a conspiracy of love

at the heart of the Gospel

At the heart of Jesus’ gospel is the kingdom of God. This phrase sums up Jesus’ entire ministry and life’s work. The “kingdom of God” points to God’s active rule over human social relationships.

When we read the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we see that every thought and saying of Jesus was directed toward one thing: the realization of God’s reign—marked by love, compassion, justice, and peace—within human society.

a vision of transformation

The kingdom of God, as Jesus preached it, envisions a profound transformation of both human beings and human institutions—social, political, economic, and religious—so that they express the character of a God of love. It brings together personal and social transformation in both spiritual and political realms.

Through metaphors and stories, Jesus described the kingdom as the work of a social and political movement inspired by divine love, restoring what he believed to be God’s intention for humanity from the beginning. Rather than longing for a divine restoration of political and religious power, Jesus painted a vision of God changing the world from within—by creating a new community bonded by egalitarian relationships.

Jesus took the long-awaited dream of a just and compassionate society and made it a living vision that could transform the world.

a vision is like a seed

A vision is like a seed planted in the hearts and minds of people. When it takes root and is nurtured, it can grow to produce astounding results. Jesus used this imagery for the kingdom of God.

He asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? It is like a mustard seed”—the smallest and seemingly most insignificant of seeds—“that someone took and tossed in the garden.”[1]

Some scholars note that in first-century Judaism, a mustard plant—really just a common weed—was forbidden in household vegetable gardens because it spread rapidly and disrupted order. In Jewish thought, order symbolized holiness, while disorder symbolized uncleanness. Rabbinical law forbade mixing certain plants in the same garden. So, when Jesus said someone threw a mustard seed into a garden, his audience understood he was sowing disorder and subverting rule-based holiness.

Like an invasive mustard plant in a tidy garden, the kingdom of God takes root in the world’s domination systems, spreading its subversive message even today.

the enduring domination system

Throughout history, nearly every society has favored an elite minority at the expense of the majority. For thousands of years, economic elites have rigged systems for their own prosperity and control. They extracted wealth from the sweat of slaves, peasants, and laborers, while contributing little to the common good. Social control was maintained through violence and military might, often with religious support. Such societies were patriarchal, with men dominating the lives of women and children, and they often favored one race, tribe, or ethnicity over others.

Biblical scholar Walter Wink (1935–2012) called these societies manifestations of an enduring “domination system” that has shaped human history since civilization arose in the ancient Near East. Wink described it this way:

It is characterized by unjust economic relations, oppressive political relations, biased race relations, patriarchal gender relations, hierarchical power relations, and the use of violence to maintain them all. No matter what shape the dominating system of the moment might take (from the ancient Near Eastern states to the Pax Romana to feudal Europe to communist state capitalism to modern market capitalism), the basic structure has persisted now for at least five thousand years, since the rise of the great conquest states of Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE.[2]

We see the domination system in kingdoms, empires, and dictatorships. Patriarchy has been enforced through customs and religion. Even democratic societies, when controlled by the wealthy and powerful, reproduce the same injustice: massive tax cuts for the rich, bloated military budgets, corporate welfare, vast prison systems, and cuts to social services for the poor are all signs of a corrupt system.

overcoming the domination system

Walter Wink argued that Jesus’ teachings were a prescription for dismantling the domination system of his time. The kingdom of God is an antidote to its injustices—a vision that turns the domination system upside down.

In God’s reign, domination values are reversed: the first shall be last and the last shall be first; the greatest will be servants; the powerful will be brought low and the lowly lifted up; the hungry will be fed and the rich sent away empty.

The kingdom belongs especially to the poor, the hungry, and the grieving because they long for its arrival. The rich, entrenched in the domination system, find it nearly impossible to enter.

Every act of resistance against unjust laws, every effort to transform oppressive structures for the common good, is a sign of the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed.

a people and a task

The kingdom of God is more than a vision—it calls forth a people inspired to transform society through small daily actions. “Kingdom people” lead radically different lives that challenge injustice and disturb the status quo. Their actions form a conspiracy that persistently prods the powers and principalities toward social transformation.

