Pentecost 3 B: Preach The Truth Slant
Dear Partner in Preaching,
What’s the difference between a fable and a parable?
I think answering this question is crucial if we are to preach this passage. You see, a fable is primarily didactic, a clever story meant to offer some insight into and instruction about life – think Aesop’s Fables for a moment. A parable, on the other hand, is intended to be disruptive, to interrupt what you thought you knew and not just teach you something but actually to confront you with a surprising and often unwanted truth.
Fables are handy when you want to give kids some good advice or teach them some moral or practical lesson. Who doesn’t remember the lesson of “The Tortoise and the Hare” (slow and steady effort pays off) or “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” (honesty is the best policy)?
Parables, on the other hand, are useful when the truth you want to share is difficult – whether difficult to hear, comprehend, or believe. I don’t know if Emily Dickinson had parables in mind when she wrote her poem on telling the truth “slant” but she just might have:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
Jesus describes the coming Kingdom of God in parables because he knows the reality it introduces is unexpected and that his hearers can’t really take it in all at once. Parables, as Eugene Peterson has said, are in this sense like narrative time bombs. You hear them – tick – wonder about them – tick – think maybe you’ve got it – tick – and then as you walk away – tick – or over the course of the next day or so – tick – and all of a sudden the truth Jesus meant to convey strikes home – boom! – almost overwhelming you with its implications or, per Dickinson, blinding you with its vision.
Jesus conveys two such truths in today’s passage, and while a few minutes of explanation about parables may be helpful to set the stage, the sermon, finally, cannot be about parables about these slanted truths Jesus tells. But here be careful: precisely because Jesus’ parables are so explosive, we tend to domesticate them in our preaching.
And so the first parable might be about the wonder of faith or the need to be ready to bring in the harvest. Or it might be about our complete inability to control the coming kingdom, to dictate whether we (and others) believe (or not). This second possibility is uncomfortable because it leaves us vulnerable. God’s kingdom comes apart from our efforts, cannot be controlled or influenced, and can only be received as a gift. In this sense, faith is apparently a lot more like falling in love than making a decision. Because kingdom-faith, like love, is something that comes from the outside and grabs hold of you, whether you want it to or not.
If this is true, then how are we to regard those who do not seem interested in our sermons, congregation, or the Kingdom of God? The members who have “fallen away,” the family members who opt to golf on Sundays, the friends or co-workers who think our attendance on Sunday is nice but seem to have no interest in why we go? Are these folks objects to be targeted, persuaded, and cajoled into faith? Or are they mysteries to be understood and loved, part of the fertile soil that God may be working apart from our efforts. And perhaps the faith we hold, the bits of the kingdom we have perceived, can only be offered with delight, no strings attached, with the same enthusiasm and generosity of a child sharing a dandelion ripe for blowing.
The second parable tells an even more difficult truth. Perhaps it is about how God can grow small things into grand ones, although that feels a bit like a fable. Or maybe, just maybe it’s really about the kingdom’s penchant for penetrating and taking over our lives, sometimes against our better judgment. Mustard, after all, was a lot less like a flowering shrub that we might plant around the edges of our property as an accent than it was an invasive weed, something you want to keep out of your garden and lawn at all costs because it runs amok easily, gets out of hand, and nearly takes over whatever ground it infests.
So also with God’s kingdom. If it were sold in a box, it would likely have a warning – “use only in moderation” or perhaps even “maybe hazardous to your health.” But that’s just it, the kingdom isn’t a commodity to be bought and sold, used diligently but carefully. It’s a new reality that invades, overturns, and eventually overcomes the old one. It’s a word of promise that creates hope and expectation, leads people to change their jobs to share it, and to leave behind their old ways to live into it. The kingdom is dangerous because you just don’t know where it will take you or what you will do when it seizes hold of you.
And those birds that are attracted to its shade? I used to assume this was simply a cute picture, a bush large enough to shelter woodland creatures. But given that in the parable Jesus told just before these two (the parable of the sower) the birds are the ones who snatch away the seed the farmer sows, I’m not so sure. These birds might be the undesirables, the folks decent people avoid, the ones we prefer to keep on the other side of our street and, preferably, outside our homes. Yet across Mark’s Gospel it just these people who flock to the kingdom Jesus proclaims.
