Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Osmond Anike

Readings:

First Reading:: Ezekiel 18:25-28 – When the sinner renounces sin, he shall certainly live.

Responsorial Psalm:Psalm 24(25):4-9 – Remember your mercy, Lord.

Second Reading:Philippians 2:1-11 – Be united in your love.

Gospel:Matthew 21:28-32 – Tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.

I tell you solemnly, tax collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before you”. This solemn declaration of Jesus in the gospel of today should terrify any right-thinking Christian. And believe you me, he was neither joking nor being sarcastic when he made this statement. The statement is not an irony; it is a statement of fact. Whenever Jesus begins a statement with the formula: “I tell you solemnly…” he is making a proclamation which he expects his audience to take as serious as he made it solemnly. Jesus has always challenged the popular religious notions that has almost always led to laxity in matters of morality and spirituality namely, that nominal identification with a particular religion (in our case, with Christianity) suffices for salvation. During his time, it was “legalistic Judaism” versus the rest. For many people of his time, identifying with strict Judaism that focused on the letters of the law was considered a sure guarantee to making heaven. However, the worst part of this laxness is the false conviction that those considered as public sinners like the tax collectors and prostitutes had no business venturing near the threshold of heaven. For the majority of the people who hold this view, this group of “public sinners” were already irredeemably damned and as such, there was absolutely no hope for them in terms of redemption. The legalistic group (mostly the scribes and the Pharisees) prided themselves as “masters” of the Law and the Prophets (in terms of knowledge and expertise) and as such, made light of their covenant obligations. Inner conversion was put at the periphery in order to project their bizarre belief that knowledge of the law was what distinguished “saints” from “sinners”. Jesus, on the other hand, took the opposite approach, namely, that the law was only as good as when they can lead to a change of heart and to conversion. In other words, “doing” (the will of God) for Jesus, takes precedence over “knowing” (the will of God).

Of course, Jesus was not the first to try to redirect people’s attention back to the question of continuous inner conversion as the only guarantee of making it to God’s kingdom. Jeremiah lived his entire life trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to warn the people of his time that it was not the fact of their being the “chosen” people of God nor was it the presence of the Temple of Jerusalem in their midst that would guarantee their salvation but rather going back to the covenant pact they had with Yahweh and abiding by it faithfully. The people failed to hearken to his warning and relapsed into moral laxity and irresponsible conducts. The outcome was that Jeremiah’s prophecy about the destruction of Jerusalem as a result of their laxity came to be their lot. In today’s first reading, Ezekiel continued in the line of Jeremiah’s insistence on a return to covenant obligation by asserting that when the upright man renounces his integrity to commit sin and dies because of this, he dies because of the evil that he himself has committed. However, when the so-called sinner renounces sin to become law-abiding and honest, he deserves to live. What these statements show is that what actually counts is not the fact of being chosen or not chosen but rather the willingness to renounce one’s sin and become law-abiding. In our context, what counts is not the fact of being identified as a Christian or a Catholic. Such nominal identification can only be of help to us if and only if they lead us to a conversion of heart.

In the Gospel, by means of a simple story of two sons who followed different paths in their responses to their father’s instruction, Jesus demonstrated that what counts in the final analysis is the ability to have carried out God’s instruction. It was not just enough to have said “I will do it” but failed to do it in actual fact. Once we have committed ourselves by saying “yes”, it is like committing ourselves to a solemn vow of which the Bible says, “Thou shalt fulfil your vow to the Lord”. The very day we willingly became Christians through baptism, we committed ourselves to the solemn vow of abiding by the laws and directives of God. Therefore, not to fulfil the vow is like renouncing our integrity to commit sin. We are like the second son in the story that Jesus told who said “yes”, but refused to carry out his father’s instruction. We are like the ancient people of Israel in the Book of Deuteronomy who, after listening to the book of the Law, said: “All that the Lord has said we shall do”. However, shortly after that commitment, they degenerated into idolatry by means of the infamous golden calf. That action of theirs was like renouncing their integrity to commit sin. Their previous commitment to God counted as nothing in the light of their present renunciation.

The so-called tax collectors and prostitutes are like the first son in the gospel episode, who initially said “no” to his father’s directive. However, he later had a change of heart and “repented” by going out and carrying out that very instruction he previously said no to. His previous hostility towards his father’s instruction cannot be used against him because he eventually carried out that instruction. This is what matters in the long run. As Christians, we are busy basking in the euphoria of being God’s chosen people while neglecting to carry out God’s directives. We make light of God’s commandments while at the same time condemning those we consider as “sinners”. We often think that because we have the correct formula for heaven, that fact alone suffices to translate into direct entrance into heaven. We shall be monumentally disappointed on the last day when we see others entering and ourselves being denied entry.

Brothers and sisters, those we denigrate are actually getting the correct answers while we are busy fidgeting with the formula. The person who gets the correct answer at last is the one who goes to heaven, and not the one who has the right formula but fails to get the correct answer. This is precisely why tax collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before you and me because, despite the fact that they started badly, they are arriving at the correct answer. We who started well by being provided gratuitously with the right formula are, strangely enough, renouncing our integrity to commit sin, and therefore, deserve to die. When you are a Christian, beware, so as not to take things for granted to your own detriment!