“But what do you think about this? A man with two sons told the told the older boy, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’ The son answered, ‘No, I won’t go,’ but later he changed his mind and went anyway. Then the father told the other son, ‘You go,’ and he said, ‘Yes sir, I will.’ But he didn’t go. Which of the two was obeying his father?” (Matthew 21:28-29)
I used to think I was the first brother in this parable. A secular, Jewish, agnostic, I’d come to and refused Christianity any number of times before ultimately giving in to this God’s dogged pursuit of me. “OK, OK. If you want me so badly, here I am.”
At eighteen years old, I sat in Angell Hall auditorium on the University of Michigan campus, eyes wide, as the skill of the Renaissance masters convinced me that the Biblical stories they depicted were “true.” God on the Sistine Chapel ceiling reached down to me, sparking my secular bones to worship. The bright red and blue disciples’ robes brushed me as I, too, reached out for the Rabbi. I was blinded along with Paul by Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro as a voice called out, “Why do you persecute me?” After combing the library stacks for a dusty and much underlined Bible, I was easy game for my dorm’s resident Campus Crusader for Christ. Off I went to the nearby Nazarene church to be baptized.
However, that semester of Art History ended. Months passed and along with them my initial certainty. My Jewish mother and grandparents fulminated that I hadn’t embraced homosexuality instead and invoked generations of forbearers, victims of Christian anti-Semitism, cursing me from the grave. On the other hand, my European intellectual stepfather viewed Evangelical Christianity as the logical progression of American aberrations such as girl scouts, gum chewing, and peanut butter consumption. He waited out this puzzling phase of my life, bemusedly, as he had others. Meanwhile, both physically and intellectually, I strained against the moral absolutes of this new religion I’d embraced. It didn’t take long before I stood with my Bibles and Christian books at the counter of a local second-hand bookstore.
After this initial conversion and retreat, I pushed hard against faith and especially its Christian face. However, it dogged me. At twenty-eight, I returned to the church, this time in a different state and a different denomination. I had my new Dutch Reform minister baptize me by full immersion in a chilly Wisconsin lake, certain that my weak faith was partially due to the tiny ewer of tepid water which marked my initial baptism. Clearly such a feeble stream couldn’t work true rebirth. Yet even this second full-body dunking didn’t hold me, and once again I withdrew. For more than a decade, I remained outside the church, troubled by the dissonance between body and spirit. I balked at the exclusivity of the Christian message. Nor could I stomach Paul’s hostility toward the intellect given the great joy mine provided.
Finally, fourteen years later, still pursued, I found myself back amongst Christians. “I’m sorry,” my new pastor said. “I won’t baptize you a third time.” I’d fallen in with Episcopalians who repeat the Nicene Creed’s “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” Luckily for me, this particular church was theologically non-dogmatic, able to embrace biblical literalists as well as those who approached the text metaphorically. I had changed as well in the past three decades, no longer as anxious to square all my beliefs and practices with a single, seamless reading of scripture. I had gotten to the point where I could allow incongruities and unanswered questions, “believing” even as much about my faith remained mysterious. Nor did I feel the need to convert those around me, trusting instead that God was able to call them if such was their destiny—after all, hadn’t God pursued me for close to thirty years?
When I read this passage in Matthew, then, I felt reassured. “I’m set. I’m the first brother of the parable, of course--mocking, rejecting, refusing, but ultimately returning to faith.” However, a few days ago when I came across it again, I no longer felt so sure. Now I wonder if I’m not more like the second brother, saying “yes” but not following through on the implications of my assent.
I think it was naïve of me to read the first son’s movement from no to yes as a mere nod to belief. Jesus isn’t speaking about doctrine or church membership. He’s talking about daily practice and about one’s lived response to the gospel message. It isn’t enough to say yes to God on Sundays or even yes when asked, “Are you a Christian?” Jesus is looking for a more fundamental reaction to this profession of belief.
I know that I still very much say no to losing control for the Kingdom of God. I still balk at radically changing my life to follow Jesus. “I’ll be a Christian,” I say, “if everything can proceed largely as it did before. I’ll read the Bible, go to church, pray, donate money to charity, volunteer, admit faith in public, but that’s about it.” I don’t think Jesus would be satisfied. Jesus told his first disciples, “Go and announce that the kingdom of heaven is near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cure those with leprosy, and cast out demons… Don’t take any money with you. Don’t carry a bag with an extra coat and sandals or even a walking stick.” The older brother would have said, “You’re joking,” but he would have gone and given it his best shot. The younger brother, in contrast, would have set off down the road until he thought he was out of sight, and then doubled back to his old comforts. “Surely he doesn’t mean it,” he would have reassured himself. “That would be crazy.”
I think there’s a certain degree of “craziness” for God that I’m scared to entertain. This fear makes me wonder how much of a “yes” to God I’ve really said—so, alas, I’m demoting myself to the second brother. I hope that God isn’t finished with me yet. In the same way he poked and poked and poked until I finally huffed, “All right already. I’ll be a Christian,” I assume he’ll continue to push me out into the world, gently removing first one crutch then the other until I’m willing to perform more radical acts of love. He may have to pry my fingers loose one by one, the way mothers peel their reluctant kindergarteners off their legs at the classroom door. “Go on. Go heal the sick and raise the dead.” How can I refuse?
