By Khen Lim
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Author of ‘Share
Jesus Without Fear,’ Bill Fay is today also an ardent evangelist but he was
not one since young. There was a time when, in his own words, he led a “pagan
lifestyle.” In the website crosswalk.com, he tells a story
of knowing and befriending the co-pilot of the private jet that he used in his
heydays to ply his “illegal mob” trade whatever that meant. When his co-pilot came
to Christ, he also made Bill promise that he would share the Good News with his
son.
It would be another five years before he was given a shot at
it but in that time, Dutch had died. One day he stumbled across the son at the
Denver International Airport. With two hours to spare, he remembered the
promise he made to Dutch. And there he was the son, unmistakable features plus
that signature guitar he always carried with him.
On seeing Bill, the son said, “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“No sir, we’ve never met. But I am a man who’s prayed for you
for over five years, and I have a message for you from your dead father, Dutch.”
It appeared very much like the time had come for him to fulfil
his five-year-old promise. And for the next two or so hours, Bill shared with
the son the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In that time, he realised that the son
understood every Scripture verse he brought up. There was not one he didn’t
know but to his dismay, he also could not accept any of the verses Bill raised.
He asked the son why – why he could not accept Jesus as His
Lord and Saviour. The answer seemed strange. He recalled the date, time and
place. He remembered a godly Sunday School teacher who told him that Jesus was
the way, the truth and the life. With that, an opportunity and a privilege went
from optimism and hope to one of sadness and angst. As they parted ways, a
tearful Bill felt sadness.
Moved by it all, he asked God, “Why go to all this trouble if
he was not going to accept You?”
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The story doesn’t tell us what happened after they parted at
the airport but we do know that the son, Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.,
perished in a plane crash into Monterey Bay on October 12 1997, aged 53. He was
the pilot. From the article, that was probably the one and only meeting that
Bill had with Dutch’s son. The anguish that Bill would have felt would be tough
to have to go through.
Bill’s story is without a doubt interesting but so were some
of the readers’
feedback. One wrote in, mistaking Bill’s article as “judgemental.”
She thought the article was saying, “Hey,
I preached the gospel to John Denver AND HE REFUSED IT!! (her capitals)”
Thankfully, it wasn’t a view widely shared. What was eye-opening was the other
readers seeing the real possibility that God’s amazing grace could have
possibly been at work in this otherwise tragic story. In other words it might
have had a happier ending, except that we’d never know.
Many readers shared the confidence that God would have known
something about Dutch’s son; something we are not privy to; that in the
precious seconds before the crash, the possibility that he finally accepted
Christ as his Saviour isn’t so unrealistic to believe. As unlike as it may
sound and as improbable as it is in reconciling with Bill’s story, he could
have come to the realisation that it was then or never. That narrow window of
opportunity was the only chance he would have understood.
To understand the amount of time he had to have contended
with, he is an excerpt from a report on the disastrous air crash:
“The pilot took off and performed three touch-and-go landings in a span
of about 26 minutes, followed by a straight-out departure to the west. Ground
witnesses saw the airplane in straight and level flight about 350 to 500 feet
over a residential area, then they heard a reduction of engine noise. The
airplane was seen to pitch slightly nose up; then it banked sharply to the
right and descended nose first into the ocean.”
The notion of having a minute to think things over is there.
It might not be a lot but between life and death, it could be enough to accept
Christ and be saved. And if you haven’t worked it out yet, Henry John
Deutschendorf, Jr’s better known name is John Denver, one of America’s most cherished
and enduring favourite sons of country music with evergreen hits like ‘Rocky Mountain High’ and
‘Annie’s Song.’
Inimitable Grace
God’s grace is inimitable, incomparable and simply remarkable.
No one but God could offer such grace of such unmatched quality. Grace is
offered even in times we’d never realise. Grace can come in moments we’d never
thought it could. For John Denver, God’s grace would still be available to him
even if for only those precious few seconds before the crash. The fact that we
will never know doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or the grace wasn’t there. It’s
only another way of saying that John could have been saved.
