The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Proper 12A
Parables, parables, parables! I do love that Jesus teaches us in parables. Parables are short stories that are meant to draw us in, to wrestle with the text, to think differently.
Yet we struggle with them because we want neat, tidy, clear-cut answers. Even though we Episcopalians are more comfortable with ambiguity and story-telling in our theology than many other denominations (and hence why our tradition has so many poets and authors represented in our theology), we still want the Bible and Jesus to be clear and straightforward. We want to know the point we’re supposed to take away from the Gospel passage. We want a nice one-to-one correlation on any symbols; we get anxious when it’s not perfectly clear. We want to wring all the juice out of these delicious Gospel oranges before we toss away the rind and drink the juice.
But story-teller Jesus wants to push us further than that. We don’t just load up the Gospel parable into the fancy juice-press, hit the button, and POOF get our simplified and digestible meaning.
Perhaps instead of Gospel oranges, we might think of the parables as Gospel broccoli. Sure, I guess you could toss it in a blender, but broccoli can be eaten raw, roasted, stir-fried, or tempura-battered and deep-fried. Broccoli is versatile and adaptable, loaded with nutrients and fiber – a great vegetable, indeed. And maybe I could give it my own parable twist: “The kingdom of heaven is like broccoli. A man upon going to the Mongolian stir-fry restaurant filled his bowl to the brim with broccoli, put noodles and sauce on top, and handed it to the cook to fry, and he ate a nutritious meal that nourished his body.”
Ok, I’m not a parable-master like Jesus, obviously. But the power of a parable is in the fact that it can be listened to from different angles. We let ourselves be surprised if we don’t try to shoe-horn in a familiar, clear-cut interpretation into the parable. What if we looked at the parable from all sorts of different angles? Like dream interpretation where we look at the meaning through the perspective of different people and things in our dream – what might we uncover in our understanding of the parables if we let our imaginations be part of the process?
And if we end up confused, we can take solace in the fact that the apostles and disciples were also often confused by the parables of Jesus. That’s ok! Our salvation is not found in being smart and clever – our salvation, life, and healing are all found in Jesus himself. As St Paul says, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Our life is not found in squeezing the “correct” interpretation from a parable to make sure that we’re perfectly right. That’s not much of a journey with Jesus, and being Christian is that we journey together with Jesus, striving to be transformed as part of the Kingdom of Heaven, to be mustard seeds and yeast, to be merchants in search of pearls and to be a bundle of fish nets.
There is so much more to the parables than getting them right. The parables, if we chew on them, become part of our connection to Jesus. We’re sitting at his feet, wondering, contemplating what the words mean.
And we’re meant to do that contemplation together. So I want us to take time as a community to sit with one of the parables. I have some questions under the parable to help guide some group reflection. (Oh, yes, now you see that I’m up to no good, and I’m going to make you chew on the parables, too!) Then we’ll share back what we learned.
Parable 1: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
- Read this parable twice in your group.
- How is a mustard seed like the kingdom of heaven?
- What about the fully grown shrub is heaven-like?
- What do the birds mean in the kingdom of God?
- How are we called to be a mustard seed? A shrub? A bird?
Parable 2: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
- Read this parable twice in your group.
- How is yeast like the kingdom of heaven?
- Who is the woman? Does she represent someone? Us? God?
- What about the flour?
- How are we called to be yeast? A woman making bread? Leavened dough?
Parable 3: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
- Read this parable twice in your group.
- How is treasure like the kingdom of heaven?
- Who is the person who found this treasure?
- Why did he hide it, sell all he has, then buy the field? Does this make him dishonest for not revealing the presence of the treasure to the person who originally owned the field?
- How are we called to be treasure? A man purchasing a field? The field?
Parable 4: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
- Read this parable twice in your group.
- How is a merchant searching for pearls like the kingdom of heaven?
- What is the point of selling all your property to buy a pearl to possess? Does that make good business sense?
- What makes this pearl one of great value, something to be prized above all other pearls?
- How are we called to be a merchant? A pearl of great value?
Parable 5: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
- Read this parable twice in your group.
- How is a net like the kingdom of heaven?
- How do we feel about the sorting at the end of the parable? How do we tell good fish from bad? Is it even our ability or responsibility to sort the good fish or bad fish?
- What is the net doing? What are the fish doing?
- How are we called to be a net? A fish? A basket?