It is challenging to seek out the biases that guide our thoughts and behaviors because as the old cliches say, we can’t see the water we swim in nor the forest through the trees. Our brains often try to tell us that the way we view the world is the only way. Present in the Trinity at our creation, Jesus not only knows how our brains work, he lived as one of us and experienced this life as we do. And so he used parables to help us broaden our perspectives.
A parable is defined as a story with a moral or spiritual lesson. As Jesus used them they are so much intricately layered than that. Jesus taught with parables to provoke our imaginations and help us see what God is up to in this world. Instead of zeroing us in on a simple moral lesson, Jesus’ parables are meant to equip us to step out of the fishbowl or forest so we can begin to know ourselves authentically as God made us.
Matthew (1:10-17), Mark (Mark 4:10-12), and Luke (8:9-10) each share Jesus’ explanation for why he used parables. Jesus spoke in parables to distinguish between those who had eyes to see and those who had hardened their hearts again God’s love for all. It wasn’t to keep secrets but to speak in a way that equipped those who were willing to see their true motivations and open to the transformation of their hearts. Those who were blinded by building their own kingdoms couldn’t understand the nature of God’s Kingdom revealed in the parables.
We don’t earn our way into the Kingdom by having the proper eyes and ears. We enter the Kingdom by responding to the invitation ‘follow me’ and allowing our hearts (aka the eyes and hears that enable us to be present to the Kingdom already here) to be transformed by God as we journey together following Jesus. If we aren’t willing to be transformed we can’t see the path into the Kingdom. We can pretend and tell others we are following Jesus but in time our behaviors will reveal that we don’t have the eyes to see or hears to hear who God is and Whose we are.
In one of the few parables that are in all three of the synoptic gospels (the label for the grouping of Matthew, Mark, & Luke as distinguished from the Gospel as written by John) Jesus tells a story of a man who was a bit enthusiastic with his planting.
The seeds are going everywhere. Some seeds grow a bit but don’t thrive. Some end up in lifeless and volatile environments. Some land in a healthy situation and thrive and do what seeds are made to do, produce fruit. This is also one of the few parables Jesus explains to the disciples. Each of the three writers offers the story and Jesus’ explanation with their own nuances. Matthew writes that the seeds are the word of the Kingdom; Mark writes they are the word; Luke writes the word of God. Throughout our scriptures, the word WORD is understood to be the revealing by God of the character and purpose of God.
God, the Creator of all there is, reveals the Godself continuously in and through all that is created. When we humans have the eyes to see and ears to hear, this self-revealing God is illuminated by our lives so that others may see and hear, too. But we have to be careful not to let that go to our heads. It is God who does the revealing. Like the sower who scatters seed with the joyful energy of abundance, it is God who relentlessly seeks us to show us how to be fully human as God made us to be. We participate with God, following Jesus, shining God’s light of Love on the pathway of the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. We can’t control or coerce how others receive God.
We can do the work to build up a community where all are invited to be transformed as together we follow Jesus into the Kingdom-in-earth-as-in-heaven. As Jesus-led leaders, we know that we, too, follow. Being in a leadership role does not elevate us above anyone else nor does it mean we possess the ability to do what God does. When we accept a leadership role we also accept the responsibility and accountability to enable and equip those whom we lead to do what is their’s to do in the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven.
Does this understanding of the purpose of parables and this particular parable help you broaden your perspective? Are there thought patterns or habits of yours you are discovering that may not be congruent with following Jesus?
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 