Pentecost III

“He did not speak to them except in parables.”

A parable is a teaching tool used by many in the ancient world -- and today. It is meant to juxtapose several things and reveal meaning by contrast, allusion, or extended metaphor. It is not meant to be immediately accessible — in fact, obscuring the spiritual or political point being made by a story or image can make it more palatable to one otherwise inclined to object, and can hide radical ideas from authorities.

Jesus conveyed political and spiritual points (or, going for the unity of all things, 'politico-spiritual') via parables. Some are extended stories; others simple sentences and images. Banquets, flocks, wealthy people. Beggars, more sheep, seeds. Some are making an obvious point, obscuring it behind a story to avoid initial controversy; others are a poetic image that could compel a lifetime’s dedication to understand.

I read this about parables:

“By telling stories using the examples and situations familiar to people in a particular region and time, listeners could better relate to and understand what was being taught.”

Indeed. Examples and situations familiar to people. He did not speak to them except in parables.

And, more:

“The settings for the parables of Jesus are usually in the context of daily life in ancient Judea, ranging from stories reflecting the rural society to the life of the elites, both of which the listeners would have been familiar with.”

Parables all around us. He does not speak to us except in parables.

The life of the elites!

Jesus today speaks in parables of subway stations and expressway driving habits, restaurant service workers and investment bankers. Still he speaks to us in nothing but parables, opening our minds to grace and truth.

Ezekiel’s lofty cedar tree is a parable of the life of the people. Green things are dried up; dry things are made to flower.

That mustard seed. God’s reality is like it. Small when first perceived; growing within and without to a size unimagined when first perceiving the seed.

That other image of God’s reality among us and within the cosmos — the one who sows the field and eventually reaps the harvest, but has no ‘sense’ of how the growth has occurred. Wendell Berry wrote a poem that explained this parable (‘in private,’ like Jesus and the disciples in today’s Gospel) to me:

“Whatever is foreseen in joy

Must be lived out from day to day.

Vision held open in the dark

By our ten thousand days of work.

Harvest will fill the barn; for that

The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled

By work of ours; the field is tilled

And left to grace. That we may reap,

Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood

Rests on our day, and finds it good.”

—

Amen. Still he speaks in nothing but parables to us today. What have you heard lately?