Putting First Things First
Last Friday was Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival. Across much of East Asia, families gather around this time of year to share food and give thanks for the season. Even those who don’t celebrate Chuseok know the feeling of pausing on a special day to think of the people we owe thanks to. But gratitude often waits. We tell ourselves we’ll call when things settle down, or bring it up next time we meet. Then life gets busy again, and whatever we meant to say slips away. We say that our family and our faith matter to us more than almost anything else. We mean it. Yet when we look back over a day, we often find we gave no real time to the very things we called precious. Holding on to what matters, in the actual shape of our days, turns out to be harder than it sounds.
In today’s gospel, a father sends his two sons out with the same instruction. “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” The first son refuses. The second says he will go. But the first later changes his mind and goes to work, while the second never does. Jesus asks the question directly: “Which of the two did the will of his father?” The answer isn’t hard. It’s the one who went to work. He said no at first, but then turned his heart and did what his father asked. We’re not told why the second son never went. Maybe he never meant to. Maybe something else came up and he forgot. What we do know is that his word stopped short of his feet. We’re not so different. When we say we’ll do something, we usually mean it at the time. Once this is finished, once things are easier—then we’ll get to it. In the meantime, the intention just stays an intention. Jesus told this parable to the chief priests and elders—people whose whole vocation was serving God. Yet when John the Baptist showed them the right way, they didn’t believe him. The ones who did believe were the tax collectors and the prostitutes, the very people the religious leaders looked down on. Agreeing with a teaching isn’t the hard part. The hard part comes when it asks us to change our plans, or costs us something. We can pray for a certain kind of life and still, when the moment to decide arrives, reach first for our own comfort. The first son changed course and went to the vineyard. His change of heart showed up in what he did next. If we’ve truly reconsidered what matters to us, something in how we act should follow.
One of my favorite films is The Mission. In it, a man named Rodrigo Mendoza has spent years capturing and selling indigenous people into slavery. In a fit of rage, he kills his own brother, and is left afterward with a crushing guilt. There’s a scene where he drags a heavy bundle of armor and weapons behind him up a punishing mountain trail—toward the very people he once hunted. When he finally reaches them, one of them cuts the rope holding the bundle. It falls away, and Mendoza breaks down in tears. That weight was his old life—the life in which he threatened, captured, and sold human beings. Now he is received by the people he once harmed, and begins to live among them. Mendoza doesn’t stop at regret. He learns to live for the people he once treated as goods to be sold, sharing his life with them. In the end, he dies defending them. What changed in him was the answer to a simple question: who am I living for? Before, he sacrificed others for his own gain. Afterward, he gave his own life for theirs.
In today’s reading from Philippians, Paul writes: “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” What we put first shows up in our choices. We may believe that helping others matters, and still hesitate the moment it costs us our time or our money. Sometimes loving someone well means letting go of an opinion we’ve held onto, or a habit we’ve grown comfortable with. This is true even within families. When we’ve lived alongside someone for many years, we assume we know them well. But time changes bodies and circumstances. Something a person once managed easily may now be difficult. Something that once seemed minor may now be a real worry. Even parents who have given everything to raising their children still have new things to learn. Once children are grown, love has to change shape— from deciding to listening. If our words start to sound like interference, the answer isn’t to explain ourselves more insistently, but to ask honestly whether what we call help is actually helping. Caring for the people who matter to us sometimes asks us to change a way of thinking we’ve long taken for granted. Paul continues: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” Christ emptied himself and took the form of a slave. He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death. His love took the shape of a life given away. If we carry that same mind, our choices should show it. If we’ve always reached first for our own convenience, there will be times we need to rearrange our plans, and carry some real cost, for someone else’s sake. It’s worth asking, honestly, what we are actually giving for the things we say matter to us.
Our days are full of things that genuinely need doing—work to make a living, keeping a home together, the people we’re responsible for. None of that is wasted, and there’s no need to blame ourselves simply for having been busy. Still, it’s worth asking whether the things we’ve grown used to doing are still the most necessary ones. As seasons of life change, so does what comes first. Some things may need to be set down, so that time can go to someone we’ve been neglecting. If our bodies can’t carry as much as they once could, we can still do what’s within reach. We can pray for someone, or simply ask how they’re doing. If we need help ourselves, we don’t have to carry it alone—we can ask. Each of us, in our own circumstances, can look for our own way to follow God’s will. I hope gratitude, too, can become something we act on. We live surrounded by the help of family, neighbors, and fellow believers. We can thank the people who have stood by us, and take up a portion of the burden someone else has been carrying alone.
The father tells his son to go to the vineyard today. Our time isn’t unlimited. Changing our hearts, and then living that change out, takes time. Coming close again to a relationship long left unattended takes time as well. Keeping this up isn’t easy on our own. That’s why we need God’s help. As Paul writes: “It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” God gives us both the desire to follow his will and the strength to carry it out. Even as we recognize what needs to change in us, and try to act on it, we can ask for that help. I hope we can each take a moment to consider how we are caring for the people who matter to us. May we find ways to speak our gratitude, and to give our time when someone needs us—so that the love we speak of becomes something we actually live. Amen.