The kingdom of God thus involves a VISION, a PEOPLE, and a TASK. Continue reading

Jesus and Fascism

 I am currently writing a new book. The working title is “Jesus and Fascism: Donald Trump, the MAGA Republicans, and White Christian Nationalism.” For now, I’ll just share the introduction with you.

My unique contribution is the idea that Jesus faced a similar situation in his time as we are facing in the United States today with racially-pure Judean nationalists who wanted a strong-man leader to Make Israel Great Again.

introduction

Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.
— John Lewis (1940–2020)

Those who choose, even on a small scale, to love in the midst of hatred and fear are the people who offer true hope to our world.
— Henri Nouwen (1932–1996)

I awoke on the morning of Wednesday, November 6, 2024, to the realization that the twice-impeached and criminally-indicted former president Donald Trump was elected to the presidency once again. For a while, it was easy to dismiss Donald Trump’s 2016 victory as a fluke. Eight years later, that’s now impossible. Some observers might think Donald Trump’s first term represented rock bottom. Just wait. I think we are in for a tough fight.

At first, I could not believe it, nor could I understand it. I was shocked, confused, and utterly dismayed. Why would the American public vote this way? What did they see in this man? Firmly ensconced in my blue liberal bubble, I thought the majority of Americans were better than this. It appears I was wrong.

Continue reading

Windswept and Woke: a sermon by Rev. David Felten

David Felten is the pastor at The Fountains United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, AZ. I originally became aware of him when he emailed and then phoned me in late 2020 to say that he wanted to preach a sermon series based on my book “A Conspiracy of Love.” I was flattered by the gesture. That series grew to 19 sermons from January through June in 2021. I eagerly watched each Sunday when the church “studio” service appeared of their YouTube channel. Then in 2024, he preached another 12 sermons based on my book “People of the Way” from January to May. (You can see them all at www.followingjesus.org/videos.)

I have come to regard David as my pastor and my friend because he speaks to me about what it means to be a progressive follower of Jesus in our contemporary situation. He is passionate about justice, equality, and human dignity. I regularly follow his sermons on YouTube (www.youtube.com/@FountainsUMC).

On June 8, 2025, Pentecost Sunday, David titled his sermon “Windswept and Woke” in which he compared the Jesus followers in Jerusalem on Pentecost to the current situation in the United States. It is a powerful sermon and deserves to be more widely heard.

In it, he paraphrases John F. Kennedy’s “I’m proud to be a liberal” statement with this comment:

“Stay Woke”

“If by ‘woke’ they mean someone who
chooses to stay awake rather than
sleepwalk through injustice . . . someone who
listens to new voices instead of cling to
old prejudices . . . someone who believes that
health care, housing, education, jobs, civil
rights, and human dignity matter —
then I’m proud to say I’m woke.”

David’s preaching style is warm, casual, conversational, and frequently humorous. Enjoy and be inspired.

Does That Complete Your Order? / The Feeding of the 5,000 / A Sermon

Pastor of The Fountains United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, AZ, Rev. David Felten delivers his studio sermons in a casual, conversational, and often humorous manner. This sermon on the feeding of the 5,000 is entitled “Does That Complete Your Order?” David relates that he once worked at a McDonald’s and he was taught to up-sell an order. As we hunger for justice in a world of poor, sick, malnourished, and marginalized people, how would we complete our order?

For more of David’s sermons, check out www.followingjesus.org/videos to see his sermons based on my books “A Conspiracy of Love” and “People of the Way”.

The Biblical Understanding of the Resurrection of the Dead

(This post is an excerpt from An Unorthodox Faith: A New Reformation for a Postmodern World by Kurt Struckmeyer)

 

In spite of nearly universal Christian belief about a heavenly afterlife, Jesus never proclaimed a message about life after death. It was not as if it was a foreign concept to him; the belief was widespread in the Roman Empire of the first century. The Egyptians believed in a shadowy existence after death and had for thousands of years. Likewise, the Greeks believed that an immortal soul continued after earthly existence ended, as did the Zoroastrians in Persia. From the south, north, and east, these ideas prevailed among the peoples surrounding Palestine. But for Jesus, otherworldliness and a future life in heaven was not a central part of his ministry or mission. His proclamation of the kingdom of God was about a transformed life on this side of the grave. It was all about how we live today, not what happens after we die.

