Playing the Blame Game
based on Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32 and Matthew 21:23-32
by Rev. Karen Goltz

I am a native Bostonian.  I know I don't sound like it, but I am.  And as such, I was raised to believe in the Curse of the Bambino.  Most of you probably know what I'm talking about: the reason why the Boston Red Sox were unable to win the World Series for eighty-six years.  Every time they got close and lost, or didn't even get close at all, it was because they were cursed.  It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they weren't playing very well, or at least not as well as the teams they were playing against.  No, it wasn't their fault-they were losing because of the Curse.  That was our excuse and we were sticking to it.  Because of course it was easier to blame the Curse than to hold our team responsible for their playing.  Blame the Curse, not the team's performance.  So then, why are we attributing their 2004 win to their superior playing?  What happened to the Curse?  Could it be that it never existed?  If we can claim responsibility for the good, why not the bad?  What would happen if, instead of making excuses for our failures, we took responsibility for them?

And I'm not just talking about baseball.  Blaming others for our problems is an epidemic in our society.  People pass the buck and attempt to take the attention and the blame away from themselves by pointing at someone or something else.  Genetics are a big scapegoat.  "I'm overweight because my mother was overweight, and I inherited her slow metabolism."  "I have a drinking problem because my parents were alcoholics."  That one's both genetics and environmental.  Then there's just our environment as the scapegoat.  "I'm in a dead-end job because I never had the opportunity to get an education."  "I can't worry about the needy because I can barely pay my own bills."  "I can steal pens from my company because everyone else is doing it, and they're underpaying me anyway."  "I don't have to correct the store clerk who forgot to ring up some merchandise but bagged it for me anyway, because they're a big store with big markups, and they can afford to lose a little inventory."  "I'm unhappy because my life stinks."  And we lull ourselves into believing these excuses, and we hide behind them and blame them for our shortcomings, and we absolve ourselves from any responsibility for changing our situations, because after all, we're only victims of our circumstances.  But really, deep deep down we know that that's not true.

In our first reading today, God through Ezekiel attempts to restore Israel to her former glory.  They have suffered a tremendous blow-their land has been conquered and they have been carried off to the land of their conquerors to live as an exiled people.  Their faith in God was challenged; this was happening either because God was not in control, or because God wanted them to suffer.  They refused (rightly) to believe that God wasn't in control.  So that left them with the understanding that God was punishing them.  But they also refused to believe that they had done anything bad enough to deserve this amount of suffering.  So they remembered that when he gave them the ten commandments God had said that he would punish children for the iniquity of their parents to the third and fourth generation (Deuteronomy 5:9), and figured that that must be what was happening.  They weren't responsible for their own situation; it was their ancestors' fault.

But through this great prophet God explains to the Israelites that this isn't exactly the case.  Yes, their ancestors sinned.  They made some bad decisions with their neighbors, and the Israelites are now facing the natural consequences of those decisions.  But that said, there was no excuse for their continued disobedience and poor behavior.  Children can no longer blame their parents for their sins.  It sounds so simple and obvious. And we are tempted to forget that children often do suffer from the sins of their parents; predisposition to addictions and obesity can be genetically inherited, and the behaviors we're taught as children do help shape us as adults.  But ultimately we make our own choices.  The choice to continue in the dysfunction is often the easier path; it's all we know.  But we can learn other ways and new behaviors, and we don't have to continue those patterns we were taught, and we don't have to indulge those natural-but-self-destructive impulses that we feel.  But somehow the idea of blaming others is easier to grasp than actually facing the problem.

As verse 4 of Ezekiel 18 reads and is the theme of the passage, "It is only the person who sins that shall die."  Now the people of Israel thought this was unjust.  It's unfair that God would be so hard on those who had wicked parents.  They didn't ask to be born in a culture that didn't follow God the way they were supposed to.  Is it right that God would judge them the same as he would judge those who had been brought up to know his ways?  Yes.  Because at some point those who did not follow God had the opportunity to make things right.  The emphasis here is in recognizing your own sin and then repenting.  Or, another way of looking at it, the emphasis here is that your past doesn't own you; you do have choices.  For good or for ill, what's past is past, and what matters is what you do now.  As Ezekiel declares in verse 31, "Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit."

That's pretty good advice for the sons in the parable we heard in Matthew today.  Both of them made a statement about their future actions; one said no, I won't do what you want me to, and the other said yes, of course I'll obey.  But when it came time to act, neither one allowed their past to dictate their present.  The one who said ‘no' acted ‘yes,' and the one who said ‘yes' acted ‘no.'  And in both cases, even though their past didn't dictate their present, their present did shape their future.  The one who acted in obedience did the will of his father, and was rewarded for it.  The one who acted in disobedience, even though he'd told his father what he'd wanted to hear, was made lower in God's sight.

Our environment obviously has an influence on our thoughts and actions.  But God tells us that we do have choices, and our choices matter.  It doesn't matter what's popular and prevalent in our culture and society; what matters is what God is calling us to do, and how we respond to that call.  Is an obedient response going to be unpopular?  Probably.  Will it be difficult?  Definitely.  Are those legitimate excuses for acting in disobedience?  Absolutely not.  The bottom line, in Jesus' explanation to the chief priests and elders-and probably to anyone else who will listen-is that we can no longer make excuses because of birth or background or culture.  If you hear anything this morning hear this: all that matters is who we are and whose we are.  We are free when we belong to Christ Jesus.  The good news is that we are no longer trapped because our parents were in debt or drank or gave us everything we asked for or didn't hug us enough as children.  The bad news is that we can no longer use them or culture or curses or society or anyone else as an excuse for our failures.

One of the things that often confuses us as Christians is whether what we believe is more important than what we do or whether what we do is more important than what we believe.  But today we are told that what we believe changes who we are; and what we do naturally flows from that identity.  We are called to be in covenant with God.  We are called to be held accountable to God's standards.  We are called to confession and repentance.  Yes, we often have to face the consequences of sinful actions, our own and others.  But those actions don't define us.  Yes, we often live in an environment that is downright hostile to Christian discipleship.  But that environment doesn't trap us.  Yes, we're called to follow the one who gave his life for us, a call that seems impossible to follow.  But the one who calls us also is with us and helps us to meet that call.  "For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God.  Turn, then, and live." (Ezekiel 18::32)  No excuses.  Amen.