Success, Parables, and the meaning of life

Success

What does success look like to you?

Scoring a goal

New house

Mountain peak

Beach

Scrooge McDuck

Heart

Success -> purpose -> Meaning of life

Meaning of Life -> Kingdom of God

The MEaning of Life is like...

Not the sort of thing we’re used to.

All those images of success we had before - they all depend on something that we’ve done ourselves,

But the man in Jesus’ story is a bit clueless. He doesn’t really seem to understand what’s going on, it just kind of … happens

Kinda reminds me of this guy (Forrest Gump)

The Success Trap

The problem with taking all the credit for our success, is that we’re not always successful.

What happens then? We’re un-successful. We’re failures.

We fall into the trap of thinking that every succes that we have is because we’re awesome, amazing, wonderful people. Every failure we have is because we suck.

And when you let that cycle repeat itself, what do you end up with?

A society where some people, often through no special merit, end up at the top of the pile, and some people, through no paritcualr fault of their own, end up at the bottom.

The success trap is this - we start to believe that that is the way life is meant to be.

We start to believe that we are born successful, or we are born as failures, and nothing that we can do will ever change that.

So the success trap begins with the lie that everything we have comes from ourselves, and ends with the lie that the success or failure of our endeavours tells us who we really are..

Neither of these things are true.

None of us are self-made. None of us are defined by

Jesus is telling us that we can’t be failures when it comes to God’s kingdom. We can’t be failures when it comes to the meaning of life, becuase it was never really up to us in the first place.

All we’ve got to do is be there. Be part of it. Show up for our own lives, show up for each other.

Life is like a box of chocolates

You never know what you’re goign to get.

Sometimes, things go the way that we plan. More often, things come at us out of left field, and we just have to adapt and cope as best we can.

Examples?

At first it might seem a bit unflattering to be compared to the man in Jesus’ parable - everything seems to take him by surprise, and he’s not exactly pro-active.

But there are two really important messages for us in this:

First - just show up and do what is in front of you. Participate in what God is already up to.

Second - the meaning of life - the kingdom of God - is making its own plans that don’t rely solely on us. It’s something that we get to take part in, but it’s not going to fail if we don’t get it right. It’s not going to pass us by if we don’t do all the right things, first time, every time, 60% of the time.

But why didn’t Jesus just say that?

Why did Jesus teach in Parables in teh first place?

What’s the point in parables?

Relateable - we can see ourselves in the story

down-to-earth - God is with us

accessible - don’t need a PhD in theology to get the point

adaptable - not one off instructions, but a new way of seeing the world - lens

mysterious - Jesus is not a self-help guru, but a person who cares about us, and wants to know us intimately. We’re not meant to understand him from a distance, we’re meant to get up-close and personal. To invite Him to be a constant part of our everyday lives.

Ultimately, the meaning of life is not some abstract idea, but a relationship - that begins in God’s love, and overflows to you and me, and sweeps us and our relationships up into his down-to-earth, relateable, accessible, adaptable, mysterious kingdom.

And that’s what life’s all about.

The Good News i this: the world doesn’t revolve around you or me.

The Good News si also this: we are not irrelevant, nor held at arms length. We’re invited in. Wanted. Needed. Loved.

That’s the Kingdom of God.

That’s true success.

That’s the meaning of life.

Amen.