The parables in rock songs

Matthew

• The Lamp under the Bushel (5:14-15): “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (Pink Floyd)
• The Wise and Foolish Builders (7:24-27): “Shelter from the Storm” (Bob Dylan)
• New Patch on Old Cloth / New Wine in Old Wineskins (9:16-17): “Old Habits Die Hard” (Bon Jovi)
• The Strong Man (12:29): “Fun with Ropes” (The Go-Go’s)
• The Tares (13:24-30): “Farmer’s Blues” (Merle Haggard and Marty Stuart)
• The Mustard Seed (13:31-32): “Really Very Small” (Esperanza Spalding)
• The Leaven (13:33): “Rise Up” (Indigo Girls)
• The Hidden Treasure (13:44): “Give It All Up” (The Corrs)
• The Pearl (13:45-46): “You Can Get It If You Really Want” (Jimmy Cliff)
• The Net (13:47-50): “Talking Fishing Blues” (Woody Guthrie)
• The Unforgiving Servant (18:23-35): “Cold, Cold Heart” (Norah Jones)
• The Labourers in the Vineyard (20:1-16): “Best for Last” (Adele)
• The Two Sons (21:28-32): “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” (The Clash)
• The Wicked Husbandmen (21:33-41): “The Payback” (James Brown)
• The Great Banquet (22:1-14): “It’s My Party” (Lesley Gore)
• The Fig Tree (24:32-35): “Juicy” (The Notorious B.I.G.)
• The Faithful/Unfaithful Servant (24:45-51): “Wake Up Call” (Maroon 5)
• The Ten Virgins (25:1-13): “Stupid Girls” (Pink) 
• The Talents (25:14-30): “Work Me, Lord” (Janis Joplin)
• The Sheep and the Goats (25:31-46): “You Don’t Know Me” (Ray Charles)

Mark

• The Sower (4:1-9): “Fields of Gold” (Sting)
• Interpretation of the Sower (4:13-20): “Why Must I Always Explain?” (Van Morrison)
• The Seed Growing Secretly (4:26-29): “I Keep It Hid” (Alice Clark)

Luke

• The Two Debtors (7:41-43): “Bills, Bills, Bills” (Destiny’s Child)
• The Good Samaritan (10:25-37): “Walk on By” (Dionne Warwick)
• The Friend at Midnight (11:5-8): “He Woke Me Up Again” (Sufjan Stevens)
• The Rich Fool (12:16-21): “Give, Give, Give Me More, More, More” (The Wonder Stuff) 
• The Barren Fig Tree (13:6-9): “Chop ‘em Down” (Matisyahu)
• The Lost Sheep (15:1-7): “Can’t Find My Way Home” (Traffic)
• The Lost Coin (15:8-10): “The Search Is Over” (Survivor)
• The Prodigal Son (15:11-32): “Daddy Lessons” (Beyonce)
• The Unjust Steward (16:1-13): “Wise Up” (Aimee Mann) 
• The Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31): “Help!” (The Beatles)
• The Master and Servant (17:7-10): “No Thanks to You” (Emma Watson)
• The Unjust Judge (18:1-8): “Naggin’ Woman” (The Kinks)
• The Pharisee and the Tax Collector (18:9-14): “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” (The Temptations)

The Parable of the Two Good Guys

A young man who knew his Bible, could cite chapter and verse, was sent by his pastor to question this new teacher in town, name of Jesus, to see if he was “sound”. “Jesus,” the lad was told to ask, “how do I get eternal life?”

“That looks like a Bible you’ve got there, young fella” Jesus said.

Waving the black book to which Jesus had pointed, the lad declared, “Yep, it’s the inspired and inerrant Word of God, infallible and perfect in every way.”

“Sorry?” Jesus said.

“It’s the inerrant Word of God,” the lad repeated.

“Let me see,” said Jesus.

The lad handed the Bible to Jesus, who took it, opened it, shook it, smelled it, then returned it to the youngster. “Who says it’s inerrant?” he asked.

“God says,” the youngster replied.

“Where does God say that?” asked Jesus.

“In the Bible,” the youngster replied.

“But that doesn’t answer the question,” Jesus said, “it begs the question. It’s circular reasoning to say that the Bible is inerrant because in the Bible God says that the Bible is inerrant. What you claim to be true you’re assuming rather than proving. Which is a logical fallacy, which is bad apologetics, which shames our faith.”

“You what?” said the lad, completely discombobulated. “Are you trying to trick me?”

“Of course not,” said Jesus. “It’s just that you’re brandishing that book like it’s an assault weapon rather than a surgeon’s scalpel, and I suspect that you read it rather unimaginatively, one-dimensionally, as if it were a cook book rather than a love story, and listen to it as if it were a collection of notes rather than a magnificent symphony. You search it for answers, but you don’t allow it to probe you with questions. You look for closure when you should pray for critique. God certainly speaks to us through the scriptures, but interpreting the Bible is rarely a simple matter, let alone an open-and-shut case. We should expect to be surprised and disturbed, to have our fixed views challenged – and our settled selves changed.”

But the young man had that impatient, I’m-not-listening-to-a-thing-you-say look on his face. “Just answer the question,” he demanded: “How do I get eternal life?”

“Ahem,” sighed Jesus (not “Amen”). “Let’s turn to the Bible then. What do you say it says?”

“It’s obvious,” replied the youngster (rather smugly, it must be said): “You must love the Lord with all your heart and soul, mind and strength, and you must love your neighbour as yourself. Leviticus 19:18 and Deuteronomy 6:5. End of.”

“Excellent. So all you need is love,” said Jesus, pretending to be impressed and persuaded. For he suspected that the lad had an agenda, that he would try to embarrass and expose Jesus as an unreliable teacher. And Jesus was right.

“Ah,” the lad said, “but who is this neighbour I must love?” Of course he knew the answer: according to Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the neighbour is my fellow believer. But rumour had it that Jesus was mixing with all sorts, pervs and quislings and folk of other faiths, so how would he answer the question?

But Jesus didn’t answer the question, or at least he didn’t give a straight answer. Instead he told a story. “One night a man was walking to town when he was attacked by some thugs. They beat him up, took his wallet and iPhone, then ran off, leaving him half-dead. A minister happened to be walking along the same road, but when he saw the man, he checked his watch and hurried past him. A priest followed a few minutes later (he and the minister had been at a conference on theological ethics). He also saw the man, left some change, but stepped around him. Then two strangers to the area, oddly dressed, came upon the man, and when they saw the state of him they were overwhelmed with pity and compassion. They held him in their arms, stopped the bleeding, called a cab, took him to a local public house, and stayed with him all night. The next morning, they gave the landlord £100. ‘Look after him,’ they said. ‘Call a chemist and get some bandages, Savlon, and Ibuprofen. We’ll be back in a few days and reimburse you for any extra expense.’ Now,” concluded Jesus, “who were the good guys?”

