July 24 , 2005
Commentary by Russell Pregeant |
See also: [2008] [2002] |
Ps. 105:1-11
Gen. 29:15-28
Rom. 8:26-39
Matt. 13:31-33, 44-52
Matt. 13:31-33, 44-52
The selection from Matthew is again from the parables discourse, so that the theme of the conflict of the Rule of Heaven/God with that of Satan is still in the background. The Parable of the Net emphasizes the coming judgment and makes clear that not everyone who initially responds to the preaching of the word will survive that judgment. It therefore has the character of a warning to church members, which makes a fitting thematic conclusion to the string of parables that comprises most of the chapter.
The parables in vss. 31-33 and 44-45, however, are perhaps best treated apart from the Matthean context, especially if the preacher has dealt with the themes of conflict and judgment in relation to earlier readings from Matthew 13. They fit into the chapter by virtue of their parable form and their symbolization of the Rule of Heaven, but much of their original power is lost if they are assimilated into the over-all themes of this discourse.
In both The Treasure and The Pearl, the character of the Rule of Heaven is illumined through the device of comparison. We should not, however, take the direct comparative statements in a rigid, literal way. Vs. 45 says that the Rule of Heaven is “like a merchant,” but it is in fact the action in the story that tells us what that Rule is like. So the merchant does not, per se, stand for the Rule of Heaven, nor should we identify the treasure in vs. 44 as a cipher for it. We should look for clues as to the nature of that Rule in how the characters behave in the light of surprising situations.
I do not use the term “clues” thoughtlessly. As with the parables of Jesus generally, both of these parables are open-ended stories, calling for imagination on the part of the hearer, who gets no definite statements about the Rule of Heaven, only clues. One has to figure out for oneself how the actions of the man digging in the field and the merchant disclose something of its inner nature. What we can say, of course, is that in both cases the value of the “find” is so great as to merit selling all that one has in order to obtain it. But it is up to the hearer to supply concreteness to that fairly abstract point. What is it that is so valuable? This is a question that the original hearers, the preacher, and the congregation have to work with on the basis of the wider Christian tradition as well as their own human experience and imagination.
However one fills in the details, on the other hand, the stories demand a recognition of the character of the Rule of Heaven as surprise and gift. The man was not looking for treasure, and the merchant could hardly have expected to find a single pearl worth all his goods. Thus John Dominic Crossan classifies both these stories as “parables of advent” and says of the man digging in his field that his “normalcy of past-present-future is rudely but happily shattered.” (In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus, p. 34)
The action of the man digging in the field raises an interesting question, since it involves dishonest action: he find the treasure in someone else’s field and presumably does not tell the owner about it. Most interpreters discount this element, considering the parable essentially amoral. What he did, although dishonest in the actual world, serves only to illustrate decisive action and total commitment and is not a moral example.
Both the open-endedness of these parables and their character as surprise and gift offer opportunity for analysis from a process perspective. There are a number of qualities that the biblical tradition attributes to the Rule of God/Heaven that seem quite indispensable—e.g., peace and justice. It is important to recognize, however, that if we understand God’s universe as continually producing novel situations, the specific forms peace and justice might take will necessarily vary as time and place change. Just as people in the ancient world could hardly have imagined the specific debates around these issues in our day, so we can hardly imagine what they might be like in the future. And yet it is incumbent upon all who await and pray for God’s Rule to open ourselves to surprising new forms for our communal lives in the future and to be willing to let these visions of the future affect the present. For process thinkers, of course, God’s Rule is not some final state to be enacted at the end of history but rather something to be realized, in ever different ways, at every stage of our residence on this planet.
The parables of The Mustard Seed and The Yeast were for a long time treated as parables of growth. More recent analysts, however, think that what they image is not growth in the sense of natural development but of miraculous occurrence—God’s revolutionary disruption of what we might think of as the “normal” procession of history. The Mustard Seed occurs in all three synoptic gospels, with some seemingly minor variations that are important when we ask about the form in which Jesus might have told the story. In Mark, the seed is sown upon the ground, while in Matthew it is sown in a field and in Luke in a garden. In Mark the seed grows into “the greatest of shrubs,” while in Luke it becomes a tree; and in Matthew the terms are combined: “when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree.” Finally, in Mark the birds come to nest in its shade, while in Matthew and Luke they nest in its branches.
