The Lutheran Hour
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"Teachable"
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Text: Matthew 21:31
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“Lieutenant, did you hear what you said in there?” Master Sergeant Hotchkiss often asks me questions like that as we ride in the pickup truck on the flightline. We’ve just come from a meeting or an aircraft status update, where I had been trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about, and he would kindly let me know that he could see through it.
Sergeant Hotchkiss was 15 years older than me, but technically, I outranked him. I was a new lieutenant assigned to an aircraft maintenance unit in the Air Force. The captain had put me “in charge” of the night shift. But Master Sergeant Hotchkiss, the crusty, mustached mechanic driving the pickup along the flightline where we parked the jets, he was the guy who was actually in charge.
This is how it works in the Air Force maintenance world. They take a young officer, usually fresh out of college, and team him or her up with a seasoned non-commissioned officer, an NCO. The officer is “in charge,” but the NCO is the teacher.
And whenever Sergeant Hotchkiss started asking me loaded questions like, “Were you listening to yourself talking in there, LT?”—part of me wanted to fire back and defend myself, so that I could look smart, at least in my own eyes. But another part realized what was happening. He was trying to teach me. But that meant having to swallow that familiar, bitter feeling, of having to reckon with the fact that I just had said (or done) something dumb. And I didn’t even realize it.
You probably know what this feels like. Think back when you were learning how to bake cookies, or drive a car, or do algebra. You thought you knew what you were doing, but you didn’t. You didn’t know that baking soda is not the same thing as baking powder, or that diesel fuel is not the same as unleaded, or that you can’t distribute exponential variables by addition but only by multiplication, duh. You didn’t know what you didn’t know.
But you did know the feeling when you realized that you said or did something that everybody else in the room knew was dumb. You know what it feels like to be taught, or to get “schooled,” as they used to tell me when I still played basketball.
My sixteen-year-old son tells me that basketball players don’t say that anymore, Dad. “Oh? What do they call it when someone drives past you and scores in your face?”
“They say you ‘got broke’ or ‘cooked.’”
These days I’m getting schooled by my sixteen-year-old.Whatever generational slang we use to describe it; we all know the feeling. And this was how it felt for many people in the presence of Jesus of Nazareth. People were getting schooled—although Jesus had a way of teaching people without demeaning them, helping them learn without making them feel lesser. Read or listen to His four historical biographies in the Bible—the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and you will see school in session. But you won’t see Jesus being mean about it.
You probably had teachers like that, in school or on the job. For me, I think of Master Sergeant Hotchkiss. He showed me respect. I knew he wanted the best for me. He never suggested that he was better than me. He just had more time on the job. He’d seen more and done more. And he knew it was his responsibility to teach me and he helped me learn without making me feel lesser. Looking back, I’m grateful. But I didn’t like feeling dumb in the moment, which is often how people felt around Jesus, except that sometimes they weren’t so grateful.
All of this is exposed in a confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders of His day. In the Gospels, the religious leaders say all sorts of dumb things. They don’t know what they don’t know. Now, back up the story a moment: Jesus had followed on after a famous preacher called John the Baptizer (or John the Baptist). John had caused quite a stir, baptizing his students, preparing the way for God to come and restore His kingdom. But John had been arrested and incarcerated because the authorities were threatened by him, which left all these hungry students without a teacher, temporarily.
The last thing John said publicly was that Jesus is the One whom John had been sent to prepare the way for (see Matthew 3:13-14, John 3:25-30). So, Jesus has a huge following, even bigger than John’s. He had devoted three years to walking around ancient Israel, teaching, performing miracles, doing good. Then, He goes to Jerusalem, the capital city, the seat of power, religious and political and military and economic power. And He rides in on a donkey. Crowds are praising Him, calling Him God’s chosen King. He goes into the temple in Jerusalem, and starts acting like He’s in charge, like He owns the place, cleaning house, declaring judgment on the temple leaders.