The youngster was nonplussed. “The ‘good guys’? What’s that got to do with getting eternal life?”

“I’ll get to that,” Jesus replied. “But first, answer my question.”

“Well, the minister and the priest – what denominations were they?”

“Who cares?” said Jesus.

“And were they born again?”

“Does it matter?” asked Jesus

“And those two other guys – are you sure they weren’t gay?”

“And if they were?” said Jesus.

“And why didn’t they call 999 for the cops and the paramedics?” the youngster continued his third degree. “Had they been drinking? Were they on drugs? They sound like foreigners. Were they migrants, even illegals?”

“What is this, a sketch from Life of Brian?” suggested Jesus.

“And the man who was mugged – where was he going, what was he doing? It all sounds very suspicious to me.”

“I …” began Jesus, quite flabbergasted.

“And …” interrupted the youngster.

“Look,” counter-interrupted Jesus, “Leviticus and Deuteronomy don’t have the last word on defining ‘neighbour’, and eternal life isn’t a matter of your church, theology, or religious experience, nor do you ‘get’ it, you live it, starting now, with simple human decency: being truthful and thoughtful, kind and generous, acting justly, practicing mercy – and not just to your own, to fellow citizens and co-religionists, but to anyone in need, especially strangers, whatever their ethnicity, faith, or sexuality. If they’re hurting, they’re your neighbour, and if you help them, you’re their neighbour. We are called to help even those who hate us, and one day you might find someone you hate helping you. Eternal life is another life, but it’s hidden in this life.”

“Well,” harrumphed the youngster, “I’ve heard enough. You’ve said nothing about getting saved. You’re clearly unsound.” But feeling sorry for Jesus, he added, “I’ll pray for you.” Then he handed Jesus a leaflet and started to walk away.

Suddenly, however, he stopped, as if struck by lightning. But the sky was blue, though a cottony cumulus cloud had just passed the sun, which winked, flashed, then glowed benignly, like a huge egg yolk, on the two people below. The young man turned around: “I’ll think about what you said.”
Jesus waved and picked up his fishing rod.

Sliding scales: one last time on the parables

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

Picture a sort of sliding scale, from hell to heaven. On this scale let’s place some people, from very wicked people to very good people, and let’s keep it to famous – and infamous – people from modern times. Let’s start, at the bottom, with Hitler. I mean you gotta start with Hitler, right? Then let’s move on to, say, Osama bin Laden, who is kind of the personification of evil in the 21st century (so far – long way to go yet). Okay, now let’s move on to some indisputably good characters. How about Desmond Tutu or, earlier, Martin Luther King? But I guess we should remember that King was an adulterer. Mother Theresa then – there’s a saint for sure. But then remember that, in her letters, she confessed to doubting the very existence of God. Still, I guess a little atheism doesn’t stack up to the heaps and heaps of her good works.

But enough. You can argue about your own personal sliding scale of sinners and saints over lunch, but I think you get the picture: some people further away – maybe even out of sight – from being good with God, and others closer and closer.

Now picture a pub in, say, Guildford. A minister walks in with a bag full of Christian Aid envelopes. His collection has exceeded all expectations. He’s got a bruise on his left cheek. That’s because he turned it to the right cross delivered by a householder who thinks the church is full of hypocrites and he’d rather gnaw off his right arm than give to one of their bloody charities. The minister asks for a glass of mineral water. “Ice with a slice?” asks the elderly landlord. “Yes, please,” says the minister politely. “Anything to eat?” asks the landlord. “No thank you,” says the minister politely, “I’m fasting today.” He notices a collection container on the bar – two, in fact, one for the British Heart Foundation, the other for Macmillan Cancer Support. He puts a fiver in each. Then, just before he takes a sip from his mineral water, he says a little grace, in thanksgiving for the money he’s raised – and now given – for good causes. Then he takes his bag and his drink and goes to the rear of the pub to sit down. But there – there is this guy, slumped in a lounge chair, fashionably dressed but stinking of booze. The minister has seen this young man before. Yes, he lives in that huge gated house and commutes to the City. And he’s heard him bad-mouthing the Occupy Movement on a radio programme. “Merchant bankers,” thinks the minister, “what a bunch of crooks. And there he is, dead drunk on his unmerited bonuses and dodgy investments.” Then the minister hears the banker mutter something. He leans closer to hear. “What a mess I’ve made of my life! What a mess I’ve made of the lives of others! God, look what I’ve become!” And the minister thinks, “There but for the grace of God …”

The minister goes back to the bar. “Excuse me,” he says, “there’s a drunk sitting at the back. Could you get rid of him, please?” “Sorry, no,” says the landlord. “He’s my son. You can sit somewhere else – or leave.” “Well, I never!” exclaims the minister. Then he slams down his drink and leaves.

Another sliding scale of – only two – rather ordinary people this time, but one not so moral, a white collar criminal and sot, and the other a religious man living quite ethically, if a bit bad-tempered. Sort of contemporary Pharisee and tax collector, from our parable.

To make the connections you must, first, eliminate the idea that the Pharisee, or the minister, are hypocrites. Jesus says nothing about hypocrisy in the Pharisee, nor do I in the minister. The Pharisee tithes, that is, he gives a tenth of his goods for the upkeep of the Temple. By tradition there are numerous exemptions, but this Pharisee makes no exceptions, he tithes all his income. He’s a Big Giver. And his outward rectitude is matched by a spiritual discipline: he fasts. According to the Torah, fasting is required only on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Pharisees, however, chose to fast two days before, and two days after, the three major Jewish feasts, twelve days a year. But this particular Pharisee fasts two days a week, over a hundred days a year! And here, in the Temple, he gives thanks, “There but for the grace of God ...” Yes, a very religious man.

Similarly, my minister works tirelessly for Christian Aid and he gives generously to any number of charities – and I could go on to tell you about his work with the homeless and asylum seekers, and about all the church committees on which he serves, and that he’s even written a book. And his spiritual discipline is as conscientious as it gets. Here he is fasting during Christian Aid Week – in May, not during Lent. And he says a little grace even before having a drink in a pub – non-alcoholic, of course. And in the manse he’s on his knees in the study before nine, and in bed, before going to sleep, he prays for his church members and family, and for desperate situations in the world. His church adores him.

