Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52: Five Parables of the Kingdom This week’s Gospel lesson is a whole boatload of parables about the Kingdom of Heaven, something Jesus talked a lot about but never described in plain words. He told little stories and vignettes about what it was like, stories that may seem simple on first reading, but the more you think about them, the less obvious their meaning becomes. If there’s one thing these particular parables have in common, it may be the idea that the Kingdom of Heaven is something that requires patience. The word “parable” literally means putting one thing beside another. It’s not as clearly defined as an allegory, in which every image has a direct, one-to-one symbolic meaning. Parables simply set two ideas in juxtaposition and let the listener sort out the similarities. The earliest versions we have of most of the parables of Jesus do not include explanations; these were likely added by later editors in the communities where the Gosp...