Notes from the Wayside: Perspective: The Way the World Works

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

The Way the World Works

"Allow the children to come to Me," Jesus said. "Don't forbid them, because the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to people like these children."

Matthew 19:14 (CEB)

They say that I can move the mountains

And send them crashing into the sea

They say that I can walk on water

If I would follow and believe

With faith like a child

From "Like a Child" by Jars of Clay

One day, some parents bring their children to Jesus so that He might bless them. The Disciples believe that Jesus has more important things to do with his time, so they tell the parents to leave Him alone. Jesus rebukes His disciples and tells them that the Kingdom of God belongs to the childlike. He then takes the time to lay His hands on the children, pray for them, and bless them.¹

Soon afterward, Jesus encounters a rich man who wants to know what he must do to obtain eternal life, in other words, life in the age to come. The Jewish people looked toward a coming age of peace, and this man believes that Jesus is the messiah who will usher in this age of peace.² Jesus can see that, though the man is both moral and religious, he is somehow missing something. He tells the rich man to sell everything he owns and to give all of the proceeds to the poor. The rich man walks away dejected because Jesus' instructions are just too difficult for him. Jesus then announces that it will be extremely difficult for rich people to enter the Kingdom of God.³

Jesus then says that, when the Kingdom of God is fully realized, "many who are first will be last" and that "many who are last will be first."⁴

Jesus then tells a parable about a landowner who needs people to work in his vineyard. The landowner heads out early in the morning and hires some people who agree to work for a typical daily wage. He continues to hire people throughout the day. At the end of the day, he pays all of the workers the typical daily wage regardless of whether they worked twelve hours or one hour. Naturally, the people who started working early in the morning are angry that they didn't receive more than those who were hired at the end of the day, so they confront the landowner. He reminds them that they agreed to work for the amount they received and tells them that he can do whatever he wants with his own money.⁵

Jesus concludes His teaching, saying, "So the last will be first, and the first will be last."⁶

Are you beginning to notice a theme here?

If you grew up going to church like I did, then you've probably heard these stories a number of times, perhaps in Sunday school. It is a pity that Christians have become so familiar with these stories that they don't always realize how disturbing and even offensive these stories really are. These teachings should shake us to the core, for Jesus takes the way our society is structured and turns it upside down.

In the Gospel stories, Jesus spends a lot of time talking about something called the Kingdom of God (or Kingdom of Heaven, depending on which Gospel account you're reading). The Kingdom of God can be understood as a reality in which God reigns. It is a reality that can be described as both "already" and "not yet": though it is already realized in the hearts of those who earnestly seek to love both God and neighbor, it is not yet fully realized in the world at large. When Jesus says that, in the Kingdom of God, "the last will be first, and the first will be last," He is saying that the Kingdom of God will not be structured in the same way the world is structured now. Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God strike at the heart of two elements characteristic of our present world: privilege and entitlement.

When Jesus says that it is extremely difficult for rich people to enter the Kingdom of God, I wonder if He is saying that it is extremely difficult for any people of privilege to enter the Kingdom of God. For the entire history of human civilization, society has been structured so that one group of people, the privileged, has an advantage over the rest of the population.⁷ The rich man Jesus encounters is a privileged person: because he has money, he has advantages in society that other people simply don't have. Perhaps he even thinks that the task he needs to accomplish to enter the Kingdom of God will be easy for him because he is a man of means.

The task Jesus assigns to the rich man proves to be extremely difficult because it will require the rich man to forfeit the privilege he so greatly enjoys. After Jesus says how difficult it is for such people to enter the Kingdom of God, the Disciples ask, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus replies, "For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible." Privileged people are generally unaware of their privileged status, yet they will hold onto it with a white-knuckle grip. Privileged people need God's help to learn to hold their privilege loosely, for they will lose the privilege they enjoy if they are to enter the Kingdom of God.

The landowner in Jesus' parable could have prevented any arguments with his workers if he had just paid people in the same order that he hired them. The people who were hired first would have walked away completely unaware of what everyone else would be paid. The landowner actually makes a point of paying first the people he hired last. It is as if the he actually wants the people who were hired first to realize how blessed the people who were hired last are. The people who were hired first have a sense of entitlement: they believe that they deserve more than the rest of the workers because they have worked the longest. When the workers receive their pay, the people who think they are most deserving feel the most cheated.

Jesus, throughout His ministry, butted heads with people who had a sense of entitlement. They were the Pharisees who devoted their lives to following the Jewish Law and the scribes who devoted their lives to studying the Law. They believed that they had earned favor from God because of their religiosity, yet Jesus tried to get them to see how much God loved the so-called "sinners" they ostracized. Like the people whom the landowner hired first, the scribes and Pharisees were not entitled to a greater reward; they only had a greater responsibility to the One they served.

One of the first things Jesus says in his public ministry is, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near."⁸ The Greek word metanoia, which is translated into English as "repentance," literally refers to a change of mind.⁹ If we want to be part of the Kingdom of God then we must not assume that we already understand how the world ought to be. Instead, we must be willing to reconsider everything we think we know. If we truly want to enter the Kingdom of God, we will have to leave any privilege or sense of entitlement at the door. If we try to hold on to these things, we will end up weeping and gnashing our teeth.

And this brings us back to the children.

Little children are more prepared for the Kingdom of God than the rest of us because they haven't accumulated the baggage the rest of us carry - the baggage we won't be able to take with us into the Kingdom. They don't understand how the world works, nor are they set in their ways. They have not grown so accustomed to their privileges that they will fight tooth and nail to keep them. They do not have any sense of entitlement, because they have not accomplished anything in this life. All children really have are two empty hands, opened and ready to receive whatever grace God has to offer them.

The Disciples ask Jesus who will be the greatest in the Kingdom of God. Jesus says that the humble will be the greatest in the Kingdom and that the Disciples must become like little children if they even want to enter the Kingdom.¹⁰ If we truly want to be a part of what God is doing in the world, then we must also become humble and childlike, laying down our privilege, our entitlement, and our presumptions, so that our hands are free to take hold of whatever God has to offer us.

Notes:

Matthew 19:13-15
The Greek phrase zoe aionios, which is translated into English as "eternal life," literally means "life of the age," presumably the long-awaited messianic age of peace.
Matthew 19:16-29
Matthew 19:30 (NRSV)
Matthew 20:1-15
Matthew 20:16 (NRSV)
Wikipedia: Privilege (social inequality)
Matthew 4:17 (NRSV)
Wikipedia: Metanoia (theology)
Matthew 18:1-5