26A.   Ezekiel 18:25-28.   This selection of Ezekiel sets the stage for this week’s lesson.  There is a group that thinks they know better than God.  Adapting a line from a famous musical, “Why can God think like we do?”  Adding just another line, “We’ve got it right.  Why can’t God think like we do?”  It is so easy to take the position of God and allocate it to oneself, which is to say, “What I think is right and virtuous and not what God thinks,” or another way to say the same thing, “I replace God; instead of God over me, it is I over me.  I am quite capable of running my own life without God.”

Matthew 21:28-32.  That is exactly what the chief priests and elders of the people thought.  The second son took on the veneer of holiness and piety but within himself thought he knew better than the father; and so, he ignore what the father wanted and did whatever he wanted to do.  The first son had a mind of his own, had no desire to put up a front of pleasing the father, spoke his own mind and did as he himself pleased.  Realizing the error of his ways, the first changed his mind and, in fact, obeyed his father.  Jesus likens the second son to the chief priests and the elders of the people; and the tax collectors and the prostitutes, to the first.  Jesus points out that John the Baptist got them to do the right thing but the chief priests and the elders of the people refused to follow the way of John’s righteousness.

Philippians 2:1-11.    Paul calls on us to, “Have the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus,” i.e., as he emptied himself, humbled himself so should we.  Jesus was so submissive to the Father’s will that became “obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.”  He, unlike us, was equal to the Father but “did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.”  He let go of what was his right to hold on to and “taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,” since he was truly human yet still divine so to accomplish the redemption of humanity.

“Complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing.  Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory.”  The chief priests and elders of the people were so full of themselves that they rejected the way of righteousness of both John and Jesus.  That same selfishness is what divides the Church community.  That attitude that I know better than God, than the Church authority that divides the Church, creates divisions and an atmosphere which does not speak love of one another.

The last verse of Sunday’s psalm (Ps 25:8-9) says, “Good and upright is the Lord; thus he shows sinners the way.  He guides the humble to justice, and teaches the humble his way.”  He is “the way, the truth and the life.”  In Matthew 11:29-30, Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.” Resting in the Lord’s humility and obedience, leads us to be a humble and obedient people likewise.  “Let every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”