This coming Sunday is the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time. On a more technical note, the answer to the question depends on the text you read. There is considerable variation in the manuscripts (MSS)  and other older texts for the form of the parable and the subsequent answer to Jesus’ question.

There are three main variants: (a) The first son refuses and then goes; the second promises and then fails; and the leaders approve the first. (b) The first promises and then fails; the second refuses and then goes; and the leaders approve the second. (c) The first refuses and then goes; the second promises and then fails; and the leaders approve the second. [There are cultures in which the very act of saying “no” to one’s father is a far greater offense than not doing what the father asks. But it is perhaps that both sons need to change.] Scott (Hear Then the Parable) suggests that both sons are wrong. Scott frames it in the sense of honor — a son who publicly says “no” to his father is shaming his father.

When the parable hearer is asked to choose between the two sons, a dilemma arises. Both sons have insulted the father, one by saying no, the other by saying yes but doing nothing. But one comes to the family’s aid by going into the vineyard and upholding family solidarity, while the other maintains the family’s good name by appearing on the surface to be a good son. Would the father choose to be publicly honored and privately shamed, or publicly shamed and privately honored? In the first century C.E. that is not much of a choice. The real question is with which one he would be more angry. But in being forced to choose, he must choose between the apparent and the real, between one who appears to be inside the family and one who appears to be outside. [p. 84]

That being said, the third variants [c] has the Jewish leaders approving words rather than deeds. This puts them in a bad light even before Jesus comments on their behavior, and it may have been for that reason that some scribes and translators preferred this reading that makes the Jewish leaders speak in the very way that Jesus will charge them with having acted. But this last option can hardly have been the original intention of the story, since Jesus’ response does not challenge their answer, but rather charges them with not having lived up to it. Their reading of the story, he implies, is right, but their correct thinking is belied by their actual behavior. The reading as translated in our text is agreed by most commentators to represent the original form of the story and response.

Image credit: Parable of the Two Sons, Andrei Monorov, 2012 | CC BY SA 4.0 |