Worship September 27 2026

 (Ex 17:1-7; Mtt 21:23-32) 10:30 am, Sun, Sept 27, 2026; JGW, FBC Amherst

“What do you think?” asked Jesus. He asked, one day, as He told yet another parable. “What do you think?” Jesus truly wanted to know. Maybe more than that, He truly wanted His listeners to think, and tell what they thought. 

What did you think, here today? The man has two sons. One says he will help out in the vineyard, but never shows up. The other says he won’t help, but he’s the one who actually does. Who obeyed?

I suppose the answer is obvious. So today – for us – is about speaking and acting. Saying and doing. Is our challenge to say what we will do, and do what we say? That might not be the point of Jesus’ parable. What we do is what truly matters. Ah, so how to have our behaviour changed and moulded, in the right directions, no matter what we say, no matter where we start. 

‘Trust and obey,” an old hymn says. But is ‘obey’ a popular term these days? Is obedience considered a virtue by anyone? Perhaps we like the idea of others obeying us, or them obeying what they should obey. But how many of us aspire to be obedient to… anyone? 

I suppose we have our moments. You may be like me and have your favourite driving and traffic rules you like to obey, but others you prefer to break. I like signalling left or right, sometimes even coming out of my own driveway. I judge others for not signalling. I also like keeping near the speed limit on the one hundred series highways. I do; and I get passed. But get me on a paved back road somewhere and you’ll find me going twenty kms over the limit. I found myself doing that yesterday!

As a person of Faith, I was certainly trained that obedience to God, to Jesus, is so very important. It is a key to living well, being right with God, and accomplishing the best things in life. Find the will of God for my life, and follow the plan. Obey. Even now, I remember a song from Vacation Bible School, more than twenty-five years later.             O-o-obey-o, every day-o, 

That’s why we say-o, Yes, we will obey!

You may have noticed that Jesus tells his story of the two sons in response to the religious officials who questioned His authority. He sums up the situation declaring that the local wrongdoers are getting into the Realm of God ahead of the priests and the elders of the people. The tax collectors and prostitutes may have got off on the wrong foot, but they responded to Jesus and His Way faster than the established Jewish leaders. 

We have quite a few people as obedient examples in the Bible. People who were blessed by Jesus and followed or obeyed in one way or another. Yet so many are people we just glimpse for a moment, and we don’t know the rest of the story at all of what happened in their lives. But each one is an example of a different teaching, a particular path for the person to take.

We can turn to our Saviour for many teachings – often in parable form – to guide our lives, our behaviour. You might be a person who remembers little, famous snippets of what Jesus said. Reminders of the ways to go. Wisdom to follow. And some paths to avoid. In the weekly Gospel readings for each Sunday this summer, we have had a succession of ‘famous’ things Jesus said. At least, they have been well known among Christians, and somewhat beyond us. Can you think of ‘famous things’ Jesus said?

We heard Jesus speak of ‘the blind leading the blind’ on Aug 16. 

He gave Peter “the keys of the kingdom” in the Aug 23^rd Gospel.

He said to Peter “get behind me, satan” on August 30^th. 

On September 6^th we heard “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am.” 

He spoke of ‘forgiving seventy times seven’ on Sept 13^th. 

“The last shall be first and the first last” said Jesus last Sunday.

In upcoming weeks we’ll hear Jesus say more catch phrases:

“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

“Many are called, but few are chosen.”

“Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

Other teachings in our Faith are direct and clear. But there is always some interpretation, some figuring out just what it might mean for us. The Ten Commandments, for instance, which will be our reading next Sunday. It takes a bit of work to sort out what every one of those means for us.

We each have the parts of Christian obedience that we choose, and other paths we don’t follow. (Like me with the rules of the road.) Some of what we choose not to do, we decide is not commanded anyway. Some of what we choose not to obey, we do feel would be the right way, we just can’t do it. 

Perhaps you are like me, from time to time, and you think over what you do and what you don’t do because you are a Christian. As I said in those ten sermons at the start of this year: we are different, and each do some of the things that being a follower of Jesus is, but probably not all. 

I’m really big on worship together with others, once a week. I’m hooked on it. It is one of the Christian disciplines I have learned to do and can do. I am quite unhappy when I have a Sunday off but cannot get to a service somewhere. It’s going to happen again at the end of October. I’ll have to figure something out. 

I have my own sense of keeping the sabbath holy (speaking of the Commandments). So I try not to buy any things on Sundays. Including gasoline. But my big exception to this is restaurants: I’ll go out and put people to work in restaurants on Sundays. That’s not really consistent of me, is it?!

I’m still a believer in giving a portion of my income to the Church. Not charities instead – though I think that’s good too – but ten percent or something to the church of which I am a member. I’m not that good at the math of it. And I don’t think I should just get away with not giving because I am the minister. Or get away with not giving much by letting the late Janet Christie cover for me. No. And it is probably more import for me and my ego and my lifestyle to give up money, off the top, than it is for this church to get my offerings. I keep needing to be trained to make sacrifices, and to share, and to give up control of stuff I worked for. And so on. 

But other ways of obeying Jesus can get totally neglected by me. Such as going the second mile. Giving away things I have plenty of. Sharon has always been much better at that than I’ve been. She always has a weight set. You know, some exercise equipment. How many times has she bought more (second hand) because she gave her weights away? To someone she thought needed it?

“What do you think?” Jesus asked the authorities. “Which of the two did the will of his father?” With great authority, Jesus taught publicly. Many people have found He is worth and worthy of following. He is an Authority. We can obey Him to find our Way. For what we each do, despite where we start out, matters. What we each do is of value in our world. 

The inspiring Christian writer and teacher, Richard Foster, claimed this: We have real difficulty here because everyone thinks of changing the world, but where, oh where, are those who think of changing themselves? People may genuinely want to be good, but seldom are they prepared to do what it takes to produce the inward life of goodness that can form the soul. Personal formation into the likeness of Christ is arduous and lifelong. (Claiborne, Wilson-Hartgrove & Okoro, Common Prayer: a Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, 2010, p. 270)

It is your ‘obedience’ and mine, to what is good and right, that adds to the beautiful work of God in this world, and makes a difference. So we are still here. We keep working at it, keep on as disciples of Jesus the Christ. After fifty years. After eighty. Taking our next step of what’s right and true is worth it.

Madeline L’Engle, know best for her poetry and science fiction, I think, wrote: We are all asked to do more than we can do. Every hero and heroine of the Bible does more than he would have thought possible to do, from Gideon to Esther to Mary. Jacob, one of my favourite characters, says L’Engle, certainly wasn’t qualified. He was a liar and a cheat; and yet he was given the extraordinary vision of angels and archangels ascending and descending a ladder which reached from earth to heaven. (Claiborne, Wilson-Hartgrove & Okoro, Common Prayer: a Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, 2010, p. 111)

We are all asked to do more than we can do. That’s the miracle of obedience. That’s the power of Faith in Christ. That’s the possibility of God’s plan. Whatever you said to yourself you’d do, yesterday, greater goodness is possible today and tomorrow. Don’t forget that.