4.9.22 - When Is A Kingdom Not A Kingdom? A Look at Jesus’s “Kingdom Parables” (Kenny Camacho)
SCRIPTURE: Mark 4:31-32 & 4:26-29; Matthew 13:33,13:44, & 20:1-16; Luke 14:16-24
“Jesus identifies with us, so we can be incorporated into Him. Jesus chooses to experience all the messiness of a human life, including mockery and abandonment and false accusations and even torture and death, so He can wholly and fully identify with His own Creations. We have a God who fully and personally sees us, so that he can then bring us to true and complete liberation from our smallness, our meanness to each other, and incorporate us into His perfection and His story. The Empire-story shares itself–even gives itself–for the Subject-story, the Slave-story.”
REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
This week we are dealing with what can feel like a pretty remote concept: the idea of a “kingdom.” What does that word mean to you? How would you define it? How might it be a relevant idea for you?
Kenny said that, in the kingdoms humans make, we incorporate so we can identify with power and control. Can you think of any examples of this? What are the limitations or problems with this kind of “kingdom”?
In the first four parables Kenny discussed, the “KIngdom of God” is presented as a mustard seed, yeast, a treasure in a field, and a harvest. What connects these four metaphors? What do they teach us about God’s Kingdom?
Kenny said that the core belief of the kingdoms of this world is that violence can be redemptive. How did you process that idea? Do you see evidence of it in your own life? How is this at odds with God’s Kingdom?
In the final two parables, God’s Kingdom is a banquet, where those who are invited refuse the invitation and so the invitation is extended to strangers on the street, and a vineyard, where all workers are paid the same wages no matter when their shift started. What does this tell us about God’s Kingdom? What does it mean for God’s Kingdom to be liberation…and how does this work?
How does Jesus turn the “incorporation for identification” model of earthly kingdoms upside down?
If we really are living in the Kingdom of God…what should we do? How do we live well?