This week Ezekiel joins in with the theme of how God is unfair, or not. The question he’s addressing concerns individual responsibility (Ez 18:25-28). And he clearly didn’t have much impact on Jewish thinking, since we still hear in Jesus’s time how the general attitude was that people’s misfortunes were a result of their parents’ actions (e.g. John 9:2-4). Jesus has to point out, equally forcefully, that no, we are responsible for our own actions.
Of course these days we are heavily into individual responsibility – or are we? We’re certainly keen to emphasize individual responsibility… for others, yes … but for ourselves? Maybe not so much. There’s a great deal we may still be tempted to put on other people; the rich, the poor, immigrants, trade unions, bankers, lawyers, … Currently there’s an epidemic of blaming “government”, which is of course “other people”.
The other striking aspect of Ezekiel’s rant (on God’s behalf) is that bad people will die. That is right up our alley. From the Three Musketeers, to the Wild West, to the latest superhero, the idea that villains should die is embedded deep within our psyche. So of course God is going to go around killing the bad guys!
Except he doesn’t.
Just after the passage we have in today’s reading, Ezekiel (prophesying for God) says (pretty much): What! Are you stupid, why would I want people to die, I want them to live, you dumb****!! (Ez 18:32) We do know that God isn’t into killing people. So why does Ezekiel make it sound like he does?
When might we hear: “if you do such and such you will die”. Break away from heroes and villains, and think about doctors: “if you go on eating too much and not getting enough exercise you will die, of a heart attack.” Sometimes the doctor needs to be that blunt. She’s spelling out consequences, not threatening punishment… Jesus came as a doctor, not as an avenger. He kept reminding us of that.
And today he too is discussing the issue of responsibility, but with a slightly different twist.(Mt 21:28-32) Taking responsibility isn’t a matter of saying the right thing. It’s about doing the right thing. The Jewish leaders were masters of fine appearances – what mattered was that you looked good, what you did in reality was less important.
So why do people do this? We can understand why the first son might well decide he doesn’t want to go work in the vineyard – it’s hot, dusty, unpleasant work. But it also makes sense that on reflection he thinks better of it and does what he has been asked. However the case of the second son is more interesting. Why does he say yes, and fail to follow through. He can’t expect that his father won’t notice. So why claim something that is so obviously untrue?
That doesn’t make so much sense. But I suspect that we can remember plenty of occasions when we’ve done something similar, going right back to our childhood. We feel tremendous pressure to give the answer we think is expected, particularly to someone we love or respect. It seems that our need to do this outweighs our concern about failure to follow through. Sometimes that might be due to indifference or laziness, perhaps we really did think we were going to do it when we said so. But there are cases when we know even when we’re saying it that we really don’t have the capability to do it, but we somehow convince ourselves otherwise.
Maybe this scenario is in Paul’s mind when he says: “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves” (Phil 2:1-11)
The pressure we feel to say yes, even when we mean no, is bound up with that need to look good, to put on a good appearance. And that in turn is a form of vanity, or seeing ourselves, or maybe our self-image, as the most important thing.
As Paul goes on to point out, Jesus was the exact opposite of this – he didn’t hold onto anything, but let it all be stripped away, even to the point of dying. We also will give it all up on the point of death. But we can also let go of some of that need to be the best, to seem to be the best, even before that. Jesus showed us how.