(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on March 17, 2019, Second Sunday of Lent)
Not Be Forgiven?
Why does Jesus tell
parables? Why does he teach using
these short stories, these puzzles for the heart?
Our scripture appears to offer
one explanation, but it’s one that I’ve never understood. “For those outside,” Jesus says, “everything
comes in parables” (4:11). And
then the passage continues, citing the prophet Isaiah in an apparent
justification for these puzzles: “in order that they may indeed look, but not
perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn
again and be forgiven” (4:12).
So that they may not be
forgiven? Jesus tells parables so
that those on the outside will not be forgiven? This is troubling to me for two reasons. First, I am troubled that Jesus would
wish for some people not to be forgiven.
Second, and to make matters worse, I would appear to be on the
outside. Jesus has just given “the
secret of the kingdom of God” to his disciples, but I never get to hear what
that secret is. The gospel of Mark
doesn’t let me eavesdrop on that conversation. So I appear to be destined for incomprehension and
unforgiveness.
Who Gets It
As I puzzled over this worrying
scenario, one thing stumped me more than anything else. Why would Jesus not want someone to be
forgiven? Since the beginning of
the gospel of Mark, the good news has always gone hand in hand with
forgiveness. When John the Baptist
prepared the way for Jesus, he proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. When Jesus began his healing ministry,
he not only healed body parts, he also healed hearts: he forgave people. (At one of our Friday Lenten coffees,
Amanda paraphrased Jesus’ forgiveness in a succinct, down-to-earth way. It is saying: “I take you as you
are.”)
This problem perplexed to the
point that I began to look for an alternative explanation. Maybe I was reading this wrong, because
everything else in the gospel would suggest that Jesus offers forgiveness for
everyone who will welcome it.
Jesus takes everyone as they are.
So I perused what biblical scholars have to say about this passage, and
here’s what I learned. That
troubling little clause at the end of Jesus’ speech, “in order that they…may
indeed listen, but not understand,” need not be read as a part of Jesus’
speech. We might read it instead
as an aside by the narrator, as an explanation of how an ancient prophecy by
Isaiah is still alive and true, because in this passage we will indeed see a
group of characters who listen but do not understand: namely, the disciples
themselves; that is, the privileged recipients of the secret of the kingdom,
the insiders par excellence!
Right after the disciples have heard the secret of the kingdom, Jesus
says to them, “Do you not understand
this parable?” In other words, the
privileged few who have the secret, the innermost of the insiders, are the very
ones who hear but don’t understand, who see but don’t perceive, who refuse to
turn around and be forgiven. Like
the rocky soil and the soil among thorns, they receive the good news but it is
choked by their ambition, it falls away when persecution arises.
But those on the outside to whom
all of this is an unexplainable mystery, somehow they get it. The blind will see it. The deaf will hear it. The untouchables will touch it.
All the Love They Could Get
If I’m being honest, I think I’m
a bit like the disciples. When I
read that they receive the secret of the kingdom and then realize that I do not have the secret, I get worried. I want to know it. I want to understand it. I want to hold it, to master it. I think the disciples were the same
way. I think they saw the secret
of the kingdom as a mystery that they could master. Later we hear them squabbling over power, about who will sit
on Jesus’ right and left hand in glory.
Later we see them dismissing children as disruptions to their
gathering. They think they’ve got
it, and others don’t.
A couple of weeks ago when we
were sharing communion with the memory care residents at Symphony Manor, a
couple of the residents didn’t quite follow the standard procedure of receiving
communion. Carol was carrying the
cup, I was carrying the bread, and the residents were invited to take communion
by intinction. When the bread and the cup got to Mr. Wright, he reached his
hand into the tray and grabbed as many cubes of bread as he could. I looked at Carol and I think I may
have rolled my eyes. Mr. Wright
was not doing it right. A few moments later, Eva, who had
already received communion once, left her seat and hunted us down and helped
herself to another piece of bread dipped in the cup. I’m not proud to admit it, but in both moments I felt a
twinge of agitation. They didn’t
get it.
But as I read today’s scripture,
I can’t help but smile. Because it
was scripture repeating itself. If
anyone got it in the scripture, you’d think it would be the disciples, whom
Jesus had just told the secret of the kingdom. But they still don’t understand. On the other hand, you have the outsiders for whom the good
news is a parable, a mystery, and they are the ones who enter into new
life. If anyone gets it in the
end, they do. And if anyone got it
at Symphony Manor, it was Mr. Wright and Eva, who took as much of the love of
God as they could get. For them,
the good news was not something to know and control, something to legislate and
set limits to, but rather something to be entered into and experienced and marveled at.
Good Soil
What is it that makes for good
soil? It is not what our world
values. Our world values
go-getters, can-doers, ambitious and competitive achievers. But Jesus compares this attitude with
thorns that choke the kingdom of its life. Our world values a sure thing, security, stability. But Jesus compares this impulse with
the rocky ground in which the kingdom cannot take root and in which it will
fall away when things become insecure.
What is it that makes for good
soil? In this passage, Jesus
doesn’t say. But I wonder if we
aren’t given examples in the blind who see, the deaf who hear, the untouchables
who are touched, the forgetful and forgotten across the street who remember
something beyond the mind’s controlling reach. Aren’t they all somehow representative of a soil that has
been broken? They’re not looking
to get ahead in life. They’re not
looking for power. They’re looking
for friendship. They’re looking
for communion. They have no
blueprint for the world, no big plans to build. They are, instead, of a more humble disposition. They are broken soil hungry for life,
receptive to the seeds of love, soil in which grows something quite splendid,
if we are to believe the gospel.
As I continue to chew on Jesus’
Sabbath example that we explored last week, his pattern of transgressing the
religious routine in order to touch the need of the world, I ponder the
possibilities for transformation.
Not us transforming the world.
But us being transformed by the needful around us. Maybe the garden plots most prepared
for God’s kingdom to take root are not in the safe spaces of our lives, but in
the broken soil. The broken soil
of our individual lives, for sure, but also the broken soil in the communities
around us. For where there is
brokenness, there is also openness—where God’s love might take root and grow
and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.
Prayer
Gardening God,
Ever-sowing your love
In our world:
Plow the surface
Of our hearts
And invite us
Into the brokenness
Of our neighbors,
That together we might bear
Your kingdom fruit,
Which is life abundant.
Amen.
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