Jesus, Deliciously Odd 3

March 21, 2011 By scotmcknight 15 Comments

This is the season for publishers to stun the world with the latest discoveries of Jesus, but it appears there is very little in the offing this year. But one book that is now available is Pope Benedict’s volume two about Jesus, and I really enjoyed his volume one. So: Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection.

Back now to our series: William Willimon’s book, Why Jesus?, is about Jesus. Each chapter sketches a theme about Jesus. Nothing is as “deliciously odd” (from a blurb on the back of this book by Jason Byassee) about Jesus as his parables, and Willimon is simply at his best playfully and probingly explaining those parables for us.

You can try to capture Jesus by explaining his parables, but the Jesus you capture will escape by the time you open your capturing hands. He makes some points about the method itself — this parable telling of Jesus.

Which of these statements by Willimon is your favorite? Why? And which parable does it really fit?

First, “Parables, these pithy, strange little stories from everyday life, are the most distinctive — and peculiar — aspect of the teaching of Jesus. Parables are close cousins of another distinctive literary form: the joke.”

Second, “Jesus comes across at times as this Zen-like teacher whose greatest desire is not to pass out the right answers but rather to tease and to provoke even more questions.”

Third, “These parables are like windows through which we see into the heart of God. Yet sometimes, when you gaze through a window, there is a moment when you catch the reflection of your face.”

Fourth, “Surely Jesus could have found a more effective mode of explaining his message — unless explaining of his message was not his chief goal.” [Read more...]

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Imagine a World 8

August 24, 2010 By scotmcknight 8 Comments

ImagineaWorld.jpgThe parables of Jesus summon us to the edge of the world in order to imagine a world that can only be called “kingdom.”

One scholar says Luke 7:41-43 is one of the treasured religious possessions of the Western world, while I’d say it was originally Eastern! Still, he’s onto something. It’s brief enough for me to quote in full:
7:41 ”A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed him five hundred silver coins, and the other fifty. 7:42 When they could not pay, he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” 7:43 Simon answered, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled.” Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.”

As always, context shapes intent and impact: A Pharisee is being picked out by Jesus for his unforgiving attitude toward a sinful woman who is showing extravagant love toward Jesus. Simon is cornered by the words of Jesus, but what we need to do something special: instead of pointing our finger at Simon, instead of joining in on the fun and guffaws of those around Simon (who surely must have said, “Ouch!” or something like it), we are to identify with the woman and to take pity on Simon. We are to make sure we are not like Simon. 


Imagine a world, Jesus is saying, where the religious prigs show compassion, mercy and love toward the biggest of sinners. Imagine a world where we are united by our gratitude for forgiveness instead of our triumph over those who have sinned so much.

Imagine a world, then, where the grace of forgiveness overwhelms all sins but that same forgiveness has the grace to transform us into people who, unlike Simon, welcome the sinner and take joy in the sinner’s extravagant love.

[Stories With Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus
]

Filed Under: Parables 8 Comments

Imagine a World 7

August 19, 2010 By scotmcknight 18 Comments

ImagineaWorld.jpgThe parables of Jesus summon us to the edge of the world in order to imagine a world that can only be called “kingdom.”

Parables are more than illustrations and more than stories making a point. Instead, they invite us into a storied world that has the power to transform the one who enters the storied world.
Jesus invites us to imagine a world where forgiveness shapes relationships. (Read the parable after the jump.)
Forgiveness, C.S. Lewis once observed, is a lovely idea until you have something to forgive. So true. 
But a world shaped by forgiveness is a shalom and love world. So, kingdom world. So Jesus.
The debt in this parable is incredible, so the storied world invites us to imagine a staggering story. The “king” is not a simple analogy of God. Instead, we are to enter the story to hear the whole story, to see the whole story, and to let the wholeness impact us. God stunningly forgives us of staggering debt, and God disapproves of those who fail to live out graciousness and forgiveness toward others. 
As Klyne Snodgrass puts it: “The kingdom comes with limitless grace in the midst of an evil world, but with it comes limitless demand” (72). [Stories With Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus
]
Thus forgiveness not shown is forgiveness not known (also from Klyne). 
We are called to forgive because we are called to shalom and love, and you can’t have complete shalom until you have reconciliation. Forgiveness is incredibly difficult at times, but it is always the goal of all those who follow Jesus into his imagined world of kingdom.

[Read more...]

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Imagine a World 6

August 6, 2010 By scotmcknight 9 Comments

ImagineaWorld.jpgThe parables of Jesus summon us to the edge of the world in order to imagine a world that can only be called “kingdom.” 

