Credibility Gap?
Sermon by James W. Crawford
September 26, 1999
Jesus finds his authority attacked by the religious establishment. They look askance at his rabbinical training. They question the extent of his experience. They doubt his integrity. Indeed, they believe him to be a total fraud. "Who do you think you are?" they stridently ask. "Who do you think you are coming into this city, invading our temple, subverting its practices, shutting down its commerce? Who are you to question religious practices established long before you were born?"
Jesus refuses to flinch. Their threatening questions fail to move him an inch. Indeed, Jesus counters his Temple antagonists with a question. It is also about authority. "Do you believe the authority of John the Baptist to be divine or human?" he asks. They demur. They are trapped. If they answer, "John's authority comes from God," they convict themselves of egregious ethical dysfunction. You see, John is one of their kind. By failing to live up his standards they condemn themselves of failed religious leadership. No way they are going to do that! So they duck the question. "John's authority?" they reply. "We don't know where it comes from." "Quid pro quo," says Jesus. "Then I'll not tell you where my authority comes from." But as a matter of fact, he does let them know where his authority lies—and how they can tell.
Remember? Jesus launches into the parable of the "two sons." The father asks his two sons to go work in the vineyard. The first says, "No problem. Count on me. I'm off." But he fails to go. The second son replies, "No way, pop. I've got my own agenda." Then he goes to the vineyard. Our Lord's key question: "Which of the sons did the father's will?" "The second," responds that, oh so alert, religious crowd. "Right on the money" says Jesus. "And you condemn yourselves out of your own mouths. You claim for yourselves a battery of religious credentials, D.D.s, Ph.D.s, Th.D.s, clinical training, ordination. You criss-cross the land pontificating on religious issues; you have your degrees and citations plastered all over your office walls—and with all that wisdom, experience, and religious acumen, you fail to recognize John's Divine mandate; you resist taking him seriously. Let me tell you temple-hangers-on something. The sorriest elements of society, the grafters, the pimps, the dope pushers, the child abusers—that gang listened to John. They changed their ways. They began to treat people differently. They are actually showing you, who claim to be religious, what it means to be a citizens of the kingdom."
I
What is going on here? Again, why this parable in this circumstance? Well, Jesus in this parable uses a credibility gap to define his own credibility.
In the first place, he calls upon those religious types to live up to their own highest aspirations. As we suggested, Jesus knows John the Baptist represents the best of their religious tradition. He believes these prominent church types should model their behavior and their religious convictions after John. "Be like John," says Jesus. "He represents the best of what we offer. You may not like what I say, but John's style lies up your alley. You say so yourselves. Just one problem: you say 'yes' to John with your lips, but not with your lives. You are a living credibility gap!"
Now, friends, the approach Jesus takes to those religious leaders seems to me similar to an approach the world often takes to us church folk. Outsiders take a look at some of us church types and say essentially, "You say you follow Christ? Fine and good. If you love him you should. He's worth it."
You see, the best friends of those of us in the churches may well be outsiders who call us to our best. They insist we make good on our commitments. They may not be Christians themselves—they may be out-and-out agnostics, they may be benign atheists—but they respect the power of Christ's life and yearn for those of us who claim discipleship to live like it. "You confess Christ as sovereign in your life?" they ask. "OK! Live up to him."
Who can forget that haunting plea of Albert Camus, that French novelist-philosopher, public prod, defined by one of my teachers as one who denied God but could never ignore God—who can forget Albert Camus reviewing the debris of World War Two, speaking to the likes of you and me and our churches, though he could not count himself among us. Remember? "If Christians made up their minds to it, millions of voices, millions I say, throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals who without any sort of affiliation today intercede almost everywhere for children and for men."
The same fervent challenge comes to us time again in our own age. The world at large begs us to be honest to ourselves. It says to us, "If you consider yourselves a Christian church and you call yourselves followers of Jesus, then with no apology, with neither fear nor favor, offer the Gospel and surrender to its service of love and peace and hope." What a high and provocative challenge. As we pursue it in good faith we will find men and women of differing political inclinations, varying measures of faith, emerging from different cultures, professing a variety of creeds who battle for the dignity and value of human life. As Church folk, we do not have to buy their political philosophy, we need not stand with them on their creed, but, by heaven, if they stand for human dignity we need stand beside them for God's sake. "You love Christ?" the outsiders ask. "Then live up to Christ. You confess faith in One whom you assert breaks down the walls between races, classes, nations, religions? Live as if you believed it. Your Bible," they say, "begins in a garden and ends in a city. Why not make that city of God the city of Boston?! Close the credibility gap," they admonish. "You say yes to Jesus with your lips, well and good. Say yes to Jesus with your lives."
II
And remember the second son? The one who says, "Thanks, but no thanks. No hard labor in that vineyard for me!"—the son who then changes his mind and goes? Now, everyone agrees this boy does the will of his father. And then, with everyone in agreement, in the parable Jesus wields the scalpel: he tells his skeptical antagonists that these proud and surly prodigals may have a better chance at heaven than so-called "religious people."
