Evil has recently been vanquished and the redeemed now live on New Earth where all is perfect and Jesus is King. Many customs and things still resemble the previous world, although spectacularly enhanced now. Pastime and sports, for example, still exist and so does most other recreation, including a truly virtual telecasting experience.
The biggest draw across the global kingdom now is an ongoing contest called “Open the Universe!” initiating Jesus’s long-awaited expansion of the human race to other planets throughout the cosmos. But who will govern the first new world?
Thus, Jesus has handpicked two teams of the faithful to compete and showcase their glorious skills and abilities. The task: build a city. Each team travels to a designated location on New Earth, constructs, and manages a city of their own, engaging the help and talents of the chosen denizens who will inhabit that domain.
In the end, Jesus will award his first regency to the team that has best organized, designed, erected, and governed its city. There are no losers; the second team will gain regency of the next expansion.
The people of New Earth are riveted by the giftedness of the participants, for each person presents facets of the Sovereign One, as they are called, only that individual can express. In fact, the hosts in Heaven watch with excitement, too.
Captain: Joseph Team: Abraham, Peter, Nehemiah, Josiah, Daniel, Esther, Joshua, Barnabas, Elisha, Luke, Samson, Timothy, Philip the Evangelist, John the Baptist
Cities on New Earth are designed around themes that are strongly incorporated in the built environment. The theme Jesus desires for these new cities is “Human Wonder in Eternal Triumph.” Use of the theme also factors in team selection.
Based on what you know of these people’s lives, particularly their strengths and abilities—projected in a perfect reality—which team do you think would be awarded the first regency? Why?
How do you interpret the city theme?
How might each team incorporate the theme into its design?
CC BY-NC, Israel Defense Forces, Flickr Israeli paratroopers on Mt. Hermon enjoying the season’s first snowfall
This is the fourth and final post in the “I Love That Line!” series that features writers’ reflections on their favorite Christmas carols. Nate Smith, writer of Breaking the Silence, reflects on two stanzas from “Winter Snow.”
It is hard for me to imagine a non-hectic Christmas. Just the mention of the word used to leave a sour taste in my mouth having worked retail on-and-off for ten years and then in restaurants. People swiping cheap gifts off metal shelves to satisfy their family’s greed—(It’s a watch.)—and others: “I cannot believe you’re working on Christmas!” and my unspoken reply: It’s because you’re shopping, you idiot!
It’s the busyness of the season that caused me to hate Christmas. There was always another party to attend, another person to help, another gift to buy that dragged my savings account back to zero. Each act didn’t feel like giving either; instead, it felt more like an obligation to appease those high on the Christmas spirit.
Quiet, Soft, and Slow
The idea of slowing down during Christmas is not usually signaled by numerous texts and e-mails inquiring, “What’s your new mailing address?” So the arrival of a greeting card reminded me not only of those who love me, but also the fact that my address has changed every year for the past seven years.
It was me with the vagabond status that was also not slowing down. But how do you slow down when every year you’re readjusting to a new place? My heart was unsettled in many ways. The Christmas rush was always a stark reminder of feeling left way back in the mix. The season’s great anticipation was simply lost in the chaos.
“Winter Snow” captured my heart last year. The verses explain all of the ways Jesus could have come to earth. It could have been like a storm, a fire, a tidal wave, among other ways. Indeed, it would have been so easy to make a big statement in a region overrun with turmoil and war.
“But you came like a winter snow,
Quiet and soft and slow,
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below.”
It was so simple. Jesus entered quietly, a whining newborn lying softly in the manger distanced from war. His was a refugee status that proclaimed to the world that somehow the kingdom of God was now here.
Everything about it was gentle and unexpected, nothing rushed. A nine-month pregnancy cannot be rushed but birthed with patience. And like the snow when it falls, it changes everything it touches. It brings silence and silences the crowds, for winter has come.
Thy Kingdom Come
I see in my many address changes an odd approach to how the yearning human heart seeks after God. And it prompts me—vagabond spirit, unsettled nature, and all—to slow down and really notice how the Kingdom comes.
Now escaped from Christmas greed, I can see the beauty of Christ everywhere—in the laughter of those frolicking in the snow; in the warmth between a couple strolling and admiring Christmas lights; in the anticipation of gingerbread cookies almost done.
“Oh, no, your voice wasn’t in a bush burning.
No, your voice wasn’t in a rushing wind.
It was still; it was small; it was hidden.”
“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
*Portion of an exegetical paper I wrote on the topic.*
The parable of the vineyard workers in Matthew 20:1-16 is part of Matthew’s gospel of the kingdom. Matthew is the only writer who tells the story, which places its composition around A.D. 63 and for the benefit of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. The details of the parable would have been very familiar to Jesus’s audience. Brad Young offers a sitz im leben perspective (on-scene contextualization):
The setting assumes the difficult economic conditions of first-century Israel. Many day laborers are standing in the market hoping to be hired for a day job. The original audience could readily identify with these workers and their real-life situation…Day laborers were on the bottom end of the economic structure. They received minimal wages for sporadic work. As the primary wage earners, they had to support their families by the odd jobs they could acquire for day service. During the time of harvest, the situation improved as landowners needed additional day laborers to harvest the crops on time.
One noticeable aspect of this parable is that at its outset the householder, not his steward, works from early morning to late evening to acquire laborers. This would have been an immediate signal to the listening crowd that their normal worldview was about to be challenged.
The parable can be divided into three acts: Act One, the hirelings (vs. 1-7); Act Two, the payments (vs. 8-11); and Act Three, the dialogue between the owner and the grumbling workers (vs. 11-15).
It is obvious that the parable involves economic details. The only condition imposed on the workers is proper work for a day’s wage. This was the denarius, a silver coin that meant a usual day’s pay. The parable, however, should not be used to imply any message about economic arrangements in society, a proposition not obvious in the illustration.
Moreover, the owner’s pay arrangement is simply impossible in the developed world and modern economy. Business leaders and workers would spurn the idea.
A Hard Pill to Swallow
The workers are recruited throughout the day and are finally called in to be paid. This is where the parable does what it is characteristically known for, which is setting up listeners for a surprise. The owner starts by paying the laborers who have worked the least amount of time first—and they receive just as much as those who have toiled all day in the heat.
The first-comers are begrudged. When confronted the owner explains that he had kept his word and had also decided to be gracious to those who had come later. Donahue says:
“If the reader too quickly identifies the owner as God and is unwilling to experience the same feelings as those who worked all day, the challenge of the parable loses its force. Hardly any parable in the Gospels seems to upset the basic structure of an orderly society as does this one…The constant complaint in our society about welfare is proof that popular morality operates according to the principle of ‘equal work for equal pay.'”
The laborers who had been fortunate enough to receive work in the morning should have rejoiced at the generosity of the owner.
Still, one significant limitation of the parable needs to be pointed out. Those who labored all day earn their day’s wage by their work; but Jesus did not believe that anyone earns a place in the kingdom by his or her work. It should be understood that parabolic language should not be pressed too far.
God’s Undeserved Favor
What is the message of the parable? It is first a parable of the kingdom by which Jesus illustrates the incredible grace of God. It drives a wedge between two ways of thinking about Christian life and one’s relationship with God.
The first mindset centers on human goodness and the ability to earn one’s way into the kingdom. But a problem arises here because distinctions are easily and often made between those whose length of service and fervor for the kingdom are exemplary and those who have less to show. The simple standards of justice and the ranking of time and effort determine degrees of worth.
The second way of thinking ventures much deeper into the gospel to show us that God’s way with us makes no distinctions between us. Each of us are accepted and loved by him, and we are saved not due to any efforts we make but purely as a result of his grace. It is that “God loves us not because we are lovable, but because God is loving in a radical way.”
This is the gospel. Borsch says, “We either ‘take what belongs to us and go’—a way of living that cuts us off from true fellowship with God and others—or we receive from God what he has graciously chosen to give.”
Credits: Borsch, Frederick Houk. Many Things In Parables: Extravagant Story of New Community. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988./Donahue, John R. The Gospel in Parable. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988/Young, Brad H. Jesus The Jewish Theologian. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1995
A 'Mike' for Christ 