Praying with the parables
We’ve been hearing a lot of parables for the past few weeks. There was the parable of the sower, who tossed seeds every which way. And there was the parable of the wheat and the tares, a story of good and evil growing side-by-side.
Today, Jesus gives us five parables in rapid succession. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. Like yeast mixed into flour. Like treasure in a field. Like a merchant searching for fine pearls. Like a fishing net thrown into the sea.
Last week and the week before, the Gospel text tried to explain the parables’ meanings. Even with those explanations given, it became clear that a parable never has just one meaning. And this week, we don’t get even that much.
***
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, Jesus says. It’s a tiny seed that grows into a great shrub where birds can make their nests.
What does that mean?
Maybe it means that God’s kingdom begins in things too small to notice. With a prayer, a kind word, a decision to forgive. And from that seed, God grows something large enough to shelter others.
But then again, last week, weeds were a problem. And mustard is a sort of weed. Maybe this parable is telling us that, like a weed, God’s kingdom spreads to places beyond the borders we might originally imagine.
***
The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman mixes into an enormous amount of flour until all of it is leavened.
Maybe this is another parable about small beginnings. A little yeast changes the whole batch. Maybe it’s telling us that God’s work can be hidden and still be real.
Or maybe we’re the yeast, and the parable is teaching us that we don’t have to transform the whole world at once. We can be faithful in the place and time where we find ourselves and trust that love and mercy will spread even from a small beginning.
***
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. A man finds the treasure, hides it again, and in his joy sells everything he has to buy the field.
Maybe the kingdom is something we stumble upon without knowing we were even looking. Suddenly, we recognize that the life God offers us is worth giving everything we have and everything we are.
Or maybe the oddness of the story is the point. A man finds treasure in someone else’s field and doesn’t tell the owner. Maybe not every character in Jesus’s parables is a role model. Maybe we’re meant to question whether God’s kingdom could ever be a thing that we own and control.
***
The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds one pearl of great value, he sells everything and buys it.
This sounds a bit like the parable of the treasure in the field, but it isn’t quite the same. The first man finds something he wasn’t looking for and keeps it secret until he can make it his own. The second has been searching all along. Maybe this is a story of how we come to God. Some are surprised by God, stumbling over treasure in a field. Others find God through long seeking.
Maybe the pearl is God’s kingdom, and following Christ means letting go of all the other things that keep us from choosing it.
Or maybe God is the merchant and we’re the pearl. Maybe the parable isn’t about how much we should be willing to give up for God, but rather about how much God has already given to seek us and bring us home.
***
And then the last parable, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, catching fish of every kind. At the end, the good are gathered and the bad are thrown out.
Maybe this is a parable about judgment, about a final sorting left only to God.
Or maybe it’s about gathering, about a net that catches fish of every kind, of more varieties than we would ever choose on our own.
***
At the end, Jesus asks his disciples, “Have you understood all this?” And with remarkable confidence, they say, “Yes.”
I don’t know that I would have said yes in their place. Because I have a few follow-up questions.
And then Jesus says one more thing, almost a parable in its own right: “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
Maybe that’s a parable about how to hear all the others. The householder doesn’t choose between the old treasure and the new. He brings out both.
I think that’s permission to acknowledge that Jesus’s parables aren’t puzzles with one correct solution. They’re places where we meet God. And what we notice in them will change from season to season.
There’s an old way of praying with scripture associated with Ignatius of Loyola. He taught people to pray by imagining themselves inside the scriptures. What does the field look like? Smell like? What sort of treasure did the man in the parable find? How much did it weigh? How long did he stand there, deciding what to do next?
We can all pray with the parables in the same way. Pick one image. Read it slowly. Then imagine yourself in the scene.
Maybe today you feel like a mustard seed, small and buried and waiting. Maybe you’re the woman with her hands in the dough, working on something that won’t become visible until time has done its work. Maybe you’re searching for something precious. Or maybe you need to hear that God is searching for you. Or maybe it’s just one of those days and you feel a bit like a fish in a net.
This doesn’t mean that a parable can mean anything we want it to mean. We read it in the company of the church, alongside the rest of scripture, and in the light of Jesus’s life. That means that we should question any interpretation that makes us less loving, less merciful, or more prone to judge our neighbors.
But we don’t need to be afraid of hearing more than one thing. As St. Paul tells us today, even when we do not know how to pray as we ought, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. A parable isn’t a problem to be solved. It’s a story to enter into, trusting that God’s Spirit will meet us there.