Analogously, that tax collector and my banker – they are bad dudes. Remember tax collectors in first-century Israel were Jews who worked for the Romans. They were quislings. And they were notorious big-time rip-offs, working on a franchise, owing the exchequer a flat fee while collecting from their compatriots all they can squeeze out of them. Similarly my merchant banker. He is a crook, a white-collar criminal, and he’s an alcoholic as well. Both guys are morally repugnant. But the Pharisee leaves the Temple as a son on bad terms with the God who happens to be the Father of the tax collector too, and the minister leaves the pub on bad terms with the landlord who also happens to be the father of the banker.

The Pharisee and the minister – thank God we’re not like them. “There but for the grace of God…” But oops – that’s their line! Still, modestly, humbly, we can all say that we don’t look down on people who aren’t as virtuous as we are, on a sliding scale, I mean. And we’re delighted, aren’t we, that the tax collector and the banker go home right with God? (Yeah, I know I’ve made a pub-owner a stand-in for God. In defence I’d say that that is just the kind of scandalous thing that Jesus would do.) I mean, we’re not bothered that Jesus doesn’t say anything about the tax collector repenting and turning his life around, nor I, likewise, about the banker? So imagine, if you will, going back to Temple or pub a fortnight later, and there is the tax collector again, still bleeding people dry, and there is the banker again, still wheeling and dealing and drinking 20-year-old malts, both woe-is-me-ing and trusting to mercy – and getting it. And we’re not bothered, right? Right?

Or do we not choke, morally, on the unfairness of such a scenario? Imagine it repeating itself yet again. Surely there’s got to come a time – three strikes and you’re out – when the tax collector and the banker have got to resign from their occupations, the one taking his savings to reimburse those he’s defrauded, the other sending a five-figure cheque to Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. A time when the Lord and the landlord can congratulate their children for their impressive repentance and new-found civic virtue.

But then, wasn’t it precisely their virtue and achievements that the Lord and landlord ignored in the Pharisee and the minister? Do we really want to say that, after all, it would be better if the tax collector were more like the Pharisee, the banker more like the minister? That mercy is all very well, but surely not without a little reform, and if no reform, then some divine vengeance? But if we do want to say that – and I think we all probably do, at least a bit – don’t we demonstrate that we’ve missed the point of Jesus’ parable?

The thing is, once we start sliding scales, from real bad guys right down to, well, me – and while I might not be a saint, hey, I’m not that bad a guy – which the tax collector and the banker, not making comparisons, precisely do not think, but which the Pharisee and the minister do – well, then grace has left the building. Unconditional grace. Limitless forgiveness. I know it’s foolish, crazy, certifiably insane. And I could tell you, more sensibly, that the scales of divine judgement are sliding scales, that God has only so much patience, that that the time will come when he turns nasty – Pay-Back Day when the worse-than-me will finally get what they deserve. Which the church often teaches, and it really packs them in. But not, as far as I can tell, Jesus, who died preaching to a congregation of two – one of whom heckled – and lives for everyone. Everyone. God’s scales don’t slide like ours. Jesus goes down – all the way down – and Jesus takes all of us back up with him. The self-sufficiency of religion – get over it. The all-sufficiency of grace – get used to it. That is the odd, disturbing, but very good news that we are privileged to hear again today.

Bethel URC, Swansea

12 May 2013, Easter 7 (Christian Aid Week)

The smart and the stupid

A sermon by Kim Fabricius
 

A year ago last Saturday there was a wedding at Bethel Some of you may remember it. The bride was a stunning blonde. The two bridesmaids were also rather easy on the eye. The groom was tall, dark, and handsome. And the father-in-law-to-be was a dead-ringer for George Clooney. I know – in my dreams! – because the bride was, of course – my Katie! Great wedding, great reception, great day. Katie and Paul, by the way, are still together – and just back from a fortnight in Bali and Singapore, poor kids!

We’ve just heard the story of another wedding. It used to be called the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (AV). Not anymore. Perhaps because the idea of virgins at a wedding stretches the bounds of contemporary credulity. So now we call it the parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids (NRSV), Young Women, or even Girls (REB, GNB), because they were probably teenagers.    

Let’s set the scene as Jesus paints it, with the colours of first century Palestine. We’re talking a bit of a nuptial do – and then some. The wedding feast takes place not at the local Dragon Hotel but at the home of the groom. A crowd of family, friends, and neighbours fills the house and spills into the street. Meanwhile, the groom and his best men (if you like) make their way to the bride’s house. From there the groom collects his bride (sorry, Dad!), puts her on a donkey (not a Daimler!), and escorts her back to his house. But not directly: the high-spirited entourage takes an extended detour through as many streets as possible, to show off the bride to the whole village. By the time the party arrives, it’s nightfall, and the waiting guests are well ready to party – including our ten teenagers.

What’s with the lamps? Well, it was one thing for young men to be out on the streets at night, but women, young or old, always carried lamps. Not to see by, mind, but to ensure that passers-by wouldn’t hassle them, or think that they were out on the pull – reputation was, is, everything in the Middle East. So all ten young women are being prudent and proper. Each has a lamp. Ah, but only half of them have brought extra fuel, small flasks of olive oil, just in case the bridal party, in its youthful exuberance, takes even longer than usual to parade its way back to the groom’s house. So long, in this case, that they become sleepy and nod off…

When, at the stroke of midnight, from the dark a cry is heard. “Here they come!” “Oops!” say the gaggle of girls who didn’t plan ahead. And then to those who did, “Give us some oil!” “No way!” comes the reply. “Not our problem.” Miffed and muttering, the former five storm off to beg, borrow, or buy some oil. But it’s the middle of the night. It takes a while. And when they finally return to the banquet, now in full flow, it’s too late – the door is shut. “Open the door!” they shout. “Sorry,” says the groom, “Do I know you?” End of.

And the point is …? “Be prepared”? Well, of course, advanced planning is always a good thing. Whether or not Jesus himself is referring, in the parable, to his second coming, St Matthew has certainly adapted the story with the Lord’s return – his delayed return – in mind. By the time the evangelist is writing, maybe fifty years after the first Easter, he advises the church to be ready for the long haul. And we’re still long-hauling it. But “be prepared” – is that it?

