Heard, spoken, or enacted, parables confront us with a different picture
of God and a more inclusive social vision.
What follows are three little vignettes about Gandhi. But because Gandhi
is now himself an iconic metaphor, these stories can be heard as parables and not just
amusing antidotes.
When Gandhi was
studying law at the University
College of London, a white professor, whose last name was Peters, disliked him
intensely and always displayed prejudice and animosity
towards him. Also, because Gandhi never lowered his head when addressing him, as he expected....
there were always "arguments" and confrontations. One day, Mr. Peters was having lunch at the dining room of the
University, and Gandhi came along with
his tray and sat next to the professor. The professor said, "Mr. Gandhi, you do not understand. A pig and a
bird do not sit together to eat."
Gandhi looked at him as a parent would a rude child and calmly replied, "You do not worry
professor. I'll fly away," and he went and sat at another table. Mr. Peters, reddened with rage, decided to take revenge on
the next test paper, but Gandhi responded
brilliantly to all questions. Mr. Peters, unhappy and frustrated, asked him the following
question. "Mr. Gandhi, if you were walking
down the street and found a package, and within was a bag of wisdom and another bag with a lot of
money, which one would you take?" Without
hesitating, Gandhi responded,
"The one with the money, of course." Mr. Peters, smiling sarcastically said, "I, in your
place, would have taken the wisdom, don't you
think?" Gandhi shrugged indifferently and responded,
"Each one takes what he doesn't have." Mr. Peters, by this time was fit to be tied. So great was his
anger that he wrote on Gandhi's exam sheet
the word "idiot" and gave it to Gandhi. Gandhi took the exam
sheet and sat down at his desk…. A few minutes later, he got up, went to the professor and
said to him in a dignified… polite tone, "Mr. Peters, you signed the
sheet, but you did not give me
the grade."
In the New Testament Jesus’ parables attempt to convey the true nature
of a loving and benevolent God. For
Jesus’ followers throughout the ages parables expose evidence for hope,
delivering the assurance that God’s kingdom is inevitable, and at the same time,
already here. There are both stories
that we understand as parables, but there are also parabolic expressions, like
Jesus as the shepherd, or the door, or the vine, or the bread. Such expressions are not necessarily exclusive
to Christianity or found in the Bible. For instance, the
Buddha commanded his followers to “love your brother as the apple of your eye.”
Here’s another example: In midwinter, St. Francis called out to an
almond tree, “Speak to me of God!” and the tree burst into bloom. Parables call us to life, sometimes new life,
but more often, just awaken to the life that is in us. Parables instruct us to look at the world
around us as expressions, if not the very being of God. But it is more than developing new sight, it
is the redevelopment of our inner life; the transformation of our eyes that
enable us to see what is clearly present but hidden from those who are still
blind.
A gnostic gospel, the Gospel of Thomas speaks parabolically
about the kingdom in this way: Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you,
‘Look, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will get there
first. If they say, ‘It is in the sea,’
then the fish will get there first.
Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you
come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that
it is you who are the children of the living Father. But if you will not know
yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that
poverty.”
Elaine Pagels, the foremost Christian expert on the gnostic
gospels, says of these texts, “The ancient gospels tend to point beyond faith
toward a path of solitary searching to find understanding.” Parables do this. They foster a kind of
solitary searching to find understanding. Here’s another parabolic example from
Thomas: “Knock upon yourself as upon a
door, and walk upon yourself as on a straight road. For if you walk on that
path, you cannot go astray; and when you knock on that door, what you open for
yourself shall open.” And another
one: “Jesus said, ‘If you bring forth
what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
In Matthew’s gospel we hear Jesus teaching a series of
parables; different stories, but the essence of the messages are not that
dissimilar. “He put before them another
parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and
sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown
it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that birds of the air come
and make nests in its branches.” How
much more significant this tale becomes when we understand that mustard seeds
do not usually produce trees but are simply shrubs.