And these leaders confront Jesus. They ask Him, “Who gave You this authority that You do these things?” Now we’re told there’s no such thing as a dumb question, but if you’ve been listening to the story of Jesus thus far, you might wonder if this is an exception. Jesus—He can see through all their posturing—and He says to them, “I will also ask you a question. Answer me, and I’ll tell you by what authority I am doing these things. The Baptism of John—was it from heaven [from God] or from man?” (Matthew 21:24–25)
And that’s when the religious leaders start to taste that bitter feeling, because they know that they’re about to get schooled.
They put their heads together and see the trap, or at least what they think is a trap. They think Jesus is trying to shame them, but in truth He’s trying to save them. They know that if they say John’s authority was from heaven—from God, then Jesus would say, “Why didn’t you trust him, then?” But if they said John was speaking on his own, making it up as he went along, then they would get in trouble with the people, because most of the people believed that John had been speaking God’s truth, that he was a prophet.
So, they answer Jesus, “We don’t know.”
Now, sometimes saying, “I don’t know” is the best thing you can do. It’s a sign of humility and teachability. But in these religious leaders’ case, it’s not that. It’s a cover to avoid looking dumb in public. “We don’t know.” It’s not a humble plea to be taught. It’s their attempt to dismiss the question so that they can look smart. Jesus sees through it: “Then neither am I going to tell you by what authority I’m doing these things,” He tells them. But He doesn’t give up on them. Instead, teacher that He is, He takes an indirect approach (see Matthew 21:23–27). And this time they don’t even see it coming.
Jesus asks them, “What do you think? A man had two children. And he went to the first and said, ‘Child, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And [the child] answered, ‘I don’t want to!’
But later, after he changed his mind, he went.[The man] went to the other [child] and said the same. And he answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.
Which of the two did the will of his father?” They say, “The first.” Jesus says to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.
For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.”That’s from the Gospel according to Matthew 21. It’s the perfect parable for the situation, because, however they answer, Jesus has them. Whether they point to the first child or the second child, either way, they’re about to get schooled.
Neither of the two children in the parable is admirable. Both disrespect their faither, one to his face, the other, behind his back. It’s just that the first one changes his mind, he had a “come-to-Jesus” moment, like former prostitutes or ex-tax collectors. Tax collectors who, by the way, used a legal technicality to get away with stealing from their own people. Tax collectors and prostitutes behaved shamefully. They had disrespected themselves, their neighbors, and their God. Maybe they did it willfully, or maybe they just didn’t know what they didn’t know. Either way, when they tasted that bitter feeling of being exposed, they changed their minds, like the first child in the story. And now, in the saving presence of Jesus, they were invited to learn from their mistakes, without being made to feel lesser (see Matthew 11:28–30).
The religious authorities, however, were like neither of the two children in the parable. Faced with God’s kingdom coming in Jesus, They said “no” to His face and behind His back. They are unteachable.
Often you’ll hear sports coaches say that raw talent and hard work will only get you so far. What a player really needs, beyond some skill and work ethic, is to be coachable—to be teachable. And the same is true for most other domains of life. Sometimes we Christians portray ourselves as having it all figured out. Sometimes we think that what separates us from others is that we have all the right answers. Sometimes we act as though “being right” is the most important thing about being a Christian. But we need to remember that the early Christians, the first Christ-followers, were called disciples, which is a word that means “learner.”
And to be a learner, you need to be teachable. To be teachable is to admit that you don’t have it all figured out. To be teachable is to realize that you don’t have all the right answers. To be teachable as a Christian is to become like an ex-prostitute, a former thieving tax-collector, and welcome the invitation to learn from Jesus without being made to feel lesser.
It also means having to swallow that desire to save face and look smart. It means, by the grace of God, having your mind changed, having your pride cooked, and your self-sufficiency broken—crucified on the cross with Jesus. But that is the one thing the religious leaders won’t have. They won’t be teachable.
What keeps people from being teachable today? It’s not all that different than it was for the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. Deep down, we have the same reasons. We don’t want to look dumb in front of people we want to impress. We don’t accept that we are not “self-taught” individuals, and never will be. We don’t want to be totally dependent on God, on His Word, and on His Spirit, and on His people.