Bernard Brandon Scott (Hear Then The Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus, p. 373) proposes the following as the closest we can get to an “originating structure”: “Like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his garden and it grew and became a great shrub and puts forth large branches so that the birds of heaven make nests in its shade/shelter.” He attributes the tree/branches motif to the tendency of the tradition to want to depict God’s Rule in grandiose fashion. Crossan’s reconstruction is similar, although he accepts Mark’s “ground.” And here again he finds the notions of advent and gift. It is the contrast between the tiny seed and the large bush that makes the essential point about God’s Rule, signifying “the graciousness and the surprise of the ordinary.” (In Parables, p. 51).
For Crossan, The Yeast also signifies advent, surprise, and gift, but it has the added note of “hiddenness and mystery.” (In Parables, p. 38) It is notable that the woman “hides” the leaven in the dough. Scott recognizes the theme of hiddenness but sees also “scandalous” aspects that signify the “subversive” quality of God’s Rule. Yeast was used as a metaphor for a corrupting influence, and woman often carried the symbolic value of impurity. Scott also finds a similar note at work in The Mustard Seed, since he accepts Luke’s “garden” as the place of sowing. For, because the mustard plant was notoriously difficult to control, there were prohibitions against sowing it in a garden.
Process thought, although in one sense clearly an evolutionary philosophy/theology, is distinguished from mechanistic versions of evolutionary thought in part by virtue of God’s activity in luring the world toward the good. Although the possibilities for the future are limited by the past, God’s role in the creative advance is precisely to provide the opportunity for novelty. Thus the notion of “miraculous” change is, if not taken literally, quite compatible with the process perspective. That perspective, in fact, gives us a framework for understanding the surprising possibilities that are open to us despite the discouraging elements in the past and present. The final verses in the selection from Matthew, however, add a balancing note in Jesus’ words about the old and the new. Reflective of Matthew’s belief that Jesus did not abolish the Jewish Law but fulfilled it, just as he also fulfilled the prophecies in the Jewish Scripture, these verses can from a process perspective remind us that the new is never in total discontinuity with the old. The future God offers us must always build in some degree upon what already is.
Romans 8:26-39
The Romans passage contains some problematic elements for the process interpreter. Not only the predestinarian language but even the notion of divine foreknowledge fly in the face of the notion of a future that both human beings and God are free to shape in some measure. Such language in Paul, however, is balanced by other language that clearly presupposes human freedom and responsibility. And the tension between the two offers us the opportunity to work hermeneutically with Paul, allowing both his world view and our own to undergo creative transformation. Literal understandings of predestination and foreknowledge will not work for us. But perhaps Paul’s use of them can attune us to ways in which the modern capitulation to an acceptance of mere randomness in the events of the world on the one hand or a stark and negative fatalism on the other dulls our sensitivity to the ways in which God continually opens the future to us.
Vs. 28, which encourages trust in the future, can, however, be used in a distressingly naïve way that process thinkers should be careful to guard against. There is a textual problem in this verse, with some manuscripts reading “all things work together for good” (NRSV) and others reading “in everything God works for good.” The latter reading would certainly be more compatible with process thought, but the weight of current opinion seems to be against it.
As James D.G.Dunn comments (Romans 1-8, Word Biblical Commentaries, p. 494), the sentiment that all things work for the good—which was a standard maxim in the Greco-Roman world— “has a certain triteness” and is belied by the hard facts of human experience. Process thought, indeed, is clear on the reality of evil: all things do not work out for the best. And the fact that many parishioners believe this means only that pastors should find ways of leading them beyond a theological position that sets them up for eventual disillusionment. On the other hand, it remains true from a process perspective that God is at work in even the direst of circumstances, although limited by them. So this verse might in fact be a good launching pad for a sermon that calls upon process thought in wrestling with the problem of evil.
Russell Pregeant is Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Emeritus, at Curry College, Milton Massachusetts and has served for over a decade as Visiting Professor in New Testament at Andover Newton Theological School. Among his publications are the volume on Matthew: in the Chalice Commentaries for Today series, and Engaging the New Testament: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. A native of Louisiana, he enjoys cooking spicy Cajun and Creole dishes.
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