in the world: “Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus ... who ... emptied himself, taking the condition of a slave.”
What is your opinion?
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