So why is there this widespread belief—shared by most clergy—that the message of Jesus was a message about a heavenly afterlife? Perhaps uncritical acceptance of a centuries-long tradition of doctrines created by ecclesial committees and a fundamental lack of interest in serious biblical scholarship is part of the answer. But being afraid to speak the truth to laity is the major issue. Letting people believe what they want to believe is the easier path to take. After all, clergy stand by their parishioners at the graveside when a loved one dies. Comfort, not challenge, is a requirement of their job. Still, at some point it becomes necessary to tell the truth about what is really in the Bible, if in fact the Bible is to be a foundation of Christian faith. And one thing is sure—a heavenly afterlife was not central to the message of Jesus in the gospel accounts.

One confusion about a heavenly afterlife is the concept of the resurrection of the dead. People often assume that the resurrection spoken of in the New Testament is an immediate transition from the moment of death into a glorious heavenly existence in the presence of God (or Jesus). But it’s not. Biblical resurrection is the idea that the dead will someday return to a renewed life here on earth, not to a heavenly dimension.

In the first century, the idea of the bodily resurrection was a fairly recent innovation in Jewish thought, espoused primarily by the Pharisees—including the Apostle Paul who claimed he was educated as a Pharisee. The Pharisees believed that those who had died as martyrs for their faith would be raised by God to experience new life in an earthly messianic kingdom and would be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their martyrdom in a renewed life as vindicated heroes. Resurrection was an issue of justice for the faithful but was clearly a concept based on wish-fulfillment.

Continue reading

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s conscientious participation

Before we had an all-volunteer Army, the United States government historically made provisions for conscientious objectors in the military draft procedure known as the Selective Service System. A conscientious objector was either classified as 1-A-O and served in the military as a non-combatant, or was classified as 1-O and served in an alternative service capacity, such as an orderly in a VA hospital.

But the government only recognized people who objected to military service based on religious grounds, not moral or philosophical grounds. This tended to favor Christians from the historic peace churches such as the Mennonites and Quakers who include pacifism as part of their religious training. Accordingly, the Christian had to be opposed to all wars to be a conscientious objector.

During the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court widened the definition of religious grounds to include any Christian with sincere beliefs regarding military service. But the court did not extend the privilege to those who opposed specific wars on the basis of moral or philosophical grounds. It was thus impossible for a Christian who opposed a specific war on the grounds that it was unjust or immoral to be classified as a conscientious objector.

a just war

Most churches embraced what is known as the Just War Theory. But they usually failed to apply it to any conflict. Governments were regularly given the benefit of the doubt that their cause and their actions are just. The just-war criteria were generally ignored and, as a result, Christians frequently march off to kill one another in service to the state without a second thought. As churches, we engaged in no serious dialogue, no discussion, and no concrete debate. In practice the just-war theory was not taken seriously by anyone—church or state.

But there is another viewpoint, and that is one that I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer was faced with in World War II. Participating in military service as an armed combatant requires the Christian to be ready to take human life. Therefore the basic stance of the individual Christian and the church should be that participation in warfare is always fundamentally wrong and that non-participation should be the norm. This I think was Bonhoeffer’s view. Participation in war is sinful and unjust.

But, from Bonhoeffer’s viewpoint, if the individual Christian believes that by participating in this sinful activity a greater good may be gained—the protection of innocent people or the control of aggressive states—then the individual has a right to make that ethical decision—one of conscientious participation in violence. The individual must assess the situation and the alternatives and must determine what is the just, right, and compassionate thing to do.

nonviolence and conscientious participation

Bonhoeffer provides a case study for conscientious participation in violence. Bonhoeffer was a pacifist. He believed that nonviolence was the way of Jesus. As it became apparent that Germany would go to war, he was asked what he would do. He replied, “I pray that God will give me the strength not to take up arms.”

Bonhoeffer wanted to travel to India to study nonviolence with Gandhi and learn Gandhi’s methods first hand so that he could introduce these techniques to the Confessing Church in Germany. He was eager to know if nonviolent resistance could still be possible and effective in Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, he never made the trip.