But in our age, The Information Age, in some ways it’s even easier to stay unteachable. How so? It’s the illusion of power—the fact that nearly all information is just an internet search or an AI-summary away—that makes us sometimes feel like maybe we really do know it all, that we don’t need anyone to teach us.
Now even on a human scale, it doesn’t take much to see that the power we’re promised in this Information Age is an illusion, because information is not the same as knowledge. Knowledge is having the right information for the right context. It means knowing what information to pay attention to and what to ignore.
Information is not the same as knowledge and knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Wisdom is knowing how to adapt and apply knowledge in diverse, complex, constantly changing contexts. So the power of all this information at our fingertips, without being taught knowledge and wisdom, it’s an illusion.
But that’s all on a human scale. The claim of Jesus is something even bigger. The Jesus we meet in the Bible isn’t just putting Himself forward as the smartest person in the field of religious knowledge. He is the smartest Person in every field of knowledge, because He’s the Creator of all knowledge. He is the Truth in-Person, the Word of God made flesh. At least, that was His claim, and that’s exactly what led to His death. The religious leaders had Him crucified because they rejected His claim. God disagreed and raised Jesus from the dead.
What the risen Jesus means for us is not just that our self-taught power is an illusion, but also that Jesus is our only true Teacher, because all truth is His truth, no matter who happens to profess it.
That’s why Jesus told His followers not to call each other “teacher” or “instructor,” because, He said, “You only have one Teacher … the Christ … and you are all brothers [and sisters] and “the greatest among you will be your servant” and “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled. And whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (see Matthew 23:8-11).
For Christians, what makes us teachable is not fear of being publicly humiliated. It doesn’t grow out of shame. It doesn’t come from being made to feel lesser. Being teachable comes from the assurance of being loved. Of course, getting schooled includes the humiliation and death of your pride. But without the assurance of being loved by God, your broke, cooked pride would just make you either resentful or defeated. But when you trust that your Teacher, the Teacher, cares for you, you become willing to go through the crucible of being taught. Jesus loves you enough to make you teachable. And He sends you many teaching assistants to guide you along the way.
For me, as a young military officer, this included Master Sergeant Hotchkiss and many other enlisted personnel whom I technically outranked but became my teachers, nonetheless. Our military career field was aircraft maintenance, as I mentioned, and in the maintenance world, getting schooled sometimes came with love, but also sometimes felt a little like getting hazed, such as when they sent the new guy to the supply warehouse to put in an order of 100 feet of Fallopian tubing or three yards of “flight line.” (The flightline, remember, is the pavement where they park the jets).
But when you’re secure in Christ, you can learn from anyone.
Author A.J. Swoboda, in his book—a book that was a huge help for preparing this message—the book is titled, A Teachable Spirit: The Virtue of Learning from Strangers, Enemies, and Absolutely Anyone. In the book he tells how, when he was in his thirties, when he was a respected, young college professor with a doctorate, and had an impressive list of publications to his name, he tells when he was faced with the humiliating fact that he didn’t know what a Philipps screwdriver looked like.
His wife was doing a home improvement project. She sent him to the garage to fetch the screwdriver. Dr Swoboda said he was standing there, looking down in the toolbox, and just then realized he had no clue what he was looking for. His parents were well-educated, but neither had been very handy, and they had never taught him this stuff. He didn’t know what he didn’t know. And he said, “Out of nowhere, a surge of emotion welled up” within him and he began to cry. “Why am I crying? What is happening to me?” He thought.
Cold tears drying on his cheeks, A.J. returns to his wife, empty-handed and ashamed. Vulnerably, he named his inadequacy. But it was also a new chapter for him, because God was teaching him. And not in any expected way. God rarely teaches us in the way we expect. God did it in His way, through the gentle instruction of A.J.’s wife.
A.J. teaches introductory courses about the Bible at a Christian university. And he says that every semester when he has a new class, he outs himself with that screwdriver story. And it always hits home. Whether it’s ignorance of hand tools or of the Bible, he notices that his students feel a “double shame,” one, for not knowing, and two, for not even knowing that they were supposed to know. A.J. writes: “This twofold assault keeps too many of us from becoming the … teachable disciples God longs for us to be.”i So, A.J. says that before he can teach them, he has to convince them that it’s okay to be taught—and that he’s a safe person to teach them, a teaching assistant for Jesus.
