Today’s service was taken by Christopher Belk, a worship leader, and this reflection has been written by him, based of the set readings. Thanks to him for doing this.
Ezekiel 18, 1-4; 25-32; Matthew 21, 23-32; “Sour Grapes”
One of the most famous stories in Aesop’s fables is about the fox who saw a bunch of grapes and tried very hard to get them down, but after jumping a good few times he couldn’t reach them, and went away saying “Oh well, I guess they were sour anyway”. We use “sour grapes” nowadays to talk down someone or something which we have failed to get or live up to. For instance, a student might have set his or her heart on a particular university course, and then be refused a place: afterwards he or she might be rather pleased to hear criticism of the professor concerned.
In our OT reading God quotes as a proverb: “the parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge”. Presumably “sour grapes” of some sort was a well-known saying by around 600 BC. Aesop lived around the same time as Ezekiel, if not a bit earlier. However, Aesop’s fable says nothing about children’s teeth, and the moral in Ezekiel is not quite the same. After all, the fox never actually ate the grapes.
What God seems to be saying to Ezekiel is that we are too ready to excuse bad behaviour by people who had a bad upbringing, or other challenging circumstances or disappointments. In a similar way, how often do we hear politicians saying everything is the fault of the previous government, and how often indeed do we all look for any way of blaming someone else for our misfortunes, parents and governments included, and doing what we can to discredit them . Often that is called seeking justice, but a lot of it is just sour grapes, like for the fox. If God does not agree with us then he is being unfair.
We are also too ready to think good behaviour has God’s approval so any minor imperfections in a good person will be overlooked. How often at funerals do we hear how wonderful someone was, so that must be enough to get them to heaven. If it doesn’t, then God is being unfair again.
The logic of what God says in Ezekiel seems to be that only someone’s last actions count – whoever they were: if they finished well it is OK, if they didn’t it isn’t. Sounds like a bit of a lottery to put it mildly: it would be a rash thing to claim perfect behaviour at any time, and what about someone who dies suddenly? The key surely is in the last verse, where God says “Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit”. He is not so concerned about actual actions as about the spirit behind them. Someone who is truly seeking God can be excused a lot: someone who only seeks self-justification is missing the plot. Adam and Eve’s original sin was not so much in eating the forbidden apple as in preferring their own decision over their relationship to God.
The whole OT is a history of how God was inviting his people back into the relationship which had been lost, and also the history of how people almost always tried to find the way through actions rather than the right spirit. All sorts of actions were thought to be needed, typically the temple sacrifices. For a Jew, last Sunday was Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement. Nowadays Jews keep this by fasting and repentance:, in Leviticus there was the ritual of the “scapegoat” where the High Priest laid hands on a goat symbolising everyone’s sins and the goat was then driven off into the desert.
That is not nowadays practical, but it forms a picture or preview of what Jesus has done in dying for the whole world. If you read the book of Hebrews you will find a detailed exposition of this parallel. There is nothing we can do ourselves to wipe out the fact that, however you define sin, and however good we think we are, we are and have been less close to God and one another than we were created to be. Despite either ancient or modern rituals, there is no ritual or action of ours which can fully atone for that; as Jesus quoted, the most important commandment is to love God wholeheartedly and love your neighbour. So Christians accept and believe that God has himself taken on the task of full atonement (at-one-ment) as a free gift to those who accept Jesus as their Saviour. The hymn To God be the Glory, great things he has done celebrates that.
So now let’s look at our gospel reading from Matthew. When the Pharisees asked Jesus a simple question, on whose authority was he doing miracles, why did Jesus not on that occasion simply tell them he had God’s authority? Instead he asked them a question in turn; what did they think of John the Baptist? He was, I think, testing their spirit. If they had had the sort of spirit that God requires, then they would have been happy to recognise the spirit in which both John and Jesus operated. As it was, they preferred their own so-called wisdom, even when that human wisdom alone could not give a straight answer. Jesus knew that any further discussion was useless – they were not genuinely seeking God. Whatever they were really after they didn’t get it; they just hated and condemned Jesus: sour grapes!
I think often we need to adopt the same approach to theological discussion – you can soon tell what spirit is behind questions people ask about Jesus. Arguing from a purely human viewpoint will get us nowhere, and it can be best not to start arguing at all. The Holy Spirit within us will, if we ask him, help us to discern the spirit in which a question is asked.