Homily, September 25, 2026, Rev. Holly Cardone
Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost
September 25, 2026
I like to think, that until I started getting into some real trouble, I was a pretty obedient kid. I loved my mom, I wanted to do the right thing, do what she asked of me, and for the most part I did. And then came the teenage years and it wasn’t pretty.
Neither was my homelife. Yet, despite the abuse, running away, drugs and alcohol, in my heart I wanted to do the right thing, and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t. I wanted to be good, and my thoughts and actions were bent on self-destruction. This is a terrible place to be for a kid. Feeling powerless over one’s behaviors and thoughts, wanting to be a much better person than I was capable of being, and feeling doomed because it seemed that there was nothing I could do about it. The adults I met didn’t have any answers or guidance either. Rehab for teens wasn’t a thing, and research into trauma and PTSD was just beginning in earnest.
But then, something happened. I was introduced to a spiritual program that changed my life. I was the adult child that said, “I’m not working in your stupid field,” but with a God of my understanding, I was able to walk into the field, and take care of business. Not because someone told me that’s what I should do, but because I had a relationship with God, I had a community of people who loved me, and wanted to help me, and I was willing to do whatever it took to stay sober and grow into the person God had intended me to be.
In verses 12 through 17 of Chapter 21 in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus turned over the tables of the money changers and threw them out. Then the blind and lame came to him at the temple and he healed them. The chief priests and teachers of the law were indignant because they saw the wonderful things Jesus did. But what really made them mad were the little children, in the temple courts, shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” The children recognizing Jesus as the Messiah. Jews, at the time believing that the Messiah would come from the line of King David. Jesus defended the children to the chief priests and scribes, saying ‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’g?” from Psalm 8:2. And then he left.
It was the next day, when Jesus was once again at the Temple, when the establishment, the core constituency of the Sanhedrin, the court of the Temple, confronted him again. This time, demanding to know under whose authority Jesus was doing all these things. A tricky question. Jesus had no rabbinic ordination, so he couldn’t attest to his authority coming from a teacher. And if he says his authority comes from God, well, that would be considered treason, and they would have reason to kill him.
Jesus refuses to walk into the trap and turns the tables on them, again, by asking a question that mirrors their own. "Was John's baptism from God, or just from humankind?" This works perfectly because John had already publicly pointed to Jesus as the one sent by God. So, if they admit John's authority was from God, they'd have to also admit Jesus's authority — since John vouched for him. But if they say John was just a man with no real authority, they risk angering the crowds, who loved John. Caught in that trap, they refuse to answer either way — they just say, "we don't know." They can’t answer Jesus’s question honestly, so Jesus isn’t going to answering their question honestly either. They never wanted an honest answer, they just wanted to entrap him so they could put him on trial for blasphemy.
The parable Jesus tells them reflects the lack of integrity and honesty in the temple leaders. The first son says “no” he isn’t going to do the work in the field, but later he decides to go. The other son, says, “yes,” but never goes. Jesus is saying to the chief priests and scribes, “You are the second son. You said yes to God, but you don’t live your lives in accordance with the teaching. Love God and love your neighbor. Clearly, they adore themselves which is why they feel so threatened by Jesus.
The tax collectors and prostitutes are like the first son. On paper, their lives said "no" to God — they were the moral outcasts, the obvious sinners. But when John came preaching repentance, they believed him, repented and changed the course of their lives.
I wasn’t a bad person, I was lost, sick, trapped by my disease, my trauma and my thinking. I was the son who said no, and was so far from the field, I didn’t know how to get back there. And there was no amount of “should” that could turn me around. I had all the willpower in the world, but my heart and my mind were misaligned.
I changed by the grace of God pointing me into the direction of a group of drunks that met in churches every day, God, community, and connection. Not someone trying to scare me into right acting as the Sanhedrin wanted to scare Jesus into silence. But through my own hard work and recovery community, my “no” turned into a “yes.” Not because I was ordered into the field, but because I finally wanted to be there.
The chief priests had all the right credentials, all the right words, all the right public "yeses." What they didn't have was a heart that had met God — the kind that lets you watch tax collectors and prostitutes repent and be moved by it instead of threatened by it. Jesus isn't condemning them for their past. He's grieving that even after seeing God at work right in front of them, they still wouldn't change their minds.
So, here's the question this passage leaves us with: which son are we? Not which son do we sound like on Sunday morning, but which son shows up in the field on Monday? Because God isn't looking for people who can say the right "yes." He's looking for people whose lives eventually get there — however long it takes, however far from the field we started. The tax collectors made it. The prostitutes made it. I made it. And if we’re still finding our way there, which I can tell you from experience, happens regularly, God’s arms are open, and the field is still waiting, and we have the opportunity every day to try and make it. Amen.