Building Together: Listening to Jesus and The Parables
When we talk about building together, we are not talking about events or church activity. We are talking about the people we are becoming as we follow Jesus and the kind of church God is calling us to be.
Clapham Park is full of life. Our streets carry different languages, cultures, generations and stories. There are long-established families and people who have recently arrived; busy shops, schools, cafés and places of worship; people heading to work and people struggling to find it.
There is creativity, resilience and generosity here. There is also loneliness, financial pressure, inequality, violence, anxiety and the quiet burdens people carry behind closed doors.
This is the place where God has called us to follow Jesus.
So, what does it mean to build together here? What kind of neighbours are we becoming? What does generosity look like when households face difficult choices about food, heating and rent? What does hope sound like to a young person worried about their future, or an older person who feels increasingly isolated? How might the church become a place where people across generations, cultures and backgrounds genuinely belong to one another?
These questions are not separate from discipleship. They are part of it.
This Term
This term, we will explore them through a new sermon series on the parables of Jesus.
Jesus speaks about seeds, soil, money, meals, families, neighbours, workers, vineyards and lost things. He uses the familiar world around him to reveal God’s kingdom and invite people to see differently.
If Jesus were walking the streets of South London today, I sometimes wonder what images he might use: a crowded bus, a housing estate, a corner shop, a school playground, a food bank, a delivery rider waiting outside a restaurant, or a neighbour we have passed a hundred times but never really seen.
The point is not to rewrite the parables, but to remember how deeply Jesus’ teaching was rooted in ordinary life.
The kingdom of God is not an abstract idea hovering above our daily experience. It touches our money, relationships, work, forgiveness, hospitality, use of power and treatment of people who are easily ignored.
Jesus’ teaching was rooted in ordinary life.
Sometimes the parables comfort us. Sometimes they disturb us. They can illuminate something immediately or leave us wrestling with questions that resist easy answers. Jesus seems willing to let his hearers think, wonder and listen again.
That is why the parables fit so naturally with our theme of building together. Jesus is not simply giving his disciples information about the kingdom. He is forming a people whose shared life bears witness to it.
As we explore each parable, we will consider its original context and what Jesus was teaching through it. But I would also like us to carry one question:
Where is Jesus challenging me through this parable, and what is one step of obedience I can take?
This moves us beyond treating a parable as a puzzle to solve. It invites us to listen. What does the story reveal about God? What does it expose in us? Does it challenge how we see another person? What might Jesus be asking us to notice, change or do?
For those who would like to read alongside the series, Paula Gooder’s book The Parables is well worth exploring. It combines theological depth with an accessible approach, helping readers understand the parables in their original setting and consider the questions they raise for Christians today.
Most of all, I hope our engagement with the parables will continue beyond the sermon.
Each Sunday, before leaving church or later that day, have one conversation with someone about the parable we have heard. Ask:
Where is Jesus challenging me through this parable, and what is one step of obedience I can take?
This may seem like a small insignificant step, but the kingdom of God is like a small seed…
Building together will require more than our good intentions. We need to keep allowing Jesus to shape our imagination, our habits and the way we live alongside one another.
My hope is that these parables will make us more attentive to Christ and to the people around us so that our faith is lived not only inside a church building on Sunday, but in homes, schools, workplaces, parks, estates, high streets and friendships across South London.
We are listening again to the stories of Jesus because we want to become more like Jesus. As we do, may God help us build a church whose life together offers our neighbours a glimpse of his kingdom. May we become:
