7/26/20 “Pullen’s Parables” by Nancy E. Petty

Matthew 13:31-33; 43-44
*Please read parables from the #ParableChallenge below the sermon!

Reading Matthew 13 is like standing at a bountiful buffet with all you favorite foods and trying to figure out where to start. For me, that means, do I start with my grandmother’s chocolate pie or Nancy Jo’s strawberry cake or Boulted Bread’s morning bun. The 13th chapter of Matthew gives not one parable of what the kingdom of heaven is like but eight – eight mind-teasing teachings on what God’s kingdom/beloved community is like. The cast of characters include a sower of seed, a woman baking bread, a fortune seeker, a merchant and a commercial fisher. The objects of the lessons utilize a mustard seed, yeast, weeds, seed, a hidden treasure, a fine pearl, and a fishing net. As I said at the beginning, where does one start?

Jesus’ parables tend to turn things upside down and sideways. They catch us by surprise, often with irony. As Emily Dickenson writes: they “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” They take an angle that is often overlooked or undervalued. Sometimes they are multi-dimensional and depending on which way you turn them they can convey different perspectives or meanings. It seems clear that Jesus meant for them to be this way – the meaning hidden deep within what on the surface looked like everyday life. It is also clear that he was speaking to the people of his day, in their context, using their ordinary lives to teach about God’s vision for God’s beloved community. And how we read them today may be very different than how his hearers heard them.

To illustrate this point, one theologian writes: we have “fallen prey to the temptation to read these parables as something like a proverb: ‘big things sometimes have small beginnings’ or ‘don’t judge something based on its size.’ Makes sense on a superficial level, as each parable talks about something small – a mustard seed or a bit of yeast – blossoming into something much grander. Until you realize, however, that neither mustard seed nor yeast was viewed positively in Jesus’ world. Mustard was a weed, dreaded by farmers the way today’s gardeners dread kudzu, crabgrass, or bindweed. It starts out small, but before long has taken over your field. Similarly, yeast was a contaminant and almost always represents the pernicious nature of sin when mentioned in the Bible. Why, then, [this theologian asks] compare the kingdom of God to a pernicious weed and pollutant?” I wonder if it’s because the listener was disoriented by this comparison to a familiar and vexing symbol, and we are more vulnerable and open when we are disoriented. “But also because both mustard seed and yeast have this way of spreading beyond anything you’d imagined, infiltrating a system and taking over a host. Might God’s kingdom be like that – far more potent than we’d imagined and ready to spread to every corner of our lives?”

Could it be, that in the 21st century, we lose some of the profound meaning of Jesus’ parables because we are reading descriptive words that come from a different culture and time and place and people? As I mentioned earlier, many of Jesus’s parables point to simple ordinary everyday things, such as a woman baking bread, a man knocking on his neighbor’s door at night, or the aftermath of a roadside mugging. Yet, these stories deal with major themes of Jesus’ life and mission. It’s not that we can’t identify with these parables – we still bake bread, knock on our neighbor’s door at night when we need something, and it may very well be that in our lifetime we come upon someone who has been harmed or hurt on the roadside. We can and do find meaning in them. And yet, our context for looking for God’s kingdom on earth in the year 2020 is very different than 1st century Palestine.

So I started thinking about how Jesus might tell these parables today. What would he point to in our everyday lives to paint a picture of God’s beloved community? What words and images and metaphors would he use to not just describe but actually evoke some aspect of God’s presence and reality in our lives today? Jesus’s parables went beyond the head (the thinking part of our faith) to the heart (the feeling and passion of our faith). So I am wondering, what parable or parables might Jesus tell us today or point to, from our 21st century lives, that would reach into the depths of our knowing and our feeling (our head and heart) and move us into the unimaginable realm of God’s love and justice – God’s kingdom now just as did those parables heard by a people long ago in a different land?

I reached out to a couple folks this week and asked them if they were asked to present a 21st century parable about God’s kingdom what would it be. The first response came back in a text message. (That within itself might be a parable.) It was the image, now seen around the world, of a woman sitting in the middle of the street naked in Portland, Oregon protesting the police killing of George Floyd as federal agents shot tear gas and rubber bullets all around her. The image of this woman in all her vulnerability emerging from a cloud of tear gas smoke is, indeed, a parable in a picture. The vulnerability of justice work. The call to live our faith with our entire bodies. The reality that standing for justice can be risky. Another, an elder who grew up on a farm, imagined the kingdom of heaven being like hearing his mother’s voice calling him home for dinner when he was a child. Hearing that loving voice from a distance calling you home to safety and care. Another person compared it to having the latest iphone with the most advanced camera and standing ready to take a picture of a hummingbird sucking the nectar of a beautiful flower but being so taken by the beauty of the hummingbird and flower that in the moment you forget to take the picture and the hummingbird flies away.

