Friday April 17th
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”
–Matthew 13:1-9
As we embarked in a new direction in these days of isolation, we began by listening to Jesus preach his famous Sermon on the Mount. His style in that sermon was almost antiseptic in nature, straightforward, no-nonsense. However, personally, I don’t believe that was Jesus’ favorite style of teaching and preaching. His favorite medium, which he used most often, was that of nuance-laced parables.
We love the parables, those pithy, creative, clever pieces that deliver truth in ways that baffled Jesus’ critics. But as we heard yesterday, we must be careful, lest we think we have the parables figured out. Clarence Jordan likened a parable to a Trojan horse. It is so alluring that it is allowed into the inner court. No one is aware of the danger it poses until it is too late. The trap is sprung before the listener realizes that any of his or her usual defenses are necessary. Ron Hansen, my Jesuit novelist friend says: “Parables invite the hearer’s interest with familiar settings and situations but finally veer off into the unfamiliar, shattering their homey realism and insisting on further reflection and inquiry. We have the uneasy feeling that we are being interpreted even as we interpret them.” So, let us listen to these parables as if we are hearing them for the first time.
I feel that it is important to note that this time together will not strive to produce an answer sheet for the meaning of the parables. Parables by their very nature have various meanings at different times and in different contexts. What’s more, parables are not meant just to satisfy our understandings. In fact, parables are told to unsettle our understandings.
What I mean by that is that we come to the Bible, and come to the parables, with certain presuppositions. Where we were born, where we went to school, what we do for a living are all things that can almost hypnotize us into believing there is one correct way of thinking . . . and that we are privy to it. The parables jarred the minds of those listening to Jesus in the first century, and they are meant to do the same thing in the 21st century. So, as we begin, let me freely admit that I am intrigued about engaging stories that I have heard many times, but I’m also intent on hearing them in a fresh way this time and the next.
I agree with whomever said that the reason God created human beings is that God loves stories. If this is true, and I think it is, it should not come as any surprise that when Jesus began teaching, his teachings were not just seasoned with stories as in sermon illustrations; the stories were the basis of the teachings themselves. Jesus was an amazing teacher, and his medium was story.
The brightest of people seem to do their best work when they put their teachings in the form of a story. Consider those two crusty old professors from Oxford – C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. They were both brilliant, both noted for being intellectual giants in their own disciplines, both well-read in several different languages. And yet, when they sought to impart that which was most important to them they told stories, taking us to the land of the hobbits and elves and talking trees, the land of Middle Earth, or to a place called Narnia where animals talk and trees dance. And that is true for other bright minds, like the Ivy League professor, Chaim Potok, who takes us into the land of Hassidic Judaism by telling us stories within stories, stories of pathos and grace. Robert Coles, the noted psychiatrist and professor, wrote an amazing book, The Call of Stories, which not only examines the importance of narrative strategies in therapy settings, but the ways we all learn about ourselves, namely, through stories and storytelling.
Jesus was the consummate storyteller. Perhaps he had learned it through his teachers and the Talmudic materials. After all, some of the most insightful teachings in Hebrew Scripture could be considered parable. Just entertain the possibility that Ruth, Job, Jonah and other books were not history, but parable. And even in the history texts there are parables that punctuate the archives, like so many parables in the book of Judges (e.g. the parable of the trees in Judges 9), or that amazing parabolic riddle that Nathan posed to David, ensnaring him into the realization of his own guilt.
Jesus wasn’t the first person to use storytelling as his teaching method, but his storytelling was perhaps the best in articulating with such evocative flair that worlds changed. Perhaps, the reason people were so enthralled with his storytelling is that few preachers or teachers in his day and time employed this method. The Pharisees, for instance, didn’t use parables as a teaching device. Jacob Neusner, the astute Jewish scholar, tells us, “A survey of the rabbinic materials (in the 1st century) turns up a curious anomaly. In those layers of tradition that can be isolated as belonging to the Pharisees, there are no parables.” Now, this doesn’t mean that Jesus was the only one who used stories, but what Jesus did was to make storytelling a fine art and a fine way of imparting God’s truth.
Storytelling invites people into the story so that they might understand not only the story itself but their own story, and most importantly, the greater story. Stories, good stories, call for involvement. That was the reason C.S. Lewis was so adamant about not having his stories made into movies. He felt that it was important for readers/listeners to create their own images of the children and Aslan and Narnia. (He must be rolling over in his grave since Hollywood found a way to get around his wishes!) Pushing this idea, I would suggest that storytelling is a helpful instrument in describing salvation. God loves us, but this love doesn’t become complete until we respond. God begins the story of grace in us, but we are asked to participate in its telling.
Our parable for today is a good example in understanding this method of storytelling. It is a paradigm for all the parables that Jesus tells. This particular one is about farming, and one that anyone familiar with Palestinian life would recognize. It reveals that Jesus had a love for the earth. Like the farmer-poet of our time, Wendell Berry, Jesus gives us an agronomy lesson which is, in fact, a lesson of the Kingdom.
