Welcome! The posts about ex-evangelicals and Christian nationalism last week brought many new readers to the Cottage community.
The Cottage is about smart analysis and sane faith in a time when religion seems to have gone off the rails. In these offerings, we explore the territory of head and heart in ways not typically heard in public discourse.
Three times a month midweek essays look at some issue in religion and culture. Every weekend, the Cottage sends out Sunday Musings, a reflection usually drawn from the Bible. The written posts are accompanied by a monthly Zoom gathering, recorded sermons, and occasional podcast and videos.
I’m so glad — we’re so glad — you are here! I hope you find deeper understanding and inspiration for your soul at the Cottage.
Today’s Sunday Musing is based on the lectionary reading from the Gospel of Luke.
Luke 18:9-14
Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, `God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, `God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."
As soon as I saw the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the lectionary, I immediately knew I wanted to share with you a selection from Freeing Jesus. It tells the story about how I got in trouble tweeting about this passage — and what the parables are all about. This excerpt is from “Jesus the Teacher,” one of my favorite chapters in the book.
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THE NEW TESTAMENT recounts many stories about Jesus, but it also contains many stories by Jesus. Christian Sunday school lessons are replete with them, these memorable stories about all sorts of seemingly mundane things — seeds, baking bread, lost coins, bad bosses, equal pay, lighting lamps, weddings, and parties. The stories are often like this one:
With what can we compare the kingdom of God . . . ? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. (Mark 4:30–32)
Although I cannot remember when I first heard this story, I do remember the teacher passing out tiny seeds to us. I looked at them in my palm, marveling that these small things would become large plants, so that birds would make nests in their branches. As I listened to the story, I felt surprised, sensing something just beyond my ability to name or explain. Later, I would learn the words that captured how I felt: mystery, wonder, and awe.
Jesus’s stories are called parables. They are not rules, commands, or doctrine. Instead, they are open-ended tales that invite us to struggle with their meaning, to wonder, to see the world from unexpected angles. Amy-Jill Levine says they are “mysterious,” in that parables “challenge us to look into the hidden aspects of our own values, our own lives. They bring to the surface unasked questions, and they reveal the answers we have always known, but refuse to acknowledge.” Parables are fiction, as Levine says, “short stories by Jesus,” or, as New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan puts it, “fictional events about fictional characters.”
Many Christians are under the misimpression that the parables are like Nancy Drew mysteries — that they bear one meaning, that there is a single solution to these gospel puzzles. But that’s not quite right.
During a recent fall, I preached for six weeks on the parables from the gospel of Luke and posted bits of those sermons on Twitter. Those tweets came to be the bane of my existence, especially when I tweeted about Jesus’s story of a Pharisee and a tax collector. The standard interpretation (and the one too many church people seem to think is the only legitimate one) is that Jesus criticized the Pharisee as a hypocrite and praised the tax collector as a true saint.
For years I thought the same. But when I looked at the story anew, it struck me that both Pharisee and tax collector are accepted and loved, one as a faithful believer (even if a bit obnoxious), the other as a repentant sinner. Maybe the tale of the Pharisee and tax collector was not an “either-or” choice, but a “both-and” mystery.
I learned something from that sermon, an exciting notion that challenged my understanding of piety and grace, of how God loves and whom God accepts. When I shared it on social media, however, my Twitter feed blew up. Three or four days of attacks ensued (mostly from clergy!) about how wrong I was, how the parable was as clear as a bell, how I had violated the whole of Christian tradition. “You can’t say that!” “Don’t you read the Bible?” “Block the heretic” (which is, I suppose, a bit gentler than the medieval alternative of burning heretics). And those were the nice tweets.
“Parable” comes from two Greek terms, para, meaning “to come alongside,” and ballein, meaning “to throw,” and is itself a paradoxical word. A parable is intended to be a story that comes alongside our regular understanding and, frankly, upsets it. It uses ordinary things to draw us to extraordinary ones and crafts understanding using the seen to explain the unseen. In effect, the parables are Jesus coming alongside us and ripping off our cozy theological comforters. Parables should leave us gasping, out in the doctrinal cold, and shaking with anger, awe, or surprise. Nothing is as we thought. The whole point of a parable is to disturb, disrupt, and perplex us, shaking up what we believe to be true, all without providing an easy answer or simple moral to fall back upon.