Becoming teachable doesn’t degrade you. It doesn’t mean you’re gullible or uncritically impressionable. It just means you’re not God—and what a relief that is! But you were made for God, for eternally learning the ways and the mysteries of the God who died and rose to save you. To be teachable then is to be loved. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
i A.J. Swoboda, A Teachable Spirit. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2025, 15.
Reflections for September 27, 2026
Title: Jesus’ Parable of the Two SonsMark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. You’ll find FREE online resources, archived audio, our mobile app, and more, at lutheranhour.org. Once again, here is Dr. Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. I’m visiting with Dr. Jeff Gibbs, the author of an in-depth commentary on the Gospel according to Matthew. Thanks for joining us, Jeff.
Jeff Gibbs: Thanks, Mike. Good to be here.
Mike Zeigler: A lot of congregations this weekend are going to be reading from this parable that we talked about in the message today, the parable of the man with two children. And I appreciate in your translation that you note that Jesus calls them “children,” even though the pronouns indicate that they’re sons, they’re male children. What’s the significance of that? He doesn’t call them children though, or He doesn’t call them sons. He calls them children.
Jeff Gibbs: So I actually wonder if Jesus is deliberately avoiding that term because the key issue here is not how good are you? It’s “What do you think of Jesus?” And they hate Him. They’re trying to trap Him and they want to kill Him. See, and so that’s … the Person of Jesus is at the center. And the tragedy, of course, is that the religious leaders—at least some of them—of the people are hating and wanting to destroy the One whom they should have been welcoming and worshiping. So Jesus Himself through this whole section is right at the center. He’s the only “son” in this part of Matthew, if I could say it that way.
Mike Zeigler: When we think about trying to apply it, who are the likely people that this parable would be addressed to today, if we could apply it in that way?
Jeff Gibbs: I might kind of gently suggest that in some ways it’s the leaders of the New Israel, which is to say pastors like you and me, church leaders who have to just always make sure, God helping us, that we never make ourselves too big. And we always hear the message of John, “Repent!” because God needs to do a radical thing. And He’s going to do it. He’s going to gather the wheat into His barn and He’s going to burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. We ourselves have to be constantly in touch, not in a paranoid way, but in a humble way. We believe John and so we believe in Jesus. We don’t try to trap Jesus. We let Jesus be the Lord, which of course, if He’s exalted, then I am humbled.
It’s a little harder to apply this parable precisely because these are the enemies of Jesus trying to trap Him and He in turn is trying to trap them, right? To be honest, I think it’s a kind of a simple application: thank you, God, that you have saved me from myself and not allowed me to go into this place where these highly trained, very sincere, very pious people find themselves, that is, opposing Jesus. So the fact that I believe in Jesus and that I worship Him with the Father and the Spirit, one God, now and forever, I’ve been spared this fate. It’s not the kind of application that you hear a lot in church, but I would simply say this is more difficult to honor the context and then to apply it to our lives today.
Mike Zeigler: Change their minds. That’s repeated two times. You did not change your minds. They changed their minds. So there’s a Christian way, even if it’s just returning to gratitude, could be a wonderful change of mind that we could re-experience frequently.
Jeff Gibbs: They were resistant to being taught. This is one of the things that I used to tell seminary students is one of the most important qualities of a pastor is that he be teachable. I mean, you teach, but he needs to be teachable. And that applies to all of us. And so, yeah, Lord, make us open to seeing our flaws and to hearing the message of John and the message of the One who has come in righteousness. That is to say, to put things right. That’s what righteousness means, I think, in this context. It’s not so much about “doing good stuff.” It’s that Jesus has come to put things right between us and God and ultimately to fix the world. It’s a powerful truth.
Mike Zeigler: Lord, make us teachable.
Jeff Gibbs: Amen. Make us teachable.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word” music courtesy of The Hymnal Project (Michigan District-LCMS) Used by permission.
“Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.