For Bonhoeffer, nonviolent resistance was the realization of the ideas Jesus expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. Bonhoeffer explored the implications of these teachings in his book The Cost of Discipleship. He believed that the Sermon on the Mount may have been an early catechism that reflected what the Jesus movement attempted to practice as an alternative form of life: nonviolence, love of enemy, justice, and fulfillment of human community not by the letter of the law, but by the spirit of God’s commands. He did not see these teachings as unrealistic ideals, but instead as the fundamentals of discipleship.

Not wanting to remain on the fringes of the struggle in Germany, Bonhoeffer joined the underground resistance. His brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, secured him a position in the Abwehr, the military intelligence arm of the German army. The Abwehr was a center of the resistance against Hitler. Bonhoeffer used his ecumenical contacts to communicate secret information about resistance plans to the Western nations. This position also enabled him to avoid bearing arms.

In the end, Bonhoeffer became involved in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He believed that if Hitler were killed, fellow plotters within the military leadership of Germany would approach the Allies and ask for a peace settlement. Bonhoeffer believed this must be done to stop the continued destruction of the war. The plot to kill Hitler failed (twice).

nonviolence requires a widespread resistance

Bonhoeffer never rejected nonviolence as ineffective or impractical. Nonviolent resistance to Nazi authority was successfully used in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Bulgaria. Bonhoeffer never believed that violence was the only recourse against evil. But nonviolence on a large scale requires an army of people; the same way violence requires an army. And in Germany the tools of nonviolence were not available to Bonhoeffer. There was no widespread dissent, not even in the churches. The Nazi dream of a 1,000-year Reich was too powerful a force in the minds of the German people. The leaders of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Roman Catholic churches had not trained people to be the troops of nonviolent action. Instead, they had prepared their young men for war, told them to do their duty, and blessed them on their way.

Bonhoeffer prayed that the churches would speak out against war. In a 1934 sermon he called on the larger church to rise up with these words:

“How will peace come? Who will call us to peace so that the world will hear, will have to hear? Only the one great ecumenical council of the holy church of Christ over all the world can speak out so that the world, though it gnash its teeth, will have to hear, so that the peoples will rejoice because the church of Christ has taken the weapons from the hands of their sons, forbidden war, proclaimed the peace of Christ against a raging world.”

nonviolence must be our fundamental stance

Bonhoeffer never claimed that his actions were justified—in the sense of being made right due to the rightness of his cause. He always believed that the action to take a human life, even Hitler’s life, was wrong.  Bonhoeffer declared he was personally willing to make an attempt on Hitler’s life. But before doing so he would deliberately have to leave the church. He believed he was committing a sin—and he threw himself on the mercy of God. When Bonhoeffer chose this path he realized he was no longer following Jesus.

Bonhoeffer believed that our fundamental stance as Christians must be one of nonviolence. Yet his conscience told him that if a limited act of violence could save many other lives, he would commit that act, even if it were wrong. He wrestled with the decision. And then he accepted the consequences of his action.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested, not for the assassination plot, but for helping Jews escape from Germany. While in prison, his involvement in the plot was discovered and he was executed.

a conscientious struggle

When one chooses to participate in an activity leading to death, it must be based on a struggle with the conscience. The answer cannot be predetermined by a set of rules unless the Christian resolves to renounce all violence and all life-ending activities regardless of the situation. That is perhaps the only rule that can possibly apply to those who want to follow Jesus. Even then, the Christian must accept responsibility for the consequences that result from that decision.

We can have no easy way out.

 

prayer to the God of Love

God of love,
you are the ground of our being.

You are the source of all life,
you are the breath that fills us,
you are the pulse that animates us.

Your love flows within us,
your compassion connects us,
your presence surrounds us.

You are light and love and life itself.

You dwell within each of us,
yet the world doesn’t know you.

Everywhere, people live in darkness.

They struggle for safety and security,
through power and prestige,
wealth and possessions,
control and domination –
of one person over another,
of one race over another,
of one country over another.
and violence, not love, is their redemption.

Fill us with your power,
the spirit of compassion.

