July 24, 2011
Text: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Emily Dickinson wrote in one of her poems: “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.” The parables do that—like little poems, they tell Truth but tell it slant. They do not give us an explicit, point-by-point rule for how to live life—they simply shine light on the ordinary in a way that hints at life’s deeper meanings, and then they leave us to consider what those meanings might be. Jesus tells the disciples that it requires insight to understand the parables, and not everyone has this kind of insight. What a relief—I was afraid I might be unwell from the heat this week! Maybe I’m simply not one of the ones who will understand the nature of the new mind, the transformed heart, what Jesus was calling the kingdom of heaven.
If it’s not something each of us is expected or able to do, then I have to think this kind of understanding must require ALL of us. Maybe that’s why Jesus told parables to groups, not individuals, because it was in and through community that the kingdom of heaven—the new realm—would be revealed. With this in mind, I’m leaving time for you to add your own insights.
Parables are simple enough to speak to the whole human family, all cultures, all ages, all degrees of education—at whatever stage of development and readiness we might be—and they are complex enough to yield new discoveries each time we work with them. What I hear won’t necessarily be what you hear. So I’ll look forward to hearing what you hear at the end.
This week we have an assortment of parable fragments: The mustard seed, one of the smallest of all seeds, grows large enough for birds to nest in its branches. Yeast, once it’s mixed in the dough, can’t be seen but the nature of the whole loaf of bread is changed. Someone finds a treasure in a field and buries it again so he can buy the whole field. Finding one small pearl is worth selling everything else in order to own it. One ordinary fishing net is able to catch every kind of fish…and then the great separating will begin when the angels will sort out the righteous from the evil.
And then Jesus asks them, “Have you understood all this?”
And those wacky disciples have the audacity to say, “Yes.” Certainly. Of course. No problem.
What about us? Do we understand? What is the “slant” of Truth in these parables for us?
One of the things I notice is a reminder not to overlook small things. Small efforts, small places, “small” people (as opposed to high and mighty)—like the mustard seed—often take root and branch out enough to become nesting places for God’s realm to be lived on earth. The Potter’s House, I hope, is one of those little nests in the neighborhood, Joseph’s House another, and Christ House, DY house, and others. The philosophy “small is beautiful” has been an important guiding principle in this church community: small churches, small mission groups yielding a depth of relationship that large programs might not allow. But the mustard seed in Jesus’ story doesn’t choose to be small, just faithfully is what it is. It lets itself be planted and then grows as big as it grows.
The listeners knew about mustard seeds and they knew they do not become full-sized trees. They might grow to 4 feet tall or so, but only the smallest of birds could ever build their nests there. And they would have been aware of another connotation as well. They would have known that rabbinical law condemned the mustard plant as a threat to household gardens. It was fast-growing and tended to take over the edible plants. The honorable tree for them was the cedar of Lebanon, a mighty tree that any religion would be proud of. Why wasn’t the kingdom of heaven being compared to the cedar of Lebanon—instead of a ridiculed renegade shrub?
I also notice how much the things we can’t see can matter—like a little bit of yeast kneaded into a lot of dough, my invisible attitudes and feelings and longings radically change the nature of my life’s bread. A little bit of a bad attitude can taint a whole era of my life, just as it can taint an entire mission or project. The least glimmer of hope can make any little effort shine. Our perceptions, for better or worse, alter our sense of reality. When I think about and pray for the Potter’s House or the Festival Center or the next use of the Wellspring property or any other part of our common life, I am amazed at how beautiful they can seem, how full of potential, AND how utterly impossible it can be to imagine them in a state of consistent wellness—depending on the lens I am looking through at the moment. So I find myself wondering about the quality of the yeast that I’m using. What subtle element are we stirring into our life together? Will it help us to rise?
Something else I notice in these parables is a reminder that when we assign value to things, we tend to get the price tags wrong. We tend to give huge worth to ultimately unimportant things and less worth to those things that do ultimately matter. We go out hunting in the wrong fields for the wrong treasure and wouldn’t know a pearl of great price from a plastic bead.
The Washington Post published a few money facts several years ago called “How Wealth Divides the World,” and even though the statistics are outdated, they still speak to this problem of confused value:
>The article in the Post said it would cost $6 billion to give everyone in the world a basic education—while we spend $8 billion to purchase cosmetics.
> Water and sanitation systems could be installed in all countries needing them for $9 billion—while we spend $11 billion annually on ice cream.
> Basic health care would cost $13 billion a year—while we spend $17 billion a year on pet food.
Would we get serious about ridding our life of things that have minimal worth if it meant it would allow all of us to have true treasure? Statistics suggest we likely would not. We’ve grown accustomed to so many imitation pearls that we can’t always discern the difference in value among them. What has real value for this time in our world’s life? Are we to help discover it, protect it, rediscover it? How will we recognize Truth? We’re going to need each other’s help if we hope to learn the difference between the imitation and the real.
Jesus taught in parables to show us that Truth will be found in ordinary places. Truth disconnected from the ordinary becomes elusive, ephemeral, conceptual. Jesus wasn’t trying to get us to expand our consciousness of concepts—just our consciousness of one another and of God’s realm right here, in our midst. Hidden in plain sight among us, the kingdom of heaven is revealed.