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The John Denver we knew was a great singer and composer whose
songs have given many of us pleasure for years but his personal life was far
from being gratifying. Wikipedia
describes two traumatic divorces that then led to years of depression, drunkenness
and disorderly behaviour. Denver broke the law by driving under the influence
and crashing his car but even sadder still, he should have been alive by staying
away from flying as stipulated by the FAA because of medical disqualification
for failure to abstain from alcohol. That was two years before his death.
While the popular country folk singer’s life isn’t exactly a
happy one, nobody can say that he shouldn’t be saved. Nobody can certainly
guarantee that what he thinks he knows is how God works. Even while we know
Denver’s life wasn’t exactly plum, even as he spent the final years fallen foul
of life in general, there is nothing ingrained in the way God does things that
tells us what could have happened beyond what our eyes can see and how our
limited minds know.
And if we don’t know yet, here’s the deal – God’s grace works
in the most exceptional or strange way. No human formulae unravels its mechanisms.
Even the brightest minds can never understand or predict its workings. God’s
grace shows itself as a completely inverted, inside-out, right-side down idea
of who gets and who doesn’t get it. Things just aren’t the way we believe they
are. God’s grace is completely at odds with the likely, often siding with the
unlikely and appearing in an entirely otherwise way.
God’s grace defies us because of what we think we know. We
apply our standards and expectations but God’s grace tells us they don’t work.
So who inherits the kingdom becomes a perplexing issue; one where going back to
the drawing board mightn’t even help. It appears that when we feel so right
about a person’s remote chances of being saved, God might drop by and tell us
we’re so wrong. Some murderer from death row or some vagrant living off skid
row would appear the least likely in our books, but never discount God from
doing something exceptional and least expected. And as we thumb down those whom
we think hardly deserve to even be at heaven’s gates, God could say to us,
“Watch Me.”
The hardest part for us, the living, is to take all this in
and not see how wrong we are. And that’s because the way we view God’s kingdom
isn’t the way He views it.
“For My thoughts are not
your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways. And My
thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9, NASB)
God’s view of what’s good in His eyes isn’t necessarily how we
see things. The funny thing about this is that we are made in His image but yet
we don’t share the same views. He thinks one way and we think the other. He
considers a person’s insides to be important while we are impressed by what he
wears. He talks about the heart of willingness and desire when we believe what
you have materially is the makings of a successful person. We’re just so
divergent of one another because sin has set us apart.
And so it is that when it comes to who gets to inherit the
kingdom of God, we are bound to disagree. Which is why we have come to call it
God’s Upside-Down Kingdom.
The shepherds tell us so
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Membership into God’s upside-down kingdom is unprecedented.
It’s unlike the exclusive golf club where you need to be super-successful, have
a fancy title bigger than your name, own a glass castle and drive a vehicle
that runs on pomposity. God’s kingdom is completely different. You may be the
perpetual underdog. You are likely to be a very unimportant person in the
living world. You are bound to be marginalised as a second-class citizen and
called all sorts of derogatory names. You are despised. Hated. Trodden. And
often ignored. Asked the shepherds and they would understand.
The Gospel of Luke (2:1-21) tells us that the angels did not
approach the people of authority or power or influence to spread the news of
the birth of Christ. That would have been the expected thing to do because
people in the right places of society are often the best placed to let the
world know. God thought differently and chose to let the shepherds be the first
to know. They were the privileged ones, God asserted, and not the ones we would
have chosen.
The shepherds represent a group with no social standing and no
voice in the community. Well-known scholar, Alfred Edersheim
(1825-1889), a Jewish convert to Christianity who wrote the book, ‘The Life and Times of
Jesus the Messiah’ in 1883, said this of the shepherds:
“The angelic annunciation
of the birth of the Saviour of the world came not to important dignitaries or
kings, but to shepherds tending their flocks in the middle of the night. While
the recipients of the message were certainly important to God’s plan, equally
so were the sheep they watched.
