Pentecost IX, Proper 10: Why Parables?
Genesis 25:19‑34
Romans 8:1‑11
Matthew, 13:1‑9,18‑23
+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Why parables? Why did Jesus continuously, distinctively speak to people in parables?[1] At times Jesus did speak to us in declarative sentences: love your enemies, forgive one another without limit, don't be anxious about tomorrow, preach the gospel, make disciples, sell what you have and give to the poor. He hardly addresses all the complexities of human relationships, but he states clearly fundamental principles for us, basics for how we should treat one another, although you wouldn't know them by the way we behave.
When it comes to describing what God is doing, however, Jesus speaks more enigmatically. He uses parables, comparisons, analogies, to describe what God is doing, how the Kingdom is mysteriously becoming present. Parables help us to identify God's work; or, more precisely, they reveal his presence to us.
Parables are riddles that engage us, provoke us, frustrate us. They are not always clear, and Christians don't always agree about what they mean. Jesus teases us and makes us wrestle with what is true. This is how we learn. It's not learning by rote, which is not learning. Rather, parables produce dissonance, uncertainty, confusion, and we have to have a capacity for dissonance, uncertainty, confusion or we won't learn, we won't grow.
So when we hear a parable, we recognize that there are different angles of meaning, that there are different, but valid, interpretations and perspectives. If we approach them with humility and openness, we can discover new meaning in them.
The parable of the sower challenged the early Church, and I think that the evangelists figured out a meaning for it based upon their experience. Today's gospel has two parts: first, the parable, and second, the interpretation. I think that their interpretation is the early Church's, not Jesus'. I think that the gospel writers took their interpretation and put it, as it were, into the mouth of Jesus.
Most biblical scholars today don't think Jesus' parables were allegorical. The interpretation offered is an allegory, one that suited the early Church, one that made sense in light of the resurrection. The allegorical interpretation suggests that the farmer's field is the world and that each of the four different soils represents a different kind of people. Only one of these types of people receives the gospel and bears fruit. As for the three others, Satan plucks the gospel out of the hearts of some people; persecution and unpopularity drive some away from the gospel; and, the cares of the world and the love of riches cause some to fall away. There's some truth to that, and I suspect that it reflects the experience of the early Church. Not everyone who began to follow Jesus endured to the end.
But frankly I don't find this a satisfying interpretation. The gospel takes root in all kinds of people, some of whom endure persecution or worldly temptation and remain true to the gospel. The point is that the gospel brings forth fruit in every kind of soil, people who have all different kinds of experiences. Some people who are persecuted, some who face terrible troubles, some who have great riches, some of all these types do produce fruit.
More facetiously, I also don't like the implication that those of us who produce fruit are good soil, people like us, because we all know that good soil tends to have a lot of manure in it. Do you really think that the gospel wants to make the impression that effective evangelists are full of it?
I think that Jesus told this parable for a different reason. I don't think that he was explaining why the gospel takes root in some people and not in others. Rather, I think that he was telling a story to encourage his disciples, who probably endured a lot of rejection. This parable is a pep talk for evangelization. During Jesus' ministry, most people did not respond positively to the gospel, to Jesus, and to Jesus' disciples. Jesus was patting his disciples on the back, saying, ADon't get discouraged. Even if it seems that you are producing only a little fruit, God will still produce a spectacular harvest.@
In the ancient Near East, a farmer would scatter seed generously before plowing, expecting that not many of the seeds would blossom and bring forth fruit. A good harvest for a first century Galilean farmer would be about ten bushels for every bushel of seed; seven and a half was typical. So a farmer expected that he would lose quite a bit of seed to rocky soil, scorching sun, birds, weeds, and thorns. But Jesus promises a harvest thirty, sixty, even a hundred times greater. In other words, God will produce an incredible harvest despite all the things that typically diminish a harvest. God is at work. We don't need to worry about anything other than sowing the seed. God will give the growth, tremendous growth. God is at work even when it does not appear that way to us.
