Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ Matthew 25:34-40 ESV
Spoiler Alert – Stop reading now if you haven’t seen the Internship, and still want to!
The premise of the Internship, is that a competition for a Google internship. It essentially comes down to a team of misfits and a pompous rich kid and his team of stars. The bad guy makes it clear he doesn’t have time for anyone but those he thinks are important.
This becomes most clear in his interactions with a scruffy headphone guy who is painfully shy, and never listens to music but wears the headphones because it lets him keep to himself. One of the two bumbling protagonists goes out of his way to befriend headphone guy, while the pompous villain makes fun of him.
At the final announcement of who won the internship, the pompous guy can’t believe he lost, and interrupts the announcement to say, “lets get someone down here who matters.”
Headphone guy appears, is revealed to be the head of a major department at Google, and he’s been listening to the whole thing. He tells the villain – you haven’t shown very much googliness. We learned earlier in the movie, this googliness is all about community and creativity. But the villain says, “what does that even mean?”
The headphone guy sums it up, “The fact you don’t even know is why you’ll never work here.”
Jesus says this about his kingdom. Compassion is a sign that you get what my kingdom is all about. Its part of kingdomliness. The way you treat those who don’t seem important, is actually very important.
Jesus even puts himself in their shoes – says it’s like you’re serving him when you serve others.
He goes so far as to say that this is how he sorts out those who want to be in his kingdom, with him, and those who want to take a pass. He says its like separating sheep and goats – the ones who want to be in his kingdom will act like it, and those who don’t, won’t. He says this twice, and I only read one version here, which is the positive describing who gets in, but he also tells the story in the negative, describing who stays out. What becomes clear is that we choose God’s kingdom, or separation from him, not just with words but with actions.
We’ll see tomorrow how this applies to our neighbours.
Question: How do these six actions benefit the recipient, the doer, and Jesus?
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We’re going to take a quick look at a passage from the Sermon on the Mount today, that we actually explored several weeks ago as part of that series. You can find it here: http://bit.ly/14LRCtP
Matthew 6:28-34 ESV says:
And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Jesus uses a good analogy – beautiful flowers are clothed in God-given beauty. But our human tendency is to see beauty as the product of our own hard work – we need to toil and spin if we want to be beautiful. We have invented entire industries of fashion, consmetics, pharmaceuticals devoted to helping us work for our beauty.
We regularly delude ourselves into thinking it’s all about us, from our beauty to our purpose in this world, and that can make it very hard to rest.
It’s so easy to feel guilty – I didn’t do as much as I should have last week, I forgot this, or I am so not ready for Monday. We always think we should be doing more. It can be particularly hard for entrepreneurs – every sale makes or breaks the company, every contact could be a sale.
So we stay up at night, or check our phone constantly, or just have our mind on work when it could be resting.
True rest means finding ways to put that kind of worry and guilt aside. Tomorrow, we’ll look at one more inner change that helps., then next week we’ll look at some practical hints, but for many this looks like prayer, some kind of different activity, and turning the phone off.
Question: What do you tend to worry about when you’re resting? Do you feel guilty about resting, or taking vacation?
Just in time for summer's blend of work and rest, Redeem the Commute is starting a new series of daily challenges to help busy people restore life to the commuting lifestyle. This seven week series will look at the meaning and purpose of work, rest, and ancient practices that have helped followers of Jesus to keep the two in perspective and balance for centuries.