Let me tease out two further points (parables are always a tease). First, how do we react to failure? When we screw up, what do we do next? I think the parable puts to us this important question. How do the young women who weren’t prepared react, first, when they discover that they didn’t bring enough oil to see them through the evening, and, second, when they find the door shut in their face? They shout, that’s how they react. Although the awkward position in which they find themselves is their own fault, they shout, first at their five friends, “Give us some oil!”, and then at the groom, “Open the door!” That’s foolish. That’s stupid. As foolish and stupid as being unprepared in the first place. In the world, in the church, “barking orders at others is not an acceptable way to try to solve problems created by our own inadequacies” (Kenneth Bailey).

And yet isn’t that precisely the way some people in the church are reacting to our own failures? The church is in trouble and sometimes you’d think we were in those old Laurel and Hardy sketches where Ollie says to Stan, “That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into!” “You” being the liberals if you’re an evangelical, and the evangelicals if you’re a liberal, or – outside the church – the secularists, or the Muslims, or “the world” as such. Christians aren’t in charge anymore, we feel marginalised, and we don’t like it. And it can’t be our fault, can it? For centuries we’ve more or less acquiesced in being the nation’s Department of Religion and, as court chaplain, we’ve blessed its deployment of wealth and power. We’ve colluded in the domestication of the gospel, the privatisation of faith, and the reduction of morality to family values and good citizenship. We’ve conceded that the Sermon on the Mount is quite lovely, but altogether impractical, and totally irrelevant to the real business of living. And now governments of the left and the right don’t do God anymore and – what? – we’re surprised? When the church itself hasn’t been doing God – not really, not radically, not riskily – not like Amos did God, not like Jesus did God, since almost forever?

No, whatever state we’re in, it’s not our fault, blame this or that, bark at him or her, play the victim, raise the volume. Can this be right? Or is it not a sign of both denial and panic, and a sure indication that we’ve lost both the argument and the plot? What about taking responsibility for our failure to be the Israel of Amos, the church Jesus? And what about having the good grace to announce the wedding feast of the kingdom, not with a paranoid posture and a shrill voice, but with a calm confidence that Christ is risen and reigns, and a tone in our evangelism that is joyful without being cheesy, and bold without being bolshie? Hey, it’s a wedding we’re talking about!

And the second thing I tease out of our parable is this. Note well: it’s not about good and bad people, it’s about smart and stupid people. Of course Jesus came to take away our sins, but the way some Christians talk you’d think he also came to take away our minds. Jesus himself enjoyed the company of bad people – the gospels call them “tax collectors and sinners”. The good people – the gospels call them “scribes and Pharisees” – they didn’t like that at all. And, of course, it was these good folk, not the bad folk, who conspired to kill Jesus. Why? Because they thought that because they weren’t bad they could do no wrong – which is a fatally stupid conclusion to draw. Bad people certainly do harm, but it’s stupid people that wreak the real havoc in the world, people with a catastrophic combination of self-importance, conviction, and complacency.

By “smart”, of course, I don’t mean having academic intelligence but nous, practical intelligence, which includes having your deception detector in good working order, to see through the posturing and guff we get every day from the corridors of political and financial power, precisely from people educated at Oxford and the London School of Economics, the so-called great and, yes, the “good.” By “smart” I mean carrying your lamp, with plenty of oil, to shine light into the dark places we encounter. By “smart” I mean having the wise-as-a-serpent mind of Christ.

We live in benighted times where lying has become routine, systemic, and very lucrative, while truth-telling is ever threatened by the demands of social stability and so-called economic necessity. Pilate can only look askance at the very idea of truth, while mendacity is the morality of Mammon. But Jesus looks at the world and asks: What is really going on here? Who is really smart? Who is really stupid? He means according to the standards, not of Whitehall or the City of London, but of God’s covenant and kingdom. The standards of justice and compassion that drove Amos to lodge his protest on behalf of the dispossessed outside the temple in Bethel. The same standards that will drive our Lord to stage a demonstration on behalf of the dispossessed outside the great Temple in Jerusalem. Which, interestingly, was the political and banking centre of the nation. In fact, the St Paul’s Cathedral of his day. If you catch my drift.

Bethel URC

11 November 2011, Pentecost 21

Essential reading on the parables

A guest-post by Jeff Aernie

1. Interpreting the Parables

Klyne Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008)

Craig Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables (2d ed.; Downers Grove: IVP, 2012)

Richard Longenecker, ed., The Challenge of Jesus' Parables (McMaster New Testament Studies; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000)

Kenneth Bailey, Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels (Downers Grove: IVP, 2008)

2. Helpful Pastoral Resources

Craig Blomberg, Preaching the Parables: From Responsible Interpretation to Powerful Proclamation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).

Gerald M. Bilkes, Glory Veiled and Unveiled: A Heart-Searching Look at Christ's Parables (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012)

3. Important Earlier Volumes

C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Ni

sbet, 1936)

J. Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (New York: Scribner, 1963)

Tertullian on interpreting parables

The parables of Jesus were all the rage in the second century. Gnostic teachers like Valentinus hung lavish esoteric cosmologies from the parables. Not even the smallest detail was safe from allegorising interpreters. This exegetical excess led second-century writers like Irenaeus and Tertullian to formulate rules for interpreting the parables. Irenaeus' rule is pretty simple (Against Heresies 2.27): stick to the clear kanon of truth, and don't read anything into the parable that would contradict the plain sense of the apostolic faith. For example: don't interpret a parable to mean that there's more than one god, since this would be out of harmony with the faith.

Tertullian is more interesting (On Purity 8-9). He makes the same observation as Irenaeus: interpretations of the parables should be rejected if they "destroy the whole economy of salvation". And he insists that parables should be interpreted in light of the Christian faith: "We do not take take the parables as sources of doctrine, but rather we take doctrine as a norm for interpreting the parables." But he is not concerned only to rule out heterodox interpretations; he also dwells on the characteristics of good interpretation of the parables. He assumes that the good interpreter will take in the whole parable at a single glance, while the heterodox interpreter scrutinises every little detail and loses the wood for the trees. In an age that loved allegory and typology, Tertullian is bracingly straightforward: "Why a 'hundred' sheep? and why, indeed, 'ten' drachmas? and what does that 'broom' stand for? Well, when he wanted to show how pleased God is at the salvation of one sinner, he had to mention some numerical quantity from which one could be described as 'lost'. And in view of the ordinary procedure of a woman who looks for a drachma in the house, he had to supply the assistance of a broom and lamp."

