How to Become a Parable
John Shuck
First Presbyterian Church
Elizabethton, Tennessee
November 6th, 2005
Jesus said:
What does God’s imperial rule remind me of?
It is like leaven which a woman took and concealed in fifty pounds of flour
until it was all leavened.
--Luke 13:20-21
Parallels: Matthew 13:33, Thomas 96
Source: Q and Thomas
Scholars’ Version
When it is all shaken out, what do we say is life’s meaning?
What is it about? What are we about?
I am sure you have wondered that, haven’t you?
It is in the wondering that we discover.
It is possible that we may not find what we are wondering about, but if we don’t even wonder, then we get the banality we deserve.
Jesus was a wandering wonderer—a dreamer—a storyteller—a worker of words.
He left us with some very odd parables and permission to let our imaginations run wild. Our imaginations have indeed done so. Our imaginations have run so wild that we took this teller of tales and turned him into the second person of the Trinity.
But I am getting way ahead of myself.
I am interested in the historical figure of Jesus, so much as we can locate him.
I am interested in what this individual has to say about life.
It isn’t that I am not interested in what his followers had to say about him—that is the church for the most part—but I am more interested in what Jesus himself said than in what the church said about him, or said he said.
My point is that I am interested in Jesus because he had some interesting thoughts about life.
I think what he said is so interesting that it actually might make a difference as to how I live my life.
Think of those people who have said things that are so interesting that they have changed the way you live. How many people have had that power in your life?
Jesus had that power—that charisma—that wisdom—that prophetic insight.
Jesus encouraged us to wonder. He taught us to critically examine our presuppositions.
Jesus says to me in effect. Notice how I use the present tense.
(Jesus, an historical figure, says in the present to me, that is the power of this person who said things to have them still say things in the present!)
Jesus says to me, “Think about your life. Is it good? Before you answer, define good.”
Jesus, of course, never said that sentence. But he says it to me.
What Jesus said includes a string of parables, for which we do not have a context. One of things he said goes like this:
Jesus said:
What does God’s imperial rule remind me of?
It is like leaven which a woman took and concealed in fifty pounds of flour
until it was all leavened.
When I read that, this is what I hear Jesus saying:
“Shuck, think about your life. Is it good? Before you answer, define good.”
The parables of Jesus spoken over twenty centuries ago, force me in the present to think about life, my life, and whether or not my life is good. Because he shakes up my notion of what is good.
That is what parables do. They shake us up.
They invite us to think differently about life, in thinking differently, become the difference.
One of the most important books on parables and on Jesus is Robert W. Funk’s Jesus as Precursor. (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1994).
Funk compares Jesus with those whom he calls “strong poets”, one of whom is Franz Kafka. Funk quotes Kafka:
“Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says, “Go over,” he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something too that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. And these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with everyday: that is a different matter.” (p. 4)
Not everyone complains. Some people take parables, attach a moral to them, or a church dogma, or a platitude, or a helpful hint for healthy living and the work is done.
But for those who complain about parables—for those who know that the sage is not talking about morals, dogmas, platitudes or helpful hints—parables are indeed maddening. What good are they for everyday life? What is this fabulous yonder, or as Funk suggests, what is this divine domain that Jesus invites us to enter?
Kafka again:
“Concerning this a man once said: ‘Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares.’
Another said, ‘I bet that is also a parable.’
The first said, ‘You have won.’
The second said, ‘But unfortunately only in parable.’
The first said, ‘No, in reality; in parable you have lost.’” (p. 6)
Crossing over to the yonder to the divine domain is to become a parable. The second man by identifying a parable as a parable, thereby distances himself from the parable’s invitation. He settles for analysis and loses his opportunity “to divest himself of daily cares.” (Funk, p.6)
The parables of Jesus are invitations to cross over “yonder” to the “divine domain” or the “Kingdom of God” if you prefer. What is this yonder? Where is it? What is it? How do I get there? Sorry, says Jesus, I can’t be more precise. But let me tell you a parable…
What does God’s kingdom remind me of?
It is like leaven which a woman took and concealed in fifty pounds of flour
until it was all leavened.
Jesus can’t be more precise, because he can’t be more precise. We must enter the parable with all of its imprecision, uncertainty and ambiguity. But we are reluctant. Why?
Kafka one more time. This is his parable entitled “The Watchman”.
