Jesus parables could be
difficult, even for people of the time in which he was teaching them. Their point is not told straight out, and although
in the Gospels, Jesus is pictured as interpreting them, the interpretations are
for his disciples only. Regarding this,
Jesus says in Mark "To you has been
given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes
in parables; in order that ‘they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may
indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be
forgiven.’” And on behalf of those outside, I say "ouch!" What good to "those outside"--whoever
they may be--are stories they don't get?
And certain groups of
Christians--collectively labelled "Gnostic"-- would say
"none." Outsiders, those not
*inside,* not initiated into the group cult, aren't supposed to learn from
Jesus' parables. And there are just
enough hints in the gospels and letters of Paul to keep some scholars arguing
that there was a gnostic component to Jesus’ teaching, even though it doesn't
matter much these days, because Gnosticism as a viable proposition didn't last
much longer than the 4th century CE and one of the reasons non-gnostic
Christianity prevailed is it's openness ... There is no "secret
teaching" in orthodox Christianity, no secret ladder of initiation, that
you climb in order to open up new secret knowledge. All Christian teaching--at least in Christian
scripture--is open to everyone, Jesus' saying in Mark notwithstanding.
In other words, we're supposed to understand today's parables,
but though it may not have been so may have been like falling off a log back in
the day, it can be much more difficult a task today, and the main reason is
that it is today. It's near on 2000 years since Jesus told
them, and things have changed. Cultural
references that Jesus' disciples would get right away don't mean the same to
you and me. Take the mustard seed in the
first parable: these days, we think of
mustard as something that comes in little those ubiquitous, yellow bottles . .
. today, it’s is a an important spice in many regional cuisines, and ball-parks
around the country, and grows well in temperate regions, such as Canada, India
and e United States.
But in the ancient Middle East,
it was a noxious weed. It would get into
a container of good seed, and it was so small that nobody noticed it, and when
the good seed was planted, there would come these shrubby mustard plants, competing
with the good crop for sunlight—which there certainly was a lot of—as well as water,
which in those parts, there wasn’t. So
to the farmer, the mustard plant was at best a major pest, and it could be a
real problem, reducing yield, and helping drive the farmers' family into
further and further debt to the powers that be.
What would an image be that would
have a similar impact on us, the modern readers? Well, what if we replaced mustard with
another plant, say . . . dandelion? Or I
know . . . thistles, which Pam and I cleaned a boat load of from our garden is
spring . . . Let's see what that sounds like: “The kingdom of heaven is like a thistle
that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds,
but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that
the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." Well, perhaps that doesn't quite cut the . .
. thistle . . . because though thistles are annoying to us gardeners, they
hardly threaten our livelihood . . . but maybe that’s something we can work
with: the kingdom of heaven is like an
annoyance, like that neighbor who lets his dog bark all night, or those darned
kids, skateboarding all over the sidewalk . . . these aren’t bad, but let’s try
something a bit stronger . . . The kingdom of God is like the neighbor who lets
his pit bull run around the place
off-leash, and there are little kids playing.
Is that better?
Ok . . . Let's take a look at the
second parable. Jesus compares the
kingdom of God to yeast, or leaven: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a
woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” And once again, our understanding is hampered
by our time and place, by our conception of yeast as something that comes in
tidy little packets, with things like “Fleischmann's” and “rapid rise” written on
them. But in the first century, leaven
was almost universally regarded as a symbol of corruption, of impurity. After all, it was what made corpses rot and
food spoil. Jewish women would clean it
out of their houses for Passover . . . Leaven was made by setting aside a
portion of bread to spoil, and that could be a tricky thing. If it didn't spoil enough, it was worthless
as leaven; let it spoil too much, and it became poisonous, even fatal. And here Jesus is, comparing the kingdom of
Heaven, the reign of God, to something that rots, something that contaminates,
something that corrupts. Oy vey!
So these weren’t just mildly
befuddling word-puzzles to first-century Jews
. . . they were disturbing, subversive even . . . when I read these
parables I think of legions of good, first-century Jews suffering strokes . . .
and they’re told together, they’re like a one-two punch, and with that in mind,
let's step back and consider them together.
Jesus often paired similar stories so that one illuminates the other, so
that one commented upon the other. What
do they have in common? Well, they're
both absolutely unexpected, they overturn the conventions of the day . . . both compare the kingdom of God to things that
aren't well-regarded in first century society: a weeds and leaven. In addition, both act in the same way, both
make things impure, corrupt: the mustard seed renders a bag of seed impure, and
when left unchecked, whatever crop it has infested. The leaven, when placed in an unleavened
loaf, renders it impure as well. Finally, and perhaps most critically, both
operate from the inside: the yeast
inside the bag of seed or crop in the field, the leaven within the loaf or whatever
else it is spoiling.
