Imagine you had hurt someone, who didn’t deserve to be offended. Say, someone who was already a loner and a bit of an outcast. Maybe you said something in the presence of friends that made someone feel alienated. Or you told a joke that reflected badly on this someone.

Then you realized your mistake and said to this someone, ” My bad. Sorry.”

And that someone said, “Yeah, it’s ok.”

But it wasn’t ok, because this hurt was one of many this someone had received over the years, and it made the someone feel  less accepted and “Less than.” It reaffirmed that this someone didn’t belong to any respectable group, but deserved to be outcast.

So what to do? You decided to put a one hundred dollar bill in an envelope and write a short note in so many words saying,”My bad,” hoping this will make up  for your mistake.

When the offended person, the someone, opens the envelope and reads the note, what will the person say? Will the hundred dollar bill make him feel more included? Will he realize that he  is accepted in the group that alienated him.? What do you think is the outcome of this story?

Now suppose this someone is black, and you were trying to make up for the history of injustice to Blacks with your gift. What will this Black man say?  What could else could he say? Thanks for thinking of me, but this doesn’t compensate for anything we have suffered in the past?

This is what I think of reparations for injustice to the Black citizens in our midst. It is an unintended insult, a futile gesture, because it uses base currency to deal with centuries of offenses. It feels too much like buying friendship, brotherhood or sisterhood. It needs some humanity to go with it, something more than, “I’m sorry.”

The gesture of humanity would be something more personally demanding. Maybe it’s working with residents to build homes in blighted neighborhoods, working side by side with the victims, one home at a time, one neighborhood at a time. Working with local churches, community groups, schools–all those who may have suffered injustice in the past. Maybe it’s a teenage drop-in center, designed by local teens.  Maybe it’s erecting a medical care complex, with a cooperatively developed plan in a segregated community. Maybe it’s redesigning a public school with a race consciousness as envisioned by a local parents association. Maybe helping to recruit young Black teachers for that school by paying them to student teach and later teaching in the district that suffers from neglect and has a burned-out faculty.  Maybe hiring teachers and construction workers from the victimized community.

These gestures cost money, yes, but they are meaningful gestures because they require sacrifice and contributions where they are needed.  Think of the large sums of money doled out by financial reparations. Think how it could be employed in projects like these. Think of the demands that put the dominant class in the role of servants, not presuming, but assuming responsibilities for injustices like red-lining, employment discrimination, neglected public housing, token reform in schools, criminal injustice. Think of adding personal investment to the impersonal funds handed over (which are like sending someone a check for their birthday).

These efforts are much harder than reparations. They demand a personal concern and investment in the offended c0mmunity.  Even the partial failure of such efforts show generosity more than a buyout. We should not be afraid to fail or imperfectly succeed.  We are still mere mortals with good intentions. It is the intention and faithful follow-through that reflect our hope to counter-act injustice. It is more than a buyout. It is a human gesture.

To paraphrase the Epistle of James: ” Funds, by themselves, if they have no works, are dead” [James 2:17 ]. The healing begins with sincerely trying to help. We must take the harder path to begin to heal hurts that persist today. Reparations, as financial gifts, are not enough.

An Extension of the “Stories that Wound; Stories that Heal”  by Brian McLaren

At the online seminar “Stories that Wound, Stories that Heal” (September 28, 2023) Brian McLaren showed the remarkable transformation of the fatal scripts of human history by the redemptive stories of Jesus.  He gave an imaginative rendition of futility in human history compared with the inverted story of faith of Jesus the Christ.

A rough summary from one of the slides in the zoom seminar:

From  . . . to

Domination to Service

Purification to Forgiveness

Revolution to Nonviolent Transformation

Isolation to Engagement

Victimization to Empowerment

Accumulation to Generosity

The six categories on the left of the equation are stories that wound, while the six stories on the right are stories that heal.  McLaren wanted to show that history was comprised of stories that oppressed and immobilized us, while Jesus taught us how to be free and hopeful.  This was a profound grounding for identifying our own faith stories of wounding and healing.

The wounding stories articulated the social dimensions of human conflict, whereas some of the healing stories reflected a psychological component. For example, “purification” as a legal restriction was compared to the more personal “forgiveness.”  “Isolation” was contrasted with the more personal “engagement.”  While all of these stories have social underpinnings, they made me wonder how psychological conflicts were pivotal in biblical stories. What about the psychological conflicts that generate our stories of wounding and healing?

