10: And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
11: He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
12: For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
13: Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
(The New Testament, King James Version)
Earlier today I read that out of all the great works of Western civilization, the Bible is the hardest to interpret. In this particular excerpt from the Gospel of Matthew, we have the problem or the key to this difficulty raised by the disciples themselves-- why is the parable the choice form of discourse, particularly in the New Testament? The speaking figure of Jesus suggests that the parable separates the men from the boys-- the disciples from the masses that have come to receive his message. I want to try and argue a kind of an opposite case, that the parable is not really created because the listeners are those who don't see while seeing, and don't understand while listening, but that the parable is in itself a kind of mystery whose seemingly opaque form ensures its longevity. In other words, the parable is a classic means of extending Jesus' message over centuries of time, rather than allowing it to possibly wilt at the mercy of a few disciples.
If Jesus initially disseminated through the parable, then this same parable flowered over twenty or so centuries, using its interpretable form to speak with changing and inconstant generations.
The figure of the disciple has due importance, but in the long term, it is the multitude whose simple memories of the parables will populate the New Testament and thus even though they're intelligence in the moment is limited, it is their continuity that colors the future of the Christian faith.
While the disciple has been "given" the mysteries of the heavens, the multitude must struggle to crack the nut. It is the continuous cracking of the nut, then, that keeps the faith going, not the one time transfer of Jesus' idea to his immediate right-hand men. This, of course, touches briefly upon the idea of religion as a living, growing entity that must constantly be reinterpreted in order to sustain its marriage with this world. Does the parable of the sower operate differently in a world where people have never sown a seed, than in the world where it's all they did? Do our generations struggle to establish that basic relationship between what is sown and what flies away? But what remains important here is that the parable has carried through for various reasons: its simplicity, its deep connection to the figure of the human, and most interestingly-- the connection of this human to the earth. The parable, then, is a very earthly thing, and about earthly people. I wonder, in ending, why the earthly is such a bad thing.
If Jesus initially disseminated through the parable, then this same parable flowered over twenty or so centuries, using its interpretable form to speak with changing and inconstant generations.
The figure of the disciple has due importance, but in the long term, it is the multitude whose simple memories of the parables will populate the New Testament and thus even though they're intelligence in the moment is limited, it is their continuity that colors the future of the Christian faith.
While the disciple has been "given" the mysteries of the heavens, the multitude must struggle to crack the nut. It is the continuous cracking of the nut, then, that keeps the faith going, not the one time transfer of Jesus' idea to his immediate right-hand men. This, of course, touches briefly upon the idea of religion as a living, growing entity that must constantly be reinterpreted in order to sustain its marriage with this world. Does the parable of the sower operate differently in a world where people have never sown a seed, than in the world where it's all they did? Do our generations struggle to establish that basic relationship between what is sown and what flies away? But what remains important here is that the parable has carried through for various reasons: its simplicity, its deep connection to the figure of the human, and most interestingly-- the connection of this human to the earth. The parable, then, is a very earthly thing, and about earthly people. I wonder, in ending, why the earthly is such a bad thing.
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