Give us the courage and strength
to love our neighbors,
to reconcile with enemies,
to break down barriers,
to unite in community,
to share our bread,
to speak the truth,
and to offer our lives.

Use us as seeds, as leaven, as salt, as light,
to transform the world,
to reflect your vision for all of life,
and to joyfully welcome your reign of justice and peace.

Amen.

 

© 2012 Kurt Struckmeyer

 

God

God is a verb, not a noun.

—R. Buckminster Fuller

Let me begin by saying what God is not. God has no preferred pronouns. God is not a he, she, they, or it. God is not a transcendent, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, interventionist, supernatural being who can intercede in history, answer prayers, or perform miracles. There is no observable evidence for any of these claims. The continual presence of war, widespread gun violence, an epidemic of drug overdoses, the existence of massive poverty—all these put a lie to an interventionist, supernatural being acting for the good.

It appears that everything I learned in catechism classes about God was wrong. It reflected a God of the Old Testament as influenced by Greek philosophers and then interpreted by Medieval theologians.

Instead, according to the First Letter of John, “God is Love.”

God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in them. (1 John 4:16)

In Greek, the language of the New Testament, the phrase “God is Love” is “theos ein agapē” (THEH-ohs ayn ag-AH-pay). Agapē (ag-AH-pay) implies a selfless love, a self-giving love, often an unconditional love. It is a love directed toward others, putting the needs of others ahead of oneself. This is the kind of love people saw in Jesus. And for the early Christian writers, it described the love of God.

When the Bible declares that God is Love, it means that these two language symbols—God and Love—are identical. If God is Love, then the converse is also true: Love is God. God is not a loving being. God is Love itself.

Scholar Don Cupitt has written:

In the New Testament, in the First Letter of John, we are told that the words Love and God are convertible. You can’t slip a knife between them. If you love your fellow human being, you know God and are in God, whereas if you don’t love, you don’t know God . . . The word God doesn’t designate a distinct metaphysical being; it is simply Love’s name.

Therefore, the word “God” is a name we give to the spirit of selfless love found at the depths of our humanity and experienced in the relationship of human love toward one another.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer commented on our relationship to God:

Our relation to God is not a religious relationship to a supreme being, absolute in power and goodness, which is a spurious conception of transcendence, but a new life for others, through participation in the being of God.

The radical message of the New Testament is that God is no longer an external being who dwells in heaven. Instead of a transcendent God, God is immanent—within humanity. God has come to dwell among us, not just in the person of Jesus, but within the heart of every human being. Indeed, God has always—and only—been a part of humanity, located deep within human consciousness and projected as a divine actor in the human story.

God, in the form of compassionate love, is a latent presence within each of us, but this God remains hidden until humans outwardly express love toward others. Loving one another is the full expression of God on earth.

No one has seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is brought to full expression in us. (1 John 4:12)

God becomes an immanent reality within our hearts, within our minds, within our relationships, and in our actions. Selfless love is a divine reality that animates us, empowers us, and transforms us from self-centered and selfish individuals to self-giving people.

That means you cannot pray for divine intervention in life. Prayer cannot persuade God or change God’s mind. Instead, prayer is meant to focus our thoughts, to change us into more compassionate people, and to cause us to act on behalf of others.

God cannot act independently from humans. God has no power other than the relatively weak power of human love. Love represents the highest, deepest, and most powerful force in human life. It is the energy that fosters human growth and change. Love is the impulse behind empathy and concern, and the fuel that drives compassion and justice.

What we need is a much more powerful understanding and experience of a love that reorients our lives and transforms us into fully-human beings, fully-human agents of the selfless love we call God. If we allow it to be unleashed, the divine love within us will not let us remain the same. The radical love we see in Jesus pulls at us; it pushes and prods us out of our insular shells. It forces us to become more than we are, more than we are comfortable with, and ultimately all we are meant to be.

This means we have an enormous duty: to join with others in a conspiracy of love. Alone, we can do little. United, we have the power to change the world. The conspiracy of love is a small movement at the margins of society prodding the powers and principalities of an unjust world toward transformation. It is a network of people in our communities and around the globe who are connected by a common vision and mission. It begins small, working from the margins and from the bottom up, but the whole purpose is to effect great change over the lives of many people who are hurting and suffering under the way things are. It involves feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, caring for the sick, accepting the unacceptable, and ultimately transforming the politics of our day.

