What is Most Valuable?
Sermon # 1 in a Lenten Series: “The Parables Jesus
Told and Lived:” Lanny Peters, Pastor
The First Sunday in Lent,
Mark 1: 9-14; Mark 4: 33-34
Our
church covenant begins, “We are together only to be the
With this in mind, I plan to focus my preaching during Lent on the parables of Jesus. In doing so, I will propose that the parables Jesus told were at the very heart of his teachings and, furthermore, that by his life and example he embodied and lived out many of those same parables.
Bill
Herzog, one of the most important mentors during my seminary days, in his book
on the parables, begins the first chapter with these words: “The parables of
Jesus have long been revered as earthly stories with heavenly meanings. They
have been viewed in this way because Jesus was thought to be a teacher of
spiritual truth and divine wisdom. However, this view of Jesus stands in some
tension with the account of his final trial and execution. If Jesus was a
teacher of heavenly truths dispensed through literary gems called parables, it
is difficult to understand how he could have been executed as a political
subversive and crucified between two social bandits. It appears that
These observations and questions are particularly apropos for this season since Lent is a time to prepare us for Easter by way of the cross. In the parables lie secrets to the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
That
the parables are at the heart of Jesus’ teachings is verified by the earliest
recorded gospel, Mark, which tells us that, “With many such parables he spoke
to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except
in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.” (4:33-34,
emphasis mine) Why would Jesus speak to the crowds in parables whose
meanings were often so difficult to understand that he would even have to
explain them to his disciples later in private. I
believe that it is a sign of the brilliance of Jesus’ style of teaching. He
once told his disciples “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of
wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) Jesus’ parables sounded
like harmless folk stories but they could jump out and bite the religious and
political establishment of their day, challenging them in radical and
disturbing ways. The parables were Jesus’ way of being wise as a snake and yet
somehow seeming innocent as a dove. Or at least for a while anyway, until he
began acting them out in
Jesus’
use of parables helps to account for his immense popularity among the peasants
who crowded to hear him speak, some of which even began to follow him around.
As I hope to show in this series, Jesus used parables to “speak truth to power”
and at the same time speak to those who were without power. Bill Herzog’s study
of the parables has convincingly shown that Jesus was a “pedagogue of the oppressed.” Herzog
points to one modern day person who has used a similar style of teaching, Paulo
Freire, and the impact he made in his native Brazil
with his teaching and organizing based on his belief that, “To understand the
oppressed, one must learn to perceive the world of the oppressed….It may seem
odd that a literacy program could generate a revolutionary pedagogy. Yet it did
so because Freire used the vocabulary of the poor as
a tool of social analysis so that, as they were learning to read, they were
simultaneously learning to read their culture, including systems of domination,
exploitation, and marginalization.” (Herzog, p. 19, 20)
While
Jesus “developed his own reading of Torah (his Bible) as an instrument of
spelling out the justice of the reign of God, he also learned to read his
colonial context, which was dominated by Roman overlords.” (Herzog, p. 17) With both Freire
and Jesus, we see that empowering the oppressed has dire political
consequences. This helps to bridge “the apparent gap between traditional roles
ascribed to Jesus, such as rabbi or teacher, on the one hand, and his death in
But I am
getting ahead of the story. Let me back up to today’s gospel lesson from the
lectionary. “And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He
was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild
beasts; and the angels waited on him. ” (Mark
Just before
Jesus had entered the wilderness, John had baptized him. At that time, Jesus
heard God say to him, “You are my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”
(Mark
And then as a
sign of what this new kingdom would look like, Jesus called his first
followers. Ignoring the religious and political elite, Jesus’ first disciples
were plain fishermen. It was like a joke. It was also an enactment of parables
he would later tell. The time is fulfilled, and the
Jesus
would later tell a number of parables inviting others to do the same. He once
said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure
hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and
sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matthew 13: 44)
The late John Claypool began a sermon on these parables this
way: “Ours is a many splendored
universe, or to use the Chinese metaphor, a world of ten thousand
things. This means, quite practically, that we’re faced with a myriad of
options in every direction and that we’re called upon to make value judgments
at every turn. Carlyle Marney used to say that there was no agony in life more acute than those
moments when you realize you’ve paid too much. It’s at these times that
you look at what you have, and consider all the sacrifices that went into the procurement
of those things, and then sense a disparity between the two. It’s at this point
that a profound sense of disappointment may settle in…. We’ve no more
fundamental task in life than facing up to the fact that there are millions of
options laid out before us in a lifetime and that we must decide what is worth
what.” John Claypool, Stories Jesus Still Tells: The Parables.
When Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field,
which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has
and buys that field,” all the peasants and farmers knew where that imagery came
from. That area of the world had throughout history been a battlefield between
numerous powerful nations. People who lived through foreign invasions learned
that about the only safe way to protect their possessions from marauding armies
was to bury them in the ground. Sadly, the owners would often be exiled or even
killed and never return to claim their valuables. So the treasures remained in
the earth, only to be discovered accidentally by some other lucky soul, years
or even centuries later. (Claypool, pp. 4-5)
To emphasize his point Jesus said, “Again, the kingdom of heaven
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.” (Matthew 13: 45)
The pearl was the most valuable of all jewels in that time. In the Book of
Revelation, it says that the gates into heaven will be covered with pearls,
which became the basis of the old expression, “the pearly gates.”
When the farmer found the treasure buried in the field and the
merchant found the pearl of great value, “their lives became genuinely
different. All things were seen in a new light and there was a joyful
rearrangement of things. Suddenly there was a willingness to let go of what one
had in order to get something that was obviously better. ) Claypool, pp.
8-9)
Jesus
is saying that once we understand what the
Now
lest we think that what Jesus is offering is literal treasure and pearls, he
told another parable: The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he
thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?”
Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones,
and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul,
Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be
merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very
night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared,
whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves
but are not rich towards God.’” (Luke 12: 16-21)
With
this parable, Jesus made it clear that the sign of the
Once
the
“Now
after John was arrested, Jesus came to