PARABLES: ALL IN

Sermon Summary, “Parables of Jesus: All In” Matthew 13:44-46, July 17, 2016

CH Dodd said, “At its simplest the parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.”   A metaphor set along side a complex concept to reveal a spiritual truth.  Vivid, Jesus once told of putting manure around a tree for three years.  Strange, mysteries to tease the mind.

Today Jesus tells stories of the Kingdom and asks are we “All in”?  Are we?  At its simplest, the Kingdom is where God rules, where his will is done.  At it’s more complex, Jesus told seven different parables to share the complexities of the Kingdom.  Today, the great worth of the Kingdom.

Important to note that the Kingdom is “Both/And.”  It is both a current and future reality.  It is breaking in now in the presence of Jesus, but it’s not quite yet.  And we know that it is a future reality.  The Gospel of John does not use the term the Kingdom of God, but “Eternal Life.”  Your eternal life begins now and is a future reality. “Those who believe in me will never die.”

The question for today remains “Are we all in?”  Are we?

⁴⁴ “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

A plowman in a field going about his business stumbles over a treasure, finds of such value that he reburies it, goes and sells all he has and buys the whole field.  First hearers would have said, “The dummy, it was finders keepers.  He didn’t have to buy the field.  The treasure was already his!”  But he had to make sure  he was “all in.”

⁴⁵ “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶ on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Now we have a man who not just accidently finds the kingdom of great worth but has been searching his entire life for it and yet, it is of so much more value than he expected that he sold all that he had and bought the one pearl.  He went all in.

I love the song from "Godspell," "Day by Day."  "Day by day, day by day.  O dear Lord, three things I pray: to see you more clearly, to love you more dearly, to follow you more nearly, day by day."  I think that's what it means to be all in, to invest ourselves in the Word of God to see him more clearly; to continually converse with God, prayer, that continuous of conversation to love him more dearly; then to ask what it means to love my neighbor and to discover what it means to follow him more nearly.

Will we find the kingdom of great worth, our eternal life?  Will we make it our business, day by day, by Word, by prayer, by following?