We who have achieved a relative amount of education and position and income and status don’t like much to think about this, but the original followers of Jesus were, in the eyes of the culture, all pretty much losers – lowly fishermen, despised tax collectors, prostitutes and criminals, lowlifes loathed by the religious establishment. Maybe that’s the way the followers of Jesus have always looked to the rest of the world – those people desperate enough, lowly enough, to find hope in Jesus’ message that the kingdom.
So here’s the thing: I don’t know how these parables and this sermon will sound to the most established of our congregation. But I do know how it will sound to everyone – established or not, longtime member or first time visitor – who is struggling, who does not feel accepted, who wonders about the future, or who has experienced significant loss or rejection. Because in these parables Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom of God comes of its own…and comes for us. The Kingdom Jesus proclaims has room for everyone. It overturns the things the world has taught us are insurmountable and creates a new and open – and for this reason perhaps a tad frightening – future. This is, in short, a threatening word for any and all who believe they are “self-made” men or women, but simultaneously good news – perhaps the best news – for anyone who can admit his or her need.
Early on in Leif Enger’s wonderful book Peace Like a River
Yours in Christ,
David
I’ve been listening to a lot of my favorite band, U2 of late and as I read your words I heard echoes of many of their songs. I believe when they talk about God, they have a penchant for telling it slant. Just an observation.
I knew I wanted to preach on this text, but I wasn’t sure which direction I was going to go with it. Your words about how the Kingdom is invasive, and overcomes the old reality really hit me. And then thinking about the birds being the outcasts who can seek refuge in the Kingdom is such a great illustration.
Thank you so much for your dedication on this site!
On Pentecost Sunday I asked people to write about their hopes and/or concerns for our congregation as we begin a more intensive journey into multi cultural ministry and worship. We then prayed our thanksgiving for the Holy Spirit’s presence and continued leading. When looking at what was written there was a great deal of openness and simultaneously fear. The fear was expressed in worry about declining attendance. Many long for the days they remember of a filled sanctuary and a filled Sunday school.
As I think about these parables this week, especially the mustard seed, I am thinking about how the kingdom of God is not what we expect it to be…in the grand cathedrals and great ceremony. Of course we can experience God in these places but right now I’m thinking of the little church that is learning to be in their community in new ways, the young person who’s future is changed because of the mentoring provided by another, the woman who is experiencing conflict and finds a safe harbor in her worshipping community, or the pastor’s discretionary fund that never seems sufficient to fill all the needs that we see yet always has enough funds that no one is turned away amity handed. None of these is grand but maybe that too was a point in this parable.
Thanks for your thoughts on this passage.
David,
Parables may be a time bomb or even an slow release time capsule – both end with an AHA! Thanks for some good commentary on the disruptive nature of the Kingdom. Here is a poem for this week’s Gospel:
Pentecost III – St. Mark 4:26-34
26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32 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.”
33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
Seedy Story
Seeds not creeds or deeds,
Jesus tells tales of seeds.
‘Kingdom speak’ is the language of simile:
“The Kingdom of God is as if…”
Attention to creation
Yields revelation of God’s rule.
Seeds not creeds or deeds,
Jesus tells tales of seeds.
Scattered seed sprouts and grows
Inch by inch and row by row
And the one who scatters
Does not know.
Imagine the mustard seed
A plant that ancients call a weed
Annoying farmers and hard to tell
From the good seed that fell.
Imagine the Kingdom
Annoying all of us
Like a weed, a prickly shrub
That becomes a bush
A refuge for birds
A place for their nests
The hidden love of God
That never will rest.
Mysterious as a seed,
Persistent as a weed –
God’s loving way
Sprouts and grows.
The Kingdom comes
We do not know how
But annoyed and amazed
We furrow our brows.
Seeds not creeds or deeds,
Jesus tells tales of seeds.
Kenn Storck – June 9, 2015
Could it be … could it possibly be … that God is fed up with religion too, just like a growing number of people around the world?
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find the kingdom of God in the people and the places who are the least religious of all.