Tertullian thus happily admits that some elements of the parable might remain unexplained. The heterodox interpreters, he says, are driven by a lust for coherence and comprehensiveness. They want every detail to fit. They "work out these parables with perfect consistency." Theirs is a kind of conspiracy-theory theology: a perfect account that explains everything and leaves nothing out. By contrast, good interpreters of the parables should allow for a measure of imperfection and inconsistency. "We make no effort to twist everything so that it fits our own explanation, striving to avoid every discrepancy." An exegetical argument, Tertullian says, "should not be extended beyond the limits of the subject matter with which it is concerned." It is better to have a general sketch of what the parable means than to be lost in a maze of hyper-interpretation. "If needs must be, we prefer to have an incomplete rather than an incorrect understanding of the scripture."

And why does all this matter? Because "bad exegesis is no less serious than bad conduct."

The parable of the feuding farmers

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

We’re still down on the farm this week. Last week we were doing the theological horticulture of seeds and soil. This week, in the parable Jesus tells, the planting has been done and the crop is growing. What a relief! The farmer can sleep at night with a peasant’s pleasant dreams of a harvest. Can’t he? Not so fast! As it turns out, no, he can’t. As if rocky soil, weeds, weather, and pests weren’t problem enough, there’s a people problem. The traditional name for this parable is the Wheat and the Tares. You could also call it the parable of the Feuding Farmers.

Feuding families were a common outcrop on the social landscape of the world in which Jesus lived. Indeed you didn’t have to start a fight with your neighbours. Simply by being born you inherited from your parents and kinship group a ready-made set of friends and enemies. In American folklore we have the famous feud in Pike County, Kentucky during the second half of the nineteenth century between the clans of the Hatfields and the McCoys. It escalated into open warfare claiming over a dozen lives. We’ve got a situation like that in this parable, without the bloodshed. A feud (let’s say) between the Waites and the Wrenchworts.

What happens? One night, while farmer Waite and his family are counting sheep, one of the Wrenchwort clan hops the fence, sneaks into his neighbour’s field, and sows some weed seeds. In fact, the vandal is particularly dastardly because the seed he sows – in the Greek, zizania – is a particular species of grass known as darnel. Darnel grows like wheat, and looks like wheat, but it’s poisonous – and that will put farmer Waite in a position between a rock and a hard place.

Now Waite is not a tenant farmer or a sharecropper; apparently he owns his own land, because he employs several labourers. A few weeks after he plants his crop, some of these farmhands come to him and say, “Mr. Waite, we’ve got a problem: weeds. But we know you planted good seed, so where did they come from?” Waite knows at once: “It’s that klutz Wrenchwort.” “Don’t worry, sir,” the farmhands say, “Weeds R Us.”

Now it was usual agricultural practice to weed out darnel, perhaps several times a season, precisely because zizania is so toxic that it can easily destroy a crop – that’s the rock I mentioned. But then there’s the hard place: if there is a profusion of these weeds, their roots can become so intertwined with the roots of the wheat that neatly separating the two is well-nigh impossible, and certainly a very risky business. So what does farmer Waite do? “Leave it,” he says to his workers. “We’ll sort it at the harvest.” And there the parable ends. After telling another couple of parables – one about mustard seed and another about leaven – Jesus goes on to explain the parable to his disciples, but most scholars agree that this explanation is actually Matthew’s, not Jesus’ – Matthew is really into fiery furnaces and folk weeping, and wailing, and gnashing their teeth – so we’ll just stick with the original. In this scripture, what might the Spirit be saying to the church today, to us here and now?

Well, the basic point isn’t rocket salad – I mean rocket science! It’s a parable about patience. I have preached many times on patience – most recently last Advent – and confessed that patience is a virtue with which I, personally, have constantly struggled. But I think we live in an age – the age of Information Technology – that particularly conspires against patience. In April I got a new PC. I was pretty happy with the old one until my kids, when visiting, wore me down complaining how s-s-slow (“Dad!”) the old one was. We live in a culture of speed where delivery has to be swift. But today, taking our cue from the parable, just what is the Spirit saying about patience?

You see – to continue the PC metaphor – the church gets infected by all sorts of viruses from the culture in which we live. I want to suggest that impatience, though it sounds like a rather minor vice, is actually one of the worst of them, because it drives us to do not just stupid, but sometimes quite sub-Christian things. Indeed, as a church we do these stupid, sub-Christian things precisely to the people represented by the person on whom the parable turns: that lowlife Wrenchwort – the enemy.

Jesus talked a lot about enemies. That’s because he made a lot of enemies. Powerful enemies who eventually killed him. The first Christians, indeed the early church for three hundred years, also made a lot of enemies, suffered persecution at their hands, were fed to lions by them – the martyrs who refused to bow the knee to Caesar, refused to fight in Caesar’s wars. Then Caesar – one Emperor Constantine – himself became a Christian and everything changed. Ever since, apart from the historic peace churches like the Mennonites and the Quakers, we have done Caesar’s bidding and spread Caesar’s carnage. When the state says, “Kill!”, we kill, even other Christians. That’s because we take the Sermon on the Mount as if Jesus preached it for us to break into groups and discuss it instead of to obey it. Indeed the church has deployed our parable itself to justify compromises with state power, arguing that good and evil – the wheat and the tares – are far too mixed together for us to be decisive witnesses to the radical nonviolence of Jesus. We must be – the weasel-word – “prudent”.

But Jesus was anything but prudent. Nor does his parable teach prudence. Jesus knew evil when he saw it, and he named it, he spoke truth to power – that’s why he made enemies – and so does his parable. Wrenchwort is a villain. Evil is not obscure: if someone or some system does violence to people by excluding them, or impoverishing them, or, finally, by killing them – that is evil and followers of Jesus can have no truck with it. Prudence is not a Christian virtue.

Patience, on the other hand, patience is an altogether different matter. With evil, followers of Jesus must be patient as Jesus himself was patient, even with Judas, as God himself is patient, even with the devil himself. Jesus never excluded Judas, even sharing the last supper with him. And surely you must have wondered why God has given the devil his leash, why he’s never reeled him in, why, indeed, he’s never destroyed him. But surely the answer is obvious: because Jesus and the Father of Jesus don’t do violence – don’t do either pre-emptive strikes, or “payback” – no, because they are patient.

