So I pray that I will speak in God's name and do please sit down.

We continue our journey through the parables that Matthew gives us. If you’ve been here for the last few weeks, you’ll notice a theme of good and bad coexisting together. The wheat and the weeds, and there are others in the gospel: the sheep and the goats. What will happen at the end of the age?

Jesus, like most good preachers, knew that not every picture will have the same effect on everyone. Some images we find easier to get hold of, and because of the way our reading has been split up today, we have a whole string of these parables of what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Different ones will chime with each one of you. You will know my particular favourite comes at the beginning: the mustard seed that we plant, this tiny seed that grows into the biggest of all the trees, and the birds see it from a distance and come and make a nest in its branches. I’ve always thought that’s a beautiful image of what the mission of God’s church might look like in this place. So far, so good, then; we pick the image that chimes with us most and we’ll go with that.

But Jesus is saying so much more. He’s inviting his listeners to understand what this thing that can seem so difficult to get hold of, what this thing, the kingdom of heaven, is like.

This is not something that will happen after we die, so it’s all lovely. It’s something we are to work for now. In all of these parables, there is a hidden element. The kingdom of heaven is something we have to search for diligently and with hard work.

We all know we’ll only search for the things that we are interested in. But Jesus says this is worth looking for. The tiny seed that seems so insignificant grows into something extraordinary. And we have the yeast hidden in the dough that makes it grow. The pearl of great price. The merchant sells everything he has and buys the field because he found one thing that is worth giving up everything for.

Turning for a moment to our reading from Romans, Paul’s letter was to new Christians who were persecuted for being followers of Jesus Christ. In those words from Romans, in the time they were written, they make perfect sense. “Don’t worry if you are persecuted, because God loves you. If God is for us, who can be against us?” In our modern age, that passage from Romans can, and I suggest, is often misunderstood.

For one thing, it talks about predestination. It says - there are people who are already chosen to be ones who are in God’s kingdom, so it doesn’t matter what we do. In our modern age, we tend not, in the West at least, to be persecuted for our faith.

If we were to have a lazy reading of Romans, we might say, ‘Well, that’s okay. I cannot be criticised because God is the ultimate judge, and He is always for me because I love Him, and that’s fine.’ That, my friends, I suggest would be a very dangerous reading; because we might be tempted to think, in this age where, by and large, our faith costs us nothing. Doesn’t matter how we behave, as long as we say we believe in Jesus Christ, everything is fine. Because God is the ultimate judge. That is not what we are to take from this.

Today, I think instead we are invited to take both of those readings and combine them to come to an understanding of what it is to strive to be a disciple of Christ. First of all, think about the image, the parable that works for you.

And now consider this: What are you doing to work to bring about the kingdom of heaven? We always have that great paradox of the now and the yet to come, because that is what we are called to do: to give up everything, to search for something that is worth searching for. And by the grace of God, Christ has given this promise that we will receive the kingdom of heaven as children of God to people who are fallen and broken human beings.

Who Paul knew could never do all the good we wanted to do, because it is hard baked into our nature that we will screw it up, time and time again. It’s how we’re made. The question is, do we say, “I’m sorry, Lord, can’t help it,” or do we strive for something better?

Because Paul’s words to us this morning are: this promise of heaven, the kingdom of heaven, worth searching for, giving up everything for, and working hard for, is given into the hands of people who habitually get it wrong, and yet God is for us, provided we are prepared to sometimes literally put the spade work in and search diligently for the kingdom of heaven until we find it. If we do that, then Paul says it doesn’t matter what persecution you face.

It doesn’t matter how much people tell you you’re stupid for your faith, or you’re looking in the wrong place. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. But if we do not search diligently, there’s that warning that is so often neatly tucked into the back of Jesus’s parables. He says, ‘Those who are trained for the kingdom.’ Now, you in the congregation might think, ‘Oh, well, that’s you, Rachel. You’re the trained one. You’re the scribe. You who are trained for the kingdom, that’s your job.’ Actually, as disciples of Christ, we are all being trained for the kingdom every day of our discipleship.

So those who are trained for the kingdom, whoever we are, are called to behave in a certain way. And if we do not heed this warning, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Will we be the good fish or the bad? Only God really knows.

And Jesus said to them, “Have you understood this?” And they all said, “Yes.” I think I might have said yes and nodded like, “Yes, I have understood it.” Jesus asks us over the years, every day, “Have you understood what I am saying to you?” This is our call. Whichever image works for us to decide that we will seek diligently for the kingdom of God every day until we find it, because the kingdom of heaven is something that grows, and in case that’s starting to make you feel slightly anxious.

By the grace of God, we have another truth. If we understand what is being asked of us, and if we commit as individuals and the Church to do our best to do what is being asked of us, then we never do it alone.

Then, we can hold on to those beautiful promises at the end of Paul’s letter, this passage in Romans, because my brothers and sisters, in case you were wondering, I am convinced that nothing will separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord

By the grace of God, because of where I happen to live in the world and the age in which I was born, I have not suffered persecution for my faith. But plenty do, and those of us who do not, should never take it for granted.

I have suffered criticism, some of it justified, some of it not. I have suffered criticism for doing things that people didn’t agree with, in a way that people didn’t agree with, and that’s fine because we live in a free country. But we are not free, as disciples of Christ, to distort the gospel to suit our own ends, our own purposes, or our own particular energy on a given day. As faithful disciples of Christ, we are called to search diligently and in a costly way for the kingdom of heaven until we find it.

And when we find it, we are to share it with those who either do not know it exists or don’t believe in that “fairy tale”. Because actually, these parables work on a number of levels. We are called to be the seed that grows. We are called to be the yeast that works through the communities in which we live. We are called to search diligently for the outworking of that pearl of great price. It is worth it, my friends, because nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Next week we are marking Gift Day. Normally we mark it at our Patronal Festival. We’ve not done that for a number of reasons this year. What does your giving of gifts look like?

Giving us some money, and if you want to give us money, that’s splendid. There is plenty we can spend it on. Or is it giving of your time and giving of your heart and your head to search diligently for the kingdom of God until you find it? And I will just say, those two are not independent of one another.

You can do both, but how will you use your gifts in the service of God?

There are many people in this church who give their gifts diligently already, and you will understand that on the cusp of leaving, I’ve turned my mind to all the people who have served in this church since 1860, I wonder how many times this sermon, this passage, has been preached on since 1860? Whatever the answer to that question, The truth of it is essentially the same: that we are called to search diligently for the kingdom of God in the communities we serve.

Both in the churches in which we serve, and actually also inside each of us, for we, too we are little examples of the kingdom of heaven. And how we use our gifts in order to show that to everyone else is a matter for each of us. We will all receive these parables differently

This morning, I pray that you will know that you are loved, that nothing will separate you from the love of God, and I pray that the confidence and security offered by that knowledge will allow you and motivate you to search for the kingdom of heaven diligently until it is found.

And I pray all of this in Jesus’ name. Amen.