That shepherds would be
out with their flock in the middle of winter should not be a surprise, since
Israel’s winters are Mediterranean (usually cool and short). Rainfall totals
increase from December through February but Jewish history suggests that the
flocks remained even through the rain. In fact these sheep stayed in the fields
thirty days before Passover (February) when the clouds unleash their worst
torrents.
We can imagine, then, the
sombre conditions into which angelic light blazed to life with a message not
heart since the days of Isaiah the prophet. Although we know very little about
these shepherds, they likely did not observe practices, since their isolation
in the fields and the necessity of their constant attention made this
impossible. But their lack of religious obligations doesn’t mean their service
was strictly secular.
Somewhere deep in Jewish
tradition (revealed in writings called the Mishnah), a belief had arisen that
the Messiah would be revealed from the Migdal Eder (‘the tower of the flock’).
This tower stood close to Bethlehem on the road to Jerusalem, and the sheep
that pastured there were not the type used for ordinary purposes. The shepherds
working there, in fact, took care of the temple flocks, the sheep meant for
sacrifice.
We can trust that God had
a specific purpose for this shepherd audience, and the work they performed
suggests the reason. These men who watched the sheep meant for slaughter
received a divine message about the ultimate Lamb who would take away the sins
of the world through His death and resurrection.”
(Book II, Chapter VI)
Unless guided, it’s not easy to see the connection that led to
the appointing of the shepherds but Edersheim has put it clear enough in terms
of how God sees things the way we miss them. For a people who are not high up
society’s list of personalities, they have the remarkable privilege of
witnessing the most important event of that period.
Breadcrumbs define God’s chosen
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In life, the rich ignores the poor. In life, what really
separates the rich from the poor isn’t the materialism but the food. One has
food at is beck and call. He eats what he wants. He eats anytime of the day and
any amount he likes. He pays a king’s ransom just to eat the littlest of the
rarest foods. The poor finds it unimaginable to waste any food. He has no
choice of what he wants to eat. He survives on anything he finds edible. And if
it’s only breadcrumbs left on the table, and if he has to beg for them, that is
what he would do.
The story of Lazarus (Lk 16:20-31) is told of this dimension
in life between the privileged and the non-privileged. One of them is among six
brothers and probably rich beyond description. And as he eats, he does so
knowing that in his company is a very poor and hungry man whose difference
between life and death could be defined by whether or not he gets to eat the
breadcrumbs off the table.
But death comes to one and then shortly thereafter, the other.
Both however face completely different outcomes. While living, one was basking
in luxury; the other was simply fighting for survival. In the life after death,
the luxuriating experience evaporates; he finds himself judged. The parable
tells of the rich man “in agony in this flame” and thirsting even for the
privilege of lapping at a finger dipped in cool water (16:24).
The poor man has a name, Lazarus but through the parable, we
don’t know what to call the rich man. Jesus, in telling this, had made a point
of this. The poor has a name but the rich is ignored. The rich seems to talk
forever even in death but like the shepherds, the poor appeared to have no
voice.
Knowing the agony that death brings, the rich man pleaded to
Abraham to warn his five brothers that they may “not come to this place of
torment” (vv.27-28). When that didn’t go down well, he tried convincing the
patriarch that, “if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent”
(v.30). Abraham merely retorted: “if they do not listen to Moses and the
Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead”
(v.31).
It is interesting to note that this is the first and only
parable that sheds some definite light on the hereafter even though the word
‘hell’ is never mentioned. And we have picked up on some telling nuances about
how the rich man talks and talks but the poor doesn’t. But it’s the poor who
God knows by name but to Him, the rich might as well be anonymous. The trodden
inherited the key to His kingdom; the rich finds himself nowhere near. One is
now sumptuously fed while the other is desperate even for a drop of water.
God’s grace covers the poor for they are the more probable
candidates to enter His kingdom. Matthew says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (5:3, NASB). The phrase ‘poor in spirit’
refers to those who are not spiritually arrogant. It is a phrase that describes
the rich man and his propensity to ignore the plight of the poor.