But they were not just any shrub, rather the most invasive and unwanted
of all weeds in the ancient world. Sometimes,
it is helpful to get at the meaning of a particular parable by way of another
parable, even from faith traditions that are not our own, like this one. “One day when he was thirty-eight years old,
the Buddha met [a king, who] said, ‘Reverend, you are young, yet people call
you ‘The Highest Enlightened One.’ There
are holy men in our country eighty and ninety years old, venerated by many
people, yet none of them claims to be the highest enlightened one. How can a
young man like you make such a claim?’ The Buddha replied, ‘You majesty,
enlightenment is not a matter of age. A
tiny spark of fire has the power to burn down a whole city. A small poisonous snake
can kill you in an instant. A baby
prince has the potentiality of a king.
And a young monk has the capacity of becoming enlightened and changing
the world.” So what do a mustard seed, a
tiny spark of fire, a small poisonous snake, a baby prince and a young monk all
have in common? Some truths are simply
universal.
One of the most well-know Buddhist monks of all time, Thich
Nhat Hanh, examines
this particular parable in his book, Living
Buddha, Living Christ, saying, “Matthew described the Kingdom of God as
being like a tiny mustard seed. It means
that the seed of the Kingdom of God is within us. If we know how to plant that seed in the
moist soil of our daily lives, it will grow and become a large bush on which
many birds can take refuge. We do not
have to die to arrive at the gates of Heaven.
In fact, we have to be truly alive.
The practice is to touch life deeply so that Kingdom of God becomes a
reality. This is not a matter of
devotion. It is a matter of practice.” But how do we practice this?
Which brings us back to parables. Parables teach us to see
the world through God’s own eyes. In other words, parables teach us
mindfulness. And the only way to be
mindful is to practice being mindful; to practice paying careful attention to
the world around us and the people and events in it. Mindfulness helps us to
see what is right before us in ways we had not seen it before. You know that you are truly practicing
mindfulness when you begin to interpret what you see and experience around you
in terms of parables. A Zen monk spoke of the practice of mindfulness in this
way, "Before I began to
practice, mountains were mountains, and rivers were rivers. During many years
of practice, mountains stopped being mountains, and rivers stopped being
rivers. Now as I understand things properly, mountains are mountains, and
rivers are rivers.”
A discipline of mindfulness trains us to pay
attention to the seemingly most mundane things in our lives. A warm bowl of soup, filled with vegetables
from your neighbor’s garden or perhaps your own is not simply something to be
devoured before moving on to more important things. I am particularly drawn to the Five
Contemplations Buddhist monks and nuns recite before each meal as an excellent
tool for developing a Christian sense of mindfulness about God’s kingdom. They
are as follows: This food is the gift of
the whole universe, the earth, the sky, and much hard work. May we live in a way that is worthy of this
food. May we transform our unskilled
states of mind, especially that of greed.
May we eat only foods that nourish us and prevent illness. May we accept this food for the realization
of the way of understanding and love.” In
this way each meal becomes an opportunity to realize how fortunate we are when
each week some forty thousand children die from starvation. Each meal becomes
an opportunity to empathize with those who are profoundly lonely, those without
family or friends to share even the occasional meal. Each meal becomes an
opportunity to develop a deep sense of gratitude for our many blessings, the
love of God, and the way in which our love of neighbor is in turn a blessing to
us.
As you wake up, you awaken to the awareness that
God created the world and that the Holy Spirit is at work all around us,
unceasing and undeterred in her greater purpose. When you see steam rising from the grass
after a summer rain, you recognize the presence of God. When you wash your
hands, you know that water is not an element for waste and misuse, but the
water itself is an integral part of the kingdom of God and it is precious. As
we share with our neighbors the bread and wine, partaking of the body and blood
of Christ, we do it in the same spirit of mindfulness, aware that we are alive,
breathing and moving, and content to dwell briefly in the present moment. Hanh describes the Eucharist as "a strong bell of mindfulness." To take in the body and blood of Christ is to
take in the sun, the clouds, the trees, the wild beasts of the plains as well
as the tiniest forms of life, the wind and the rain, and everything that is
good and orderly and made by God. To be aware of this is to have a growing
awareness of the kingdom of God. The
holy meal we share is in itself a parabolic expression of a greater truth;
reenacted each week so that we might practice seeing it for what it is; and for
seeing the one who kneels next to us for who they are. He goes on to say that the bread and wine are
not symbols. They contain the reality,
just as we do.
Can you see this?
