In the light of the cross, and of His taking up of that low and humiliating position to confirm His Kingship, it must now be said that the in-breaking of the kingdom of heaven had brought about a dramatic inverse of reality. This is not to be forgotten or taken lightly when considering Jesus’ disposition towards the Laodicean church. As part of this inversion, in which the low position of humiliation becomes the place of exaltation, we even have the chance to see Jesus undergoing a mock coronation ceremony, with this scourging humiliation through the lowest of all low means, taking place in the midst of the age that was then in existence, even as He was receiving His exalted position in the new age being brought into existence through the working of God through the Christ-event. On the one hand, what appeared to the interested on-lookers of the day as a failed and humiliated would-be messiah figure being put to death on Gologtha, would be viewed on the other hand as the most honorable of all royal enthronements that the world would ever be privileged to witness.
Therefore, as we link the cross with the parable of the great banquet and what preceded the telling of that parable, we effectively see Jesus, having taken the lowest place (the eschaton), being instructed by God (the host of the messianic banquet) to “move to the highest place” (the protoklisian). Thus the route to the chief seat is well marked, and ignorance as to the path to exaltation within the kingdom of heaven can no longer be plead. Like Jesus, one must be willing to be identified with the lowest of the low in the eyes of the world, and be willing to walk the humbling path to the humbling place in order to have a place within the kingdom of heaven. At the same time, as we think along such lines, could it not be proposed that each and every place in the kingdom of heaven is a protoklisian, the route to which runs right through the world’s eschaton? If we do think this way, we do so while remembering that the chief seat, for Jesus, was the seat of service, as witnessed by the example of the thirteenth chapter of John and the washing of His disciples’ feet? What effect should such thoughts have as we contemplate our duties within this kingdom of which we take part if we confess Jesus as our Lord?
Taking in the scope of this picture that is being presented in word and deed, should we not be able to deduce a component of the flattening out of the entrenched social hierarchy, and its accompanying ethnic and national distinctions, which contributed to the apostolic insistence that in the kingdom of heaven, of which the church should be a model as it shares the message of the Gospel (Jesus is Lord) with the world, that there was neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female? The apostles rightly perceived that in one fell swoop, Jesus, by taking the shameful place of humiliation, and doing so as the Messiah and King, eliminated all distinctions that serve to divide. Those divisions, especially in that day, with its elaborate and divisive social structures, would stand in the way of a universal submission to the Lordship of Jesus as the Christ. Clearly, God intended all peoples to stand shoulder to shoulder in recognition of His power and His rule, but such a vision would not be able to be achieved if the people that confessed that rule, through Jesus, could not themselves stand shoulder to shoulder in an egalitarian community. The earliest church, with exceptions, was able to successfully embody this, to the point that one was not able, through observation of their gatherings, to distinguish any type of social hierarchy. This was a foreign concept. Little wonder, then, that the church thought of themselves as a third humanity---a new way of being human.
Indeed, what would be the attraction of the community of the new age of the kingdom of God if it employed structures of authoritarian power, through an ongoing recognition of established societal norms, that made it look exactly like the structures of the old age? This is why the flattening out of society that is represented by Jesus’ parable of the great banquet, in which all dine together in a way that presents no obvious and discernible hierarchy, is so completely radical. Why should this not be the case? Must we imagine that God would embody human flesh for the purposes of bringing about the redemption of His corrupted creation, and simply leave things as they were? Of course not. What Jesus is clearly addressing through His words and actions, and which He quite naturally expected to be embodied by the community that called Him Lord, is the fact that the situation in which the world found itself, with its oppression of man by man, its abuse of God-ordained power, its neglect of widows and orphans, and more, was the result of man’s fall. This had obviously not been intended within the original, pre-fall creation, and it would certainly have no place in the restored creation to come. Therefore, the church of Christ, which exists as ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven that is presently ruled by Jesus though we await its consummation and full manifestation, must serve as a visible example and reminder of the appearance that will be taken by the rule of God, while also doing its best to prepare the world, through the proclamation of the Gospel, for that rule.
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