In the summings-up of Jesus’ message we are also told again and again: “The kingdom of God is at hand – repent.” But what does the word ‘repent’ really mean according to these parables?
A sheep has gone astray and is found and the finder is
delighted that his search has not been in vain.
The lost coin could do nothing about either its loss or its finding: the
joy is solely and entirely the woman’s.
The lost son, finally, was not merely ‘lost and found; he had actually
been ‘dead and was alive again’. So if
we look at these parables, what is the kingdom of God? It is nothing other than God’s joy at finding
again the beings he created who have been lost.
And what is the ‘repentance’ which the sinner has to ‘perform’? It is nothing other than the being-found, and
the return home from exile and estrangement, the coming-alive again, and the
joining in God’s joy. We are
experiencing God’s kingdom when something like this happens to us, something
where we flower and put out fresh growth like the flowers and trees in the
spring, and come alive again, because we sense the great in exhaustible loves
from which all life proceeds. When we
experience God’s exhilaration in his joy over us, and our own vitality
reawakens, the kingdom of God cease to be some remote and alien rule; it is the
very source and fountain of life. Then
the kingdom of God is the wide space in which we can unfold and develop,
because it is a place without any restrictions.
Once we experience God’s kingdom like this, we discover afresh the
wealth of our potentialities for living.
Jurgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ For Today’s World
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