How Value is Measured in God's Kingdom

Both ancient Middle Eastern and modern Western cultures are based upon hierarchies of value, status, and prestige.  The means by which we measure those values are different, but the fact that we employ methods of valuation remains the same.

Ancient Middle Eastern cultures, like virtually all ancient societies, were honor and shame culture.  One of the characteristics of an honor and shame society was that your place in the hierarchical matrices was fixed from your birth and remained constant.  If you were born into high standing, you remained there.  If you were born into the peasantry, you remained there as well.  Honor consisted not in trying to move your way up the hierarchical systems, but recognizing your place in them and being faithful to your place.

In Jesus' day, like in most Middle Eastern societies, one of the ways that this hierarchy of value was given expression was at a banquet.  People ate sitting down, and in a square formation.  At one corner was the place of highest honor, and at the opposite corner was the place of lowest honor.  The trick was predicting who was going to show up and not sitting in a place where you would be forced to move down, in humiliation, someone else showed up with greater status, forcing you to take a lower seat.

Jesus says that in God's Kingdom, there are also hierarchical matrices, but the methodology of valuation is different.  Our value is measured not by our wealth, our social status, our beauty, or our profession, but the degree to which we serve our neighbor.  The one who will be at the place of highest honor will be the one who has demonstrated the greatest propensity for serving others.

Imagine a banquet in God's Kingdom.  If the methodology of service and sacrifice is truly lived out, no one will take the highest place, because they will want their neighbor to take it.  The highest place will actually sit empty, as the only preoccupation of those at the banquet table will be to serve their neighbor.  That is an image of the infinite lavish grace that is the cornerstone of God's Kingdom. 

The Greatest Impediment to Scriptural Holiness

In Luke's gospel, the Jewish religious authorities rebuke Jesus because he healed a woman on the Sabbath, in violation of Sabbath observance.  Jesus in turn rebukes the religious authorities for ironically missing the big picture

The whole point of the synagogue, the Jewish religious establishment, and the traditions of Sabbath observance was to remind Israel of the only thing that really mattered; their covenant relationship with God that effected their liberation from oppression and the need to maintain holiness of heart and life to maintain their side of the covenant agreement.  The woman was liberated from her own oppression through healing.  The only thing that stood in the way were the religious customs that were intended to evoke and facilitate Israel's holiness that would bring about their own liberation.

The same irony is found in the Church today.  The greatest impediment to the whole point of being the Church; to make disciples of Christ and to live holy lives according to the example of Christ, is our own religious practices and institutions, both on the local and judicatory level.  In order for the Church to carry out its mission it must avoid the trap of missing the forest for the trees.  The Church must be wiling to abandon any practice or custom that does not facilitate holiness of heart and life.