These modern day parables sparked my own imagination. I started wondering about how I might form a parable for today. I wondered about a parable of the mask. Or the parable of physical distancing during a pandemic. And what about the parable of the melting artic? Or the protest parable? Or the parable of the essential worker? What are we learning about God’s kingdom in the year of a global pandemic that has greatly disoriented our daily routines, a Black Lives Matter movement that calls for a reckoning with racial inequality, and a world increasingly devastated by poverty and a war on the poor? How is the world of the 21st century calling us to turn our thinking upside down and sideways – to be disoriented so that we see God’s presence in our everyday lives in a way that compels us to act to build God’s kingdom (God’s beloved community) here and now?

Imagine this parable. It begins, “She told them another parable: Come, everybody, for you are blessed by God, God loves you, inherit the beloved community prepared for you, for when I was hungry you fed me, when I was thirsty you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger, alone, here from a distance land and you welcomed me, when I needed something to wear you gave me clothes, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. The kingdom of heaven is like a city that had hundreds, if not thousands, of churches in it. The city was hit with a pandemic – a deadly virus – that required people to physical distance. The people could not gather in their church buildings for their worship or programs or ministries. The people were dismayed and cried out, ‘We can’t have church.’

Some religious leaders of these churches decided to have church anyway. They opened their doors, gathered in-person and the people got sick because they spread the virus among themselves. Some of those people died.

Other religious leaders and churches just shut their doors and stopped everything they were doing. Believing they could not be “the church” without coming to a building, they closed shop.

But there were a handful of church people who knew that being church wasn’t about a building. Church wasn’t about one place from which God’s love and justice and compassion flows. So they figured out safe ways to feed the hungry. They gave a refugee a place to stay. They gave of their financial resources to help people most impacted by the pandemic so they could stay in their homes and pay their utilities bills. They organized protests that were safe. They worshiped virtually even though they had some frustrating technical difficulties. They gathered in small groups on Zoom and had honest and authentic conversations about racial inequality and racism. From their homes they continued the work of environmental justice. They stay connected to one another and took care of each other as best they could. They continued to seek justice and love compassionately and walk humbly.

Then she asked, “Who was being church to the city during the pandemic and social uprising?” The church that knew church was more than everyone being in one place in one building.

My parable is not meant, nor is it, the best of parables for our times. I have a long way to go when it comes to the art of parable crafting. But I think it follows the spirit of Jesus’s parables. Mainly that God’s kingdom is found here and now when we allow our minds and hearts to be disoriented and then re-oriented to the themes of love and justice and compassion and mercy and the surprising and unimagined ways that God breaks into our lives and world. After all, those are the messages hidden in all of Jesus’s parables.

Where are the themes of Jesus’s parables hidden in our parables today? As Walter Brueggemann writes of God’s kingdom, we find it in: “a practice of neighborliness without greedy individualism; an economy of generosity without predatory parsimony; a health care system hospitality without exclusionary privilege; a criminal justice system of forgiveness without vengeful ‘law and order’; and a political order of racial justice without rank prejudice.”

So I ask: What is your parable of what the kingdom of God is like? What is Pullen’s parable of what the kingdom of God is like today? I encourage you to try your hand at the art of parable crafting. And if you take this challenge or not, know this, we are writing and living out parables every day. The question is, “Are they compelling us live and to act to build God’s kingdom here and now?”

 1. Lose, David. Parables that Do Things
 2. Ibid

#ParableChallenge

#ParableChallenge Response

In the sermon above I issued a parable challenge. I invited you to imagine how Jesus might describe the kingdom of God in the context of our 21st century lives. What from our everyday lives might he point to that would evoke images of the beloved community of God? Several of you took the challenge. I am keeping my word now and sharing your parables with the congregation. They are in the order I received them. – Nancy

Thank you to those who responded and to those who continue to help build God’s kingdom in our world today.

Parable #1: The kingdom of God is the stench of a porta-potty in a downtown of closed doors. It’s the cleaned, antibacterialization of porcelain thrones in air-conditioned churches unavailable to the huddled masses yearning to breathe free from the toxins of porta-potty blue lagoons. The kingdom of God is a perfectly pruned, mulched and fertilized Siler Garden, beauty hold the buried souls of Pullen Ancestors without a vegetable, fruit or herb in sight for the hungry seeking refuge in its lush shade. –Clinton Wright

Parable #2: The kingdom of heaven is like a four-year-old child who wants to be beside you from morning until night. The curious little eyes want to see what you’re doing and how you’re doing it; the curious little hands touch your work. You soon lose count of how many times that little voice pipes up asking you why things are as they are and what if we didn’t do things this way. –Michelle Hunter

Parable #3: Our Lord and Savior came to change the world in his time. He suffered and died as he lifted up those who were shun, exploited, sick and oppressed. He brought the messages of “Good Trouble”.