James 2:5 (NASB) focuses more pointedly:
“Listen, my beloved
brethren, did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and
heirs of the kingdom, which He promised to those who love Him?”
There it is – God chose the poor of this world to be… heirs of
the kingdom. In the parable, Jesus makes two important points for us to remember.
Firstly we are warned that there is a price to pay for the spiritually arrogant
who despite the many opportunities, failed to feed the poor. Secondly nothing
escapes God – our disadvantaged life has not been ignored by Him. He knows
exactly what is happening and He has a plan for us already. All we have to do
is stick to His script.
The unworthy prodigal son
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Such a well-known parable (15:11-32) needs no detailed
introduction except to say that the lesson of the upside-down kingdom can
herein also be exemplified. The conventional expectations are predictable. The
younger son asked for his inheritance early, left home and blew it all on
“loose living” (v.13). He became very poor, humbled given the chance when he
“gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating” (v.16). He
was lonely, cold and often famished. He is contrite of his actions. He
abandoned his family but now needed them more than he’d ever thought. Humbled,
humiliated and shamed, he knew his only recourse was to return home and face
the music.
The older son, on the other hand, worked diligently in the
fields. It would be normal to expect that he would be rewarded and given the
lion’s share for his industry. The world teaches us to recognise those who work
hard. It is fair, we learn, that we uphold those who do their part as opposed
to those who don’t. Therefore it is unsurprising that the older son was angered
by his father’s delight at his younger sibling’s enforced homecoming and he
protested vehemently, saying:
“Look! For so many years I
have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours and yet you
have never given me a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends; but
when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you
killed a fattened calf for him” (vv.29-30 NASB)
If you’re looking for the best illustration of God’s grace,
you can’t get many parables better than this. A disgraced son comes home and
his father receives him with open arms. A son who has done awful things,
depleted all he had is welcomed home and given a sumptuous meal. And even as he
says, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer
worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men (vv.18-19),” the
father “felt compassion for him…and embraced him and kissed him” (v.20b).
We are like the prodigal son. We misuse the free will that
God, our Father, gave us as promised and when we discover how far we have
strayed, He forgives us. Brimming with pride, He opens His arms to embrace us
because we are His children and He has always longed for the moment when we
finally recognise Him and take Him into our hearts.
The parable underscores the Father’s eagerness and happiness
for those of us who have been undermined, exploited and mistreated but who now
acknowledge their wrongdoings and crave to “come home” to Him. In our worldly
lives, people like this younger son are left to rue and lick their wounds. Many
would point their fingers at him, tut-tutting and saying, “We told you so” and
add the injurious “Serve you right” remark. There’s nothing very subtle about
the way people come around to punish those who make mistakes. And society will
take it into its stride to stigmatise the person, making it enormously
difficult to redeem himself. He could be left to rot forever in his own
mistakes.
Not so with God. In His upside-down kingdom lies the grace
that disadvantaged people can come under for His protection and promises. They
are the ones He saves.
The ‘untrustworthy’ women
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In ancient days – some say even today – women have no place of
prominent in society. Women are to bear children, work in the kitchen and
submit to their husbands quietly and obediently. Women are ‘out of their depth’
meddling in man’s affairs. They didn’t even have a place in the synagogues and
therefore whatever comes from their mouths cannot be considered safe,
trustworthy or reliable. Women’s words are associated more with gossips and
rumours. Theirs aren’t opinions but just hearsay. You don’t count on them with
your life.
Yet Luke highlights the opposite with a remarkable coverage of
the women whom God blessed with His grace. In 8:2-3, Luke documents them,
giving their names including Mary (Magdalene), Joanna, wife of Chuza, and
Suzanna. In Acts 9:36, Luke adds Dorcas (Tabitha in Hebrew), a woman with means
but also one with a very charitable heart. In his Gospel was also Elizabeth,
mother of John the Baptist, a woman whose barrenness resonated the same tragic
circumstances as a few others in Scripture including Sarah, Hannah and Rebekah
who eventually had their prayers answered and gave birth to Isaac (Gen 17:16-21,
21:1-5), Samuel (1 Sam 1-2:10) and the twins, Esau and Jacob (Gen 25:19-26)
respectively.
