The Smell of God: (Class materials--Jesus' Parables about God)

 

I shared this with the kids of the Ashland Youth Collective yesterday.  We passed around pads of cotton with aromatic oils and tried to identify the scents, and then tried to use language to describe the smells.  The point was that it is hard to use language to describe some things.  Among these hard-to-describe, hard-to-encompass-with-language things is "God." 

That's why Jesus told stories to try to get at it.  Stories contain feelings and relationships, and motives, and fears.  The technical word for these is "parable," which is Greek, meaning something you throw down (balo) alongside (para) something else:  para+bole.   He says these stories are about something he calls “The Kingdom of God,” or “The Kingdom of Heaven.”   A more modern way to say this is “the Kingship of God,” or the “Reign of God.”  Perhaps for those of us who have little connection to the ancient political arrangement of absolute rulers called kings, a better way to get at what Jesus is talking about is “God fully in charge, here and now.”    Here are some of the stories (parables), eleven of them taken from the 120 or so in the New Testament.  What are the themes, the shared images that come up again and again?  From these stories can we say that God is stingy, picky, or easily upset?  Is God an accountant or a rational lawyer?  Or is God a little crazy?  Is God in charge BIG, or small, or something else?  Does God like a party?  What is the picture Jesus draws of "God in charge, right here, right now?"  

God fully in charge, here and now, is like a mustard seed sown in a field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but it grows into the greatest of shrubby weeds and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

God fully in charge, here and now, is like tiny amount of yeast that a woman takes and mixes in with 50 pounds of wheat: after a bit of mixing and waiting, the whole mass of dough is raised.

God fully in charge, here and now, is like treasure hidden in a field that peasant finds and hides, then in joy goes and sells everything he has and buys that field.

God fully in charge, here and now, is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

God fully in charge, here and now, like a net thrown into the sea that catches fish of every kind, both good and bad, and fills the net until it overflows.

God fully in charge, here and now, is like a shepherd with 100 sheep.  When one gets lost, he leaves the 99 to fend for themselves, and seeks out the lost one.  He then brings it back on his shoulders, rejoicing, and is so excited that he throws a party. 

God fully in charge, here and now, is like an eccentric woman who has 10 silver coins.  When she loses one, she lights the lamp, sweeps the house, and, when she finds it, throws a party costing more than the coin to celebrate with her friends.

God fully in charge, here and now, is like a dysfunctional family: The father dotes on his two sons too much.  The younger son crassly asks the father to give him his inheritance and then goes off and wastes it in the worst ways.  Then when he comes to himself, he thinks maybe he can come back into the family as a hired hand.  But the father, losing all self-respect, runs out to meet the son, overjoyed.  He throws a party for him, and welcomes him back into the family.  The older son is so angry with the father he won’t come into the house for the party.  “But he’s your brother too, not just my son,” says the father. 

God fully in charge, here and now, is like a garden with weeds that look like the vegetables.  If you pull up the weeds, you end up destroying the good plants.  So you have to wait until the plants are nearly grown before separating the good from the bad plants. 

God fully in charge, here and now, is like two guys who go to the Temple to pray.  One, a big-shot in the religion, prays nice and loud, “THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME SO MUCH BETTER THAN OTHER PEOPLE.”  The other one, a notorious problem case, stand off by himself and can’t even look up to heaven.  “God, I am so, so sorry for what I have done.  Please let me feel again how much you love me.”

God fully in charge, here and now, is like a farmer sowing seeds by throwing them our all over the place.  Some fall on bad soil, some on rocky, some amid the weeds, and a very few happen on good soil.  But those few produce 100 times more seed than all the seed the farmer sowed.