Here are some preliminary examples I considered:

         From Struggle to Overcoming

           Doubt to Faith

                        Moses

                     John the Baptist

            Despair to Hope

                        Samuel

                       Mary Magdalene

             Temptation to Repentance

                          King David

                        Peter

Conformity to Integrity

                  Daniel

                Paul

The characters  are representative of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. To what extent do we learn about psychological conflict from the stories of these characters?

For example, what do we learn about doubt  and faith from the stories of Moses and John the Baptist?  In Moses’ case we learn of his feelings of inadequacy from his dialogue with the “I am” at the Burning Bush (Exodus 3), which contrast with his faith in standing up to the Pharaoh and leading his people through the Wilderness.  In the case of John the Baptist, we see his faith-inspired proclamation, “Here is the Lamb of God” (John 1:29) to his message of doubt “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:2).  John’s doubts might be attributed to his preconceptions of what a Messiah would look like compared to Jesus’ apolitical message. Such examples of “faith and doubt” show how even spiritual icons are subject to human weaknesses.

Samuel had a particularly trying role in the anointing of the first two kings of Israel. His calling as a prophet at a young age is inspiring, rich in hope.  He vacillated from hope in Saul, a man of majestic stature, to his disillusionment with Saul’s erratic behavior (” Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?”  Later “Samuel grieved over Saul” (I Samuel 15:19; 34).

We find even later Samuel almost makes the same mistake judging by stature, instead of fortitude, when God elevates David over his elder brothers. (I Samuel 16:7). Samuel’s cycle as prophet ranges from hope as  a judge of Israel to despair in Saul and the disillusionment in finding that God’s next choice is young and small. Samuel’s domestic struggles might have ended his story in despair (I Samuel 8:3).

The story of Mary Magdalene is more anecdotal. We assume a long-standing relationship with Jesus from her early introduction in Luke as a follower (“Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven spirits had gone out,” Luke 8:2). Her devotion is seen as she stands with few other followers at the cross. Then her despair when she comes mournfully to the tomb and finds it empty. Then the most plaintive words in the New Testament, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” (John 20:15). Then Jesus reveals himself to her and her joy can be seen in Jesus’ next words, “Do not hold on to me . . . “(17). We see in these few glimpses the vacillation from despair to hope in discovering Jesus is alive.

In these examples I want to show that the psychological struggle of individual human beings give voice to “Stories that Wound” and “Stories that Heal.”  Unlike the pairings McLaren offers in his paradigm, these conflicts exist within the characters, showing their human and redeemed natures, rather than the reversal of futility in historical examples by the redemptive teaching of Jesus.

At the same time I hope these illustrations show that biblical stories concern inner conflict, as well as public/ social conflict.  In fact the authors of both the Early and Latter Testaments show an atypical concern with inner drama compared with the literature of their times. The stories of Peter’s ascendance, fall, and revival as a leader in the Gospels and Acts gives an extraordinarily interior view of a biblical character.

If we consider our own faith stories, the views of biblical characters are reassuring, because we see the conflicts they undergo and overcome. Jesus provides an example of a severe struggle against temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-42), but there is no lack of examples from Moses to Paul.  We take hope in the resolving of internal struggles as with the revolution against social “wounding” conflicts with the healing teachings of Jesus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

r

Diana Butler Bass gives a needed lesson in textual criticism by explaining that parables are not puzzles to solve, but mysteries to contemplate (The Cottage, July 30, 2023). The lesson applies to poetry and most forms of figurative language. We should learn that we don’t regard texts as “closed” or susceptible to only one interpretation, but as “open,” inviting multiple interpretations.

While academically we have a need to ponder and keep questioning, psychologically we need to take something from a parable that will add to our understanding and strengthen our fortitude.  Like a mustard seed.

What does Jesus say about parables? When the disciples question him about the Parable of the Sower, he says “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?” (Mark 4:13). I discovered that only Mark reports this commentary about the nature of parables, so apparently Matthew and Luke found that addition to the story unnecessary.

If Jesus did say that the Parable of the Sower is key to understanding parables, what did he mean?  In this parable, Jesus says, the seed is the word. The word falls on different soils and each soil produces a different quality of plant. Only one soil is hospitable enough to accept the word and bear fruit, “thirty and sixty and hundredfold.”

If the word of God fails to multiply in the other soils, Jesus suggests it is because of attitudes and behaviors. In the case of abortive seeds, the soil has not produced fruit, which we understand to be actions that glorify God or that benefit our brothers and sisters.  This would be an organic notion of parables. They take root in our lives and change how we live.

Interrogating a parable only carries us so far. The academic approach may give us a humility about interpretation, that we must struggle to understand its meanings. The fruit-bearing part comes from understanding how this parable applies to our lives.  It is not necessarily the same for every person, but it requires a resolution, a settled interpretation that changes us.

