Parables, Discernment and Justice Witness
A write-up based on a sermon shared to a joint worship service of the Kenmore, Tonawanda First, and Maryvale Drive Presbyterian churches in the Buffalo, NY area. The Scripture lesson was Matthew 13:31-33 and 44-52
For the past months I have begun my sermons with the same phrase: “Oh, what a time to be the Church.”
It is about the pandemic, and the poor and mostly political response to it, and the anxiety many exhibit when confronted with the fact that there is no normal to go back to. It is about state-sanctioned and culturally embedded racist violence in the United States, and its ramifications against African Americans, Native Americans, and immigrants not from Western Europe. It is about socially excused rejection that quickly devolves to violence against the LGBTQIA+ community, especially trans folk and LGBTQIA+ youth of color.
I think most of us can find specifics about each of these. This is our context, a defining historical moment, social situations that will define the character of this generation.
The community to which Matthew was writing was also in a highly tense situation. Forced into exile, they were migrants. Migration for most of us migrated people is situational: forces outside of ourselves forced us to consider that there might be opportunity, prosperity, or hope in other places, a way forward that the circumstances in the motherland perhaps could not offer. For most of us, migrated people, love and hope for the motherland is never lost and often passed on in our children. At the same time, we are committed to the space we end up in – in spite of being often rejected, objectified, and forced into assimilation. That was also the community Matthew wrote this gospel too – a community that, forced into migration by the political force of the empire, were socially rejected in the places they ended up in. Matthew’s community also suffered the rejection of many in their own ethnic and religious group because of the faith in Jesus they embraced. The historical moment and social situations the Matthew community experienced defined them.
Jesus was the messiah that incarnated the values, commitments, and actions of the “Kingdom of Heaven come near” – a phrase you will often read and hear throughout the gospel. God incarnate came to bring a message of the possibility of the divine and the created to come near in a way where relationships between the divine and humans, humans among themselves, and humans with the created order can be reconciled. But it was not simply a message. Jesus acted out that message – Jesus healed. Jesus cleansed the wounded. Jesus raised the dead. Jesus casted out demons. Each and every one of these actions has the power to restore the dignity of individual human beings, and also of whole communities. These actions had that power in the 1st century. These actions have that power in the 21st century. And this power begs the question: how is the church today healing, cleaning the wounded, raising the dead and casting out demons – physically, emotionally, politically, socially, spiritually. Dignity is wholistic. Restoration is wholistic. Reconciliation is wholistic.
The lesson for today closes a series of teachings of Jesus using parables. Five parables make up this lesson, each one deserving its own time for interpretation: The Parable of the Mustard Seed. The Parable of the Yeast. The Parable of the Treasure Found. The Parable of the Merchant. The Parable of the Net. Jesus used parables to teach about the Kingdom of Heaven come near. But why in parables?
The answer to that question is found in verse 34 and 35, “Jesus said all these things to the crowds in parables, and he spoke to them only in parables. This was to fulfill what the prophet spoke: I’ll speak in parables; I’ll declare what has been hidden since the beginning of the world.” That prophetic quote by Matthew is actually found in Psalm 78, verse 2. The New Revised Standard Version translates Psalm 78:2 as, “I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old…”
Confused? Good!
There are three things about parables that I hope will liberate us from the traditional approach to parables many of us have been taught, and challenge and encourage our engagement with the Jesus of the parables for this time, place and circumstances we have been called to serve and witness of Jesus.
The first is that to the 1st-century audience, as well as to the 21st-century audience, the parables were not meant to be random stories intending to make a moral argument. They were also not intended to make statements of doctrinal certainty. Many of us who were raised in the Church, or who have been part of the Church for many decades, may feel a particular burden to make sense of the Scriptures in a way that is consonant, faithful, to the way we were taught that scripture in the first place. This is especially true with parables. Those who came before us were taught in the way they taught us – that parables have a singular, perhaps even universal meaning and purpose. Well, I propose this is not so.
Jesus was speaking to an audience of diverse social, economic, and political backgrounds. Matthew was writing to a community of diverse social, economic, religious, and political backgrounds. The 21st-century church that is reading this 1st-century document is a community gathered from diverse social, economic, religious, and political spaces. The diversity of audiences in all these instances is a reflection of the structure and purpose of parables. To some, a parable will have ready meaning, while for others it will not. And for all, the parable was not intended to have a clear (certainly not universal) meaning. Parables, as I read Matthew and Psalm 78.2, were intended to be lenses of daily life that could jump-start the imagination and understanding of the hearer and reader. In jump-starting that imagination and understanding, a parable could (and still can) shift the consideration of the Kingdom of Heaven come near to a palpable, to a relatable understanding of how the Kingdom of Heaven is also (and perhaps primarily) about the now, about the present space and time, about our shared reality. We are free from the burden of having to place some universal meaning to parables. We are also liberated in knowing that the Kingdom of Heaven come near is not about some future hope, but about the present reality – no matter how deeply carefree or how deeply burdened that reality can be.
The second thing about parables I want to share is that they are an invitation to conversation. A conversation is an engagement among different parties whose sole purpose is to… talk and engage. We often use “dialogue” and “conversation” interchangeably. But in its definition, a dialogue pretends to convince the other parties of one’s point of view. “Dialogue” is transactional. “Conversation” is relational. The engagement is the purpose in and of itself. The term conversación in Spanish shares the same root as the word convivir, literally translated, to live with or among. Parables are an invitation to conversation, to live with and among the community of faith, a community with whom we will share the process of discerning our personal and our collective witness of Jesus. The proper way to witness cannot be legislated, certainly not imposed. The proper way to figure out the way of being faithful witnesses of the message of Jesus is through discernment, through conversation. Parables are tools to incite and encourage our conversations.
The third thing about parables I want to share is that parables are an invitation to question. We are invited today to join a 1st-century audience in articulating images of daily life that can help us better talk together, ask together, question together what does the Kingdom of Heaven come near look like in the 21st century, in and through the Church, in a through the American Church.
In conversation with a colleague some time ago, we talked about this business of asking. Both of us remembered times when we felt left behind and confused. Asking a question would have solved that sense of confusion. But both of us felt, what many of us have felt at some point in our lives – that feeling that the question I have might be a dumb question. I remember teachers and professors, pastors and preachers saying that there is no such thing as a dumb question. But still, something in the Western, American, way we have been raised in makes us think that asking questions is an expression of weakness. Matthew, and this lesson particularly, reminds us that we do not practice a faith that understands. Followers of Jesus practice a faith that seeks understanding. Asking questions is one of the most important expressions of commitment and strength in the practice of the faith. That is the key tool in our toolkit of Christian living and witness – questions. I encourage you to use parables as frameworks for conversation and questions:
What is small, and seemingly insignificant thing that, in contact with the primordial power of nature, can become a safe and reliable space for life?
What is a substance we have been taught to avoided, that when hidden even under a careless amount of material, will make that material grow and change in composition?
What is something that, encountering it, could create such joy, would move you to sell everything you own to acquire it?
What is a tool that may help us catch or gather things we need for nourishment in such abundance that we could be able to intentionally cast out that which will be bad and keep a lot of what will be good for us?
What other questions are coming to mind? What other examples of daily living is occurring to you that could help explain what the Kingdom of Heaven come near to now?
Ask the question. It is the way.
A faith seeking understanding. A Spirit encouraging our seeking of wisdom. A savior right here with us wanting to join that conversation.