Motherhood was central to the life of women in ancient days. A
woman’s purpose is to extend the genealogical legacy of her family and if she
is incapable, she becomes even more isolated in society. Other than chastity
before marriage, a woman’s most important and cherished value is her ability to
reproduce. Infertility would take away from her the chance she has to play her
maternal role, robbing the family the opportunity to be fruitful and multiply.
Other than these, perhaps Luke’s portrayal of the sisters,
Mary and Martha (Lk 10:38-42) is the most poignant example. Jesus met the sisters
as He entered their village in His travels. In five verses, He taught us our
kingdom priorities, pointing to the examples offered by the sisters. One was
busy in the kitchen, complaining about how she wasn’t getting any help while
the other was seated by Jesus’ side, listening to His every word. In response
to Martha’s complaint, He says:
“Martha, Martha, you are
worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for
Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke
10:41-42, NASB)
The message is simple enough – our priority is to focus on
Jesus. Despite her diligence, she was no different to the older brother in the
parable of the prodigal son. In both cases, being simply hardworking might not
get us anywhere fast. We need far more than just the ‘doing’; we need to be the
‘being.’ In other words, we are to grow in the sense of importance that above
all else, the kingdom, being our inheritance, should always be at the forefront
of our priorities.
Women may be despised in society by men who seek to control
their lives but they are special to God. The very fact that Luke chooses to
give coverage to them is an important facet of Scripture to think about in
light of the kingdom we are to inherit.
Those you can throw to the dogs
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To the Jews, there are a few types of people they despise
venomously and one of them are the tax collectors. Tax collectors are like
today’s IRS – they’re not exactly very popular with the people. They are scorned
and heckled. Also called then as ‘publicans,’ they are looked down for the role
they play. In fact they are so reviled that the Pharisees would make a meal out
of them in their confrontations with Jesus (Mk 5:46, 2:15,17, Lk 15:1).
For example they questioned Him as to why He would eat with
them (Mk 2:15-16) but to Jesus, the common opinion of tax collectors held the
key to the end stage of church discipline. That is a person who is
excommunicated is to be treated as one would a pagan or a tax collector (Mt
18:17) He would, in other words, be a candidate for evangelism.
Tax collectors are among the ultimate scorned people in the
New Testament period and for at least four reasons. Firstly, no one takes
pleasure to pay to a government that is as oppressive as the Romans. Tax
collectors therefore take the brunt of the public displeasure. Secondly tax
collectors are widely derided as turncoats because they were essentially Jews
who willingly chose to work for the Romans. They weren’t just turncoats either
– they were making their wealth off their fellow oppressed Jews. Thirdly it was
a widely known fact that tax collectors largely shortchanged the people they
taxed. Invariably therefore they would collect more than required so that they
could skim some for themselves. Fourthly tax collectors aren’t exactly poor.
The skimmings allowed them to live a fairly luxurious life that alienated them
even more so from their Jewish community. They became so ostracised that
society separated them, compelling them to establish their own fraternity.
The Bible records by name, two famous tax collectors – Matthew
and Zacchaeus. Of the two, one became a disciple who wrote one of the three
synoptic Gospels but arguably, it is the second who carries an even more
important lesson for us and is certainly more central to the topic of the
upside-down kingdom. Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1-10) is the archetypal tax collector, a
Jew working for the Roman government and roundly hated by his own fellow Jews.
From his skimmings, he became rich and he could happily live that way had he
wanted to but life changed dramatically for him when he learned that Jesus had
entered Jericho (v.1).
