WINDOWS TO THE BLESSED LIFE
Matthew 13:10-15
Can a story change your life?Today I begin a new sermon series on the parables of Jesus…a series that will continue until the beginning of November. I decided to do this series because the lectionary, the set of readings assigned to be read in worship on a given Sunday, has us reading many of the familiar parables from Luke's gospel.
And today, I want to focus on the question: Why did Jesus teach in parables? I want to spend my time focusing on the forest rather than the trees today, as an introduction to this series on parables.
And, as we begin to reflect on that question--why did Jesus teach in Parables?--let's take a moment to ask the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray.
O Come Holy Spirit….Come as the fire, and burn. Come as the wind, and cleanse. Come as the light, and reveal. Come as the water, and refresh. Convict, convert and consecrate us until we are wholly yours. Amen.
I'm going to do something of a guided meditation as I begin the sermon this morning--so I'd invite you to sit back, maybe close your eyes, and engage your imagination as I ask you these questions.
I invite you to think of a time when you experienced joy. Unbridled joy--pressed down, spilling over. Take a moment and think about that. What caused it? What did it feel like? Would you call it a moment of "happiness," or was it something deeper than that? Might it even have been connected with something turbulent, life changing or even a painful circumstance of life? Was it a moment when you caught a glimpse of something bright beyond the usual cloudiness of life? If reality had "hyperlinks," was it a moment you would have liked to click on--to see where it leads to, a moment that might seem to connect you with some other realm beyond yourself…?
I think that exercise is a good place to start in imagining what it's like to live in that realm of which the parables speak, the Kingdom of God, which Jesus announced, and which during this series I will be calling "the blessed life." I believe that living in the Kingdom of God--the blessed life--has something to do with this kind of joy. Not just happiness--but a deep experience of life beyond mere sadness or happiness. And I believe the parables not only give us a window into what this life is like--they invite us to practice the kind of life that will enable us to live in it.
So, that's the first image I want you to hold up for yourself today, an image of joy. But let's for a moment explore a different image, an opposite image to that one.
It's an image that does not come from the scripture; comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. One of his most famous images, from his Republic.
It's an image of a cave. In this story, this image, people are strapped in, chained up and sitting in chairs, looking at shadows on the cave wall. There is artificial light, from a fire behind them, casting the shadows. But people think that the shadows are real, when what is real--what exists in the daylight--is above the cave. People don't realize what they are seeing is only a shadow of the real.
When Plato tells this story, he asks the question: what would happen if someone broke free of his or her chains, and ventured above the cave, and was able to see what things are really like? Plato asks what the people would do to such a person if that person returned from the realm of light--whose ideas would threaten our conventional way of living. But that's not the question I want to focus on today…if you know the answer to the question, it's a question more suitable for the season of Lent, than now. (There's a teaser for you).
But here's the question I'd really like to focus on today: what if someone came back from that realm of light above the cave, and tried to describe what that life is like--real life? How would he or she explain it to people who believe the shadows are real? How would that person pry their consciousness away from a conventional notion of what is real--and to understand, and live, into a reality that runs counter to convention?
My bet is this: such a person wouldn't write an essay or give a travelogue. Such a person wouldn't write a systematic theology or philosophy to explain such a reality.
No. He would tell stories.
The only language suitable to use in describing that realm--this other realm--is that of stories.
I want to tell you a brief story about a time when I was attending a weeklong intensive silent retreat at a Buddhist monastery. As I've said, I find hanging out with the Buddhists has made me a better Christian. And I say intense, because it was--we would get up at 4:30 in the morning, and do about three hours of meditation before breakfast; we would spend the whole day in silence and meditation. And part of the experience was the chance to talk with the teacher, the master; such a conversation is called dokusan. And I remember in that conversation with the teacher--we were talking about baseball, and religion and shooting the breeze. And we got to talking about this idea of truth. And she (it was a woman) told me this parable. She spoke about a story she'd heard of people building the most powerful supercomputer ever created, one that was able not only to mimic the power of the human brain, but surpass it; capable of answering any question. And when they'd completed the machine, they asked it the toughest question they could think of: What is the meaning of life? they asked.
The machine whirred and calculated for a while. And this was the response: that reminds me of a story….
But let's look more deeply into this idea, the idea that stories are best suited to speak of ultimate reality. Why stories? Why, if Jesus was trying to describe an ultimate reality that was being revealed through him and if Jesus was teaching an alternate way to live, very different from our conventional way of living and thinking…why did he use these pithy stories, called parables?
