Words are cheap. It’s easy to tell someone what they want to hear. Deeds are costly, because we can only do one thing at a time. This is an important lesson for busy church planters: To do one thing is to say “no” to 10,000 others in that moment. To merely say something is to leave our options open. Tucked away in Matthew’s gospel (and only Matthew’s gospel, 21:28-32) is the short parable of two sons, and cheap words:
“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’
“‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”
You can tell it’s a repentance story by the way Jesus connects it to John the Baptist’s ministry, which was all about repentance. But there’s a key moment before last verse. The first son “changed his mind” (v 29, and also 32) and then went out to work in the vineyard. This isn’t the normal word we associate with repentance, it’s closer to the idea that he changed his cares. It’s as if the very moment he said “no” it created a kind of anxiety that dogged his steps the rest of the day—until he simply headed out to the vines and started doing the work.