What does this mean for us today? Clearly, despite ourselves, God has given the Church fabulous growth through the ages. In the last century, Christianity has grown faster than ever. Too often, we think of the Church as being in crisis, instead of appreciating her astounding vibrancy and health. What's most important about the Church is most vital. More people are hearing the gospel and becoming disciples than ever. Yet, we can also look around our city, our culture, and tell that there's still an enormous potential for growth, for increasing the harvest. How do we sow the seed?
In 1999, I delivered a paper to some colleagues where I briefly addressed this question and rejected out of hand the notion that evangelism had to do with Christians themselves being attractive, having lives that non-believers regarded as desirable, being people others would like to emulate. In the conversation that followed the paper, not one of my colleagues challenged me on that point. Gradually, I came to believe that I was a hundred percent wrong.
I just cracked a marvelous little book, Tokens of Trust, written last year by Archbishop Williams. He points out that rather few people come to a living personal faith through arguments and proofs and that the Bible does not attempt to prove God's existence. Christianity isn't opposed to rational, logical inquiry. For most, that is not how we come to believe. Rather, we believe and come to know Jesus through other people.
What the Bible shows us is people — Abraham, Moses, Peter, Paul — struggling with God, the name Israel means "he who wrestles with God," and the heroes of the Bible are sometimes angry with him, sometimes failing him, sometimes confused about him, sometimes doubting him, sometimes heroic champions of him. The seriousness with which these people take their relationship with God is a powerful witness.
Rowan Williams writes that faith starts from a sense that
we trust some kinds of people. We have confidence in the way they live; the way they live is a way I want to live, perhaps can imagine myself living in my better or more mature moments. The world they inhabit is one I'd like to live in. Faith has to do with the simple fact that there are trustworthy lives to be seen, that we can see in some believing people a world we'd like to believe in.[2]
We believers, Williams says, have to take responsibility for making God believable. We have to ask ourselves: are we trustworthy? Unworthy as we are, God has entrusted his credibility to us. This responsibility invites us to grow up, to have vital, meaningful lives. What does God care most about? Is that what we care most about? What do we knock ourselves out for? Are those things important to God? For most of us, there is a gap between those, and if we're serious in trying to close the distance, then we're taking responsibility for God, then we're becoming trustworthy, then we're sowing the seed.
The Church is trustworthy in as far as it embodies its ideals, and the Nicene Creed calls us, the Church, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.[3] First, the Church, our parish, is one as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one. Unity in diversity, and diversity in unity. We each depend upon one another; we need the variety of gifts given to us by God, the variety of relationships with God, the variety of experiences of God, the variety of perspectives about God. These make us whole. One is not about sameness, but about including the other, so that we all have one home together.
Second, we are holy not because of our effort or merit, but because we are in relationship with Christ. God takes us up into himself and makes us holy. Holiness sets us apart not from one another, but apart from our own agendas and preferences. God's ways are not our ways.
Third, we are catholic, universal, open to the breadth of culture and learning. Rowan Williams says the Church expresses its catholicity in "being faithful to the whole of its own treasury of faith, but also trying to relate to the whole variety of human experience." Catholicity creates tension because it's often not "clear what is a proper adaptation and what is giving way to the easy or fashionable." If the Church, a parish, is catholic, then it reaches out to all peoples, welcomes them, recognizes that as they enter the community they will change the community, and calmly discerns what change is of the Holy Spirit.
Fourth, apostolic means that we are sent. We are sent to invite others to Jesus, to share what we have received. Just as others made the effort to share Jesus with us so we share him with others. I have eternal gratitude to those who nurtured my conversion, to those — to you — who nurture my faith now; and I express that gratitude in sharing Jesus and welcoming new people into the family of God. The apostles went out and shared Jesus with the world We have continuity with them, but being apostolic is not only about looking backwards, but about looking forward in mission. It's not holding on to the past, but making a new future.
One, holy, catholic, apostolic — that's the Church's call, and each of us is trying to embody that in our lives. That's sowing the seed. Then God gives the growth — spectacular growth.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
©2008 Lane John Davenport