This second son says "No," then he goes. Does Jesus commend insolence here? Does he praise rudeness and refusal to respond courteously to the father? No way. Not in the least. Jesus suggests willful rebellion may be a lot easier to handle than blind hypocrisy. He tells us outright disobedience is nearer to the possibilities of salvage than subtle sabotage. He says persons on the margin, in the gutter, outside the law may find it easier to change their ways than the person in the pew or the pulpit. Jesus indicates that frequently our glib religiosity is a tougher problem for Love to crack than blatant immorality.
Let's put it this way. And vividly. Have you been reading about John Martorano? A big-time thug, a member of Somerville's Winter Hill Gang, betrayed to the FBI by South Boston Crime Boss, James "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi. Martarano wants to avenge that betrayal. Martorano made his living as a hit-man, knocking off at least 20 people, with names like Joseph J. "Indian Joe" Notarangeli, Alfred "Indian Al" Angel and James S. "Spike" O'Tool. Martarano has gunned down more underworld characters than even that most celebrated mobster turned government witness Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano. Under a deal with federal prosecutors John Martorano will plead guilty to federal racketeering, race fixing, bookmaking, and an extortion and gangland racketeering operation that involved 10 murders. His brother Jimmy contends "Johnny's no angel." And according to the Globe "What prosecutors do is hold their noses when they make deals like this because the deals always smell, and smell bad—and on a deal like this they hold heir noses much tighter." John Martarano: not a nice guy.
So why even mention John Martarano in church? Only to illustrate our Lord's Parable about that second son who says I won't go to the vineyard but finally does. I think Jesus means that the likes of John Martorano, for all his jungle tactics, seedy morality and violent activity, may be a far easier mark for Christ to conquer than some of us, for all of our sermonizing, Bible study, and church going. Jesus is saying, shockingly enough, that the moral combat zone in the city of Boston may not only be downtown with the porn flicks, the drug trade and commercial flesh purveyors; the moral combat zone may also be right in the churches!
Oh, oh! Is it because we are a crowd of moral reprobates? Is it because we are a band of John Martoranos in disguise? Not really. I think the parable may suggest some of us may be religiously unreachable. Like that first son, we say "Yes", but do not go. Jesus suggests, it seems to me, that being religious can be dangerous to our Christian faith. He infers, I think, the risks run high that our religion may cushion itself in the beauty of this room, lose itself in the mellifluous music, blind us with the glory of the stained glass. That we should worship God in the beauty of holiness with all the means at our command, that we should ascribe to God honor and majesty, that we should mediate Truth through art, music, mosaics, even Roxbury Puddingstone reflects a high and noble activity. But this parable warns us against the dangers lurking in a piety confusing what we do here with the whole will of God. Walter Rauschenbusch, that harbinger and prophet of the Social Gospel in the early years of this century, put the risk succinctly:
Religion has spent a large portion of its force in doings that were apart from the real business of life, on sacrificing, on endless prayers, in traveling to Mecca, Jerusalem or Rome, on kissing sacred stones, bathing in sacred rivers, climbing sacred stairs, and a thousand things that had at best only an indirect bearing on the practical social relations (among the men and women of the earth.)
You see, we can create a religious shell around ourselves resisting any penetration from the transforming love of Christ. We can be moral, but joyless; cordial but unloving, virtuous without hope, and as good as that may be, Jesus says, and this is literal, "God may find it more difficult to break into that kind of life with radiance and renewal, joy and hope than into the lives of whores and embezzlers."
Good Lord, save us. Grant our worship and our compassion, our celebration and our reconciliation, our prayers and our mission may unite in gratitude and in service.
III
In closing, let me tell you of a person who received a mandate to go work in the Lord's vineyard, said "yes," and went. In 1892 this 27-year-old sailed from England to Canada in the hospital ship, "Albert." He loved the sea, possessed an adventurous spirit, and was himself a trained physician. What he discovered among the fishing villages of Labrador appeared worse than anything he knew in the broken and poverty-stricken neighborhoods of London. "How could any human being with a heart of flesh," he wrote home to England, "fail to be haunted by these hungry, wan faces of our own flesh and blood?" So Wilfred Grenfell, for half a century, built hospitals, established schools, formed cooperatives, organized churches and inspired hundreds of men and women to creative, compassionate courageous work in his "Father's" vineyard. In a lovely reflection on the meaning of his life, he testified as follows:
"I personally wish for the life of no Alexander or Napoleon, no Croesus or Midas, no Voltaire or Rousseau. The wealth of Herod or the learning of the Pharisees, after the lapse of centuries, I see clearly was of little value as He-Who-Knows counts assets. I would rather leave behind me on the sands of time the footsteps of a Martyn or a Livingstone, or a Gordon, a Lincoln or a Lawrence, a Lister, a Jenner or a Stevenson than of any king either of empire, of finance or of scholarship . . .The highest reward of life to me would be to be like Jesus."
Hey! To be like Jesus. You! Me! No credibility gap there!
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