The introduction to the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard:

But many who are first will be last, and the last first. (Matthew 19.30, ESV)

I don’t know a thing about horse racing, and I don’t gamble, but we always watch the Kentucky Derby. This year’s, run Saturday, May 7, was special and was a literal fulfillment of Jesus’ words about the first will be last and the last first. One horse jumped into the lead and held it for 3/4 of a mile. Unfortunately, the race is  1 1/4 miles, and that horse finished dead last.

In the meantime, a horse that wasn’t even entered into the race until Friday morning won at 80-1 odds (second highest payout in Derby history). Rich Strike only got in when another horse scratched. On Friday morning, the owner and trainer were planning to let him race in New York on Saturday. Neither the jockey nor the trainer had ever competed in the Kentucky Derby before. Click the picture to watch the race; I don’t think the announcer even saw Rich Strike until he crossed the finish line as the winner.

When asked if he could believe it, the horse’s owner said:

We don’t ever enter a race that we don’t think we can win. If we don’t think we can win, then we go and train some more. – Rick Dawson, owner of Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1 Corinthians 9.24 – 27, ESV)

Train yourself for godliness. (1 Timothy 4.7, ESV)

I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3.14, ESV)

I might be making progress on the parable that is really tough for a lot of Americans: “The Laborers in the Vineyard” of Matthew 20.1 – 16. You know how it starts:

For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. (Matthew 20.1, 2, ESV)

The first thing I did was to convert “a denarius” into today’s dollars. All the footnotes say that a denarius was a day’s wage for a laborer. And the working day in this parable was 12 hours. So let’s say $10/hour x 12 hours = $120.00. And you know what happened. The master went out at 9am, noon, 3pm, and 5pm and hired more workers. Then this:

And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. (Matthew 20.8 – 10, ESV)

Of course, this is where it breaks down for many of us. We think the last guys should have received $10, then $30 for the 3pm guys, $60 for the ones at noon, $90 for the 9am guys, and $120 for the original 6am workers. That would be “fair.”

So what’s the point? Let’s go back through it. What did Jesus say?

• The Kingdom of Heaven is like a master who needed laborers. That sounds a bit like, “The harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few.” (Matthew 9.37)
• Some folks jumped into the fray early and worked hard all day. These would be the original twelve disciples.
• Then others joined later, some much later. Of course, it’s just a story, but we have to ask, “Where were the latecomers at 6am?” The ones at 5pm who said, “No one has hired us” could have been out goofing off all day and just went to the pickup place near the end of the day so they could tell their wives, “We were there, but no one hired us!”
• Therefore, we have to conclude it’s yet another picture of grace. It’s hard for us to get past a merit mentality. It was hard for people in Jesus’ day too. This parable is preceded by:
  • The children: “The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19.14) But what had they DONE?
  • The rich young ruler: “What must I DO to inherit eternal life?” (Matthew 19.16)
  • The disciples who had just asked, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Matthew 19.27) Look how much we have DONE and GIVEN UP!

So what did the early birds get that the latecomers didn’t, if not more money? The joy of meaningful work. I might say more about that in a subsequent blog.

Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. (Ephesians 2.8 – 10, MSG)

Right after the transfiguration of Matthew 17.1 – 8, where Jesus appears in his glory, talking with Moses and Elijah, we have this exchange:

And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” And the disciples asked him, “Then why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” He answered, “Elijah does come, and he will restore all things. But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist. (Matthew 17.9 – 13, ESV)

“Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.”

John the Baptist had already been beheaded, and Jesus was about to be crucified. In case you hadn’t noticed, things don’t always go well for God’s servants, especially in the short term. Sometimes our harshest critics are religious insiders, not outsiders.

About that time Herod the king laid violent hands on some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword, and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. This was during the days of Unleavened Bread. (Acts 12.1 – 3, ESV)

I’ve been flogged five times with the Jews’ thirty-nine lashes,… (2 Corinthians 11.24, MSG)

I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. (Revelation 1.9, ESV)

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there. Thanks for your work: past, present, and future!

I picked this picture of tulips because it reminds me of the tulips I found for June on Wednesday to celebrate not only Mother’s Day but also her completing yesterday a 3-year program of learning to be a spiritual director.

Congratulations, June! Wife of nearly 54 years, mother of 4, grandmother of 8.

And thank you, blog readers, for this indulgence. We’ll be back to our usual fare tomorrow.

Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her. (Proverbs 31.28, ESV)

Getting back to Matthew’s gospel, there’s a very important verse on which we are sometimes confused:

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16.18, ESV)

The “rock” that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God (Matthew 16.16), is where Jesus will build his church, and there are two things in this verse we often get mixed up:

“I will build my church.”

• We build churches (sometimes called “church planting”) and expect the church to make disciples in some magical way.
• Jesus said, “You make disciples” (Matthew 28.18 – 20), and “I will build my church.”

“The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

• We think the church is huddled up like a fortress while being assaulted by hell.
• It’s the other way around: the church is successfully assaulting the gates of hell.