I ran past the first watchman. Then I was horrified, ran back again and said to the watchman: “I ran through here while you were looking the other way.” The watchman gazed ahead of him and said nothing. “I suppose I really oughtn’t to have done it,” I said. The watchman still said nothing. “Does your silence indicate permission to pass?...”
Funk comments on this parable of Kafka:
“It is not enough that the way is open, that an invitation has been issued, that the watchman is unseeing. The literal mind insists on permission to pass.” (p. 7)
There is no one to grant us permission, to give us a ticket, to provide us with a map. We enter the forest at its darkest. We enter where there is no path. We have been invited. We can cross over yonder to the divine domain on the parable’s terms, by becoming a parable, or we can remain safely, on this side, defined by our daily cares.
Let us visit our woman who bakes bread.
She is kneading dough near a small clay oven. Notice there is a lot of dough. Fifty pounds of flour! Enough to make so many loaves of bread that it would fill a bread truck!
The literal translation of the amount of flour is three measures or an ephah. Three measures is a lot, but there is more. There are stories that are remembered when we think of three measures of flour.
Abraham is sitting outside of his tent and he visited by Yahweh in the form of three divine beings. The divine beings are announcing that he and Sarah will conceive and have a son. He calls to his wife Sarah, to make cakes and to use three measures of flour.
Gideon is visited by an angel of Yahweh and is instructed that he will fight on Yahweh’s behalf. Gideon makes cakes for Yahweh from three measures (an ephah) of flour as a sacrifice. By the way the story tells us that the cakes are unleavened. The angel of Yahweh consumes the holy sacrifice with fire thereby accepting the offering.
One more story. Hannah after her son, Samuel, is weaned brings him along with a three-year old bull, a skin of wine, and an ephah (three measures) of flour to the priest in order to offer her son as a gift to Yahweh to serve as a priest.
In our parable, then, the three measures of flour means not only a lot of flour, but a feast for Yahweh. All of those stories come to mind in Jesus’ parable. She is preparing cakes worthy of the gods—specifically, for the Holy One of Israel.
But, there is a problem. She has concealed—that is the word—she sneaks in the flour, leaven. Leaven is corruption. Leaven is a symbol of the unholy. Listen to this from Exodus 12:15:
“Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses, for whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day shall be cut off from Israel.”
Leaven is never used positively in either Testament. In First Corinthians 5:6-8, Paul uses leaven as a metaphor for evil:
“Your boasting is not a good thing. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Leaven is a symbol for the unholy, for moral corruption, like a rotten apple that spoils the whole barrel.
What is the kingdom of God like?
It is corruption that is snuck into a holy feast until the whole feast is corrupted.
But it is also comic. Imagine the scene. A woman over her small clay oven, sneaking leaven into fifty pounds of flour. What does leaven do to flour? It makes it puffy, right?
Fifty pounds of flour, suddenly puffy! We have entered an “I Love Lucy” episode!
What does God’s Kingdom remind me of? What image shall we use to describe our great intelligent designer at work?
Think of Lucy Ricardo making a disaster in the kitchen.
That explains a lot, doesn’t it!
The kingdom of the God, the Divine Domain, is that which corrupts our pure and orderly church and turns it into comic chaos.
David Buttrick, who taught preaching at Vanderbilt, suggests that light can be shed on this parable by another statement of Jesus. Jesus is reported to have said to the religious leaders of his time:
“Tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the kingdom of God before you.” (Matthew 21:31)
That doesn’t mean of course that the religious leaders would not enter the kingdom of God, it is just that they wouldn’t get there first. And when they did cross over, they would be welcomed with open arms by the leaven of society, the unclean, the unholy, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the whomever else not considered pure enough for God.
To cross over into God’s domain, we all must become leaven.
We are invited by the great sages, like Jesus, to become a parable.
Only in parable can we cross over and be rid of our daily cares.
Rosa Parks is a person who I think became a parable.
She crossed over the day she refused to give up her seat.
In so doing, like leaven, she corrupted the entire orderly system of segregation.
The whole bus was leavened.
On that December day in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, she made a decision. She spoke about this decision in her autobiography:
People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
Rosa became a parable on that day.
Tired of the daily humiliation, she crossed over yonder into the unexpected, into the unknown, into the divine realm.
Do we dare cross over as well?