In this world we have stereotypes, like the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14, after the jump). In this imagined stereotyped world the Pharisee is self-righteous, hypocritical, unloving, and conscious that God is on his side. In that world, too, is the tax collector who, knowing his low status in society and his own sins of robbery, realizes his position before God and so confesses his sin. Instead of claiming his own righteousness, he longs for God to establish him as right. He sees himself as a sinner; the Pharisee sees himself as righteous.
But Jesus wants us to imagine the world where the least desirable people, those who are stereotypical sinners, repent and turn to God. A world where the most self-righteous of people are seen for what they are. 
What Jesus wants us to imagine is a world where truth about ourselves is held in the highest honor, where compassion is what matters, and where self-congratulations are abandoned.
To jolt his readers into this kind of world, Jesus uses a Flannery O’Connor-like set of bold images: the righteous man is not, the unrighteous man is. The imagined world of Jesus subverts our images of who is good — the parable is very much along the line of the Beatitudes of Jesus.

[Read more...]

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Imagine a World 5

August 4, 2010 By scotmcknight 2 Comments

ImagineaWorld.jpg Imagine a world where ultimate vindication will come, but knowing that ultimate vindication will come does not lead to passivity but to the demand for justice in prayer.

So the Parable of the Unjust Judge in Luke 18:1-8. It teaches us not so much to badger God until he gives in, but that God is just, God will bring justice, and we are to go to God in pleading for justice even now as we wait.
One of the issues this parable imagines for us is this: Does the patience of God, or the lack of justice in our world now, lead people to ignore justice issues, suppress justice issues, or go to God for justice? No one who goes to God can at the same time not be working for justice.
The major distinction between life now and life in the kingdom is that the latter is a world of pure justice and the world now one mixed up between injustice and justice. That is the condition of the world. This parable urges us to imagine a new way: a world that is marked by injustice but a people that will not stand for it and who do something about it.
And God, Jesus wants us to imagine, is not like that Unjust Judge who must be badgered and bothered in order to respond. God is good, God is just, God wants his people on his side — the side of justice. Imagine that kind of world and we will all be different. Amen?

[Read more...]

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Imagine a World 4

August 2, 2010 By scotmcknight 6 Comments

ImagineaWorld.jpgImagine a world — at Jesus’ invitation — where God is good, where God’s people come to him  with their requests, and where God responds to them. Imagine a world where God is good, where God is gracious, where God wants to respond to the needs of his people. Imagine a world where God trust God and so go to him with their needs.

The Parable of the Friend at Midnight (Luke 11:5-8; after the jump), which is sometimes read to mean that God answers in order to avoid his name being besmirched or at other times as one that teaches that persistence pays in prayers, but Klyne Snodgrass (Stories With Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus
) is not alone in showing that the crucial word (anaideia) does not mean that. The meaning of this parable does not hinge on our being like the knocker or God being like the sleeper.
Instead, this parable is about a God who is dramatically unlike that sleeper who got up only because of the prayer’s boldness. The parable doesn’t teach us to be bolder and if we are God will eventually give in; it doesn’t teach rudeness. Nor does it teach that God is like that sleeper. Instead, it is clever Jewish irony and a fortiori logic: if fathers act like this and eventually give in to rude neighbors, how much more will the good God, the Father, respond in grace. That is why the next set of teachings, which in my view function as the nimshal (the interpretation), focus on God being so much better than human fathers.
So, let us learn to re-imagine our world and learn to re-imagine it as a world shaped and governed by a good God, the Father, who loves us, who cares for us, and wants to provide for us. Let us go to that God.
What does a world look like when this parable shapes us?

[Read more...]

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Imagine a World 3

July 30, 2010 By scotmcknight 4 Comments

ImagineaWorld.jpgImagine a world where the worst of offenders or the least conforming or the most offensive — in other words, sinners — are restored to the table of fellowship.

That’s what Jesus exhorts the Pharisees and legal experts to imagine when he tells the parable of the “prodigal son” (which you can read after the jump).
Again, the Pharisees and legal experts are offended by Jesus’ behavior of welcoming tax collectors and sinners to the table. Jesus’ response is to tell stories, and by those stories he ushers everyone into a storied world — an imagined world — where a different order obtains.
In that world, Jesus says, we can imagine a man with two sons … the younger one a corrupt character who wipes out his dad’s inheritance and disrespects his father grievously and publicly, squanders it away in the Diaspora, and ends up — shockingly and comedically if not tragically — feeding pigs. But the kid comes to his senses and commits to going back home and telling his father he’s sorry and begging for mercy — just enough mercy to work on the outskirts of the estate. 
We wait for Jesus’ story of how the father responds because we know that world was not fond of rebellious wandering sons, but the father’s response mirrors Jesus’ table practices: he throws a huge party and gives the son everything and more, so much so the son gains his father’s status. 
The story’s not over because the kingdom world Jesus imagines is not ideal or perfect: we are asked to imagine what the older son’s response was. And he, like the Pharisees and legal experts, grouses over the father’s behavior. We’ve come full circle, then. 
But the father’s response, once again, surprises: instead of reprimand, the father shares his commitment, too, with the older son and reminds him in covenant language of his covenant love and faithfulness. Covenant people, he says, need to celebrate when the sinner repents and rejoins the table. 
If God welcomes them to the table, God’s people must as well!
What the Pharisees and legal experts need most is a renewed imagination, an imagination that can see what God can do in healing people. Imagine a world, Jesus wants us to see, where sinners are restored to God and to the community.