John Lewis like Martin Luther King and other notable Civil Rights Leaders, took on Racism and Economic Injustices to make changes. They to spoke “Good Trouble” and demanded new laws.

Some change came but more is needed and now our youth Black and white, in this country and all races around the world are united to the call of, “Good Trouble.” May the Holy Spirit keep the youth and all of their supporters “Eyes on the Prize as they hold on” to revise the culture that eradicates racism, social inequality and values and protects the Earth’s resources of the Beloved Community in this Century! –Janet Wise Thomas

Parable #4: Here’s a haiku – as parable in seven words – that I wrote upon encountering an old plum tree.

old plum
mere remnant of itself…
blooms

-Steve Braun

Parable #5: The Bird Feeder or Black Lives Matter

I have a bird feeder in my backyard which I fill with seeds, freeze dried mealy worms and chili powder to ward off the squirrels. Chili burns the squirrels’ mouths, but not the mouths of birds. I become very angry when a flock of blackbirds (crows?) descend on the feeder, and within a few minutes empty out the entire contents leaving nothing. Watching them completely flock around the feeder means that in a few minutes, there will be no reason for the beautiful red headed woodpeckers, the cardinals and robins to visit. Neither the black birds nor plain brown birds were what I consider beautiful birds worthy of the food I provided. Plus all you see are a feeding frenzy all over the feeder! A place at my bird feeder was not all inclusive. It was just for the birds I judged worthy because I liked the way they looked.

Working with many organizations such as the Japanese organizations, which recently held nationwide demonstrations with Native Americans, incarcerated, immigration centers and the BLM movement shows my support for ending racism and discrimination against all who believe in the superiority of White, heterosexual people.

Interesting that I never realized until today’s challenge to write a parable that I found that there isn’t a place for all at my table. –Janice Overman

Parable #6: Parable for a 21st-century nation that wants to “return to Christian values”:

I was poor, and you told me I made my own bed, now lie in it.

I had no bed, and you looked the other way and walked on.

I was homeless, and you told me to get out of your city.

I was hungry, and you told me I was a drug-addicted bum.

I was dirty and shabbily clothed, and you called me filthy and disgusting and told me to take a bath.

I was without water, and you told me to pay my water bill.

I drank contaminated water, and you told me it wasn’t your problem.

I was evicted from my rat-infested slum, and you told me I should have paid my rent on time.

I was sick and didn’t have health insurance, and you told me to get a job.

I was unemployed, and you told me to get an education.

I wanted an education, and you didn’t fund my schools.

I got a job, and you didn’t pay me enough to feed my family.

I was poor and in prison, and you said I deserved to be locked up for life; you were wealthy and in prison, and they bailed you out and got you acquitted.

I was desperately ill with addiction, and you told me I was a bad person.

I was a refugee from poverty and violence in another land, and you built a wall to keep me out.

I was a child ripped from my mother’s arms and put in a cage, and you said we shouldn’t have been here in the first place. 

I had dark skin, and you said I didn’t appreciate everything you’d already done for me.

I loved someone you didn’t approve of, and you told me I was a sinner.

I was poor, and you denied me access to birth control.

I was raped, and you said my skirt was too short.

I got pregnant and had no health care, and you told me I had to accept the consequences.

I was desperate and tried to find help, and you told me I was a sinner and a baby-killer.

I had my baby, and then you turned your back on me and weren’t pro-life anymore.

I asked for help with my children, and you told me to stop having so many babies.

I was old and weak and struggling, and you told me I should have planned better.

I was obese and in poor health, and you looked down on me and said I had no one to blame but myself.

I was disabled, and you mocked me.

I was fighting mental illness, and you told me to suck it up and snap out of it.

I was all these things, and you told me I was lazy and could rise above it all if I really wanted to. 

You told me to lift myself up by my own bootstraps. But my boots had holes in them, and there were no straps. 

You told me it was a choice.

You “othered” me.

Because Freedom. 

Because America. 

Because the Flag.

Parable #7: Parable of a First-century radical brown Middle-Eastern Jewish carpenter:

Read Matthew 25:35-40

Because “other” is Jesus.
Because “other” is all of us.

-Karen Burdette

If you would like to contribute a parable, please email it to npetty@pullen.org and news@pullen.org.