June 11, 2006
Parables
Jesus’ parables puzzled the disciples. Maybe it would have been better for them had he been more straightforward. How come you use those things, they asked, they’re all riddles to us. His answer wasn’t much help.
Here they were, charged to go out and baptise everybody who turned to them because they were so winsome and irresistible. And he answers that he used the riddles exactly so that nobody would figure them out and then expect to hit the jackpot because they had (Mt 13.10-17 more or less). Then he goes on to say that it’s not that the parables will charm you into heaven, but that unless you take the risk of opening your ears and listening for God’s sake, you’ll never get there. Music never charms the savage beast until the savage beast lets go of its savagery long enough to pay attention, or something like that which is not always all that likely.
Church conventions at their best are like parables. Of course, they’re rarely at their best, but when they are, they’re like a story with a point, not a Walt Disney allegory, but an unreasonable and altogether irrational act that doesn’t let the grace grow under its feet.
General Convention 2006 — about which the world or most Episcopalians for that matter probably couldn’t care less — has already started up in one way or another today. I’m not there yet, but will be tomorrow. I’m still recovering from all the churcher tears this morning sending off our priest of seventeen years to another cure. (The ushers handed out pocket tissue packages with the alms basons.)
Even so, GC 2006 looms for me. Maybe it’ll be a parable, even a narrative about a narrative, so we can all rejoice. Maybe it won’t. I’ll do my best to try to see it and report it that way. But it won’t make you have more faith or understanding. I’ll guarantee that. However, if you lay on it a lot of faith yourself — and prayer — this next week, you could rare back with God and help pass a miracle.