You know why people are impatient? Because we need to be in control, to feel that we are in charge. Not being in a hurry, knowing how to wait: that takes trust in the providence of God, faith that God is in control of events. The early church had that faith. That’s how it could resist Caesar. But then slowly but surely, with Constantine, with Christendom, and finally with the rise of the modern state, the church lost that faith, or rather repositioned that faith in kings, parliaments, and presidents, who now, self-evidently, controlled the course of history. Being loyal subjects or citizens trumps being obedient disciples. And still we do pretty much what the state tells us to do – the state which (as Alastair Campbell bluntly but brilliantly put it) doesn’t “do God” – because belonging to Britain or America is evidently more compelling than belonging to Christ and his church.

And the connection with patience and impatience? Isn’t violence the sin par excellence of not taking time, of being in a hurry, of the rush of blood and the angry outburst in personal relationships; of speed of delivery, of doing it to them before they do it to you, of war-war rather than jaw-jaw in international relations? Did you ever notice that Jesus doesn’t do velocity, that even when he does hurry-up he makes haste slowly, deliberately? And, of course, in his passion, he gives himself up, hands himself over, relinquishes all control to the powers of evil. Why? Because he knows that Pilate is just a pawn, and his Father has things well in hand. And because, as he says, “All who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Speed, violence, and impatience on the one hand; slowness, peace, and patience on the other. Do you see the connection?

And the conclusion I draw is this. Within the church we must accept that we are all sorts, and be inclusive of those who, personally, get on our nerves and, theologically, interpret the faith differently from the way we do. So no stomping off in a huff, or excluding those to the left of you or those to the right of you! And in the way the church interfaces with the world, a distinct identity with the courage of its convictions, including the refusal to deploy violence either against the state or on behalf of it. In the church and in the world, “all false zeal must be checked, the field must be left to ripen in patience, … and everything else left to God in faith, until his hour comes” (Joachim Jeremias).

Bethel URC
17 July 2011, Pentecost 5

The parable of the sower

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

Let’s make some connections. At the beginning of Matthew 5, there is Jesus and there is a crowd; so too here at the beginning of Matthew 13, there is Jesus and there is a crowd. It’s time to teach. The crowds are big, so in Matthew 5 Jesus sits on a hill to teach, while here in Matthew 13 he gets into a boat. In Matthew 5 he gives instructions, while in Matthew 13 he deploys a different didactic strategy: parables, stories.

Stories? Well, yes, parables are stories, very short stories. But don’t think you can relax and take it easy-peasy. It’s not as if the Sermon on the Mount is a lecture, while Matthew 13 is a children’s talk. Not a bit of it. Kids can listen in on these stories, but parables are seriously adult. They’re artful and arch, they tease and twist, they mess with your mind. The materials on which Jesus draws are commonplace – nature, agriculture, village life – but the punch lines to which they lead are always strange, unexpected, and – crucially – interrogative. So they require a nimble mind, a lively imagination, and – finally – an audacious determination to engage them and answer the question. 

Parables take you from the mundane world and the conventional ways we negotiate it, confront us with a different picture of the world, and challenge us with two questions: “Do you get it?” and “Will you live it?” Parables aren’t illustrations, certainly not illustrations of what we call – mistakenly call – reality. Rather they picture a new reality, God’s reality – Jesus calls it the “kingdom of heaven”. And, yes, explicitly or implicitly, all the parables end with the burning question: Will you make this reality your reality? Thus, finally, the parables are dangerous because they confront the listener with judgement, they sift us, they separate those who will say Yes and take a risk and follow Jesus, and those who will say No and travel by sat nav. The sting is that those who play safe are, in fact, living in a world that, for all its apparent givenness and permanence, is passing away – and so they are, if you like, comfortably heading for oblivion.

Okay – the parable of the sower, the first of a septet of parables in Matthew 13 (Matthew loves the number seven). These parables were no doubt originally told by Jesus at different times and places, parables which Matthew, clever rabbi that he is, has grouped together for the purposes of teaching in his own church. And because it’s parable number one, you can be sure that it’s important, programmatic. So what’s this new world, God’s world, and therefore the real world, like?

First, observe that while Jesus speaks to the crowd, he is actually instructing the disciples, who, however, are not as smart as they think. In fact, they’re in danger of backsliding, of being recaptured by the world of 24/7. You see the forces of opposition to Jesus have been gathering. The Pharisees and scribes, Israel’s lay leaders and public intellectuals, are spitting venom, what with Jesus’ indiscriminate association with outsiders, and his cavalier attitude to purity regulations and Sabbath observance. He’s not acting like a holy man, a religious person, at all. John the Baptist, from prison, has recently sent messengers expressing second thoughts about whether Jesus is, in fact, the Christ, or whether it’s a case of mistaken identity. And in the passage immediately preceding our parable, Jesus’s own mother wants to have a chat with her boy about his ministry, which started with such promise but now looks to be losing its way. The twelve have been watching as all these events unfold. It doesn’t look good, and they are worried men.

What does Jesus do? He paints them a narrative picture. It’s a picture they have seen many times. It’s the picture of a farmer farming the way Palestinian farmers farm. It’s not a practice Gower farmers would recognise. The farmer does not plough before he sows, and he does not plant his seeds in a calculated manner. No, the farmer walks along a path well-trodden by his fellow sharecroppers, stubble really, and he tosses on the seed. There are thistle bushes to his left and right – he tosses some seed there too. In some places there are outcrops of limestone barely covered by soil – he throws some seed on these unpromising places too. Basically, the farmer chucks the seed all over the place. Like Jesus in his own ministry, this farmer is quite undiscriminating.

What happens next? What else but what would be bitterly familiar to any Palestinian farmer whose seed was his cash-flow? Indeed Jesus actually soft-peddles the frustrations against which farmers contended: wind (the scorching sirocco sweeping up from North Africa), drought, locusts – Jesus doesn’t even mention these agricultural menaces. No, the picture he paints is depressing enough. The vast majority of the seed bears no fruit during the best of growing seasons. Some of it dies from the get-go, or gets snapped up by the crows. Some of it sprouts, but soon shrivels in the heat. Some of it actually does grow among the thorns, which, however, choke the life out of the neonatal blades. That’s the way it goes in the cruel, unforgiving world of Galilean agriculture. And even if by good fortune you get a yield, your ruthless landlord will be sure to extract more than enough of the harvest to ensure that you remain indentured to the land without any economic security whatsoever, debt and unemployment just a bad summer away.

But what’s this? What’s this Jesus is saying? Do we hear him correctly? Do the maths: the best one can expect to get is a four- or fivefold yield. But a thirtyfold yield? A sixtyfold yield? A blooming hundredfold yield?! It figures – he’s a carpenter, not a farmer. What does he know? But that’s what he claims. Is he having us on? What is he saying?

