The Second Son: Kenoo, the Rock, and the Gap Between Mouth and Feet

A father has two sons and one job for them: go work in the vineyard. The first son says no, flat out, and walks off. The second says yes. "I go, sir." Polite, respectful, exactly what a father wants to hear. Then the first one changes his mind and goes, and the second one never leaves the house.

That is the parable of the two sons from Matthew 21, the gospel for Proper 21 in Year A, and it takes about four sentences to tell. Underneath the vineyard, it is a story about the gap between your mouth and your feet. This past Sunday's readings, Exodus 17, Psalm 78, Philippians 2 and Matthew 21, spend three very different scenes showing how wide that gap usually runs. A crowd at a rock in the desert. A hymn about a God who empties himself. And a father with two sons who can't tell him the truth.

Massah and Meribah: "Is the Lord among us or not?"

By Exodus 17 the Israelites have watched the sea split, eaten bread that shows up on the ground every morning, and drunk water God pulled out of nowhere. This is not their first miracle. Then, at the next stop, Rephidim, there is no water, and the complaining starts. They quarrel with Moses. They ask why he brought them out of Egypt to kill them and their children and their livestock with thirst. Moses is so rattled he tells God the crowd is about to stone him.

God sends him to strike a rock at Horeb with the same staff that split the sea, and water comes out. Then comes the line I keep coming back to: Moses named the place Massah and Meribah, "because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, 'Is the Lord among us or not?'"

That is an accusation dressed up as a question. It comes from people standing in the wreckage of Pharaoh's army with more evidence of God's presence than almost anyone in scripture, and thirst erases all of it in about a day. Their mouths are asking a question their own recent history has already answered.

Psalm 78, the psalm appointed for the day, sits right on top of this. It promises to tell "the glorious deeds of the Lord" and then does exactly that, listing the plagues, the sea, the cloud by day and the fire by night, like a parent reading a child's own baby book back to them. Here's what happened. Here's what you saw with your own eyes. The psalm is Israel's memory doing the job their mouths at Rephidim refused to do.

Philippians 2 and kenosis: what "he emptied himself" really means

Philippians 2 is Paul quoting what most scholars think was already an old hymn by the time he wrote it down. Christians were singing it before it ever went into a letter, and the whole hymn turns on one verb: "He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave."

Paul is saying Jesus poured himself out, all the way. Status, equality with God, all of it, emptied like wine out of a jug until there was nothing standing between him and a manger, and later a cross. With kenoō, the emptying is the doing. What he said about himself and what he did with his own life are the same motion, with nothing held back to check on later.

Put that next to the desert and you can see the contrast. "Is the Lord among us or not" is words with no motion behind them and no memory attached.

Paul doesn't leave it as theology. Two verses later he turns it into an instruction: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure." "Work out" is a labor verb, the kind you would use for finishing a job in a field or on a building site. Salvation here is something your hands are supposed to be doing something about, this week, while God is underneath the doing and supplies the will for it.

The parable of the two sons in Matthew 21

Of the three readings, the gospel is the plainest version of the idea. Jesus tells the story and asks the chief priests which son did what his father wanted. They get it right, because the answer is obvious to anyone standing outside the story: the first son, the one who said no and went anyway.

Then Jesus turns the mirror around. "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you." He is talking to religious professionals, priests and elders whose public life is built out of the right sentences said in the right order, at the right times, in the right building. Every box checked. And he tells them that people they had written off are walking into the kingdom first, because those people heard something true and actually turned around and did it. They did it messily and late, without any of the right vocabulary.

The second son's words were fine. They were also the whole transaction. Nothing behind them ever left the porch.

Which son am I?

It is easier to talk about the priests than about myself, so let me be plain: I'm a second son more often than I'd like to admit. I've had a lot of practice saying the right thing, and it comes easily. Somebody tells me about a hard week and I say I'll pray for them, and in that moment I mean it completely. Then the moment passes, other things crowd in, the vineyard sits there untouched, and by dinner I've mostly forgotten I said anything.

That is what makes it sneaky. "I go, sir" is sincere when it is said. The failure happens later and quietly, when nobody, including me, is checking whether the words turned into a body standing in a field.

Two things to carry into this week

First, find one place where you are doing what Israel did at the rock. There is some fact about God, or about someone who loves you, that you already have real evidence for and are still re-litigating out loud as if it were an open question. Say the true thing you already know instead of the question you're used to reaching for.

Second, and this one is harder, find one place where you are the second son. You have said yes, out loud, to somebody, and you both know you haven't gone anywhere near the vineyard yet. Don't manage the sentence about it. Go stand in the field for ten minutes. Kenoō doesn't happen in a conversation about kenoō. It happens when the jar actually tips.

The people at Rephidim got their water in the end. God didn't wait for their questions to become better ones. He met them at the rock, mid-complaint, with water they hadn't earned. Which means you're allowed to move before you've got the sentence right.

The full episode of Monday to Sunday is above. Listen through, and then go find your vineyard.