Farming was a most crucial venture in first-century Palestine, and the method of farming had about it common ingredients. First of all, everyone would have been aware of the beaten paths that Jesus mentions in this parable. Farmers in that day and time did not have the advantage of mechanized equipment, so they had to do their sowing from hard-packed walkways; and because their sowing was done in a hand-thrown fashion, some of the seeds would invariably fall on this beaten path where no growth was possible, providing the birds with an epicurean delight. The shallow soil mentioned in this parable is common soil in much of Israel, much like the soil from the part of the country where I grew up. Out in West Texas most of the ground is about two to three inches of soil resting on hard and brittle limestone, which is known as “caliche.” Plants could take hold there but could not flourish, because there was not enough soil to take root and grow. Therefore, just a few spindly plants like cactus and the like could exist in such an environment, with everything else withering up and blowing away. The third soil that Jesus mentions is a soil infested with what most of us who try to keep a lawn are more than familiar with – weeds. Those farmers would have known about the weeds that seemed to appear out of nowhere. But these farmers would also have been aware of the good gift and advantage of good soil, soil that had the potential to produce incredible results.
When Jesus began this story, he gave it a backdrop that would have been most familiar to the residents of first-century Israel. But as simple and direct as this story seems to be, most of the people who heard it for the first time didn’t quite know what to do with it. In fact, the disciples had to ask Jesus point-blank what in the world He was up to. (By the way, the disciples remind me of the line from the movie, O God, which describes God as a comedian playing to an audience that never laughs. Jokes and stories tend to lose their impact when you have to explain the punch line!)
We, too, can look down our noses at their ineptness, but the truth is, over the years we have had similar difficulties ourselves. I suppose that is why this story has had so many different interpretations since its first telling. I mean, scholars have argued over the perspective of this parable. Some have called it the parable of the sower, an autobiographical vignette revealing Jesus’ sense of frustration with how His words are being received. Others have labeled this parable, the parable of the seed, because of its potency and power to produce so much fruit. Others still have called it, the parable of the soils, a story directed at the various ways that people listen to the Word of God. Now, these are all good and important ways to hear this story. But what do we hear today? Good seed is coming our way, and what kind of reception will we give it?
In Africa there is an arid region of land below the Sahara which is called the Sahel. All of their rain falls during the four months from May to August. The people there farm small plots of grain by hand. After August not a drop of rain falls for eight months. The ground cracks open in the heat, as do the people’s hands and feet. If they are frugal they have two meals a day until December, but by April the grain is gone, and families subsist on one thin meal per day made from roots or leaves or bark, whatever they can find. Many fall ill from malnutrition. The infant mortality rate is high. In this region there is a story that one day in the midst of the drought a child discovers a great treasure, a sack of grain that is hidden away. His parents must have forgotten! “No,” his father tells him, “we cannot eat that grain.” It is hard for children to understand why they must go hungry while a full sack of grain remains. Finally the rains return, and the children watch as their father takes the treasured sack of grain and does the most unreasonable thing they can imagine. Instead of feeding his desperately weakened family, he goes to the field, and with tears streaming down his cheeks he takes the precious seed and throws it to the ground, scattering it in the dirt. Why? Because he believes in the harvest.
And that is what Jesus does with the parables. He is sowing seeds of grace in hopes that one of them will take hold in us. What type of soil will we be?
A Time of Reflection and Prayer
- Who is your favorite storyteller? Why?
- Can you remember a story whose meaning changed for you over the years?
- How would you describe your own story? Is there a need for editing? Take time to tell your story once again to God, knowing that God loves stories.
A Musical Parable, A Guide for Prayer: Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle”
My child arrived just the other day.
He came to the world in the usual way,
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay.
He learned to walk while I was away,
And he was talking ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew
He’d say “I’m gonna be like you, dad.”
You know I’m gonna be like you.”
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
“When you coming home, dad?” “I don’t know when,
But we’ll get together then.
You know we’ll have a good time then.”
My son turned ten just the other day.
He said, “thanks for the ball, dad, come on let’s play.
Can you teach me to throw?” I said, “not today.
I got a lot to do,” he said, “that’s okay.”
And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed.
It said, “I’m gonna be like him, yeah.
You know I’m gonna be like him.”
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
“When you coming home, dad?” “I don’t know when,
But we’ll get together then.
You know we’ll have a good time then.”
Well, he came from college just the other day,
So much like a man I just had to say,
“Son, I’m proud of you, can you sit for a while?”
He shook his head, and he said with a smile,
“What I’d really like, dad, is to borrow the car keys.
See you later, can I have them please?”
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
“When you coming home, son?” “I don’t know when,
But we’ll get together then, dad.
You know we’ll have a good time then.”
I’ve long since retired and my son’s moved away.
I called him up just the other day.
I said, “I’d like to see you if you don’t mind.”
He said, “I’d love to, dad, if I could find the time.
You see, my new job’s a hassle, and the kids have the flu,
But it’s sure nice talking to you, dad.
It’s been sure nice talking to you.”
And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me,
He’d grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me.
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
“When you coming home, son?” “I don’t know when,
But we’ll get together then, dad.
We’re gonna have a good time then.”