This is the conspiracy initiated by Jesus—people of compassion and good will engaged in the unending transformation of themselves, their families, their communities, their nations, and the world at large. The vision of Jesus can best be described in the words of philosopher Charles Eisenstein as “that more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” Not only does Jesus envision a more beautiful world, but it is more peaceful and just as well. It promises the poor of the world access to the fundamental means of life—food, clothing, shelter, health care, and education for a better tomorrow. And it allows us to address the powers of death: the devastation of war, repeated gun violence, increasing drug overdoses, and the massive poverty found everywhere around us. All in the name of Love.

 

the creators

Their relationship remains unclear.
They may be unlikely brothers,
or perhaps like Oscar and Felix,
they are simply an odd couple
sharing the same high rise apartment.
But Elohim and Yahweh—
the two gods of Genesis—
have competing stories
about how they did it,
how they created all that is,
each one claiming the honor
and vying for our adoration and worship.

Elohim, a man of few words,
created the heavens and the earth
by the power of the spoken command.
“Let there be light,” he said
and there was light.
I imagine him seated in a director’s chair,
gesturing broadly with his hands
as he speaks clear and simple instructions
to the dark and formless void.
A firm believer in evolution,
Elohim has watched his simple creation
of a flat earth covered with a dome
become a vast expanding universe
of stellar clouds and dark matter.

Yahweh, in contrast,
always prefers a hands-on style,
sculpting creatures from the earth,
breathing life into muddy forms,
tending gardens,
planting orchards,
setting boundaries,
sewing garments,
and evicting disobedient tenants.

Elohim prefers the big picture,
the grand scheme,
the massive expanse of the untamed cosmos.
Yahweh, on the other hand,
believes that god is in the details.
A micro-manager of earthly affairs,
Yahweh spent centuries on a singular project
parting waters,
planning conquests,
dictating rulebooks,
demanding justice,
admonishing kings,
and controlling the destiny
of the Hebrew people
like tokens on a game board.

Today, many years later,
I imagine them in their retirement,
Elohim sitting at his telescope
watching the movement of the heavens
and Yahweh in his basement workshop
crafting a new species or two.
At the end of the day,
they sit together side by side,
Yahweh with his knitting,
and Elohim reading Carl Sagan,
bickering over the remote control.

 

(copyright © 2014 Kurt Struckmeyer)

 

the workers in the vineyard

Jesus told his disciples this parable:

The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning, around 6 o’clock, to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage of one denarius, he sent them into his vineyard.

When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So, they went.

When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same.

And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.”

Around 6 o’clock, when evening came, the lord of the vineyard said to his foreman, “Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.”

When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage of one denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more for their twelve hours of labor; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”

But he replied to the ringleader, “Friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not make an agreement with me for one denarius? Take your denarius and go! I wish to give to this last one the same as I give to you. Is it not permissible to do what I wish with the things that are mine? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

So, the last will be first, and the first will be last.

(Matthew 20: 1-16)

historical context

Knowing the historical context in which this parable was told can lead to some unusual and even disturbing conclusions about its meaning. In first-century Palestine, work was scarce and poverty widespread. Day laborers were peasants who had lost their land through indebtedness. If they were no longer needed as tenant farmers for the new landowners, they would become part of the “expendable” class. They were on a downward spiral and were desperate for work to survive. They did not have many options. They could choose between day labor or robbery. If they were too weak for either of these, they would become beggars at the gate (like Lazarus) until they died of hunger and disease. When Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), reflecting on the fate of peasants in a time of war, said that the life of humanity was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” it could aptly apply to the expendable class in the time of Jesus.

Jesus brings together the social extremes of an agrarian society: the elites and the expendables. And he arranges this meeting at a time when the elites were dependent on the lowliest of laborers. To ensure a timely harvest, the landowner needed their labor.

Continue reading

« Older posts

© 2025 following Jesus

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑

Verified by ExactMetrics