Parabolic.

Matthew 13
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.

Leviticus, Luke, and Lahore

Leviticus 19: 18: Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself...

Luke 10: 26] He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
[27] And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
[28] And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
[29] But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?

When I thought of this post before the events of the day, I had imagined it would focus on something interesting and random like the Old Testament's ideas on the birth of language, possibly the Garden of Eden, but never something so simple and Samaritan as the figure of the neighbor. But today was one of those days when what is written comes to life in the strangest of settings...
One of my close friends U. and I were driving back from a weekly lunch we have with our group of girlfriends in a part of Lahore that though crammed full with elite homes has for the past few months been suffering from dug up roads and delayed construction projects. I had decided to take a trafficky but sure route home when U. suggested that I follow the road I was parked on to what seemed to be a functioning main street. I agreed without much hesitation, I mean, I've grown up in this city-- all roads lead home. To cut a long story short, the street we had decided to follow to the thoroughfare was one of those horribly broken up ones, and all too soon U., me and the car were in a man-made ditch that because of its sandy bottom basically made it impossible for the car's wheels to be even slightly effective. Great. So I open up my airconditioned windows and beckon a grubby looking cyclist and randomly figure that he'll have the solution. True to our expectations, we'd managed to attract the attention of quite a few of the men working as guards and drivers in the homes around us-- in ten minutes around twelve men were trying to pull this car out of its awful, awful, predicament.
Don't stop reading yet-- the story gets worse. So here are the two of us standing there, me dressed in my usual sleeveless outfits, wearing flashy diamond and amethyst earrings, carrying a fat purse, (U. was coming from work and hence was a little less preposterous), but no, as if that's not enough, I decide to faint, yes, FAINT, in the middle of the street (let's assume it was because the wonderful breezes of Los Angeles and the blizzards of NJ have ruined my stomach for unrelenting Punjabi heat). But I am revived by the trusty U. and am sent to the shade by these kind people and offered a glass of water and what not else. Anyway, eventually, after some 45 minutes, the car was finally lifted out of this horrible ditch and I drove us back to home.
So here we are in a Lahore that is apparently dangerous, full of random bombers, Taliban agents, and all I find is hearts full of nothing but neighbourliness. Did I mention that all the while U. and I were wondering how much cash to slip into a hand, and when the moment came it was politely refused and we were told that this is what we do for one another? (We are planning to visit our friends with tubs full of ice-cream next Saturday though!)
The figure of the neighbour, then, suddenly leapt out at me from nowhere, saved me from Lahore's crazy roads and my own blackout. But back to Leviticus and Luke: two things: what is loving one's neighbour like one loves oneself? and who exactly is a neighbour?
I like to think that you can't really love yourself unless you have loved or love someone else first. While the self is pretty awesome, I think its a hollow, directionless toy boat if it isn't weighed with love for humanity, a human, some humans, God's creation. It is the someone else whose figure lights up the self, allowing it to take a form that is beautiful, approachable, and, holdable by itself. There is nothing really without that reflected light-- kind of like the sun and the moon. This is not necessarily romantic love, of course, in fact, here it's love of a neighbour, of that random stranger who steps into your world when you're defenceless, debilitated, and of no use to him or her, and who then guides you to a safe place. In a terribly literal way.
That's the neighbour-- not the person you necessarily share a wall with, or whose loud music makes you want to scream. But here's where Leviticus makes an interesting distinction: "children of thy people" precedes the figure of the neighbour, and thus for the Israelites it would seem that they are all they have. The one people are neighbours unto themselves. That, of course, is slightly changed. I mean, am I one of the "people" who helped me today? Yeah, we're all Pakistani, but hell, these people spend their day in the blazing sun and I spend it in air-conditioned libraries, lunch places, and pretty cafes. The cost of mending the slight damage to the bumper is probably their month's salary. I shrug it off like it's nothing. My question, then, is this? Do nation and neighbour have a connection? Can there be a neighbour without a class-nation, ethnicity-nation, religious-nation? Yes, and here's where Jesus makes a cool point-- the Samaritan couldn't care less about the Levite if he tightened the definition of neighbour to mean just his people. I'm a big proponent of contemporizing the good Testaments-- so I'm going to read Leviticus as expansive. Thy people are everywhere-- because they're all people. They're the ones who forget themselves when a chance to love their neighbour appears in front of them.
Moses' law, Jesus' law, and Quranic law ("The Women," 36: Do good to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, those in need, neighbours who are near, neighbours who are strangers...) are not laws that are totally logical or make sense-- but yeah, my heart is filled with love for my neighbours whom I am convinced I have encountered in every city, town, and village that I've ever visited.