There is No Try

Time to move on to next week's text.  We will read and pray through Matthew 21:23-32.  This is the Parable of the Two Sons.  This little story takes us back to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.  "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock" (Matthew 6:24).  

And it's not enough to piously cry out, "Lord, Lord!" and then do nothing about that cry (see Matthew 7:21).  Apparently prophesying, exorcisms and other deeds of power won't do.  Those who present this religious resume will be rebuffed.  "I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers" (Matthew 7:23).

Nor is this the chance for gleeful declarations of Lutheran desperation. It will not do to protest that thus we can do nothing at all, and that Jesus must therefore do it in our stead.  It takes theological nerves of steel to read the Sermon on the Mount and come to such a conclusion.  After all, we were created in Christ Jesus for good works, which is to be our way of life (Ephesians 2:10).  And Paul tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12).

There is danger in believing that somehow we have "arrived."  This little parable is really an allegory followed by an immediate explanation.  Jesus identifies the first son as "the tax collectors and prostitutes".  The second son is the chief priests and the elders, as identified in Matthew 21:23.  They did not listen to John the Baptist when directly exposed to his challenge.

The tax collector and prostitutes could not pretend that they had "arrived," that they belonged at the table.  The chief priests and the elders, on the other hand, came from generations of folks who claimed precisely to have arrived.  That sort of public identity can backfire on us.  I say "us" because this allegory certainly has applications for those of us who are pretty sure we belong in church.

In a series of experiments, psychologists studied the relationship between public identity and subsequent action.  In each experiment, subjects declared intentions to study harder.  Some subjects believed those intentions were public.  Others believed they were private.  We might think the "outed" students were more likely to follow through.  But the opposite was the case!

"When other people take notice of one's identity-relevant behavioral intentions, one's performance of the intended behaviors is compromised" (Gollwitzer, et al, 2009, p. 616).  If I share publicly that I will study harder, be more compassionate, be more generous, I am less likely to do those things.

How can that be?  The intention may serve as a substitute for the action.  Adam Grant describes an experiment where participants were asked to write about themselves using either "generosity" words or neutral descriptions.  Then they were asked to donate to their favorite charity.  "Those who wrote about themselves as givers," Grant reports, "donated an average of two and a half times less money than those who wrote about themselves with neutral words" (Give and Take, page 247).

What in the world is going on here?  "Other people's taking notice of one's identity-intentions," Gollwitzer concludes, "apparently engenders a premature sense of completeness regarding the identity goal."  As Master Yoda told Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, "Do...or do not. There is no try."

Could it be that the second son suffers "a premature sense of completeness" when it comes to obeying the father?