So I may ask, how do I become like the “good soil”? I may reflect that I should judge my neighbor less and listen to his arguments about who deserves help in our society.  I may be used to closing my mind as soon as my neighbor starts to lecture, but I should be learning to listen with compassion. That might be my personal take-away from the Parable of the Sower.

But if I don’t try to internalize some meaning of the parable, I won’t truly benefit or be changed by it.  I should want the parable to influence my behavior, but it can’t do that if I only ponder the many possible meanings. This is the age-old tension between action and contemplation. We must allow our contemplation to change our actions or it is only academic exercise.

This is my commentary on the Parable of the Sower; I do not exclude other commentaries. I just need my meaning to internalize that will help me change my thinking or  behavior. This is what I believe Jesus means by “bearing fruit.” Without a meaning that makes me change, the reading of parables is just an academic exercise.

I am not a mathematician, but I imagine the parable mathematically to be like a “parabola,” which has the same etymology. In math, parabolas are “special U-shaped curves that form by slicing through a cone-shape.”(https://www.dictionary.com/browse/parabola). That bit of geometry is less important to me than the resulting curve, which looks like this

a parabola (1)

What interests me is that the parabola has one low point, called the “vertex.” The path down to the vertex I imagine to be the path of contemplation.  Contemplation is like the descending curve of the parabola, a descent of memory and reflection, trying to understand. At some point our contemplation arrives at a personal meaning and begins to rise up from the vertex. As you take the ascending curve of the parabola you touch some of the same vertical points as you touched on the way down. To me this represents re-thinking your life experiences.

The parabola does not necessarily have a beginning and ending, but it has a definite direction from the arc to the vertex.  In my simplistic geometry, the parabola represents the “renewing of our minds,” as Paul urges in Romans 12:2. But to renew our minds we must first settle on our interpretation of the parable, when we arrive at the vertex. Parabolic thinking!

The blessing of parables is that we can return to them at every stage of our lives and get something new. But my point here is that we have to “get something,” not only contemplate. It is not enough to wonder, we must somehow change.  The intention of the Parable of the Sower is that we learn to produce fruit by changing: our behavior and our thinking.

 

 

Crown Him the Lord of peace,
Whose power a scepter sways . . .

[Hymn: “Crown Him with Many Crowns”]

Seeing Awakening at the front end of change sounds too much like wishful thinking, like waking up each day to look at your houseplant and saying, “Grow, grow!”

Or it is like a surfer watching for the best wave possible. As much as the surfer would like to see the wave, mount the wave, and let it carry the rider to shore, there are too many waves that either dissolve in the early stage or pick the surfer up and throw the surfer off the board, as if to say, “You thought you could ride me, but I am greater than you.” (This metaphor breaks down when the incredible ones master such waves).

Or it is like a child in the back seat of a car complaining, “Are we there yet?”

Awakening is not in the anticipation, but in the reflection, the remembrance of events, thinking, How did that happen? It was amazing!. It is Jesus saying, “You will not understand now, but later you will understand.” It is time of renewal that we remember.

One prophecy I affirm from Diana Butler Bass’s Christianity After Religion is that the next Awakening will be a World Awakening. I think she has this idea from William McLoughlin. We now have the technology and urgency to create a world community, a struggle in which we may encourage each other from thousands of miles away.

If we are to have a World Awakening it must come from universal motives, not sectarian ones. I can think of two such motives:

1. Anxiety about climate change
2. Questions about gender, especially for women and people with non-binary identity.

Every human being is affected by these issues, and so we are united “…from pole to pole, that wars may cease, And all be prayer and praise. . .” (“Crown Him with Many Crowns”). This would be cause for a Fourth Awakening, where all are included, all share in hope and concern.  And the cursed social media (or some universal medium) would have to find a place where all those who sincerely grapple with these fears and hopes can share them and messages of the Spirit.

That place is not obvious at this first quarter century of the Twenty-first, so it is too early to declare a Fourth Awakening. We will have to look backwards when the Awakening is finally visible, because we will have already lived much of it.

Patience and humility is what we need to get there. Our prophecy can be a kind of impatience. It is a desire to get ahead of the Great Change.  You don’t get ahead of God, but you can recognize what God has done and say,”Incredible. Is that what we had hoped for? Was that the Awakening we expected?”

. . . His reign shall know no end,
And round His pierced feet
Fair flowers of paradise now extend
Their fragrance ever sweet.

“Crown Him With Many Crowns”