Now. Let's take it a step further: we’ve seen what the parables compare the
kingdom of heaven to, now let’s look at the *result* of this
contamination? What does it do in the parable,
and what does that mean for the world?
According to the first one, of the mustard seed, the reign of God is
like a mustard seed that grows into a shrub, and it’s is not only the greatest
of shrubs, but it becomes a tree, and
it provides shelter for all the birds of the air. So the corruption that the mustard seed
represents turns out to be wonderful for the birds of air, which symbolize
God’s good creation.
The result of the leavening is a
bit harder to fathom . . . it doesn't say outright that anything good comes
from the kingdom's corruption, but we can infer from what it says. The three measures if flour, properly
leavened, is a tremendous amount, enough to feed a wedding banquet which, as we
all know, went on for days in Jewish culture.
And a very small amount of leaven would be required to do this, so in
both parables, a little dab of the kingdom will do ya’ . . . a small amount of
a this corrupting influence produces an abundance of good . . . luxuriant,
overwhelming living space for God's good creation, and a bounty of food for the
people of God who, not coincidentally, are often likened to guests at a wedding
banquet.
So. We've seen that the kingdom of Heaven--or the
kingdom of God, or the reign of God, they’re all the same thing—is both
surprising—things we think are bad produce good—and life-giving, but we haven't
talked about the common, some would say central, metaphor of corruption. The mustard seed hides in the jar of seeds,
corrupting its purity, and the leaven "hides" in the bread, changing
it from the inside. So let's
consider: normally, corruption makes a
good thing bad . . . Corrupt politicians make governments, created for the
public good, bad. Rust corrupts good, strong steel by weakening
it, making it unfit to use in building a bridge, say. Corruption, in normal usage, turns something
good . . . bad.
But here, the kingdom of Heaven
corrupts, and the outcome is good—creation
is cared for and the people of God are fed.
Like a lot of things in God’s
reign, the effects of God's
corruption are the opposite of what
they are in the mundane world. The
Apostle Paul understood something of this when he wrote that wisdom of God is
foolishness to the world, and the world’s weakness is the strength of God. The ways of the kingdom are often
fundamentally opposed to those of society.
And there's another consequence
of our metaphor: corruption changes, but
does not destroy. Mustard seeds don’t
destroy a crop, they make it less effective.
Leaven doesn't destroy the bread, it just changes it, makes it tastier (if
you're a beetle) or yuckier (if you're a person). Similarly, the kingdom of God seeks not to
destroy a fallen world, but change it, no matter how many wrong-headed
interpretations of Revelations you might have heard. The kingdom of Heaven is on earth, and what's more, it's on this earth, the very earth upon which we
now stand. It is working not destroy the
earth, not to condemn the earth, but
that through it the earth might be transformed, rehabilitated, redeemed, and renewed.
These parables tell us that God's
kingdom works from the inside, and it works by changing the form of what it is working on. And if God’s corruption transforms society
for the better, if it makes redeems it, renews it, then the society must have
started out in need of that redemption, that renewal. And in fact that was true: Ancient Palestine
was part of the Roman Empire, and injustice was rampant. The distance between the rich and the poor
gaped like the mouth of Sheol, and the dominant narrative, the story that
ordered Roman lives, was the myth of redemptive violence, taught that in the
end, violence is redemptive, that in the end, violence saves, that it's the
answer to every problem.
These parables were told in a
setting where there was a yawning gap between the richest and poorest and where
violence was as thick, and pervasive, as the air they all breathed. That was the Roman empire, with radical
inequality and violence at its core. And
don't get me wrong, I realize that there are great differences between us and
the Roman Empire and all, but doesn't that describe the United States, at least
to a certain extent? I mean, statistics
are pretty overwhelming that the middle class is going away, has been since the
eighties, and the gap between the richest and the poorest has widened
considerably over the past thirty years, and there is more and more wealth
concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
And violence is becoming increasingly pervasive as well—as we saw in a
recent Sunday School class, theologian Walter Wink has shown that the dominant
story of our culture, like that of
the Roman Empire, is the myth that violence is redemptive, that it saves, and
that in the end, it is the answer to everything.
So even though we’re not the Roman Empire, we're not the
kingdom of Heaven either, and in fact, the case can be made that we're a lot
closer to the Emperor that we are to God.
So I think there's plenty of room for Godly corruption around here,
plenty of room for that surprising, holy rot, as the kingdom bursts out here
and there, with little bits of corruption, little tiny spots, like a mustard
seed or microscopic bacteria, and spreads, transforming our society with
celestial corruption and heavenly blight. Look for it, find it, and nurture it in our
daily lives, and we will be co-conspirators, co-corruptors with God, hastening
the coming of the Kingdom on Earth. Amen.
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