Sisters and brothers, grace to you & peace from the God of all grace, the Christ of all compassion, and the Spirit of all life. Amen.

Well, how timely. It’s … a debate! And, one party — the one currently in power — is questioning the other party’s — the relatively-new guy’s — qualifications and credentials.

Sounds familiar!

But this morning, it’s not our sparring presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.

This morning, it’s Jesus Vs. the religious establishment, it’s Jesus Vs. the professionally religious, it’s Jesus Vs. institutional religion.

If we back up to the beginning of ch. 21 in Matthew’s gospel, we see why the chief priests and the spiritual elders in Jerusalem were nervous about Jesus and why they became so confrontational with him, questioning his qualifications.

The context is Monday in the last week of Jesus’ life. The day before had been his triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem, riding in a donkey, with palm branches and blankets and garments strewn in the road before him. Palm Sunday. The week of Jesus’ passion — his suffering — and death.

What we often forget about Palm Sunday was that it wasn’t just the donkey ride and the waving palm branches that happened that day. When Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem amid all those cries of “Hosanna to the Son of David” and being hailed as the king of the Jews, on that very same day he heads straight to the temple, goes inside, and drives out all who were selling and buying within the temple walls, overturning the tables of the money changers and those were were selling doves for sacrificing.

And if that wasn’t enough to raise some serious eyebrows on Temple Street, Jesus also performs a host of healings — inside the temple — of unclean people, people who should not even have been inside the temple walls to begin with, because of their physical defects which, according to their religious traditions, made them ceremonially-defiled: too unclean to be within the confines of the temple’s sacred spaces, and too unfit to be that near to God and the chief priests and elders.

So, it’s a set-up were rather familiar with.

The “old guard” vs. the one perceived or portrayed as a radical.

The “establishment” vs. an agent of change.

The familiar vs. the fresh new face.

And, not unlike Friday night’s debate, this debate, too, is a toss-up. One could argue that either side was the winner. Both sides got in their digs and each made the other out to look unqualified.

But quite unlike Friday night’s debate, neither side — like Jesus — was able to question their opponent into silence. Jesus somehow manages, by his authoritative line of questioning, to undermine the authority of the professionally-religious who are more concerned about covering their actions and preserving their reputations, and here’s where it gets personal: it’s Jesus silencing the clergy (I know, I know, an answer to every layperson’s prayers!); it’s Jesus silencing the spokespersons for the mainline, mainstream religious tradition; it’s Jesus silencing the professionally-spiritual. Ouch.

Well, there’s another whole sermon in there somewhere for those of us who stand in pulpits and preach for a living. But today, Jesus moves on to a story that makes his point accessible to all of us — lay and clergy alike — all who continue in the way of this one who rode triumphantly into Jerusalem on Sunday, drove out the moneychangers and stumped the clergy on Monday, had supper with his friends & washed their on Thursday, and was dead before rush hour on Friday afternoon.

Jesus goes on to ask a parable-like question about a man with two sons, one whose “No” really means “Yes,” and the other whose “Yes” really means “No.” Their father tells them both to “go and work in the vineyard today.” Both are right in their own way of being right: one gives the right answer, and one does the right thing. Both sons begin as sons, act as sons, and remain as sons; neither is cast from the family. The father remains the father of both sons, but one is revealed to be doing the will of the father, while the other one only has intentions to do so, or at least says he does.

This time even the clergy, even the professionally-religious get it, but Jesus goes on to tell them that people who they consider lower on the spiritual food chain – namely, tax collectors and prostitutes — moral outsiders and the ritually-unclean — will enter into the reign of God ahead of them because “those people” got it (they understood it, and lived it) first. They might have said “No” at first to the message of John the Baptizer, but they lived out a “Yes.”

Our Gospel texts both today and last weeks take us into the vineyard with Jesus, who taught us in last week’s parable that “the first shall be last and the last first.” The ones who got invited to labor in the vineyard at 5:00 got paid the same amount as those who got hired at the break of day.

Today, Jesus drives home the point further. Last week it was about Jesus’ radical economy of grace no matter how long you’ve walked with him. This week Jesus’ radical economy of grace tips the cart on our notions of who is included in the invitation to the vineyard. The obedient child and the disobedient child. The religious professionals and those who would just as soon have nothing to do with institutional religiosity.

But what Jesus is also teaching us this morning is about the difference between being religious and being obedient. To be religious is to “say the right thing.” But to be obedient is to “do the right thing.”

We didn’t use these particular words at the beginning of the service, but so often when we pray the opening prayer of confession we ask forgiveness for “things we have done, and things we have left undone.” In other words, for times when we have been merely religious and not obedient; for times when we have said “Yes,” but really meant “No way”; for times we have been too much in the “say the right thing” mode rather than the “do the right thing” mode; for times when we have been the predictably-spiritual rather than bold and free spirits who, like tax collectors and prostitutes, know how great is their need of God.

Sisters and brothers, to us, to all of us, and to them, to all of them, comes the gracious invitation to the vineyard. There the wine will be poured, and there the bread will be shared to strengthen one and all for the work of serving in the vineyard.

And so that there may be NO DEBATE about who gets the credit for the vineyard work, in the words of the apostle Paul in our second reading this morning, “For it is GOD who is AT WORK IN YOU, enabling you both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure.”

Amen