The other day I was in Barnes and Noble looking for some books for my summer reading. Now I'm interested in all kinds of books – mysteries, home improvement, literature, diet and exercise, cooking, politics, art, poetry, music. I buy lots of books. But by and large I don't buy very many popular religious books. You know, the kind like "Purpose Driven Life" by Rick Warren, or "7 Keys to Improving Your Life" by Joel O'Steen, books that promise to simplify my life by unlocking the secrets to the bible for me. Of course, Pastor Warren and O'Steen have huge followings, and they sell millions and millions of books. People are starving for some clarity in their lives, and that's what these books deliver. Basically, they boil down to telling us how to lives our lives according to a particular interpretation of scripture. If we follow the simple rules in the book, the logic goes, we're sure to be living "Christian Lives."
Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to live a better life and to understand God's role in your life. And there's certainly nothing wrong trying to understand the teachings of Jesus. But it seems to me that the best way to understand Jesus is to just read about him in the bible, instead of reading what somebody else says about the bible. Wouldn't that just be simpler? It would certainly be cheaper. And we just might learn something about how Jesus really saw the world. We might learn something about Jesus' worldview.
Take today's Gospel lesson for example. Jesus is teaching the people about the reign of God – about what the world looks like when we all live as God would have us live. He said,
"The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."
How's that for a clear and simple life lesson? It seems easy enough – Jesus said that God's rule is like someone who scatters seed and goes to sleep.
Or take this one:
"[The kingdom of God] is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."
Surely, that makes it all clear, right? No? Why not? Why would Jesus spend some much of his time talking in riddles? Because that's what parables are, they're riddles. Parables are stories told in such a way that we have to come up with our own answer; we have to come up with our own conclusion. But why, if Jesus really wanted to tell us how we should be living our lives, didn't he just lay it all out in something like "The 7 Keys to the Kingdom of God" or give us a 40-day program to follow. After all, life's hard enough. What's with all the riddles?
Well, I believe that Jesus taught in parables because he knew that simple, easy to follow rules really didn't make sense where God is concerned. He knew that lists of rules, "do this" and "don't do that" might be easy to follow, but they have very little to do with the varied and dynamic way God calls each and every one of us to live our lives. Lists of rules can't change; they can't accommodate the variety of ways each and every one of us is unique, and the multitude of ways we are called to live faithfully.
The Bible can be an intimidating book. There are 39 books in the Old Testament, and 27 in the New Testament. And that doesn't even count the Apocrypha. It has been translated into every known language in the world, and there have been millions of pages of commentary written about it. According to some sources, 92% of the households in American own at least one Bible. So it is not any wonder that Holy Scripture holds some kind of authority over people. Given all that is in it, and all that surrounds it, it must surely have some rules for living that we call can use. And it does.
But the Bible is not a rule book, it's not some kind of "owners manual" that tells us how to fix our lives like we fix our cars. And while the canon that makes up the bible is closed – that is, there aren't any new books of the bible being written – that doesn't mean that the God's action in the world stopped when the last chapter and verse was written. God continues to act in our lives every day, and Jesus knew that. He knew that God is working in all of us, just as God did in Abraham and Sarah's time. He knew that God's great story, our salvation history, continues to be written even today.
By teaching in parables, Jesus let people draw their own conclusions to the questions they had about their lives, based on their own experiences. He depended on the whimsical nature of the Holy Spirit, the wind that blows we know not where, to settle in each one of us and allow us to come up with our own answers to our own questions. Because Jesus knew that when we live our own stories, when we struggle with our own answers, then we can combine them with the stories of those that have gone before us, that we become part of a continuing story – we become part of the living gospel.
The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. That is, it starts out small and grows. Or maybe it means it blows in the wind and settles in the least expected places. It can grow in dry and rocky soil, where there is little water or nourishment. Or maybe it means it grows into a weed that takes over the manicured lawns and orderly gardens of the people who look to simple rules and simple answers in their lives. The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed, then leaves it alone. It grows without tending. It doesn't matter what we do; what matters is what God does.
Jesus teaches in parables because they allow us to respond to our individual calls from God. Our lives are unique gifts from God, and we are invited add our stories to those who have gone before us in God's kingdom - a kingdom that exists both then, and in the here and now, and in the time to come.
Thanks be to God.
LINK TO THIS ARTICLE - http://www.ecsssj.org/show_article.php?myid=96
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