Ezek. 18:25-28; Phil. 2:1-11; Mt. 21:28-32
Jesus tells of two sons. The first says, “I will not,” but afterward changes his mind and goes. The second politely says, “I go, sir,” but does not go (Matthew 21:28–30). Jesus asks the wonderfully simple question: “Which of the two did the will of his father?” (Matthew 21:31). There is really no difficulty answering that examination question!
We are often a little like both sons. Sometimes our “yes” becomes a “no,” and sometimes, fortunately, our “no” eventually becomes a “yes.” That is why the first reading from Ezekiel is so hopeful. God refuses to imprison a person inside his past. “When the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed…they shall save their life” (Ezekiel 18:27). The people complain, “The way of the Lord is unfair” (18:25), but God turns the question around. We human beings like permanent labels: good man, bad woman, sinner, saint, success, failure. God looks instead at the direction in which a person is travelling. A bad beginning need not have a bad ending. The first son began badly but finished well. The second began beautifully but never reached the vineyard.
The Old Testament gives us an extraordinary example in King Manasseh. His story begins so badly that we might be tempted to give up on him. He promoted idolatry, practiced evil and even “shed very much innocent blood” (2 Kings 21:16). Yet when disaster overtook him and he was taken captive, “he humbled himself greatly before the God of his ancestors” (2 Chronicles 33:12). He prayed, returned to Jerusalem, removed foreign gods and tried to repair what he had damaged (2 Chronicles 33:13–16). His past could not be erased, nor could all its consequences disappear, but his direction changed. That is Ezekiel’s message: God takes conversion seriously.
This helps us understand why Jesus makes the shocking statement that tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the kingdom ahead of respectable religious people (Matthew 21:31–32). Jesus was not praising their sins. He was praising their willingness to change when they heard John the Baptist. Respectability can sometimes become spiritually dangerous because it makes us imagine that conversion is something needed by the person sitting three pews away. The public sinner knows that something is wrong; the respectable sinner may have become very skilled at hiding it—even from himself. David committed terrible sins, but when Nathan confronted him, he finally said, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:13). Saul, by contrast, repeatedly tried to explain and excuse his disobedience before Samuel (1 Samuel 15:13–24). Scripture repeatedly shows that God can work with a broken heart more easily than with a polished excuse.
But what makes genuine conversion possible? St Paul gives the answer in the second reading: the mind of Christ. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). Then comes one of the most beautiful descriptions of Jesus in the New Testament: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (2:7), and “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (2:8). Jesus does not merely tell the Father, “I will go.” He goes. Bethlehem, Nazareth, the dusty roads of Galilee, Gethsemane and Calvary are the footsteps of his yes. Christian faith is therefore not primarily beautiful language about God. It is allowing the yes spoken with our lips gradually to enter our choices.
Beside that obedience stands Mary. At the Annunciation she says, “Let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). But her yes was not spoken once in a comfortable room and then forgotten. Soon she is travelling to Bethlehem while pregnant; then giving birth far from home; then hearing Simeon say, “A sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:35). She and Joseph flee with the Child into Egypt because Herod wants him dead (Matthew 2:13–14). Later she experiences the anxiety of searching for the twelve-year-old Jesus for three days (Luke 2:44–48). Finally, she stands near the cross: “Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother…” (John 19:25). The young woman who said yes at Nazareth is still saying yes on Calvary. Mary teaches without giving a lecture. Her faith is not noisy. She simply remains.
The same quiet faith has appeared in the lives of many saints. St Maximilian Kolbe was imprisoned in Auschwitz. When a prisoner escaped, ten men were selected to die by starvation. One of them, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out in anguish for his wife and children. Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take his place. There was no long sermon. The Franciscan priest simply made his body say what his faith had already professed: another person’s life matters. In that terrible place, Philippians 2 became flesh again—the willingness to empty oneself for another. The Gospel is often most convincing when somebody stops explaining it and quietly lives it.
Something similar, though in a very different setting, can happen in an ordinary life. Jamie Markley has publicly described spending roughly two decades caught in a cycle of addiction and incarceration. In 2015 she was facing the possibility of a very long prison sentence. Her estranged daughter visited and made a simple request: begin praying and reading the Bible, and she would return to visit. Jamie describes that period in jail as the turning point of her life. The change was not merely a promise made in desperation; her later life involved rebuilding relationships and living differently after prison. Her story is striking because Ezekiel does not say that a person’s yesterday was imaginary. He says yesterday need not dictate tomorrow.
Perhaps that is the thread running through all three readings. Ezekiel says that a person can turn around. Jesus says that the son who first refused can still enter the vineyard. Paul tells us how: by exchanging self-importance for the humble mind of Christ. And Mary shows what such a life looks like when a yes has to survive uncertainty, displacement, misunderstanding, sorrow and the cross. The good news is not that good people never say no, never fail or never fall. The good news is that, by grace, a no can still become a yes, pride can become humility, and failure can become a new beginning.
The father in today’s Gospel did not need another speech from his sons; he needed someone in the vineyard. Most of life is like that. Love becomes believable when somebody stays beside a hospital bed. Forgiveness becomes real when an old quarrel is no longer fed. Faith becomes visible when honesty costs something. Compassion becomes real when another person’s burden becomes, even briefly, our concern. Mary’s “Let it be” eventually led her to stand beneath a cross. Christ’s humility led him to give himself completely. The first son’s change of heart led his feet into the vineyard.
And perhaps that is the simple message to carry home: Our “yes” is most beautiful action eventually follow our words.
Satish Selvarance