The Gospel of St. Mark chapter four is amazing to me. Here sits a beautiful little treatise
on parables in the form of a story that is written as a kind of parable itself:
rich with symbols and veiled meaning.
This meta-parable in Mark 4 functions much like any piece of great
literature, portraying far more than a particular story set in one place and
one time. It opens a window
through which we are able to view an aspect the universal human condition, that
which is true in all places and all times.
The meta-parable opens with the words,
Again
he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around
him that he got into a boat on the sea
and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land.
“The sea” is a prominent
character in this parable.
Whenever the character of the sea makes an appearance in ancient
literature, it is of great mythic importance. And in the Jewish tradition, the sea plays a central role in
the process by which God creates and transforms the world. In modern psychological terms, the sea can
be understood to symbolize the unconscious, that place in our mind reserved for
emotions, urges, and thoughts of which we are not consciously aware. The unconscious is commonly represented
by the image of an iceberg with 90% of its mass submerged and out of sight.
St. Mark puts Jesus out in a boat
floating atop the great mythic sea talking to the crowd that remains standing
on the land. In our meta-parable,
Jesus teaches from the seat of the unconscious, from where no one is able to possess
his words with the conscious mind alone.
In St. Luke’s quite different account of this story the additional
detail is given that the people were “pressing in on him to hear the word of
God.” The crowd wants to have what
Jesus has for their own, and they want to possess it just like they possess
everything else in their lives: as a component part of their conscious
awareness, of the way that they understand the world. But the word of God that Jesus speaks will not be possessed
that way. Jesus teaches from a
boat floating out on the sea.
Our meta-parable continues with
what Jesus has to say to the crowd from his seat out in the unconscious. Mark 4, verse 2 says, “He began to
teach them many things in parables . . .” Jesus chooses to
address his landlubbing audience using the very literary form we’ve been
discussing, the parable. That’s
why I’ve titled this sermon, “The Parable Parable.” So what exactly is a parable? We’ve already established that parables are rich in symbolic
content, and that they don’t merely tell a story set in one place and one time,
but many of us have misunderstandings about what parables are and how they work. One such misunderstanding is that
parables are riddles that are to be solved by thinking really hard about
them. They are not. Another is that parables are fables used
to teach moral lessons to children in Sunday school. They aren’t that either.
A parable is a form of teaching
that uses everyday objects to open up a dialog between our unconscious and the
Holy Spirit. In the course of that
dialog, the Spirit uses things that are visible to our eyes and audible to our
ears to illumine our inner vision and speak to the ear of our heart. To try to understand a parable without
entering into a dialog with Spirit, is to “look, but not perceive,” to “listen,
but not understand,” as Jesus says in verse twelve of Mark 4.
How, then, do we enter into the
dialog? How do we allow our
unconscious to be engaged by the Holy Spirit as we listen to the parables Jesus
speaks to us from the boat? Well,
if we return to our meta-parable in Mark 4, the answer comes at the end of the
chapter, which is actually in next week’s Gospel reading. But, since I don’t preach next week,
I’ll go ahead and give it to you ahead of schedule. We enter into dialog with the Holy Spirit by stepping off of
the land and into a boat. Listen
to verses 35 and 36:
On
that day, when evening had come, he said to [his disciples], “Let us go across
to the other side. And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the
boat, just as he was (already in the boat). Other boats were with him.
Jesus says, “Let’s travel
together across the sea; let’s make our way together deep into the
unconscious.” So the disciples
join Jesus in the boat from which he was teaching, and notice the last words of
verse 36, “Other boats were with him.”
Other people had already left the land and joined him in their own
boats. We enter into dialog with
the Holy Spirit about the teachings of Jesus by getting into our own boat and
leaving the crowd behind.
I can’t tell you what your boat
looks like and how you’re supposed to get into it. The conversation is between your unconscious and the Holy
Spirit herself. I would, however,
like to share what it looks like for me, as a Benedictine, to step foot off the
shore and into my boat. Perhaps
you can hear from my experience something that will help you leave the land in
your own way.
The Benedictine tradition into
which I have been called has a really old boat that I’ve climbed into almost
every day for more than two years.
This boat has a fancy Latin name.
It’s called, lectio divina,
which means divine or sacred reading.
The practice of lectio
involves slow, meditative reading of Holy Scripture. And, as it’s been taught to me, I move in a linear fashion
through books of the Bible, two, three, six verses each day. I read these short passages out loud and
very slowly four times. After
quieting my mind, the first time I read with my feet firmly on the land. I observe the words and events, let my
thoughts arise, and let them go. I
then pause and quiet my mind again.
The second time I read the passage with my feet in the shallow
water. I listen for a word or
phrase or idea that sticks out above the others. I hold it for a moment then quiet my mind again. On the third reading, I climb aboard
the boat. I ask Jesus, my Master,
my Teacher, to show me what he has for me to see and hear in this passage, and
I ask the Holy Spirit to kindle her flame and enlighten my heart. I read and then write a brief sentence
or two in my journal about what I have been shown. At this point I am far from the shore and floating among the
deep water. After pausing again, I
ask what, in the deepest parts of my own being, in my unconscious, is in need
of divine attention and correction.
I sit and wait until a word rises within me. When it is given for me to carry, I write it in my
journal. I return to this
word several times in the course of each day.
This is what it looks like for me
to engage in dialog with Spirit about the word of God that Jesus speaks from
the boat floating on the sea. It
is my hope that you will find your way into your own boat, and that you will
brave the threatening waters that keep the crowd stuck on the land. Know that as you push off, Jesus will
be with you as your guide and teacher.
Amen.
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