Atypical of tax collectors, Zacchaeus wanted to see and know
more about Jesus. With his height disadvantage and a deepening crowd around
Jesus, he climbed up a sycamore tree (v.4) to get a better view. The Bible
tells us that he was eager, as he ran ahead of the crowd and climbed the tree.
He did so in order to be in place by the time Jesus rolled along.
Knowing he was up the tree, Jesus startled Zacchaeus by
calling him out by name and asking him if He could stay at his house. Verse 6
tells us he hurriedly “received Him gladly.” There are two things to note here
that reveals the grace of God. Firstly, to the Jews, Zacchaeus epitomised those
who were unworthy to befriend. They complained, saying, “He has gone to be the
guest of a man who is a sinner” (v.7). The Jewish standard for being a sinner
is one who transgresses their Mosaic laws. According to the Jewish norm, Zacchaeus
matched society’s criteria of a person unfit to inherit the kingdom of God.
Secondly what he said to Jesus was eye-opening, at least for a ‘despicable’ tax
collector:
“Behold, Lord, half of my
possessions I will give to the poor and if I have defrauded anyone of anything,
I will give back four times as much” (v.8)
That is some change of heart for a tax collector. And in that
one sentence, an unscrupulous, repugnant and much reviled tax collector finds
himself saved for eternity, contrary to expectations (v.7). In reply, Jesus
says:
“Today salvation has come
to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has
come to seek and to save that which was lost” (vv.9-10)
To the indignant Pharisees, Jesus’ view of His ministry was
simple:
“It is not those who are
healthy who need a physician but those who are sick; I did not come to call the
righteous but sinners.” (Mk 2:17, NASB)
While the self-righteous Pharisees viewed tax collectors as
enemies and social outcasts, Jesus saw them as opportunities to minister to and
in so doing, to heal those who are spiritually sick. While the Pharisees would
throw the rule book at people like Zacchaeus, Jesus offered redemption and a
way to salvation through Him. He offered the hope of a new life by shedding the
old. The Pharisees offered punishment, plenty of judgement and threats of
Sheol. It’s little wonder that Jesus’ arrival in Jericho was a godsend to those
who sought to hear some much needed good news (Lk 15:1).
Prayers that mirror real deceit
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There is no question that Jesus had it in for the Pharisees
for the legalistic burden they placed on His people. Their judgement of
Zacchaeus offered only a glimpse of the severity by which they dealt with those
they deigned to despise. Against the backdrop, Jesus tells a parable that
offers us an undeniable clue on the deceit of hypocrisy.
In the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Lk 18:9-15), we
see an amazing juxtaposition of the Pharisee and a tax collector (referred here
as publican). Both are in the synagogue, praying. One’s prayer is thankful to
God but for heinous reasons:
“God, I thank You that I
am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers or even like this tax
collector. I fast twice a week, I pay tithes of all that I get” (vv.11-12).
Too ashamed “to lift up his eyes to heaven” but instead “was
beating his breast” (v.13), the other’s prayer was a sincere plea for one’s own
wretchedness:
“God, be merciful to me,
the sinner!” (v.13)
One was smug and supremely confident in his own conduct. The
other knew he was a sinner and he prayed for help. One prayer is nothing but a
contemptuous spite of another person. The other was simply focusing on his own
failures. The contrast couldn’t have been starker and the lesson couldn’t have
been more damning, inviting Jesus to remark the following:
“I tell you, this man went
to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself
will be humbled but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (v.14).
In a kingdom of God that is the interpretation of the
self-righteous, God doesn’t make rules of qualification but man does. Man
determines for himself what it takes to go to heaven. He draws up rules of what
one can and cannot do but of course, the rules would be conveniently drafted in
ways that make it possible for him to qualify. Whether or not the others do is
a matter of compliance to his regulations. The Pharisee in this parable must be
seen in this light; that he wrongfully believes he knows and has the keys to
God’s kingdom.
On the other hand, the publican understands the turmoil of his
own emotions; hence his prayer has all the evidence of someone in desperation.