For those first disciples, as I’ve suggested, the parable undoubtedly spoke to their growing suspicions that they might be backing the wrong (plough) horse. But those scribes and Pharisees who just don’t get it – consider them the rocky places, Jesus is saying. And John the Baptist who once exclaimed at the Jordan, “I ought to be baptised by you, and you have come to me!”, but now behind bars has his doubts – put it down to that old crow Herod pecking away at his faith. And my mum who is now telling me, naughty boy, to come home and get a job, well, maybe her soil was just too thin, or maybe the weeds of village opinion engulfed it. But you, my friends, you’re the good soil, and as unlikely – nay, as impossible – as it seems – what? Work hard and you shall have your reward? Or, don’t worry, the opposition will come around in the end? Not a bit of it! That ridiculously humungous yield – up to a hundredfold! – no way that either huge exertions or optimal circumstances are going to produce it. Only God can give – give! – that kind of result. And God will! That’s the deal.

And what about us, the friends of Jesus today? Does this scripture speak to our need and condition? And if it does, what does it say?

What is our condition? It is not good: rocky soil, weeds, pests. The church is in decline. What should be our response? Hard work? Well, sure, work is good. But things can only get better? No, things are looking to get a lot worse. But here’s a quaint idea: God! In the URC – and I suspect in the Methodist Church too – there are those who think that only a cunning plan will save us: better management and more assessments; a new programme with a catchy advertising campaign; cutting-edge entrepreneurialism; state-of-the-art technology; and so on. And some of these ideas may indeed be worth trying. But none of them is going to save the church. And to think otherwise is not only faithless, it is quite idolatrous, trusting that the deities of effort, or ideas, or techniques will kick-start mission – by which is usually meant getting more people in the pews and on the books.

Me... I actually think... if you take my meaning... that we need fewer Christians and more disciples. Followers of the Jesus who says that following him will not make you balanced, liked, successful, or safe, no, it will put you on a collision course with the world and cause you a lot of trouble and grief. Followers of the Jesus who says you can’t worship both me and Mammon (otherwise known as the Market), can’t worship both me and Venus (otherwise known as Health and Beauty), can’t worship both me and Mars (otherwise known as the War on Terror). 

Frankly, at the moment, I think the soil of the church is too culturally contaminated to grow anything much good at all. But I also think that “a church that is shrinking in membership may actually be a church in which the soil of the gospel is being prepared in which deeper roots are possible” (Stanley Hauerwas). In other words, there is no point having more plants – more Christians – unless we have richer soil – the practices of Jesus – in which to grow them. In short, the Sermon on the Mount. Here is the soil for growing people who are serious about living the new reality of God, the soil with the promise of a yield of thirtyfold, sixtyfold, hundredfold. Here is our judgement. And here, ultimately, is our only hope.

Bethel URC, Swansea
10 July 2011, Pentecost 4

A week of parables

"Why speakest thou unto them in parables?" (Matt 13.10). He answered: "Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand" (Matt 13.13) – one of the few instances in which our Lord specifically referred to the work of Christian preachers. In solidarity with all those preachers who are gearing up for another year in St Matthew's Gospel, we'll be devoting the coming week here to the parables. This will include several of Kim's sermons on the parables, plus a few other odds and ends. It follows my rules for preaching the parables – rules that I have learned by breaking each one of them, and sometimes all of them at once.

10 rules for preaching on the parables

After hearing a Bad Sermon today on one of the parables from the Gospel of St Matthew, I tweeted ten rules for preaching on the parables – I've listed them below. 

Personally I believe the parables are probably the hardest parts of scripture to preach on. It's like trying to explain a joke: no matter how well you do it, you still end up feeling that you've missed the point. Some of the better sermons I've heard on the parables are sermons that take a cluster of parables instead of just one: Luke 15 is an obvious example, with the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son; even if it's not always as clear-cut as that, there are plenty of other cases where the evangelists' arrangement of multiple parables can provide a larger theme that helps to guide the preacher away from over-explaining the individual features of a particular parable. At times a sort of reader-response approach to the parables can be a good idea too: elaborating on the way the parable affects the hearers can again steer the preacher away from the deadening evils of allegorical and moralistic interpretations. 

I also reckon preachers on the parables would benefit from a healthy immersion in the great tradition of Jewish humour – from the Talmud, with its quirky rabbinic anecdotes and preposterous legal examples, right down to modern Jewish comic geniuses like Groucho Marx, Lenny Bruce, Jack Benny, and Woody Allen. I'm not an expert nor the son of an expert, but my feeling is that Jesus' teaching makes just as much sense when you see it within this tradition of Jewish humour as it does when viewed within traditions of the travelling sage, apocalyptic prophet, messianic revolutionary, or whatever else is in vogue at the moment.

Anyway, here are ten rules for preaching on Jesus' parables (intended more for use by preachers than by parishioners!).

Rule #1: Don't assume that God is necessarily one of the characters in the parable.

Rule #2: Don't assume that the parable is trying to tell you how to improve your life.

Rule #3: Don't assume that you're the goodie in the story (and that other people are the baddies).

Rule #4: If you can explain the whole parable without mentioning the words "kingdom of God," you're probably doing it wrong.

Rule #5: If it ends up having anything to do with going to heaven when we die, you're probably doing it wrong

Rule #6: If Jesus seems more like a headmaster giving orders than like a comedian cracking jokes, you're probably doing it wrong.

Rule #7: If you feel perfectly confident and untroubled while expounding the parable, you're probably doing it wrong.

Rule #8: If your sermon on the parable leaves people with nothing to look forward to and nothing to hope for, you're probably doing it wrong.

Rule #9: Now go back and repeat Rule 3 (because every preacher forgets this at least once in every sermon).

Rule #10: Finally, if you've preached a lousy sermon, just remember: as long as the parable was read aloud before you started, it won't be a total loss.

I'm serious about that last point too. It's often struck me how even after the most soul-crushing exposition of a parable (my own included), people go away afterwards thinking about what was read before the sermon. It's a testament to the extraordinary power of Jesus' teaching that it cannot be defeated even by its most dedicated expositors.

How (not) to preach the parables

I’ve often been struck by the way Jesus’ parables are interpreted in Christian preaching. Several years ago, I heard an extended series of sermons on the parables, and after a while I realised that each sermon had the same basic structure: first, the parable was narrated (with a few observations about historical context and such); then the pastor proceeded, with great warmth and sensitivity, to provide a “balanced” ethical interpretation, carefully guarding against any “extreme” application of the parable. So when Jesus says to sell everything, it’s not about possessions, it’s about the state of your heart – and so on.

