Today's gospel is of the two sons who are asked by their father to go into the fields to work. The one who agrees does not go, the one who declines, goes. Christ then tells the priests and the elders that tax collectors and prostitutes will enter heaven before them. He the scolds them for rejecting John the Baptist.
Sometimes these gospels are simple too much. They are too concentrated--tiny with so much mass--to be fairly analyzed.This gospel is from Holy Week. Christ is in Jerusalem speaking to the hierarchy and stimulating more and more animosity. In a week He will be dead.
In some respects, this is a wandering gospel. Christ is making a lot of points and they are not all the same. The two sons, so often used by Christ in His parables, are reversed; the older rebels, the younger acquiesces, albeit grudgingly. But Christ has made this debate with great understanding and sympathy to the participants. This is not a conflict between lord and subject, leader and follower. It is family with all the hopes, ambitions and complexities one could imagine. Yet, having set that tone, Christ is withering in His judgment. The heart will trump history and behavior and the hierarchy will trail behind prostitutes.
He then raises John as the tipping point. Everyone saw him. Everyone knew he was a good man. Yet only the dispossessed followed him. The hierarchy will pay for that.
The earlier question of how John got his power, from God or man, again goes unanswered.
Sometimes these gospels are simple too much. They are too concentrated--tiny with so much mass--to be fairly analyzed.This gospel is from Holy Week. Christ is in Jerusalem speaking to the hierarchy and stimulating more and more animosity. In a week He will be dead.
In some respects, this is a wandering gospel. Christ is making a lot of points and they are not all the same. The two sons, so often used by Christ in His parables, are reversed; the older rebels, the younger acquiesces, albeit grudgingly. But Christ has made this debate with great understanding and sympathy to the participants. This is not a conflict between lord and subject, leader and follower. It is family with all the hopes, ambitions and complexities one could imagine. Yet, having set that tone, Christ is withering in His judgment. The heart will trump history and behavior and the hierarchy will trail behind prostitutes.
He then raises John as the tipping point. Everyone saw him. Everyone knew he was a good man. Yet only the dispossessed followed him. The hierarchy will pay for that.
The earlier question of how John got his power, from God or man, again goes unanswered.
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