Lord, reveal to us the treasures of your kingdom and help us to live in the glory of your love. In the name of God who is love, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Amen.

At Chill & Chat on Wednesdays at St Luke’s we have been sharing parable stories told using Godly Play – a way of presenting scripture which involves imagination and wonder – and in the case of parables – gold boxes!

Each parable starts with a closed gold box and some wondering questions – look, the box is gold! Perhaps there is a parable inside, because parables are more precious even than gold. And the box looks like a gift – parables are given to us as a gift – they belong to us, even if we don’t know what a parable is, its still ours.

And then we lift the lid, and look inside to see what is there.

And in Godly Play, each parable begins the same way…

‘There was once someone who said such wonderful things and did such amazing things that people followed him. As they followed him, they heard him talking about a kingdom.

It wasn’t like the kingdom they were living in, or a kingdom they had visited, or even like any kingdom they had even heard of – so they just had to ask him – what is the kingdom of heaven like?

One time when they asked him this question, he said – the kingdom of heaven is like a person who took the tiniest of all seeds, a grain of mustard seed, and planted it in the ground and it began to grow. It grew up into a bush that was so tall it was like a little tree. And all of the birds of the air came and made their nests there.’ 

Or…the kingdom of heaven is like a woman, who took some yeast and mixed it with three measures of flour so that it was all leavened.

Or..like a person who found treasure in a field…or a merchant who found the great pearl and sold everything he had in order to buy the pearl.

These amazing, vivid images build up one upon the other and we can hear Jesus, the great storyteller, speaking of these wonderful things –

we can imagine the things that he is describing and know them from our own lived human experience.

They are miracles of creation – the tiny seed becoming a little tree; nothing but flour, oil and water becoming a loaf of bread.

You can see the tree grow, hear the birds twittering in the branches, taste the freshly baked bread – these stories, these parables, are alive!

They come to life in our minds and enliven our understanding of what the kingdom of heaven is like: surprising and exciting! Enormous growth from tiny beginnings – life-giving and life-sustaining – nests for baby birds and bread for hungry people. What wonderful things indeed!

And then the parables about treasure and pearls – don’t we all dream of finding treasure and beautiful things – riches and precious jewels? And we can recognize the joy of the people Jesus describes who have found them.

But there’s something different about these parables too – because its not, it seems, about getting rich – its not like winning the lottery here – but its about the recognition of something so so precious – that you would give up everything else you have in order to possess it.

The man doesn’t add the hidden treasure in the field to all that he already has – the merchant doesn’t acquire yet another perfect pearl to add to his collection – they both sell all that they own to buy the field or the pearl, that is the only thing really worth having. They recognize not the financial value, but the beauty of the treasure itself. They seem to be well off already, but then behave in such a way that bewilders others – they make themselves poor in order to have this treasure beyond any earthly price or value.

What an earth could make them behave in such a reckless and foolish way?

These parables about the kingdom of heaven speak straight into our deepest longings and highest hopes!

There really is something that is worth seeking for with our whole hearts – something that its worth giving up everything else in order to obtain!

And actually, incredibly – its already ours!

Parables belong to each and every one of us – whatever age, whatever background, whether we are worthy in anyone else’s eyes or not, or for that matter, in our own estimation of ourselves, given that we are generally our own harshest critics!

We don’t even have to understand what parables are – but what they are describing is the kingdom of heaven – God’s kingdom where the only law is love and the price to enter is simply to desire it with your whole heart.

The sting in the tail of all this is the parable of the fish, which is a bit like last week’s parable of the weeds and the wheat. Jesus’ question to his disciples about the judgement of the angels at the end of the age – ‘have you understood all this?’ – is a challenge to them as to how they will live in the light of the knowledge that he is sharing with them about the kingdom of heaven. Will this glimpse of God’s unconditional love change the way they live, their priorities and ways of dealing with others who are different, and who they might be tempted to judge harshly?

Here we need to take note that the parable of the mustard seed and the yeast isn’t just about huge growth from tiny beginnings – but also about the rather surprising means by which God brings such growth – after all, mustard plants in Palestine are not the nice mustard that we know here as in mustard and cress – but an ungainly, pernicious weed that if not checked and thrown out would easily run rampant over a whole field of wheat!

And yeast in the first century wasn’t little dried packets that we could add to flour without any mess – leaven was actually a mix of flour and water that was beginning to go putrid – producing gas that then enables the dough to rise!

So you see how these parables were and are so challenging to the way we order our societies?

It is from what we might consider such unlikely beginnings that God’s kingdom grows so wondrously.

For us, who would call ourselves disciples and followers of Jesus, brothers and sisters, siblings with him and one another – how are we, as the scribes of today – to tell the stories of the kingdom and to live them out?

It seems to call for wisdom beyond us – the wisdom of Solomon we might say as our OT reading describes!

And yet – in his request of God for wisdom as he takes on the onerous responsibilities of kingship of God’s people – Solomon shows that he possesses this already, as well as deep humility. And he finds the treasure he desires along with all that he didn’t ask for too – because God is gracious and abundant in generosity.

In all that challenges us in our world today –
profound concern for our climate and community life,
our anxiety that the world has utterly lost its way –
Paul, reminds us in the letter to the Romans, that the generosity of God, and a treasure beyond price, is the gift of the Holy Spirit – who lives in us and works through us even beyond our own awareness – helping us to pray in our weakness and teaching us to live and pray as we ought.

So when our own resources fail us, when we lose our hope in the goodness of others, when we even begin to believe that God has abandoned us and loves us no more –
then we remember that God has found us to be his most precious treasure, has hidden us in his heart and has given everything that he has, even the life of his most Beloved Son, God’s own life, to have us as his children forever. Amen.

Service: Reverend Michelle Dalliston. 30th July 2023. (St John The Baptist Church Peterborough UK)

Readings: 1 Kings 3.5-12; Psalm 119.129-136; Romans 8.26-end; Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52