Today we have a parable bonanza.
We may have been hoping for a little drink from the hose – one, maybe two parables.
But Jesus turns the fire hose on us and we get five parables – five stories about the Kingdom of God.
See, Jesus’ main focus in his ministry was to teach his listeners about the Kingdom of God.
And one of the main things he taught was that the Kingdom of God was hidden. He taught people what to look for – how to see it.
Let me tell you a story – There was a Rabbi who loved the Torah
a. He was a good preacher
b. Every Sabbath afternoon he sat at the picnic table in his back yard preparing his sermon for the next week
c. All the while his children and later, his grandchildren would play hide and seek in the yard
d. One day the youngest grandchild stands before him crying
e. He picks up the child, sits him on his lap
f. What’s wrong? Hide and seek is my favorite game to play
g. All week long, I look for hiding places and I wait all week to play with the other kids
h. I save my best hiding place for then
i. I’ve been sitting in my hiding place all afternoon and nobody found me
j. Now they’ve all decided to go play another game
k. Rabbi dried his tears, comforted him, and sent him back to play
Rabbi went back to his sermon, but couldn’t get his grandson out of his mind
Then it hit him – God, you are like my grandson – you find the best hiding places.
Even on the Sabbath, you sit in your best hiding places and we don’t find you, even when we look in the Scriptures.
Then we get tired of looking and we go off leaving you hiding.
Jesus taught about God’s best hiding places. So we could find God.
Parables are not intended to give us answers. In Jesus’ day, rabbis never explained the meaning of the parables they taught.
They left it to the listener to ask questions and to wonder about the Kingdom of God.
So I am not going to tell you what these parables mean, but I am going to give you some questions to ask about them, that could possibly help you to see the Kingdom of God from a different angle.
Take the mustard seed for instance:
a. Did you know Jewish law dictated what could be planted in Jewish gardens?
b. And that it was forbidden to plant mustard in with other plants?
c. Against Jewish law to mix mustard in because it was like a weed and would choke out the other plants
d. To the Jews, mustard was a symbol of impurity
e. Jesus was a Jew – he knew this about mustard and yet he chose it to symbolize the Kingdom of God
Or how about the parable of the leaven:
a. In the ancient world, leaven was a symbol for moral corruption, for the profane, for the unholy
b. Why? Because leaven was made by placing a piece of bread in a dark, damp place until it rotted and smelled to high heaven
c. Jesus knew this too, and yet he used a symbol for moral corruption and ritual impurity to represent the Kingdom of God. Why?
That is the question Jesus would want his listeners to ask. That is the question he would want us to ask.
.Hmmm. Could we be missing the Kingdom of God? Could we be missing God’s hiding places?
Where have we been looking? Where might we look instead?
Then there are the parables of the treasure and the merchant
a. The first thing to notice is that it is not the parable of the pearl, it’s the parable of the merchant
b. That changes everything
c. What if the merchant who searches represents the Kingdom of God? And not the pearl?
d. The parable of the merchant might give us the answer to the question – how do we discover the Kingdom of God?
e. Maybe we don’t find it. Maybe the merchant finds us.
f. Who or what is the pearl?
g. Maybe we need to wonder a bit about that!
In the parable of the treasure, the laborer finds something he wasn’t even looking for! He stumbles upon the treasure. He didn’t earn it, he didn’t work for it. He didn’t have to slay a dragon for it. What does this tell us about the Kingdom of God?
So the parables of the merchant and the treasure teach us how the Kingdom of God finds us and how we find the Kingdom of God.
And then the best news of all, the parable of the Net.
a. The net is thrown in and dragged through the sea indiscriminately – taking in everything in its path
b. That means trash and seaweed, good fish and some that are inedible
c. If the Kingdom of God is like that, who is left out of the net?
d. Who are the “fish”?
e. Jesus says that just as fishermen sort the fish and throw out the inedible ones, so, at the end of time, angels will come and sort the good people from the bad.
f. Is anyone all good?
g. Is anyone completely bad?
h. What happens at the end of the age if we are all part good and part bad?
i. Is this a bad news parable or a good news parable?
Each of these parables that we’ve heard today are good news parables and I promise you that if you dig diligently enough, the good news will be revealed to you.
How can we ever thank God enough that at the heart of all creation there is Good News, there is unconditional Love, there is Grace and Forgiveness.
