Matthew 13:31-34, 44-52/ Psalm 128
Parables, parables, and more
parables the season of Pentecost (especially this summer) seems to be a season
of parables.
Lucky us, because parables
seem especially fitting for our summertime reflections they are short, sweet
and more or less to the point. Some
times Jesus even unpacks them for us, like he did last week when he explained
the parable of the weeds, so eloquently explored by Deacon Michelle.
But sometimes the parables
are just left out there floating with no further discussion, because Jesus used
parables to teach the crowds about the kingdom of heaven through their shared
experiences, their common knowledge, their everyday lives.
In the swaths of the people
who followed Jesus there were men and women, children and elders, educated
rabbis and illiterate fishermen and parables enabled him to teach to all of
them regardless of age, education or socioeconomic status. These parables spoke
to them where they were and they innately understood what he meant.
But for us, many of these
parables seem far off, certainly inapplicable to our daily lives, and in some
places down right mystifying.
We’ve all seen the yellow
mustard in that bright yellow bottle, and most of us have seen the mustard
seeds in Sunday school and how small they are, but how many of us have ever
seen a mustard tree in person? Or is it a mustard bush?
We’ve all had a sandwich
made with wonder bread, or some other risen loaf, but how many of us mixed leavening
with flour in the last week, month or even year? Many of us enjoy a good crab
cake, order of fish and chips or a salmon filet, but have you ever gone fishing
in a shallow sea with a hand made net?
I’m willing to bet that none
of you have found a field where someone buried their treasure, and if you have
and you purchased it I think Tony and I would like to talk to you about the St
Matthew’s Society and even if you don’t have a buried treasure you still might
want to talk to us, but that is a different topic all together.
You may have found a pearl
in a merchant and purchased it, but I doubt you sold everything you had in
order to do so- most of us don’t make those kinds of O Henry-esque purchases.
So why don’t we update our
scripture so that we can understand the parables more readily?
This week I spent some time
thinking about it and concluded that with the mustard seed, leavening and
fishing parables the underlying theme is that small things make big
differences, like to the quote attributed to cultural anthropologist, Margaret
Mead: Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only
thing that ever has.
We could use similar
examples of small parts of our daily life that impact the greater world:
The kingdom of heaven is
like the Philadelphia 11- the first females ordained in the church, 40 years
ago this week. They changed the face of
the Episcopal Church forever.
The kingdom of heaven is
like a hard drive which is infected with spyware or a Trojan virus which cannot
be detected in the current age, but will be sorted out by the computer
programmer angels in the coming age.
Or
With a little background knowledge – that one cigarette butt contaminates roughly 5 gallons of drinking water.
The kingdom of heaven is
like a lake, polluted by cigarette butts the clean water molecules and the
dirty water molecules cannot be separated, in our time, but the great
distillation process will be overseen by angels in the coming age.
I know that these last two examples
are negatively skewed, but you get the picture, small parts of our lives make
big differences just like they did in the lives of the original audience.
Wouldn’t it be easier to
just change the scenarios so people would understand what scripture is talking
about more easily- as we transitioned from a tribe of nomadic people, to an
agrarian culture, to an industrial nation to now the consumer society clearly
our experiences have changed shouldn’t our religious understanding change as
well?
I’m all for making scripture
accessible, I’m all for making our experiences with Jesus universal regardless
of gender, creed, economic status, race, etc.
I am in favor of inclusive and gender neutral language in our
description of God and I think there is a time and a place for additional
non-canonical scripture.
But despite the novelty of
developing modern parables, and the enjoyment I received from the exercise, I
don’t think that we need to adapt parables to reflect the modern environment.
There is also something to
be said for handing down the same examples from generation to generation. What comes to mind for me when I think about
the experiences of the disciples, is that we as modern adherents to the
Christian faith have inherited the experiences of those who were the first
followers of Jesus.
When we are baptized, we join
in the experiences of all of those who came before us. We become part of a community of faith and
believers who share the sacraments, the scripture and the sense of what it
means to be a disciple in this age, which is far from perfect, but also when we
join this family, we are invited to learn what it was like to be a disciple in
previous ages- whether one generation ago or two or two hundred.
In an overly simplified
form, it can be said that where Carl Jung’s theory of a common unconscious or
subconscious experience claims that we as individuals share a common experience
which we are not fully aware of, in Christianity through our common scripture,
common prayer and common liturgies we are able to have a common conscious
experience. This tradition precedes
Christianity even, and reaches back into the Hebrew Scriptures, an experience
that according to tradition predates even Jesus’ by at least 14 generations.
Today the 128th psalm which
we read concludes with the hope that we will live to see our children’s
children, and peace in the kingdom of Israel.
Many of us do not have the opportunity to see our children’s children,
and we are still waiting for peace in Israel, yet we keep the common experience
alive through scripture.
It is part of who we are –
it is part of the vows we take in our baptismal covenant to adhere to the
apostles teaching, fellowship and prayers.
There is a reason – that a few weeks ago – when 50 youth of our parish
and related to our parish were given the opportunity to present in any way they
want, any scripture they wanted, that one group chose the parable of the
mustard seed. There is a reason that we
include parables have outlived their “daily application” in our biblical
cannon. It is not that we shouldn’t
change and adapt, it is not that we shouldn’t make scripture accessible and understandable. It’s that these experiences these parables
connect us to those who have come before.
It’s like the experience of
sharing a recipe passed down from generation to generation or a story about
your great grand parent. In my family
there is a recipe for wacky cake that has been used since the great depression,
when there were no eggs, and baking soda was scarce. We still use that recipe for picnics and
parties even though we have plenty of eggs and baking soda today.
In my husband’s family there
is the story of his great grandfather who complained that there was no good
fruit in boarding school and his father sent a box car full of citrus from the
grove in Florida to Chicago (or vice versa I can’t quite remember all the
details).
But what matter’s isn’t that
I know the details, but that through the sharing of the story and the knowledge
of the scenario I have the shared experience, so now I can relate to the
generation that came before me, and can accordingly share that story with my
daughter and hopefully she will share that story with her daughter someday.
All of us in Christianity
are part of that generation to generation and we need to maintain at least a
thread of relationship between the past, the present and the future. It is through common stories, it is through
these parables that we are able to transcend time and distance and share in the
Holy nature of Scripture.
It is also through common
sacraments, like Baptism and Eucharist, which all of us are invited to
participate in that we know the Love of God in our lives. Without sharing these common experiences, and these common stories, we do not have a shared identity, a
shared sense of community. It is this kind of
relationship with one another which spans generations that is a unique
characteristic of life in the church.
This weekend we at the
Cathedral welcome little James Weikel into the community. For him all of our stories are foreign, all
of our sacraments are new, for him he has no frame of reference for parables
but that which we provide. And that is
exactly what we are called to do through our baptismal covenant. This is who we are called to be the keepers
of stories, and experiences and we are to record and share these events to the
best of our ability so that we can share them with future generations. Because without this common prayer and common
scripture we are without community and without community what a lonely
existence we would have.
Let us remember our common
experience, our common belief and our common parables when we recount the
nature of the kingdom of heaven, as a mustard seed, a net full of fish, and
yeast.
Amen