That was certainly the Gospel surprise – over and over again – when Jesus was teaching and preaching. Jesus had an amazing capacity to see the kingdom seed – the divine spark – in all kinds of people. And when he couldn’t see it, he just trusted that it was planted deep inside, somewhere, and removed the obstacles in its way, even and especially when those obstacles were religious rules and requirements! This got him in lots and lots of trouble.
The kingdom of God is known by what it produces and gives, not by what it demands and takes. Ezekiel, the psalmist, Paul, and Mark are all agree on that in our readings today. Where life flourishes in intimacy, in creativity, in hospitality, there the kingdom is, and there all kinds of people are drawn. Many of these people will not think that they are “religious.” Most of them will not think of themselves as disciples. If asked why they are so patient and kind and generous, their answer will probably not name Jesus the Christ.
The kingdom of God is in the air they breathe.
The sacred is in the way they live.
The holy is organic and innate.
And this makes all of our contrived religion(s) quite irrelevant!
Could it be that Jesus was put to death for proclaiming it to be as simple as that?
I think that we die a little bit too, every time religion is used to clip the wings of imagination, to collar the throat of creative expression, to chain the feet that ache for freedom.
Perhaps being the best humans we can be is all God has ever wanted for us – so much so that a sacred spark is planted in every soul, so much so that we are given wings of imagination with which to soar. And we winged creatures of every kind, we birds of the air of all things impossibly possible, find ourselves most at home in the tree of life – our branch of it being known as Christianity – and are called to make of it an enchanted kingdom in our songs of gratitude, in our nests of dreams, in our far-flung and generous scattering of goodwill and hope.
Imagine that.
Faith App: Be a bird of the air. Sing a song of good cheer. Scatter seeds of encouragement. Trust that your faithful actions will grow into a kingdom harvest (maybe long after you’ve flown away).
Summary of Lessons: Just as the earth produces of itself – tree from sprig, grain from seed, fruit from blossom – the kingdom of God is brought forth among God’s people in canopies of hope, branches of hospitality, and the indiscriminate scattering of abundant generosity.
OPENING LITANY (based on Psalm 92: 1-4, 12-15)
L: It is good to give thanks to the Lord!
C: To sing praise to your name, O Most High God,
L: To announce your love with melody in the morning,
C: And to hum of your faithfulness at night.
L: For you have made me so glad, O Lord!
C: Like a bird of the air, I nest in your kingdom branches and sing.
L: My ears are filled with your promises,
C: My feathers are smoothed by your blessings.
L: Nurtured by you, God, in whom there is no evil,
C: My throat fills with thanksgiving and I sing.
CONFESSION
L: Here is the new creation in Christ –
C: Two-legged creatures with wings of faith!
L: Winged creatures of all kinds we are,
C: Born of earth to soar in the holy air of what life could be.
L: Let us remember with gratitude the people who built this worship nest for us,
C: And confess the times we fail to make it a place of welcome and hospitality for all.
L: Let us sing with thanksgiving for peace makers and dream weavers,
C: And confess the times we silence their song with bullying and crowing.
L: Let us imagine the kingdom of God come here to earth,
C: And confess the times we stand in heaven’s way with stone cold hearts.
(silent reflection)
L: In our confession, we pray,
C: Most Merciful God … you provide for us a tree of life, but we flock to more impressive looking trees than the cross.
You plant in us a tiny seed of the divine, but we peck and fight over larger seeds of power and prestige.
We have fallen from the sky. We have forgotten how to sing.
Come, gather us up and set us back in the mighty branches of your forgiveness.
Here is Good News: God, steadfast in love and unfailing in mercy, welcomes you home again. Your sin has been removed and left on the ground like the unnecessary weight that it is. Look now beyond the appearance of things to see with eyes of love and to fly on wings of faith. Winged creatures, let us make our nests in the kingdom of God, giving thanks for the life and death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.
PRAYER OF THE DAY
L: We pray together,
C: O God, Tree of Life … thank you for the shelter found in your wide arms of welcome … for the fruit of your word that sustains us
… for the wind in your branches that sends our hopes and dreams soaring.
