Many of you know that one of my major hobbies is to play video games online on the internet with my friends. I enjoy it in large part because it allows me to spend some time, even if not face to face, with people I care about, who over the years have come to be scattered all across the world.

Now, hanging with my friends is not the only reason I like these games. Like a good movie or TV show, the games often tell stories that draw you in, that entertain and excite you. Developers put a lot of work into them. This past week, there’s been a new development in the storyline of the game I play the most was leaked to the public. Inside this game, there are two rival factions and you choose as you play which one to support. Up until now, they’ve been in an uneasy peace, a cease-fire as it were. But now, one side has betrayed the other and war is afoot.

It’s been interesting to see the reactions of the fans of the game to this new development. “How can you do that? You make us look like the bad guys!” say the fans of one faction. “Aha!” say the others, “Now we see your true colors. You’ve been the villains all along.” In one sense, it’s all kind of silly, a bit of dumb fun. In many ways, not so different from the fans of two football teams, say WVU and Virginia Tech, talking trash back and forth about their teams, about who is better and who is worse.

I wish we only kept this sort of mindset about things as frivolous, but we don’t. It is a very human tendency that we often think the best of the portions of society that we align ourselves to, and the worst of all the others. It doesn’t matter what “portions” those are. It can be things as silly as what sports teams we like or what game faction we support. But it’s also often things far more serious. Politics, for instance. We often only see the best in our side, our party, and see only the worst in the other side. Our people are good, they’re honest, hard-working public servants who want what is best for the country. Those other guys are corrupt, power-hungry, and you can’t trust anything they say. We’re hearing a lot of that right now with the campaign heading into the 11^th hour this year.

Religion too. We’re so quick to condemn Islam for the acts of the terrorists, while so easily forgetting that they neither speak for the bulk of the adherents of that faith and also so easily forgetting the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch-burnings, and other less than pleasant parts of our own history as Christians.

We’ve talked a lot these past weeks about how we try to diminish God, make him small like us, underestimating his capacity to love and forgive. But this mindset shows us that we so often also underestimate humanity. You see, when we see only our best and their worst, we underestimate our capacity for evil and their capacity for good.

I want to repeat that, because it’s really important. We underestimate our capacity for evil and their capacity for good. And I believe that this parable that Jesus tells in our Gospel lesson today about these two sons is about more than just obedience to God’s will, it’s about what we are all capable of as human beings.

The story is quite simple. The father comes to his two sons with tasks to complete. One says no, but in the end obeys. The other says yes, and does nothing. How many, in the course of our lives, have been the first son, who rejects his father’s will, but ultimately changes his mind and goes? How many have been the second, who accepts his father’s tasks but fails to follow through? If we’re honest, we had our hand up for both of them. We are both sons, sometimes saying we will and we don’t, sometimes saying we won’t and we do.

But how easily we forget that. The Pharisees have certainly forgotten it, playing their games as they do with Jesus and his associates, sticking their nose up in disgust as Jesus gathers sinners to his side, the prostitutes, tax collectors, and other undesirables. Blind they are to the hunger within these outcasts for something more than the misery and loneliness their lives have become. Let’s be honest, no one says as a child that they want to be a prostitute when they grow up. What nightmarish circumstances of life much have been inflicted on such women, then and now, that they are condemned to such a life? And those tax collectors, lured in by greed and promise of wealth, but now so full of regret. The Pharisees see them as nothing but evil and worthless.

And on the other hand, the Pharisees own view of themselves is that they are the righteous, the saintly, the most pious, and most favored by God. Yet they are often corrupt, condemning, bigoted, close-minded, and obviously arrogant. Blind to their own failings and their own need for God.

How easily we forget. We often want to forget. None of us likes to admit to the evil that can do and have done: mistakes made, anger unleashed, broken promises, hurts inflicted. Nor do we want to see the good or potential for good in those we hate. We only want to see their worst qualities.

This past week, I reconnected with an old friend with whom I had not spoken in nearly ten years. We parted company with angry words and hateful thoughts toward one another and for years, I blamed her for the brokenness between us. But as time passed, I came to realize the fault was really mine. I wanted to blame her and think the worst of her, and I spent years doing that, waiting for her to realize her error, apologize, and come back. I was blind, and when my eyes finally opened and I finally built up the courage to make contact with her again, she found it in her heart to forgive me. A moment of grace that I know, deep down, that I did not deserve.

That’s what God does. For all blindness to our own failures and our blindness to the good of others, God grants his grace, gives his love and forgiveness. He knows what we are, that good and evil can and often do come out of ourselves. But that doesn’t stop him from loving us. It doesn’t stop him from believing we can be better. Every grace, every act of mercy and love that he showers upon us is God saying “Here’s another chance to prove that you can be better than you are.”

God believes in us. Believes that everyone of us can be better, despite all the times we’ve let him down. But he keeps giving us another chance. Paul talks about what was involved in bringing this grace to us in the passage from Philippians, in the famous Christ hymn. That hymn begins with talk about Jesus “being in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” What does that mean? A lot of things, but among them I think there is the simple reality that he didn’t have to bother with us. He could have given up on us. Enough! I’m going to start another creation over in the next universe and see if that works out any better. But that’s not what he did. He came to earth, was born of a human mother, lived as we do, and then died and rose again for our sakes. He went through all this trouble because he won’t give up on us, he won’t stop believing in us. Every grace is him saying we’ve got another chance. It doesn’t matter who we are: tax collector or Pharisee, or what side we’re on. He showers his grace upon us, because he loves us. Amen.