But that would require the church to be “out there” – not confined to a building. For example, the gates of Jericho did NOT prevail against the assault of the “church in the wilderness.” God’s called-out group of people did not stay huddled up in the wilderness. They charged into the promised land.

The church, filled with trained disciples, is supposed to look like this:

They don’t get in each other’s way. Each one knows his job and does it. Undaunted and fearless, unswerving, unstoppable. (Joel 2.8, MSG)

He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christians in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ. (Ephesians 4.11 – 13, MSG)

I wrote yesterday about the truth of the highway project between here and Castle Rock. It’s not finished even if the governor declared it finished last December. I just found out there are more serious truth issues, reported by BreakPoint on May 2.

Recently, a colleague noted how a growing number of conservative-minded people he encountered on social media, some of them Christians, were refusing to believe stories about Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Some even rejected that the invasion was an unjustified war of aggression by Russia. When he asked the reason for their doubt, their response was simply because the stories were reported in the “mainstream media,” which has done nothing but lie to us for years. – BreakPoint, May 2, 2022

I recommend you read the article in its entirety, the main point of which is that truth is truth regardless of who reports it. Something isn’t true just because someone I like says it, nor is it false because someone I don’t like says it. As a math guy, I have no problem with the idea of truth. Either your proof is correct or it’s not. Your approach either works or it doesn’t. Even Peter Schickele, creator of the fictitious composer PDQ Bach said, “Truth is truth. You can’t have opinions about truth.” (He said that even while he was lying to us!)

Truth is there, and it is available. Do the work.

¹  My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you,
²  making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding;
³  yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding,
⁴  if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures,
⁵  then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. (Proverbs 2.1 – 5, ESV)

For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. (John 18.37, ESV)

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8.31, 32, ESV)

A bit of whimsy today but with an important lesson…

I’m on distribution for road construction updates from the Colorado Department of Transportation mainly because 20 miles of interstate between where we live and Castle Rock (toward Denver) has been undergoing a widening project. It’s called the I-25 South Gap project. Here’s what came in on April 29: 

I-25 Impacts Increase Next Week – Construction on the I-25 South Gap project is still ongoing through November 2022. This week, crews will ramp up construction impacts on I-25. This includes extended lane closures on Friday, May 6 and Saturday, May 7, and daytime Express Lane closures Monday through Saturday.

Bob, why are you telling us this? Because…with great fanfare, the project was declared completed “ahead of schedule” last December!

Here’s what the Denver Post reported on November 22, 2021:

A much smoother ride between Castle Rock and Monument is in store for drivers on Interstate 25 next month as new express lanes open, bringing an end to more than three years of traffic shifts, tight lanes and construction backups...

“By mid-December, in time for Christmas, the I-25 South Gap project team will open all lanes of travel in their final alignment, with an express lane fully open in both directions,” Gov. Jared Polis said during a news conference at a truck chain-up station near Larkspur…Several speakers touted that all lanes “will be open an entire year earlier than originally projected,” as Polis put it. 

On December 8, 2021, the Denver Post closed the loop:

New express lanes opened Friday morning on Interstate 25 — initially without tolls charged — through the I-25 South Gap project zone between Castle Rock and Monument...After more than three years of construction along the 18-mile corridor, the additional lane in each direction is expected to smooth the drive through the notoriously bottlenecked section of I-25 south of metro Denver by making at least three lanes open each way.

Good news, right? It’s done. Not so fast, the Post article continues:

The highway is now in its final configuration, but work remains to be done during the winter and spring to wrap up the $419 million project officials said. After crews install and test tolling equipment above the express lanes, tolls will take effect.

In short, it’s NOT done. And work slated to be done “winter and spring” really means, I found out last week, through November. Communication, not from the governor, not from the newspaper, but from the actual people who do the work:

Construction on the I-25 South Gap project is still ongoing through November 2022.

In case you’re wondering why people sometimes have trouble believing politicians, it’s because they sometimes don’t tell the (whole) truth. 

The two kings, with their hearts bent on evil, will sit at the same table and lie to each other… (Daniel 11.27, NIV)

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (John 18.38, ESV)

Therefore, putting away lying, Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. (Ephesians 4.25, NKJV)

And I just discovered an even more troubling aspect of the perception of truth in our society, and it applies to all of us. Stay tuned.

Star Wars, the original Star Wars movie, since renamed Episode IV: A New Hope, came out Wednesday, May 25, 1977. I saw it that Friday with my friend John Wolf, fellow Air Force officer, and our base housing neighbor at Offutt AFB near Omaha, Nebraska. It was the first (and still one of the very few) movies I had ever seen in its first few days.

I still have fond memories: good and evil were evident, I could follow all the characters and the plot, the objective was clear, and we all celebrated success when the Death Star was destroyed with, yes, the help of The Force.

It’s a good reminder that we are still engaged in a cosmic battle against the forces of evil, and victory requires the Spirit – the real FORCE.

