Ride for the Brand

The Gospel text for this sermon is Matthew 21:23-32.

Has anyone here ever tried to plan a wedding? For all the excitement that is wrapped up in a wedding, the planning and months leading up to the event can contain a few frustrating moments. I remember during the summer of our wedding, one of the hardest pieces of the puzzle to put in place, was the guest list. We sent out our invitations with plenty of time to spare, and for the most part people responded. But some people just didn’t get back to us. Some people didn’t RSVP, and it seems that this phenomenon is becoming more commonplace.

Perhaps it’s part of our culture. With the birth of Facebook, many events are now planned online. The guest list on Facebook is a virtual RSVP list. I must confess that I am terrible at RSVP’ing on Facebook. For whatever reason, I just don’t do it. Sometimes I like to keep my options open, I don’t want to commit too early. I guess I have “commitment issues.”

Maybe that’s part of the problem, commitment issues. Maybe we are losing our ability to commit to things. Long gone it seems are the days of a person’s word being their bond and business being done with a handshake. Most of the time we don’t even have to look someone in the eye anymore and make a commitment, we just have to send an email or click a mouse. As the world becomes more virtual, will we continue to lose our ability to commit to something? What do you think?

In the Gospel this morning, the story Jesus tells invites us in to see commitment issues in action. A man goes to his two sons and asks them to work in the vineyard. The first son says no to work, then shows up anyway. The second says yes, and yet never shows up on the job. Each boy has an issue with commitment. But the question of Jesus seems simple; which one did the will of his father? What do you think?

The answer is pretty obvious, even the religious leaders know that it’s the first son who does the will of his father, even if it is after his initial no. The moral of the story seems to be about resolving commitment issues.

The leaders wait for the confirmation of their response. Jesus moves to speak. They get ready for the yes from Jesus and the word that they should follow through with their commitments, but Jesus has something else to say. “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” When John the Baptist came, with his cloths of camel’s hair and fiery preaching of repentance, you did not believe him. You stood on the sidelines and watched as the tax collectors and prostitutes lined up for baptism, but you remained stuck in your ways. You did not change your minds. You have commitment issues far greater than being able to say yes or no.

You are the “Yes men” is what Jesus is clearly telling the religious leaders, you are the second son. You say yes to God with your lips, but do not follow through with your lives. You think you are living right, but your commitment is in the wrong place. You commit to the ways of the empire, not to the way of Jesus. Its harsh words for the leaders who think they have all the right answers, who think their commitment is true. Yet instead of listening to these words and taking a good hard look at where their commitment lies, they withdraw to the edges and plot Jesus’ death. They miss the point completely.

Commitment is the heart of the issue here, but it’s not as simple as just following through on what you say. It’s where your commitment lies that seems to get the attention of Jesus. Yes when we don’t follow through on our commitments, when someone drops the ball on us, those actions hurt, relationships are broken, but it’s not the whole issue. There are persons, companies, and even nations very committed to their causes, but their causes are not founded in love. Their commitments are to money, greed and power. They work hard to keep to their commitments and succeed a great portion of the time, but people still get hurt, relationships still get broken, and the kingdom is still absent.

Even when we follow through on our commitments, we can still find ourselves in broken relationships. It turns out that our ability to follow through on our commitments is only part of the equation.

When I was a kid I grew up with the phrase, “Ride for the Brand.” It’s a line from a Red Steagall poem about cowboy values and commitment. Each ranch had its own unique brand, distinguishing it from another. A brand could tell you a great deal about the ranch, the values of the owner, the way they treated their stock, and their workers. The point of the poem is about riding for a particular brand and the cowboy’s commitment to that brand. If you’re going to ride for a brand, you need to put your heart and soul into it, you need to “protect it like it is your own.” You commit to its values, and your life is lived through those values. Or better yet, the world can see those values, through the way you live. That’s what it means to ride for the brand.

Jesus stands in the temple today, just days from his death and begs the question, where does your commitment lie? He looks to the leaders and tells them that their commitment to the empire won’t cut it. He tells them that the very ones whom they cast to the margins as sinners are going into the kingdom first, because their commitments are with the kingdom of God. The tax collectors and prostitutes have heard the call of John, they’ve looked at where their commitments were, and they’ve turned to God and recommitted themselves to new life in the kingdom. The brand of the empire has left them spurned and broken. Their commitment to that way of life leads only to death. They’ve heard the call of the coming kingdom. They’ve chosen to commit to God. They’ve chosen to ride for God’s brand.

Jesus tells us through his life and ministry that God is not looking for “Yes men” and women. God is not looking for lip service. God is looking for commitment to the values of the Kingdom. In a world run wild with lifestyles that seek power and status, God is looking for us to live lives that show the world that God’s kingdom is full of love and mercy. God is looking for us to ride for God’s brand.

God’s brand is not something that we have to earn. Our labor and works contribute nothing to the gift that is the love of God. Grace means that we are a people born into the promise of God’s love precisely because it’s the will of God. We are already set free. We are baptized into this love. Through water and the word we are wrapped in the love of God and we bear this love as we walk through this world. We come out of the waters of baptism marked with “watery crosses,” the brand of the kingdom of God.

Can you see them? Can you see the “watery crosses” on your neighbors, your brothers and sisters in the journey of faith? I can. The witness of these “watery crosses” is strong in this place. As we come together to worship, we are filled up to once again be sent out. We come together to be reminded of the values of the kingdom of God, and inspired to show the world those values through our lives.

This world can be troubling, full of distractions that look like good places to put our commitments. But Jesus comes into our lives to remind us of who is committed to us, of who will be there to cover our bets. Our call in this life is to commit our lives to the kingdom of God. Through his life and ministry, Jesus shows us what it’s like to live for the kingdom. “And the more of it I understand, the more I think we’d all be better off, if more people would ride for God’s brand.”