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The Parable of Parables

"Sower with Setting Sun" 
by Vincent Van Gogh (Arles 1888)
from the Kröller-Müller Museum,
Otterlo, Netherlands
Had there been no such thing as Covid-19 I should have arrived in Holden Village yesterday to begin a fortnight of lecturing, this year on "Perplexing Parables." My plan had been to offer eight lectures over the course of  2 weeks looking at different parables or groups of parables, encouraging people to see them as they were originally intended, ie. as Eugene Peterson pointed out, something "subversive", sending our imaginations off in unpredictable spirals that will sometimes be unproductive, but ultimately result in miraculous harvests, rather than the simplistic "earthly story with a heavenly meaning" that sees them as little more than "sermon illustrations". As such the Parable of the Sower and his Seed, in Matthew 13: 1-9 and the subsequent "explanation" in v10-23 is widely regarded as a Parable about Parables (and frequently, in my not so humble opinion, misinterpreted) and that was where I was going to start each week, with a session I had entitled "How Not to Read Parables." And as is my wont I had planned to start every lecture with not only a reading of the text in question, but a "re-reading" of it in some form of dialogue or monologue. I hadn't gotten around to writing those, or indeed any of my lectures, but this is what had been percolating in my fevered brain for a while until I dashed this off this afternoon. If I have time on my fully fledged return to work in this "season of opening up" I will try to post other pieces associated with the lectures I would have delivered over the next two weeks.


Voice 1:    That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: 

Voice 2:    A farmer went out to sow his seed.  As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

Voice 1:    Hold on, has this farmer never heard of scarecrows? And why was he not more careful about where he was scattering his seed? Why scatter some on the path?

Voice 2:    Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

Voice 1:    Again why was the farmer not more careful? And what about taking a bit of time to prepare the ground?  Break it up a bit. Dig in some manure?

Voice 2:    Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.

Voice 1:    This is getting ridiculous… What sort of a farmer is that careless? And anyway, didn’t Jesus say elsewhere about leaving wheat and weeds to grow together? THIS is what happens if you allow that…

Voice 2:    Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Voice 1:    Och wise up! Who ever heard of wheat or any other crop producing such a yield! Was this some sort of miraculous seed!? It’s well seen Jesus was a carpenter and not a farmer. There are times when I don’t know why I bother listening to him at all… I don’t see the point in half of his stories…

Voice 2:    Whoever has ears, let them hear.

Selah
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