Born There, Sent Today

Parable of two sons

²⁸ “What do you think? A man had two sons. Now he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’

²⁹ “ ‘No, I don’t want to,’ he replied. But later he changed his mind and went.

³⁰ “The father said the same thing to the other son, who replied, ‘Yes, sir.’ But he didn’t go.

³¹ “Which one of these two did his father’s will?”

They said, “The first one.”

Jesus said to them, “I assure you that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering God’s kingdom ahead of you. ³² For John came to you on the righteous road, and you didn’t believe him. But tax collectors and prostitutes believed him. Yet even after you saw this, you didn’t change your hearts and lives and you didn’t believe him.

— Matthew 21:28–32 (CEB)

Psalm 87 (NRSVue)

Of the Korahites. A Psalm. A Song.
1 On the holy mount stands the city he founded;
2 the Lord loves the gates of Zion
more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
3 Glorious things are spoken of you,
O city of God.   Selah
4 Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon;
Philistia, too, and Tyre, with Cush—
“This one was born there,” they say.
5 And of Zion it shall be said,
“This one and that one were born in it,”
for the Most High himself will establish it.
6 The Lord records, as he registers the peoples,
“This one was born there.”   Selah
7 Singers and dancers alike say,
“All my springs are in you.”

Friends in Christ, hear again the question Jesus asks: “Which one of these two did his father’s will?” It sounds simple, almost like a children’s riddle. We rush to answer. We point to the first son—the one who said no and later went to the vineyard. We want the story to close neatly, to give us a moral to take home. But Jesus’ question resists that closure. It slows us down. Both sons, after all, fall short: one is polite but passive, the other defiant but repentant. Neither lives in the faithfulness to which God’s people were called.

That is the sharp edge of Jesus’ words to the chief priests and elders. He stands in the temple courts, speaking to those entrusted with holiness, and he tells them that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom ahead of them. Not for lack of virtue, but because repentance is breaking out where polished religion has stiffened into disbelief. “John came to you on the righteous road,” Jesus says, “and you did not believe him. Even after you saw this, you did not change your hearts and lives.”

Here, at this moment of reversal, begins the faithful hearing of the Word.

Scripture is the record of God’s action—of the One who has already fulfilled the Father’s will. We, like the sons in the parable, hover between hesitant assent and hollow obedience. Yet Jesus Christ remains the true Son whose Yes never falters. In him, God has already spoken the great Yes to the world: a word that unmasks our self-assurance even as it rescues us from the abyss. Faith is the echo of that divine speech, and obedience is what that echo sounds like as it moves through time.

So the question returns to us this morning: Which one did the Father’s will? The question is a summons: the Son is speaking now. His voice gathers us into his obedience. Repentance is what happens when that living Word reaches the heart and turns it toward life. We have heard John’s call; we have seen others change; and still we do not move. Yet the Word speaks again, and again: Today is the day to go into the vineyard.

Psalm 87 widens the view. “Glorious things are said about you, the city of God.” The psalmist begins naming the nations once counted as enemies—Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Cush—and then, without warning, declares something unimaginable: “Each of these was born there.” The Lord keeps a record and writes their names in Zion’s book. Each one was born there. Here the speech of grace begins to sing: belonging is given, new birth is declared by God alone. The city’s foundation is not the vigilance of its gatekeepers but the love of the One who built its gates.

This is where the parable and the psalm meet—at the crossing place between God’s story and ours. The parable gives us two sons, one who said no and later went, one who said yes and never moved. The psalm gives us a city filled with people who never imagined they belonged there. Between them runs a single reality: God keeps reaching further than our maps allow. Those once thought farthest from grace find themselves closest to its center, while those who assumed they knew their place are invited to learn joy from strangers.

When Jesus says, “Tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom ahead of you,” he is not scolding so much as unveiling the pattern of grace. Grace walks into the places we ignore and finds the ones we’ve left behind. It makes a home where there was none. It is God’s freedom to love without our permission. John’s message stirred those with nothing to defend; they turned their faces toward God and began to walk. The respectable stayed still, still arguing over what obedience should look like.

In the life of the church, the register of belonging is baptism. There, we are named into our place. God builds the city and inscribes our names within it. God grants the new birth that no human hand can contrive. That is why the psalm ends in dancing: “The source of my life comes from you.” Holiness, then, is a song that begins in God and keeps reverberating through us. Our obedience is how that song learns its shape in time.

And what, today, does it mean to go into the vineyard? It rarely looks dramatic. More often it takes the form of small, steady acts that let love take root: making the phone call you’ve been avoiding, telling the truth when silence would be easier, asking forgiveness and offering it, noticing the person who sits alone, writing a letter to your representative, choosing mercy when resentment would feel good. These quiet decisions are how the soil is healed; they are the work of the vineyard.

The psalm reminds us that this work is meant to be joyful. Zion’s gates open onto music, and those who enter dance to its rhythm: “All my springs are in you.” The Lord who loves those gates delights in your ordinary faithfulness. Joy marks the lives of those who know they’ve been born there. So let us loosen our grip on tidy answers. Let us set down the easy Yes that never leaves the pew. Let us ask for hearts that rise when the Son speaks. If you have resisted, start walking. If you have agreed and stayed still, stand up. If you are uncertain, ask for the Spirit who turns hesitation into courage. The righteous road is already under your feet.

Even so, that road will not make us flawless. The Heidelberg Catechism tells us that even the holiest among us have only “a small beginning of obedience.” That small beginning is grace at work. We take a single step and discover that Christ has already gone ahead. Each beginning, however faint, opens a doorway through which grace enters.

The Spirit gathers a people whose Amen is lived as much as spoken. And when the book of Zion is opened, you will hear again the promise that steadies every trembling act of faithfulness:

“Each one was born there.”