He is in despair, not comfortable with his own sins and he seeks God’s help. He
knows he will never qualify otherwise. He is so ashamed of himself that he
didn’t have the gall to lift his eyes heavenwards.
An even sadder perspective of this parable is the frightening
parallels we see in reality. In almost every church, there would be such a
Pharisee who thinks he knows God’s rules for kingdom membership.
Rejects from a dinner invitation
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The parable describes an invitation to a big dinner sent out
to a choice selection of people. These were to be the people he gave preference
to but unfortunately they spurned him as “they all alike began to make excuses”
(v.18). He then turned his direction to his slave, telling him to “Go out at
once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and
crippled and blind and lame” (v.21). When there was still room to spare, he had
his slave go out to the “highways and along the hedges” (v.23) to find more in
order to fill all the available seats.
In this parable, the master said something of particular note:
“For I tell you, none of
those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner” (v.24).
This is a parable of great importance. The dinner is
representative of the kingdom of God itself. The invitations were given out
first to the Jews. They spurned God and His earlier plans were dashed out of a
total lack of interest. Jesus was foreshadowing the death on the cross that was
to come. He came with invitations to the Jews to join Him but instead, they
sent Him to die on the cross with two common criminals. They not only rejected
His offer; they failed completely to see that He was the Son of God and they
missed the whole point of His invitation.
And so God revealed His kingdom to the Gentiles who, though
were not His chosen, were nonetheless still His children. Those who were
invited and attended the dinner were those willing to see and hear His words
(Lk 8:8). Summarily they were the ones welcomed to inherit His kingdom.
To those whom the invitations were redirected to, Jesus
labelled them as “the poor and crippled… blind and lame.” There are two ways to
look at this description. In a literal sense that fits the allegorical nature
of the parable, these are people who do not come from plush homes. They are the
socially maligned, the disadvantaged, those who have less than meets the eye.
They are not materially well endowed and they probably ranked amongst the
lowliest in society. A latter part of the parable describes them found in “streets
and lanes of the city” as well as the “highways and along the hedges.” In current
vernacular, these are the equivalents of the homeless, hobos, vagabonds and
anyone who sleeps on park benches, under the bridges, in dark alleys and any
neglected corner of the city slumps.
Today’s stark reality impacts our senses unlike ever before.
With the economic slump in America, people lost out on their mortgages and live
homelessly. The jobless who owes too much may even have college degrees but
they’re now on the streets, living off the generosities of those who have.
Millions of fresh graduates find a completely different reality from the ones
they were promised in their freshman year, as they now face a grim future of
joblessness as America hits an average of more than 5.6 percent unemployment
(as at Dec 2014), according to the latest U.S. Bureau of Labour
Statistics.
The ones who rejected the invitations on the first round were
the privileged. They were the rich and comfortable. They had everything in
life. They were not for want of anything. They had God’s attention to begin
with. They would have had much in abundance that they could have walked over
the poor and ignored them, much like the rich man did to Lazarus. Their rejection
paved the way for God to offer the kingdom to the Gentiles, meaning you and I.
They may be the most unlikely but today, He has gone out of His way to search
out the whole world, to find them and offer them the eternal promise of life
under His grace in His kingdom.
Not the Gentiles please!
Image Source: pinterest.com
When the Jews occupied centre stage, pretty much everybody
else was out of favour until they rejected Christ. Anyone who was not a Jew is
classified a Gentile (Latin origin gentilis for ‘pagan’), which means that Israel’s
biblical enemies were all Gentiles including the Amorites, Edomites, Canaanites,
Jebusites etc. In other words Gentiles were pagans who supposedly did not know
the true God of Abraham.
In the times of Jesus, the Jews prided in the fact that they
are clean when the Gentiles were considered “unclean,” calling them also, “the
uncircumcised.” Even Jesus referred to them as “dogs” (Mt 15:21-28). In the
case of the Samaritans, the story was the same but perhaps the insults were
more glaring (Jn 4:9, 18:28, Acts 10:28).