If you grew up in Sunday school, you might think you understand the parables. There is a reason for that. Teachers and preachers not only taught the parables, but they also gave students and congregants an approved interpretation, a way of understanding the story, one often passed down through generations, that we have come to accept as the only interpretation. Thus, if you are a Christian, the familiar parables you think you know are subjected to conventional interpretations, almost like a Rosetta Stone of secret knowledge: the persistent widow is always about faithfulness in prayer; parables about Pharisees are always about hypocrites; when the rich are condemned, it is always a metaphor.
Imposing interpretations on the parables is an ancient practice. Indeed, Luke employed it when he reported the original Jesus stories in his gospel. For almost every parable, Luke prefaces the story with what he wants you to think about it, he recounts the story told by Jesus, and then he finishes by restating what he (that is, Luke) thinks the story means. Throughout the gospel of Luke, the same pattern occurs: Luke, Jesus, Luke.
In other words, the parables were so upsetting and so uncontrollable that even the disciples worked to neaten them up so early audiences would understand. To experience the parable as it was first told, however, one needs to lift the frame from the story and set Jesus’s words free to do their wilding work of imagination, without the gospel writer’s editorial intrusion.
Children seem to like parables, because when we are little, we have no fixed ideas to defend. When I preached about the Pharisee and the tax collector, I asked the congregation: “Who does God love in this story?”
A little boy shouted back, “Both of them!”
“Well, you just preached my entire sermon,” I responded.
Children appreciate a great mustard tree and do not question a God who loves both Pharisee and tax collector.
But grown-ups? Not so much.
We have to explain that the mustard tree really is not the biggest tree in the world and that it is fine to exclude those we deem hypocrites. The mystery, after all, has to be solved, the puzzle unpacked, all tension resolved. We have to arrive at the right answer. The possibility of multiple meanings is hard to imagine, especially for those schooled in the notion that texts can only be interpreted in one way, usually by employing some test of source criticism or demanding submission to a particular authoritative tradition. Because pastor says.
But being one who “comes alongside” and “throws down” is a perfect description of a great mystery writer. Jesus, the teller of parables, doesn’t provide a solution. He invites us to ponder. To listen deeply and welcome the unexpected.
INSPIRATION
I’m a teller of tales, a spinner of yarns,
A weaver of dreams and a liar.
I’ll teach you some stories to tell to your friends,
While sitting at home by the fire.
You may not believe everything that I say
But there’s one thing I’ll tell you that’s true
For my stories were given as presents to me
And now they are my gifts to you.
My stories are as old as the mountains and rivers
That flow through the land they were born in
They were told in the homes of peasants in rags
And kings with fine clothes adorning.
There’s no need for silver or gold in great store
For a tale becomes richer with telling
And as long as each listener has a pair of good ears
It matters not where they are dwelling.
A story well told can lift up your hearts
And help you forget all your sorrows
It can give you the strength and the courage to stand
And face all your troubles tomorrow.
For there’s wisdom and wit, beauty and charm
There’s laughter and sometimes there’s tears
But when the story is over and the spell it is broken
You’ll find that there’s nothing to fear
— Mike Jones, from “The Storyteller”
SOUTHERN LIGHTS 2023 is back! Y’all come!
This coming January, Brian McLaren and I are hosting extraordinary guests including Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, theologian Reggie Williams, and Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio in a weekend festival of reimagining faith in words, for the world, and in context of the cosmos — poetry, theology, and science!
We’re also going to do live, on-stage podcasts with guest pod hosts Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Tripp Fuller — and great musics from the wonderful Ken Medema.
Please join us in Georgia at beautiful St. Simons Island or virtually online. CLICK HERE for info and registration!
The Cottage community is going explore GRATITUDE in a month-long series coming up in NOVEMBER. Instead of doing an Advent calendar in December as we did last year (there will still be Advent posts — just not every day), we are going to take a four-week gratitude journey including reflections from my book Grateful, gratitude prompts, some video lessons, and poetry. There’ll also be a book giveaway — two copies of Grateful each week!
Together, we’ll remind each other of a world of gifts that call forth gratitude.
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Diana, do you belong to a group of women in ministry? Do you meet and support each other? This has been missing in my life.
Hello. I was reminded of Fr. Robert F. Capon's trilogy on the parables: Kingdom, Grace, Judgement.
He was a wonderful and provocative teacher.
https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2021/12/31/preaching-the-parables-with-robert-farrar-capon/