God is strong, and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials. And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way. This is no afternoon athletic contest that we’ll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels. Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You’ll need them throughout your life. God’s Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out. (Ephesians 6.10 – 18, MSG)

Yesterday I wrote about “the remnant” referring to a powerful essay by Albert Nock first published in 1936. I was prompted to dig out that essay, sent to me by a friend a number of years ago, because of a provocative article by Mike Metzger about TED talks. Near the beginning, he has a paragraph strikingly reminiscent of the opening of Nock’s essay: smart people believing that they can change things by spreading ideas to the masses.

TED’s premise is simple: ideas change the world. There are problems in the world… fortunately, there are solutions to each of these problems… they’ve been formulated by extremely smart, tech-adjacent people… so, for their ideas to become realities, they merely need to be articulated and spread as widely as possible in stories that actually manifest a new world. – Mike Mezger, April 18, 2022

Mike was quoting from another article, What Was the TED Talk? by Oscar Schwartz. I commend both articles in their entirety. Schwartz’s article opens with the story of Bill Gates advocating in 2015 that we weren’t prepared for a global epidemic. He was right, of course, and he had a solution – an idea. Schwartz reports Gates’ idea:

Back when he was a kid, the U.S. military had sufficient funding to mobilize for war at any minute. Gates says that we must prepare for a pandemic with the same fearful intensity. We need to build a medical reserve corps. We need to play germ games like generals play war games. We need to make alliances with other virus-fighting nations. We need to build an arsenal of biomedical weapons to attack any non-human entity that might attack our bodies. “If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic,” Gates concludes, to a round of applause. 

But Schwartz continues that few of the TED ideas as good as well-articulated as they were, bore fruit:

Of course, Gates’s popular and well-shared TED talk — viewed millions of times — didn’t alter the course of history. Neither did any of the other “ideas worth spreading” (the organization’s tagline) presented at the TED conference that year — including Monica Lewinsky’s massively viral speech about how to stop online bullying through compassion and empathy, or a Google engineer’s talk about how driverless cars would make roads smarter and safer in the near future. In fact, seven years after TED 2015, it feels like we are living in a reality that is the exact opposite of the future envisioned that year. A president took office in part because of his talent for online bullying. Driverless cars are nowhere near as widespread as predicted, and those that do share our roads keep crashing. Covid has killed five million people and counting.

Mike Metzger says that the assumption that ideas in and of themselves change the world is false. And certainly spreading ideas “to the masses” doesn’t work. What does?

Jesus gave his 11 remaining apostles and, by extension, the total of 120 in the upper room a mandate to change the world.

When they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1.6 – 8, NKJV)

And after Acts 3, we don’t have any record of big meetings. (And even those meetings were followed by extensive training: “And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ. (Acts 5.42, NKJV)

The world has been changed, not by spreading ideas through the masses but by committed Jesus followers, living out the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit. Rodney Stark documents this transformation in his marvelous book The Rise of Christianity (strongly recommend). In The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity, Matthew Kelly argues we can do it again through Holy Moments. And we should be intentionally investing in the other people, including the next generation. It’s something any of us can do – without worrying about how to reach “the masses.”

But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine: that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience; the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things–that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. (Titus 2.1 – 5, NKJV)

Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. (Philippians 2.14 – 16, NKJV)

Our recent readings in Matthew included Matthew 13, a collection of Jesus’ parables, beginning with one of the most important: the parable of the sower.

Then Jesus said to [the disciples when they asked about the meaning of the parable of the sower], “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?” (Mark 4.13, NIV)

I wrote about the parable of the sower back in August 2019: sow more seed! The sower kept sowing seed until he found the right soil – soil that would produce and reproduce.

I’ve just been reminded of a related application: when we’re sowing seed, we’re not expecting to reach “the masses” – but “the remnant.” And one of the best treatments of the idea of the remnant is in a (secular) essay first published in 1936. Isaiah’s Job by Albert Nock starts this way:

One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: “I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?”

An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances, because my acquaintance is a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation; and naturally I, as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with reverence amounting to awe.

Still, I reflected, even the greatest mind cannot possibly know everything, and I was pretty sure he had not had my opportunities for observing the masses of mankind, and that therefore I probably knew them better than he did. So I mustered courage to say that he had no such mission and would do well to get the idea out of his head at once; he would find that the masses would not care two pins for his doctrine, and still less for himself, since in such circumstances the popular favorite is generally some Barabbas. I even went so far as to say (he is a Jew) that his idea seemed to show that he was not very well up on his own native literature. He smiled at my jest, and asked what I meant by it; and I referred him to the story of the prophet Isaiah…

In the year of Uzziah’s death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. “Tell them what a worthless lot they are.” He said, “Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.”

…There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.” – Albert Nock, Isaiah’s Job, published in Atlantic Monthly in 1936.

Tomorrow, I want to share a more modern-day example of people trying to change the world just by sharing ideas with the masses. In the meantime, remember: Jesus taught the masses, he helped and healed many people, but he trained twelve.

Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach… (Mark 3.13, 14, NIV)

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.2, NIV)