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The Parable of Kingdom:
the Kingdom or a Kingdom |
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Chapter 4
The Parable of the Kingdom’s Uncommon Family
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Attention: The parable will conclude by resounding the following chorus in order for the neighborhoods of God’s people to voice their tune in harmony with the kingdom, so that they will no longer be out of tune voicing the melody of a kingdom.
The relational outcome is that you are no longer marginalized at a relational distance, but you belong to the uncommon family of God. By the whole of God, this family is constituted to be in wholeness together, and thereby harmonized to be the very dwelling for the whole of God to live intimately. Ephesians 2:19-22
The parable of the kingdom, not a kingdom, observes many neighborhoods of God’s people who actually are only looking at God’s kingdom from the outside. Their position on the outside or even on the periphery of the kingdom’s borders is obscured, because their perspective of kingdom does not reach the depths of the kingdom constituted by God. The parable concludes by taking the kingdom to the depths only God envisioned.
In the referential language common to humanity, kingdom is composed with the formality that renders highly privileged status to its leader(s). Those belonging to such a kingdom are classified as subjects loyal to their leader(s). In this formal structure and system, a kingdom’s melody may reverberate throughout to unify this kingdom. That’s how an early kingdom of God’s people evolved in its story, and how many subsequent kingdoms have existed ever since on this widened path for kingdom.
This formality of kingdom amplifies with a select tune of nationalism, which is voiced by its select citizens. Currently, the majority voice of a notable neighborhood of God’s people has become the most prominent tune heard for the melody of nationalism, which they assume defines the identity and determines the function of God’s kingdom. In God’s name, these select citizens have bestowed on a reverberating individual the privileged status of a monarch ordained by God. And this neighborhood reverberates collectively with a melody tuned by its authoritarian leader.
In its current tune, however, nationalism subtly misinforms God’s people and thus misleads them to be out of tune with the kingdom voiced by God. The parable makes apparent their dissonance by resounding the harmony consonant with God’s kingdom, which, when carefully listened to and paid attention to completely, will rewire minds and turn around hearts. As this harmony comes to the forefront, the parable not only challenges God’s people but can also threaten them, because its relational terms, process and outcome get to the heart of each person from inner out. Have you felt this way in what you’ve heard so far?
Jesus struck a chord that is rarely played by the neighborhoods of God’s people. This results in a deaf ear to the sound transmitting God’s kingdom. The most resounding tune for God’s kingdom was voiced by Jesus when he communicated directly to his followers: “I will not leave you as orphans” (Jn 14:18). How so?
This story needs to be told centered on Jesus’ relational message. His early followers, who first heard him voice these surprising words, must have been bewildered by his weird tune. Why, because all of them were part of a family. So, they paid no attention to his message since orphans, of course, do not belong to a family. This is true even though orphans are often gathered together in a structured context to serve as their family (orphanages). Whether alone or together, orphans pervaded neighborhoods.
Jesus wasn’t planting a new seed about this condition, but he was further sowing the seed God already initially planted for the kingdom with covenant relationship. The condition of orphans exists explicitly and implicitly, and the story brings out this nuance. Both conditions signify not belonging to family; the former biologically and the latter relationally. Yet, the latter condition could also exist among those in the former condition, that is, exist in biological families. The story makes explicit that these families contain or are composed of relational orphans. In other words, relational orphans is a prevailing condition needing loving response to resolve it.
In God’s relational terms, the condition for orphans could only be turned around by the act of adoption (cf. Eph 2:5). Initiated by the unwarranted involvement of God’s grace, the whole of God enacted the loving response necessary (cf. Rom 8:15-16). God’s adoption, however, does not become the experiential truth and relational reality for God’s people until consummated by the reciprocal relational response of their whole persons from inner out—that is, ongoingly entrusted (the essential act of faith) to the Father. This vulnerable relational response enacts the relational terms and work that fulfills the reciprocal relationship necessary to belong to and live in God’s family.
When this reciprocal response is vulnerably enacted, these persons then function as God’s very own children no longer apart as relational orphans but belonging to God’s family. The relational outcome resounds the chord that Jesus completed to bind together the kingdom with daughters and sons, sisters and brothers constituting God’s family in covenant relationship.
This family is an elusive family, namely when influenced and shaped by the human family (whether extended, nuclear, indigenous or migrant). What distinguishes God’s family from human families is the essential fact that God’s family can only be uncommon (holy), and thus clearly distinguished from the human family’s common ways and means defining its identity and determining its function (cf. Isa 35:8; 1 Pet 1:15; 2:9-10).
For example, how do relational orphans grow up in biological families? They evolve by lacking meaningful relational connections, as well as not having significant relational involvement with each other that they can count on. These are essential to have so that they will not be alone in their everyday life.
Jesus enacted the relational process that removed the barriers preventing the relational connection and involvement in relationships. The relational outcome from Jesus’ loving response thereby freed persons from inner out for the intimacy necessary to not be relational orphans in the context of God’s kingdom family (Mt 27:50-51; 2 Cor 3:16-18). In this integral relational process, the relational terms enacted by Jesus are not mere rhetoric composing a belief system, but rather they constitute the relational outcome that “will not leave you as relational orphans.”
Therefore, the parable clarifies the relational terms composing the condition of relational orphans and corrects the relational function of family, thereby resounding the harmony constituting God’s kingdom only as the uncommon family. In contrast and conflict with the common family, God’s uncommon family is joined together irrevocably in wholeness. The wholeness Jesus binds together is in consonant tune with both the qualitative image and relational likeness integrally in the harmony of the Father, the Son and the Spirit as One.
Yet, the wholeness of God’s people as family can also be elusive and is not the prevailing condition in neighborhoods. Rather than transmitting the chorus harmonizing God’s family, they merely voice at best a reverberating melody as children assumed to belong in God’s family. Those associated with these neighborhoods typically base belonging to it by a formal membership, their roles in it, the spiritual gifts possessed or related resources, including even physical distinctions. All these distinctions used to define the person and determine their place in the neighborhood inevitably fall into a comparative process, which then stratifies their place in a hierarchy based on “better or less,” “good or bad.” Consequently and unavoidably, this process reduces some from being equal with others, and this clearly fragments any sense of wholeness they could experience together. Still, some would argue that Paul established the identity of God’s people as coming together like the physical body, which would function on the basis of all its different parts and cannot be all the same (1 Cor 12:12-20). This is the chorus of the body metaphor that reverberates in many neighborhoods.
Given Paul’s metaphor, how does a neighborhood body become one whole family?
The distinctions Paul identifies in the body are certainly real and necessary, because the body obviously cannot be composed with the same parts. At the same time, one part of the body cannot say to another part, “I don’t need you, you aren’t necessary.” The underlying issue in all this is either defining the person from the outer in or from the inner out. The former bases the person on all their different distinctions visible from outer in, and thereby defines persons by these secondary things—all of which, again, fall into a comparative process. That’s why God emphatically does not allow such distinctions to define persons and determine God’s kingdom (cf. Acts 15:9). The reality of using such distinctions evolves both in the unavoidable consequence of creating inequality among members of the body and in the inescapable condition of fragmenting the body of its wholeness.
Can such a body of God’s people voice the above chorus?
When Jesus’ earliest followers focused on their distinctions and argued who was the greatest among them, they sheepishly asked Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom?” Jesus voiced this identity to them: “Unless you change from outer in and become vulnerable with your whole person from inner out in order to be openly involved without using distinctions for yourself—that is, openly involved just as a little innocent child who has yet to learn the common ways of life—you will not belong in my kingdom. Such a young child mainly lives from inner out at that early stage, and thus has little if any awareness of their personal distinctions emerging when viewed from outer in. Therefore, only such persons functioning like this child are considered ‘the greatest’ in my kingdom” (Mt 18:3; 19:14). Accordingly, no one should nor will be considered less and rendered to a lower status in the kingdom, though they certainly can and will be in a kingdom.
As the above chorus resounds, a body of inequality is unable to voice, much less resonate, the harmony of God’s kingdom, much less become uncommon family.
Furthermore, the distinctions commonly used for a neighborhood’s collective identity are the amount of its membership and attendance at gatherings, its activities, along with the resources it possesses. This bases its identity simply on quantitative distinctions from outer in, thus giving priority to secondary things to form a melody out of tune with the qualitative harmony of God’s kingdom functioning from inner out that gives priority to the primacy of relationships together as uncommon family.
That’s why Paul clarified in the body metaphor the essential function it needs to fulfill for the body to be whole and not fragmented:
Each part of the body must, by its nature as one body, be directly connected and deeply involved with each other, so that all the different parts of the body belong together in one whole body; thus no part can be separated from the whole or treated as less, and thereby be alone—alone as a relational orphan (1 Cor 12:22-26).
For this relational purpose to be fulfilled, Paul later made it imperative for all the neighborhoods of God’s people: “Make the wholeness of Christ the primary determinant for the depth of your persons from inner out to function in relationship together as one body in the wholeness of God’s family in relational likeness of God’s love (your first love)” (Col 3:14-15; cf. Rev 2:4). The relational outcome voiced by Paul is unmistakable and irreplaceable: the wholeness of equalized relationships joined together integrally with intimate relationships to constitute God’s uncommon family.
Therefore, Paul harmonized in these reciprocal relationships together that the relational work of God’s people integrally joins with the wholeness of God’s relational work to confirm this irreducible and nonnegotiable outcome of God’s kingdom—harmonized in the following chorus:
The relational outcome is that you are no longer marginalized at a relational distance like relational orphans; but you belong to the uncommon family of God. By the loving involvement from the whole of God, this family is constituted to be in wholeness together, and thereby harmonized to be the very dwelling within which the whole of God intimately lives. Ephesians 2:19-22
The parable keeps resounding the harmony for the kingdom’s uncommon family to the only tune voiced by the whole of the Father, the Son and the Spirit together as One, thereby always transmitting nothing less and no substitutes in contrast and conflict with anything less and any substitutes. But, why does the parable conclude here with an unfinished sound?
Who is listening carefully and paying attention completely in order to respond in likeness and thereby belong to, in and for God’s family?
© 2025 T. Dave Matsuo |