September 25, 2014
I am all too serious but not serious enough.
I am all too serious but not serious enough.
Here
is my version of a pair of parables, though I am cheating, my educated friends
tell me, every rule of modern exegesis since the Germans invented it in the
late 19th century. For example, one cannot pair a parable from Luke with one from Matthew –
they aren’t a pair; it doesn’t matter
that both occur in 18th chapters, dumb-ass. Nor can one draw no conclusions whatsoever; and that there
may be no conclusions to be drawn is not a satisfactory finding.
That
there must be proof in the pudding: Here is where, I ignorantly propose, we actually
go wrong with how we read Jesus’ parables. We come to an end of our reading and,
instead of living, even sleeping, with the story he’s told, we begin to explain
it – we exegete, we preach, we theologize, we make
a conclusion; from the delightfully, purposefully thin air of the parables, we
create structures of steel, we draw lessons of iron. Where the parables end
with only the almost inaudible pip-hiss of Jesus' closing his lips on his
laughter, we make as much moral noise as the man proclaiming his prayer in the
first of those parables here (Matthew 18).
So, when I
try to wrangle these two parables into shape, I find my hands around the neck
of no-shape at all. There are just two parables, one and then the other; then Jesus
is turning away, chuckling to himself. Also at us. There’s the lesson, if there
must be one.
c
Ted
mangles other stories from the Bible:
Genesis 16, 21 & 22 – “Abraham
& Sarah & Hagar & the Boys”-
2 Kings 18-21 - from the Baalist Bible
