...Like Kids Playing Basketball Badly

Over the course of the next several months we will be discussing the Parables of Jesus. Parables are those real life occasions in which we can "discover" the reality of the Kingdom of God in our every day experience.

Let me explain. Just a few months ago, I remember standing court side at a basketball game for 5 and 6 year olds. They were adorable...but terrible at basketball. They would pick up the ball and run with it...(there was no point at even calling a traveling penalty). They would all smother the person with the ball...(position? What position?). The more aggressive children would grab hold of the ball and rip it out of the other children's arms and run down the court to throw up a prayer shot...(at that age every shot is a prayer shot).

But that wasn't what caught my attention. There on the court were several kids from all different backgrounds. Here is how I explained it in a sermon I preached shortly after that, "Some were black, some white, some Latino, some rich, some poor, some in traditional families, some with single parents, some on food stamps, some with silver spoons, some from here, some from other places, some whose parents went to church, some whose parents went to the bar, some really good athletes, some not so much..." All that diversity gathered on one court on a Saturday afternoon. And yet they played; they laughed, they tossed the ball back and forth, and they all slapped hands at the end of the game. None of those distinctions seemed to matter. They couldn't care less about skin color or socio-economic class. On the court they were all the same, just kids playing ball.

There standing on the side of the court that day I remember thinking, "Maybe the Kingdom of God is like a bunch of 5 and 6 year old kids playing basketball badly."