Accomplish in and through us your new creation, that we might carry your love on wings of faith, singing of your kingdom come all of our days. Amen.
COMMUNION PRAYER
L: We pray together,
C: Most Gracious God … thank you for gathering into the Christ tree all kinds of people to share this bread and wine. Send us from here knowing that we nest in the protection and strength of God, we sing of the life and love of Christ, and we soar on the wings of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
SENDING
L: Let’s soar with confidence in kingdom air,
C: Building nests on mighty branches of hope,
L: Scattering seeds of peace wherever we go,
C: Creating new songs of harmony and good cheer.
L: Go now, faith-winged creatures, to love and to serve the Lord.
C: Thanks be to God!
Awesome!
Thanks as always, David, and Sheri, this liturgy is beautiful. May we use it with permission?
Another great post, David! Your point about how we can’t control or influence the coming of the Kingdom reminded me of the prayer written by Bishop Kenneth E. Untener in memory of the holy martyr Archbishop Oscar Romero, killed at his altar for opposing evil in Salvador. Here’s the prayer for your readers who may not have seen it yet:
“It helps now and then, to step back and take the long view. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
“This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capability.
“We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
“We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
“We are prophets of a future not our own.“
Love this…thanks!
Thanks, again, Dr. Lose, for your insights. As I look back in my life I become more and more intrigued and amazed at the journey. As a struggling and depressed 19 year old of the city with no religious upbringing, I ached for connection, for purpose, for hope and relevance. My father died tragically (by his own hand or another…no one knows) in 1959. Only 36 years old who served in both WW 2 and Korea. His absence only multiplied my questions and struggle.
It was at a Luthran church in 1979 that I first experienced the universal hope for this planet and all living creatures. Indeed, it captured me and has not let me go. That experience of being captured (adopted?) by this force of Love eventually led me to get a GED, an associate degree, a bachelors degree, a master of divinity degree, 4 units of CPE and, finally, service in the military as a reserve chaplain while serving primarily small struggling churches since 1986.
Yes, I was captured by that aggressive weed indeed. And it still, years later, captures my soul and imagination through many a struggle of small church ministry, through many threats from parishioners afraid of change, afraid of the universal truth of creation, through my own doubts and fears which, at times, has encouraged me to run away and hide…as if that were possible. Yes, I have tried to run, but when I stop, I still see and feel the weeds wrapped around me. A Love of the Universe that will not let go of me or the world. This weed of love and justice cries out for compassion, doing the right thing, living into the highest bliss of our natures.
I am convinced that Jesus died, not for our sins (as if God needs blood to forgive us!), but because of our slant to fear, to be something we are not, to overwhelm with power and hostility, whether by theology and weaponry. It is, as you state so well, the explosive and repulsive nature of Jesus’ teaching and actions that got him noticed, got him followed and interrogated, and finally arrested, tortured and executed.
How the Church has survived its own power and rules over the millennia is confounding. It has gone from a kingdom of nobodies and no ones to a force of creeds, rules, orthodoxy and men (mostly) of stature and pedigree. How many times has Christendom been the place of refuge for the last, least and lost? How has Christendom transformed this world, our society, into neighborhoods of equality and fairness where God’s children have enough to eat, jobs and homes of dignity?
I dare say, the aggressive nature of God’s universal love is still very much dangerous to the 1% of the world. I want to say it takes courage to be captured by these unrelenting weeds. I don’t know if it’s courage or not. For me, it has not been a choice. Doing right by this world for the sake of all creation is the only thing that makes any sense to me. All else is commentary. Thanks again. You made me think and reflect…again.
Thank you for this testimony Brad. Your words resonate with me and touched me deeply!
thank you all for great insights, especailly Sheri, Jane
parables: are perhaps intended to be a slow release capsule.
Loved the sermon
Good work. Except Jesus hung out not with low-lifers but Tax Collectors and the sort of sinners who would gather around them – rich folk, or at least middle income collaborators for the empire, and traitors to the national security. Because it does not threaten us, we are happier seeing Jesus hang out with people without and obviously dysfunctional than we are with rich Zacchaeus and his ilk. Jesus partying with corporate henchmen turns my stomach – but there it is.