O Brother
26th Sunday of the Ordinary Time – O Brother
Scripture loves siblings, especially when they are at odds with one another. Cain and Abel. The prodigal son and his brother. Complaining Martha and contemplative Mary. And now these two: the mind-changing brothers.
One says no, but then changes his mind and does what his father had asked him to do in the first place. The other one – the seemingly “good” son – says “Sure, Pops” and then never completes the task.
We’ve all been there at different points in our lives – with our own parents, our spouses, our friends and our God. We say “yes” to something but never follow through, intentionally or not. At times, too, we have said “no,” but then a guilty conscience or a period of prayer and reflection lead us to change our mind. In some ways, this tale of two brothers is typical of the human experience.
Surely, there’s something more to this than just a little Jesus nugget of wisdom concerning our commitment to completing a task. Why is this story a key piece to understanding our call as disciples of Christ and His Church?
To begin – and context is key – Jesus offers this challenge to the chief priest and elders during Holy Week, after he enters Jerusalem to the cheers of “Hosanna” and then cleanses the Temple in a moment of righteous anger. This story of two brothers is presented within days of the Crucifixion of our Lord, and he is now standing before the very ones who will send him to Calvary, asking which brother truly did the will of his Father.
Even here – within 72 hours of his death – Jesus is trying to shake awake the sluggish and closed hearts of the ones who should have had them open all along: the “religious ones,” the ones who should have been the first to recognize and accept the arrival of the Messiah. The Pharisees, scribes and elders – the theologically-trained ones who spent their days in the Temple –considered themselves to be the ones others should follow on the path of righteous, Godly-living. They were the “yes” brothers – Yes, we follow the Law; Yes, we are the holy role models; Yes, look at how our garments and tassels reflect how much God loves us.
Compare this to the “no” brother: the tax collectors and prostitutes and other assorted folk who lived much or most of their lives as one big “middle finger” to God’s commands: no to chastity and formal prayer and honesty; no to sacrifice and service of others beyond the self-serving benefits they would derive from it. God’s will meant nothing to them.
Until, that is, they were slammed by grace.
At some point, the children of the “no” – the ones that the “yes bros” would have looked-down on and condemned – had their hearts open to real conversion, a born-again moment where they saw their sinfulness in the light of God’s mercy and cried out for healing in a true spirit of repentance. They saw with true clarity the depths of their depravity and wanted to be set free in a way that could only come from God in and through the Messiah, the Promised One. They first came to the desert to see John the Baptist, who then pointed the way to Jesus, and their lives were never the same. Their lifetime of “no” became instead a powerful “yes” – yes to grace and healing; yes to humility; yes to giving-up on all the ways that led to selfish, sinful behavior. Their no’s to God became beautiful, hard-fought yeses.
Too bad the Pharisees and scribes wouldn’t allow themselves to see the transformation. They were too caught-up in their own self-righteousness to see that they were never really living a life of “yes” to God’s will at all. Instead, they kept grace at arm’s length and covered-over their own sinfulness with pious, empty practices and words. They wanted God and others to believe they were living for God, when instead they were more than willing to crucify Him to a tree in order to stop His mercy from reaching the hearts of those they thought didn’t deserve it.
In the end, their “yes” to God was really only a “yes” to the God they made out of their brand of piety, all the while their hearts were deep in the “no, I will not follow.”
I can’t help but think that in the end, when all is said and done, this Gospel challenges us to reexamine our motives for living our faith. Christ is asking us to let His Spirit into the deepest recesses of our hearts and lives so that we can live God’s Willfrom an authentic place of freedom and love.
It’s so easy, to be honest, to fool ourselves into thinking that my faith-life is fine: I go to Mass; I say some daily prayers; I haven’t murdered anyone today. And these aren’t bad things, obviously. But maybe we need to ask this question of ourselves: are these only surface-level “yeses” that really mask the inner-life of a big-fat “no” to God?
In other words, am I sitting in a pew but not willing to go to Confession to ask for His mercy? Am I hiding things from grace that need to be brought to the light of his healing? Am I spending my days judging others for their faults and failures but refusing to acknowledge my own? Am I an outward “yes” living an internal, spiritual life of “no?”
What made the prostitutes and tax collectors find and live the Kingdom in an authentic way came ultimately from the fact that they humbly submitted to God’s Will, not their own. They allowed themselves to be emptied of selfishness in order to see as God sees. His Way became the only way they desired to follow after having spent a lifetime chasing after their own sinful and selfish desires. They allowed grace to radically transform their no’s to a yes, and in so doing, they were becoming saints.
Our Church is filled with such powerful transformations, from Mary Magdalen and Augustine to Dorothy Day and Francis of Assisi. All lived for themselves until they died-to-self for love of Christ. We are all called to do the same, as Paul tells the Philippians in today’s second reading: Don’t make yourself into a god; empty yourself as God Himself did on the Cross.
Living the Yes is living the transformation that comes from authentic repentance and willingness to follow after the Crucified One. Living the Yes means being honest with oneself, others and with God. Living the Yes means not being caught-up in the trappings of outward religion in order to allow the Spirit to do the hard work of purification that we all need.
When all is said and done, the Lord would rather love a repentant prostitute that clings to His Will than a polished Pharisee that clings to his own tassels and outward religious practices.
I learned that lesson last week in the nursing home where my brother recuperates after surgery. Although he was promised to have the room to himself, within days a roommate appeared, clearly a victim of a life decimated by drugs and alcohol. I judged quickly and harshly, not wanting him in the same room as my brother. I was being over-protective, and quite frankly, selfish and pompous. In my estimation, my brother didn’t deserve such a roommate.
And yet, my brother – self-admittedly the non-religious Jasper – has spent the past two weeks being nothing but kind and genuinely compassionate to the man who shares the room with him, offering the food that he doesn’t want and making sure that his roommate has reading glasses and clothes to wear once he doffs the hospital gown.
Isn’t funny? The brother who never goes to Church and doesn’t have much time for Catholicism offered a Christ-like compassion and love in a way that his cleric-wearing older brother was unwilling to offer.
Makes me think: who’s really living the authentic holy “yes” that God’s Will asks of us?