Jesus, the Parable of God

Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle I

Ex 19, 1-20; Mt 13, 10-17

The aim of the parables Jesus told was that the Good News may pierce through the sturdy fortresses our heart.

I love stories. Well, we all do, not as much for their entertainment value as for the wisdom that they convey. There are myths, legends, fables, all are devices using different methods to convey truths, be they eternal and archetypal realities, or character and virtue or wisdom and insight. Unfortunately we do not listen intently enough into these stories, so we end up giving too much importance to the accidental data than to the underlying truths, discarding all these as fiction. The aim of the accidental data was however to make them applicable to a wide range of situations and over a long period of time.

Parable as a particular type of story

What I really want to discuss here, however, is a specific genre: the parable. Here, again, we tend to dismiss parables as fictional stories. In fact we have domesticated them, so they have lost their punch. We think that they are akin to the opening story of a nervous preacher's homily, which he would have pinched from elsewhere the night before. We are all too familiar with them: we see paintings of the good shepherd with a smiling sheep (do sheep smile) on his shoulders, and of the father hugging his barefoot son. We read them to our kids before going to bed (I don't know about you but I was often subjected to this treatment in my childhood) and we produce cartoons about them. After all they are cute stories, aren't they? Not according to a particular author however, who believes that parables were more like a time-bomb. Jesus told them to shock his audience. All parables start with seamingly innocuous storylines, which enter the sclerotic hearts of his listeners, until finally reaching a climax, a truth, a realisation which cannot be refuted or denied. The listeners would then leave disconcerted and perplexed.

Why Jesus used parables

In today's Gospel, Jesus divides his listeners into two categories. The first categories are those to whom "the knowledge of the Kingdom of heaven has been granted," and which apparently consists of the "disciples [who] approached Jesus," asking him why does he "speak to the crowds in parables." These people, apparently, are able to receive the word in its pure form, as it were, not using parables. The second category consists of those who "look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand," a category which is composed of "the crowds."

Therefore Jesus's main reason for using parables is not to explain to those who cannot understand Jesus, but those who do not want to receive his word. In other words, he uses parables not like the nervous preacher who tries to attract the attention of his listeners with something that sounds familiar to them so that they may see the connection more clearly, but to educate their heart. He wants to bring about a conversion of their heart, challenge the status quo in their way of thinking and behaving. The parables that Jesus said therefore, had an impact not in their minds in that they may understand better, but in the core of their being, that they may live in a completely new way.

Take #1: God comes to his people on Mount Sinai

In the first reading we have the first instance in the entire Bible where God reveals Godself to the people. The "peals of thunder and lightening," the "very loud trumpet blast," the smoke and the fire and the trembling of the mountain are all features of apocalyptic language used as a device to evoke the glory and the otherness of God. It is also the first instance where the people are asked to "sanctify themselves" that they may be made worthy to experience God in some way, even if this experience will be, indeed, mediated. The logic here is as follows:

Human beings are often sinful and defiled
God is the completely other, detached from anything sinful (QaDoSH)
Human beings must detach themselves from anything that defiles in order to have access to this awe-some God.

Take #2: God comes to his people in the Incarnation

In the fullness of time, God pronounced a word, the Word. God recounted a parable, the Parable to humankind. Recall what a Parable is, not a story with or just one which attracts our attention, but a Parable in the fullest sense of the word, that is, a reality in our language and which breaks through and penetrates even the thickest fortified walls of our hearts and explodes right there, changing the way in which we think of ourselves and of God and others.

Now there was no need of apocalyptic language, no awe-some-ness to manifest, because God wanted to come close, so close to humankind. Humankind did not need to purify and sanctify itself to  be worthy of coming close to God, but God humbled Godself instead and came close to us that we may then be cleansed of our sin and sanctified, not by our doing, but by God's power.

Various authors, such as Eduard Schweizer and John R Donahue have put forward other arguments to suggest that Jesus is the Parable of God. The terminology might sound misleading but once we understand that parable does not refer to metaphor that its essence is its dynamic and life-changing character, then we can also appreciate better the power of the Incarnation, a time bomb which enters into our heart only to explode and bring about complete change in our heart.