Title: The World of Grace
First, during the period of absolute poverty after the Korean War, we have been sending war orphans abroad. They were sent to so-called developed countries, mainly in the United States. There are various reasons, but mainly because we can't raise our children for economic reasons, we entrusted their lives and lives to foreign parents who have different languages and different languages. Now, most of those who have reached the age of majority witness their birth parents, sadly, to visit their homeland, Korea, to check their roots. Some have grown up with frustration and anger, deeply wounded by a sense of betrayal that they have been abandoned, but most people come to see them matured. Among them, the return of orphans with disabilities is also noticeable. An article about people with disabilities makes us think a lot. It is an article about a disabled person returning home after being wounded again. Even though he came to his homeland, he could not endure the sorrow of prejudice against the disabled again and had to return to Korea without feeling the affection he gave birth to.
The second is a report on a case of mass fraud by Koreans targeting Korean-Chinese in the Yanbian region of China. The same ethnicity was pushed by the historical batting average and the nationality changed. One has high economic conditions and the other has relatively low economic conditions. In the midst of this, it is a local report that the Korean-Chinese compatriots suffer from collective fraud using labor employment as a bait.
With the above incident in mind, it is a desperate feeling that we must seriously think about the historical direction our society has been running for so frantically for growth and development.
The Bible we read today is a parable about the kingdom of God. "The kingdom of God is like .... is like this" is an illustrative parable. So Christianity has an eschatological character of faith. Eternal life and true life are the answers to the ambiguities and contradictions of human life, and the answers to the ambiguities and contradictions of history are concluded with the realization of the kingdom of God.
Eschatology is not simply a phenomenological description and prediction of the temporal end of history, but a religious testimony and a religious dream of the ultimate goal and final realization of history. Eschatology is the answer and opinion on what to live with as the goal of history. The world in which it has been realized is both the arrival of heaven and the ending point of history.
The "Kingdom of God" is not a spatial, but rather the emergence of a world in which God's sovereignty and will are realized. It is a world where love, peace, justice, and the perfection of life are realized, and it is the end of the world that does not require any further development and progress.
The parable we read today loses its focus, and when it is read as a lesson for economic justice or distributional justice, there is great confusion. In this text, we have to look at God's sovereign grace.
The master called the servants several times in the early morning, at 3 o'clock, at 6 o'clock, at 9 o'clock, and at 11 o'clock. He gave the first promised worker a denarius a day as promised, and he gave other workers a substantial wage as promised. The problem was that the owner started giving them a denarius by paying the wages of the last person to come first. The owner's will is that it is my will to give you a daily wage at any time. And it is a declaration that "the conclusion is like this, that the last shall be first, and the first shall be last".
The great shock we can get from this parable is the world of grace, which goes beyond distributions whose masters never break their promises. In our history, there is a long tradition of dreaming of a new world out of the strife of social contradictions. There are countless traditions weaving the New World and Gaebyeokcheonji, such as the Hong Gyeong-rae Rebellion, the Im Kkeok-jeong Rebellion, and the Hong Gil-dong story.
The Bible we read today offers several directions.
1. The first should be last, and the last should be first.
2. Anyone who wants to be the first of all must be a servant.
3. The Son of Man came to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many.
You can see the prospect of a world where the systematization of our existing values and ideologies is diametrically opposed. There is a world that transcends everyone's universal competition, fierce competition for dominance, and meticulous calculations. This world is a world of coexistence where the powerless, the weak with disabilities, and the abandoned and wounded can live together. No, furthermore, it is a world where the weak are treated more like this. The realization of the kingdom of God is that this world becomes the purpose of history, the final goal, and the end.
Saegil Community is not meant to reject or criticize all existing churches, but rather to be more thorough with the gospel and will of God. "Determination" It may be seen as reform and criticism, but I think the founding purpose of the community to be carved is to show the "original" way out of the non-original "road".
Eschatological faith is the holistic engagement that ultimately gives our lives and historical direction. The utopia we seek should be the image of the "Kingdom of God". Economic and historical maturity is what it means to be a daedong society living together like this. Criticizing and correcting the real society in this goal should be our image.
Just as there is a world of transcendence that transcends today's reality, there is a world of grace that transcends existing value systems. This world of grace does not merely destroy and criticize the existing world, but supplements and supplements it. Without this world of grace, the autonomy of the secular world is reduced to the world of heteronomous resident animals. When this world of grace penetrates like leaven in the secular society, the contradiction and chaos of history can be saved and resolved.
We must now have eyes to see the world of grace and the reality of the kingdom of God where we live together.