Thus says the LORD:
You say, "The LORD's way is not fair!"
Hear now, house of Israel:
Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?
There’s Today's Gospel is a story of two young men. One makes a show of doing the right thing and does nothing. The other refuses to work in his Father's garden; but later thinks better of it, and obeys. One son lives in the world of pretense and illusions; the other lives in the real world as an impulsive young man and an obedient son.
There’s an amusing moment in Woody Allen’s film, The Purple Rose of Cairo, when Henry, a character on the movie screen, pleads with the projectionist not to turn the projector off. In this post-modern film, Woody Allen imagined what might happen if a handsome, romantic movie character jumped off the silver screen into the theater, and took a lonely young woman out dancing. The movie had to stop right there, while the other characters wondered what they were supposed to do. And when the missing character didn’t come back to the theater for several days, the whole movie industry all over the United States was thrown into confusion.
When the theater manager told the projectionist to turn off the projector and shut down the empty theater because the audience had gone home, one of the images on the screen pleaded,
“You don't understand what it's like to disappear! To be nothing! To be annihilated! Don't turn the projector off.”
But Woody Allen’s movie was more than a comedy. He worried about actors and politicians and athletes whose entire lives are about being who and what their fans think they are. Real people dream of playing in professional sports or of landing roles on Broadway; but when some people actually succeed they discover that they exist only in the minds of their fans. And there are severe consequences for those who disappoint their fans.
Jim Backus, who played Thurston Howell III in the situation comedy Gilligan’s Island was severely criticised one evening when he went to a restaurant with his wife, Henny Kaye Backus. A woman in the restaurant accused him of philandering because Mrs. Backus was not Lovey Howell, his on-screen wife – who was played by Natalie Shafer. Fans don’t want to know that the pixels on their TV screens are just actors doing a job.
Gilligan’s Island went off the air in 1967, long before computers, the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Now anyone can be a pixel image and cultivate an onscreen persona and make people think they live ideal lives like the characters in the Purple Rose of Cairo.
But some people think they are Cecilia, played by Mia Farrow. She is a bored housewife in the film who kills time by watching again and again a silly old movie called, “The Purple Rose of Cairo.” These lonely Cecilias post on the Internet like everyone else; but their images are not real and they know it. And so they grumble like Ezekiel’s neighbors, “The Lord’s way is not fair!”
And they really hate God’s reply,
“Hear now, house of Israel:
Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?
God is real and his Word is True. He is not an imaginary character in the Bible or any other book, movie, or video. And He can demand, as he does to Job, “Who are you to complain against me?”
Where were you when I founded the earth?Tell me, if you have understanding.Who determined its size? Surely you know?Who stretched out the measuring line for it?Have you entered into the sources of the sea,or walked about on the bottom of the deep?Have the gates of death been shown to you,or have you seen the gates of darkness?Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?Tell me, if you know it all.
That truth – that the God who created us with enormous courage and generosity, and who saves us with the crucifixion of his only begotten Son; that truth comes as bad news to people who create self-images, project them into the world, and think that makes them real. In fact they don’t know who or what they are. They’re living in a fiction, and think it should and must and has to go on forever. They’re terrified that someone might turn off the projector and their lives will be turned into a blank screen.
But the truth about God – that He exists, creates, and cares about us – comes as wonderful news to those who live in the Truth. We know that living a lie and cultivating images are exercises in futility: pointless, frustrating, disappointing and painful. We deserve better because God has made us to be like himself – free, courageous, and generous.
We don’t amaze anyone with phony happiness; we don’t impress anyone with threats, bullying, or violence. Those who know God know he does not forget us, lose us, or abandon us. We find him here with us even in darkness and silence, in disappointment and loneliness.
In today’s Gospel a man asked his two sons to “go out and work in the vineyard today.” He was probably upset when the first son said he would not obey; but he was very pleased when the second son said he would. However, the son who refused to go actually went out and worked; and the agreeable boy who said he would work in the vineyard did nothing.
Finishing that very short story, Jesus did not ask which son pleased his father. Which one showed a better Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, or Instagram picture?
Rather he asked, “Which of the two did his father's will?"
On Judgment Day we will be judged for who we are and not for what we look like. People around us may judge our appearance and that's fine for them. But they don’t matter. Those who care about us want to know who we are and why we believe as we do.
On Judgment Day people who are not pretty faces, people who are not pleasant images, people who are not cartoons, will hear God say, “With you. I am well pleased.” They will hear, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