[Read more...]

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Imagine a World 2

July 28, 2010 By scotmcknight 9 Comments

ImagineaWorld.jpgImagine a world, Jesus once told his followers, where lost people get found. Jesus told three such parables, we call them the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. I want to dabble with the first two today. (You can read the texts after the jump.)

We need to begin at the beginning: 
Jesus is eating with the wrong people: tax collectors and sinners. They are as much a stereotype as the Pharisees and legal experts who are inspecting Jesus’ evening behaviors at meals.
We’ve got the Good-but-Inspected-Guy doing the merciful and forgiving thing with the wrong people and the right people fundamentally upset about what’s being done.  Welcoming sinners to table — evidently before they had committed themselves to Torah observance — was the wrong thing to do.
In that context, Jesus says a new imagination is in order. And that imagined world begins with Jesus’ behavior and is justified by his stories of a different world.
The kingdom world of Jesus is a world in which tax collectors are sinners are pursued by God — a shepherd seeking for a lost sheep, a woman scouring a home to find one lost coin — in spite of the risk and are pursued by God through great effort. In addition, when God finds such a lost person, God is overjoyed — here you can think of the amount of wine Jesus produced at the wedding at Cana — to the point that he throws a big party. When he finds the sheep he puts atop his shoulders and carries it home to safety and celebration; the woman cherishes the coin and calls her neighbors.
A theme sometimes neglected in this imagined world of Jesus: the sheep being found and the coin being found are connected to the sinners who repent. Those who show up to dinner with Jesus are accepting the invitation to turn from what they’ve done, who they are and enter knowing their encounter with Jesus means a new journey. 
Imagine that world, Jesus is saying, and you will see why I welcome tax collectors and sinners to the table. The whole parable throws the normative and conventional values of the Pharisees and scribes into kilter. They can’t imagine tax collectors and sinners being transformed. They can’t imagine a prophet defiling the table like this. They can’t imagine using a shepherd or a woman for such a profound covenant action — welcoming to the table. They can’t imagine a shepherd abandoning 99 sheep to find one [but perhaps another shepherd caring for the 99 is just not mentioned]; they can’t imagine a woman scouring a home for such small value. They can’t imagine either a shepherd or a woman throwing parties for such things.
Jesus can. Welcome to the imagined world of Jesus.
What prevents us such invitations? and even from offending similar religious sensibilities?

[Read more...]

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Imagine a World 1

July 26, 2010 By scotmcknight 19 Comments

ImagineaWorld.jpgParables sometimes get a bum rap. For too many and for too long Christians have read the parables as illustrations of propositions found more clearly in other texts. So, it is argued, Jesus gives a parable about the pearl of great price — a parable that seemingly tells his followers to give it all up for the value of that pearl. The story, so it is understood, is almost cute and surely it is clever, but if you want the real stuff, go to Luke 9:57-62 where Jesus tells people point-blank to follow him regardless of the cost.

In other word, parables are “just” stories. Just illustrations. The real stuff can be found in more didactic passages.
Not so. Not so. And this approach to parables is a serious blunder. Jesus told parable after parable, and the parables are not just illustrations. Parables are fictional stories depicting an alternative world. The essence of his parables probe into this mindset he wants from his followers: Imagine a world like this. The story, the parable, takes you into its world where you will encounter a short or a little longer sketch of a reality, of a world, of what the world could be — if people were to live like this. The parable invites you into an imagined world.
How have parables been read in your context? What has helped your understand parables the most?
In other words, perhaps the propositional statements of Jesus, like Luke 9:57-62, are the bare  bones and the parables put flesh and bones and real world life on that outlined set of statements.
Hence a new series beginning today: Imagine a world (like this). If we have eyes to see and ears to hear and a mind to imagine, when we get into the world of Jesus’ individual parables, we will be challenged to live in a world that is only beginning to come into existence in this world. That world is called “kingdom of God.”

[Read more...]

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Eugene Peterson’s Newest

October 14, 2008 By scotmcknight 21 Comments

No one writes like Eugene Peterson and, because he has translated the Bible (The Message) in its entirety, there is probably no one who can plumb the depths of the spirituality of biblical language like Peterson. That he has chosen the parables and prayers of Jesus as the space for this topic in Tell it Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in his Stories and Prayers thrills me. |inline

Filed Under: Parables 21 Comments
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