When Jesus Wept - By Bodie Page 0,94

meager finances, doling out coins from the money bag to buy bread or dried fish, but always grudgingly.

Peter said this stingy quality made him a good steward.

I thought it merely made him unlikable, but it was not my place to say anything.

The sun set and the light faded. Brilliant blue-white stars twinkled overhead. Facing south, I picked out moving orange dots that marked where Roman soldiers marched or Jerusalem Sparrows lit the way for travelers to cross the great city in safety.

The argument among the disciples moved on to which of them would be greatest in the Jesus’ kingdom. Peter expected to be made the chief steward. Judas argued that as royal treasurer, his was a higher rank than Peter’s. James and John claimed the preeminence was theirs, as they were his closest advisers and his cousins.

The quickest way to divert a discussion among the followers of Jesus was to pose the question, “What is the Kingdom of Heaven like?” No matter how many times Jesus tried to explain it or gave another example, there were always additional questions.

That was part of the skill of a master teacher, which Jesus certainly was. Early on, when he was training his disciples, they thought they knew everything there was to know.

Jesus had spent three years with them, proving how wrong they were. He also used each additional opportunity to help them dig a little deeper, explore a little further. He wanted them to wrestle with questions of faith.

Since I had been in olam haba, the world to come, I had been asked many questions about what I saw there. I tried to answer each to the best of my ability.

But heaven was not the kingdom to which the inquiry referred.

The question really referred to the citizens of the kingdom, not its location.

The disciples, including me, believed that the Kingdom of Heaven would be wherever Jesus reigned, inaugurated whenever and wherever he chose to rule. So, what were the attitudes that defined the members of his kingdom?

A bulging, waxing moon climbed up the eastern bowl of the sky. Its brilliance washed out many of the stars, but not Regulus, the Little King. That brilliant, blue-white star marked the front quarter of the image of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. The Holy Spirit swam into view just behind the king’s own constellation.

When Jesus joined the circle around the campfire, it was Peter who inaugurated the dialogue with the old familiar phrase, “Tell us more about the Kingdom.”

Instead of immediately replying, Jesus looked at me. “David, when you fought and overcame the plague of locusts, did you have help?”

“Of course, Master,” I said, mentally reviewing the army of men I had hired on that occasion. “I think I sent for four groups of workers.”

“And so some worked longer than others?”

“Certainly,” I agreed. “I called more and more as the situation grew more desperate.”

“Now listen,” Jesus encouraged, though all of us already hung on his every word. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard, yes?”

This was good, familiar territory. When the Sea of Galilee was too rough or the fishing too poor, many of the listeners hired themselves out as day laborers to crush grapes or winnow wheat or pluck olives.

Jesus continued, “The landowner agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. About the third hour, around the middle of the morning, he returned to the marketplace and hired more workers, telling them he would pay them what was fair.

“At noon he went again, hired more, and said the same.”

A cock quail called from a heap of rocks on the slope below where we camped. Immediately afterward, another replied to the challenge from the opposite side of the hill. The boisterous exchange made me recall the miracle of the quail cleaning up the remainder of the plague.

“Again, in the middle of the afternoon, when the first group had been working for nine hours already, he hired still more laborers. Finally, at the end of the day, he found still more and asked them why they were just standing around. They answered, because no one had hired them. And he sent them to the vineyard to work also, even though there was only an hour of daylight left.”

There was a stir among the listeners. Where was this story going? A breeze swirling up from the valley below mingled two scents: roasting meat