In the text I read earlier, Jesus' disciples ask him this very question: "Master, why do you teach in parables?" they ask. And did you remark his answer? Very odd. Basically, he says this: you--who've been following me. You're starting to get it--this mystery I'm teaching you about. To you it's been given to know the mystery of the Kingdom. Well, that's arguable, but…. But for those listening into the conversation, those outside the circle of Jesus' intimates, he says that he teaches in parables so that "Seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not understand." Isn't that odd? Jesus teaches this way in order to confuse people.
It seems counter to the gospel, doesn't it? Wouldn't Jesus want to make his message crystal clear, so that everyone who hears it would get its meaning? Why would he intentionally bring fog into the synagogue?
The biblical scholar C.H. Dodd, perhaps best known for his work on the parables, gives us what has become a classic definition of a parable; this might give us a clue as to what Jesus is up to. Dodd says that a parable is a story characterized by both vividness and strangeness "whose meaning is sufficiently in doubt as to tease the imagination into deeper thought.
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Let me repeat that, "whose meaning is sufficiently in doubt as to tease the imagination into deeper thought."The great preacher Dr. Thomas Long, in a sermon I believe I've already quoted from this pulpit…but this quote bears repeating I think…he says that "the greatest heresy in America today is not atheism. It is superficiality."
Is it possible that Jesus speaks in parables to those outside his disciples, to those stuck in living the conventional life, so as to tease our imagination into deeper thought? Into a deeper experience of life, and the joy of living?
If Jesus had written a systematic theology to make his meaning clear to everyone--nobody would get it, and we'd never have a thing called Christianity.
I hope, by the way, as we explore these stories, that you take them home and read them again and study them. Perhaps discuss them in your family. Maybe we might even be able to get a couple Bible studies together. But we ought always to resist the temptation to think or say we know definitively what they mean. Perhaps many of us have had that experience in Bible study where someone discusses one of these stories, and gives the definitive interpretation of it. And then everyone nods their head and goes on, killing the whole discussion.
Taking that position--thinking we know what they mean--shows we don't know what they mean; shows that we are staring at shadows, rather than getting a glimpse of the true light. These stories are not meant to be brought under the firm control of our human understanding; they are meant to shock us into a new way of being; they are meant to jolt us out of our superficial understanding of--and living of--life.
It is true that the fastest growing churches in America are those that are crystal clear about what they believe; where there is very little ambiguity about what those who enter its doors are expected to believe. I think the danger with that is that it can just create another set of conventions that prevent people from really examining what the gospel means, which is by nature counter to convention; it simply means running up another flag up the flagpole for us to salute.
I may be unfair in criticizing that--especially since we Presbyterians, in our tradition, have been so careful to articulate what we believe. But included in our system of belief is the idea that the Gospel, and life in the Kingdom of God, is not about agreeing on a common set of ideas about God. Rather our ideas about God should be thought of as defibrillators to shock us into a different consciousness about the mystery of life, a deeper consciousness and experience of it, that in many ways is completely backwards, and runs counter to our every day perception of life in the cave.
That, I believe, is what we shall find as we hear these stories over the coming weeks--as we peer through these windows into the blessed life Jesus inaugurated.
Where people who work one hour are paid the same as those who work eight. Stories that speak of a place where you spend your entire life savings on one little pearl…. A place where a shepherd leaves 99 sheep just to find one that is lost….A place where we see the ridiculousness of someone with a two-by-four in his eye trying to take a speck of dust out of another's. A place where a humble but determined window speaks truth to power until it yields to the inexorable demands of justice. A place where the poor end up rich, and the rich end up poor, and where money is not means to happiness, but true joy in the Kingdom of God helps us truly enjoy what money is for.
We might even see a glimpse of that backwards, upside-down reality in our news this week, as the weak shame the strong in Myanmar; as we witness those monks in scarlet red and yellow endure the suffering of violence in order to cultivate the deeper joy of a life lived in donation to others, and to the cause of justice. Somehow, in an odd way, those pictures are also a window to the Blessed Life.
I hope in the coming weeks, not only will you see through these stories glimpses of the Kingdom, and the joy of living in it; but I also hope you gain a clearer picture of the one who told the stories, who is yearning to take you there. Amen.
September 30 , 2007
Jeff Vamos
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