I still remember my own psychological response to these sermons. First, the parable would be told in all its starkness and simplicity: and I would feel my heart pounding in dread and anticipation at the challenge of Jesus’ words. Then, by the end of the sermon, all my fears would be alleviated – no need for alarm; God’s command isn’t so uncompromising; Jesus really demands nothing of me after all!

It’s a curious thing that pastors often find it so difficult to preach Jesus’ parables. In truth, the only hard thing about the parables is that they are so simple, so straightforward in what they claim and what they demand. They are so simple that we need to make them difficult in order to escape the piercing gaze of Jesus. Or perhaps some pastors feel they need to soften the parables in order to protect the congregation from God. After all, it is God himself who bursts through these stories, coming on the scene with the unaccountable strangeness of a seed in the ground, with the disruptive suddenness of a thief in the night.

In his great book on Discipleship, Bonhoeffer highlights our tendency to “interpret” the teaching of Jesus in a way that leaves us safe, comfortable, unchallenged. Referring to typical interpretations of the story of the rich young ruler, Bonhoeffer remarks (p. 79): “Everywhere it is the same – the deliberate avoidance of simple, literal obedience. How is such a reversal possible? What has happened that the word of Jesus has to endure this game? … Anywhere else in the world where commands are given, the situation is clear. A father says to his child: go to bed! The child knows exactly what to do. But a child drilled in pseudo-theology would have to argue thus: Father says go to bed. He means you are tired; he does not want me to be tired. But I can also overcome my tiredness by going to play. So, although father says go to bed, what he really means is go play.”

In a different context, Karl Barth once told a little parable of his own: “To what shall I liken the basic principles of [liberal] theology? Is it not like a clock which is so cleverly constructed that the hands move from right to left instead of from left to right?” Our preaching about Jesus is often “cleverly constructed” in exactly the same way.

By removing everything offensive from the teaching of Jesus, we might succeed in making it easier to enter the kingdom of heaven – but in this very act, the kingdom is turned into a bland mirror image of the status quo. If we want to preach the words of Jesus faithfully, perhaps we need to lose some of our cleverness, our talent for interpretive evasion, and work instead at making our proclamation simpler – not easier, but simpler.

Two small books: Dr Barth and Dr Seuss

Robert L. Short, The Parables of Dr. Seuss (WJKP, 2008), 95 pp.; Karl Barth, Fifty Prayers (WJKP, 2008), 63 pp. (review copies courtesy of WJKP)

Here’s a couple of nice little books (Thing One and Thing Two), both just released from WJKP. In our first book, Robert Short offers an entertaining reading of Dr Seuss’s stories as Christian “parables.” I adore Dr Seuss – I’m always begging my kids to let me read more Dr Seuss, instead of those bland and banal Disney books that clutter their shelves. So I enjoyed this book’s playful engagement with Dr Seuss’s stories.

Admittedly, Robert Short’s analysis is not a very nuanced one; and it’s a shame he neglects both Dr Seuss’s sharp political edge and his extraordinary aesthetics (first and foremost, these books are great because they’re works of true poetry).

Ultimately, Dr Seuss’s writing can’t be turned into neat theological “parables” (although many of them are certainly political parables). So I can’t help cringing a little when Short tells me that Christ = the Cat, or that Christ’s body and blood = green eggs and ham, or indeed that Sam-I-am represents the name of God! (I’ll let you in on a secret: he’s called “Sam-I-am” because it rhymes with “eggs-and-ham”…) But all this can be taken in good fun, and Short is clearly enjoying himself with bucketloads of playful exaggeration.

In any case, there are some nice insights along the way – for example, in the chapter on I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, Short remarks: “The difference is that Christian faith has an infinitely greater appreciation of trouble than the world does” (p. 51). An excellent point!

And Short is right to observe that Dr Seuss’s stories possess a “profundity-in-simplicity” which allows them to make a real impact. These stories, he remarks, are deceptive in their simplicity. “Charming, childlike little tales suddenly become meaningful…. They sneak up on us. They become Trojan horses or sugar-coated medicine. They are the wise Cat in the otherwise empty hat” (p. 66).

On a somewhat more serious note, our second book brings together fifty of Karl Barth’s prayers, written for before and after his sermons. In the foreword (these prayers were originally published in German in 1962), Barth explains his growing discomfort with the traditional liturgical prayers, since they remained too disconnected from the language and content of his sermons. “For a while,” he says, “I sought help by replacing the petitions of the order of liturgy not with extemporaneous prayers (I have never dared to risk such a thing), but with freely bringing together biblical passages from the Psalms.” Only in his later years did he begin to write his own prayers as part of his sermon preparation. The resulting prayers are stirring, colloquial, often profound, and always blissfully concise – as Barth remarks in the foreword, “the spice for all parts of all spiritual and theological sayings should consist in brevity!”

Barth decided to publish these prayers in the hope that they would be used both in assembled worship and privately. The book thus arranges the fifty prayers according to the liturgical year, with some additional thematic sections (e.g. prayers for funerals). The prayers will certainly be of interest to researchers and students of Barth – but if we are to use the book as it was intended, our proper response should be to pray these prayers, to call upon God in weakness and humility and gratitude and joy. Here are a few short excerpts:

“Lord, our God, you know who we are: People with good and bad consciences; satisfied and dissatisfied, sure and unsure people; Christians out of convictions and Christians out of habit; believers, half-believers, and unbelievers. You know where we come from…. But now we all stand before you…” (p. 1).

“Lord our God, you wanted to live not only in heaven, but also with us, here on earth; not only to be high and great, but also to be small and lowly, as we are; not only to rule, but also to serve us; not only to be God in eternity, but also be born as a person, to live, and to die” (p. 11).

“None of us is a great Christian; rather, we are all very small Christians. But your grace is sufficient for us. Awaken us to the small joy and thankfulness that we are capable of, the timid faith that we bring, the incomplete obedience that we cannot refuse – to the hope in the greatness, wholeness, and completeness that you have prepared for us in the death of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and that you have promised us in his resurrection from the dead” (pp. 29-30).

GIVEAWAY: Anyway, I’ve got a copy of The Parables of Dr Seuss to give away. So if you’d like a copy, just name one thing that Barth and Dr Seuss have in common. The most interesting or imaginative comment wins the book.