Just as the Parable of the Dinner exemplified, the Gentiles
have had a tough time for centuries. Next to the Jews, they were worth nothing.
They were considered neither important nor useful. By and large, the Jews
believed them to be a threat. Wenham and Walton (2001) in ‘Exploring the New
Testament’ described the Samaritans in this excerpt:
“Some of the local
opposite came from people in the neighbouring region of Samaria, who seem to
have been a hotchpotch of nationalities and religions. Although they professed
some sort of allegiance to the God of Israel, the Jews were suspicious of their
motives and hostile towards their offers of collaboration (Ezra 4). They
regarded them as half-pagans at best. This cold-shouldering of the Samaritans
is presumably one of the factors that led the Samaritans to build their own
temple on Mount Gerizim, probably sometime in the fourth century BC. Inevitably
this alternative temple in the Promised Land infuriated the Jews and, although
a lot happened between these events and the NT period, this is one of the roots
of the Jew-Samaritan tensions that are evident in the NT.”
Source: Chapter 1 – The Historical
Context of Jesus and the New Testament, p.6
Although the above describes the situation in a post-resurrection
era, it serves to paint a picture of, at best, an uneasy relationship between
the Israelites and the Samaritans. Seen in that light, perhaps it is
interesting that Jesus would tell a parable about a Good Samaritan (Lk
10:25-37) that, underscores this tenseness. In this parable, passing Jews walk
past and ignore a badly wounded victim of a robbery attack who is lying on the
road (vv.31-32). None of the Jews would have a bar in helping someone in dire
need that is, until a Samaritan came along, saw him, stopped and treated him.
He then made the effort to bring him into the care of an innkeeper to which out
of his pocket, he paid for his services saying, “Take care of him and whatever
more you spend, when I return, I will repay you” (vv.33-35).
Sometimes we can even find an enemy crossing the boundaries to
help us. The unlikely event of the Germans waving a white flag to join their
enemies, the British and the French, in celebrating Christmas Truce in the
trenches during World War I is epochal. Its significance will forever teach us
a lesson in the beauty of the unlikely, which in so many ways, is a lesson from
God too. Within the context of the upside-down kingdom, someone you despise
might stretch out a hand to help you for no other reason than the fact that
someone had to help.
There are people who go the extra mile to help without expecting
anything in return – even the much-despised Samaritans. Even when Jesus’
disciples were angered by the refusal of the Samaritans to cooperate as they
headed for Jerusalem (Lk 9:51-56), He stood them down from seeking punishment,
saying:
“You do not know what kind
of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives
but to save them.”
The point is very simple today. We are the Gentiles. We have
been given the chance of entering God’s kingdom because in His merciful grace,
we have been granted the privilege that we hardly deserve. In our sinful
nature, God went the extra mile. In the improbable likelihood that Israel’s
ancient enemies would never see the light of day with God, the gates were
opened to them because the Jews, having been given the first option, rejected
Christ.
The Gospel spread widely in the early New Testament era and
many Gentiles were converted for Christ. Acts 11:18 offers us a look at the
reaction of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who, in praising God, said:
“When they heard this,
they quieted down and glorified God, saying, ‘Well then, God has granted to the
Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life.’”
Gentiles in Pisidian, Antioch reacted on hearing the good
news, “began rejoicing and glorifying the Word of the Lord, and as many as had
been appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48, NASB). Paul wrote to the
Gentile church in Rome, saying:
“For I am not ashamed of
the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,
to the Jew first and also to the Gentile” (Rom 1:16, NASB)
The enemies of Israel now gained something that they were not
supposed to, recognition and acceptance from God. They can now claim the
kingdom of heaven with as much right as the Jews. The very unlikely had
happened. What was said to be impossible is now a fact of life.
Paul puts this best when he wrote to the Ephesian church:
“Remember that you were at
that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and
strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the
world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have been brought
near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups
into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His
flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so
that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing
peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by
it having put to death the enmity.” (Eph 2:12-16, NASB)
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