07/13/2014 ~ 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Fifth Sunday after Pentecost ~ Proper 10 ~ Genesis 25:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Isaiah 55:10-13; Psalm 65:(1-8), 9-13; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23 ~ Communion Sunday ~ Ceremony of .-: (Shalom) for Brooke Bonney.
In Parables
“Then the disciples came and asked Jesus, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’” — Matthew 13:10.
On a number of levels, really on any level, Pixar, the movie studio which makes animated films, is a great success story. It has produced only 14 films but among those are the three pictures in the Toy Story series and Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo and Up and The Incredibles. Odds are you recognized all those titles even if you did not see them.
The studio has racked up an astounding 27 Oscars. That’s not 27 nominations. That’s 27 Oscar wins in various categories. Their first film, Toy Story, was released in 1995, so that’s 27 Oscars for 14 films in less than twenty years.
Along with the late Steve Jobs of Apple Computer fame, one of the co-founders of Pixar Studios is Ed Catmull. Ed is currently the President of the firm and has lately been making the rounds of talk shows, promoting his book Creativity, Inc. In this work he tries to synthesize some lessons to be drawn from the experience of working at Pixar.
The first success at Pixar, Toy Story, was incredibly successful. And, as is often true with new ventures, success did not come easy.
On the other hand, Ed makes the point that what came after that first success was much, much harder. What was harder? Being successful the next time and the next time and the next time— 14 times in a row.
So, how did that happen? How is it Pixar that has had 14 successful moves and zero, nada, zilch flops? (Slight pause.)
Catmull has always said he us wary of maxims. He is suspicious of rules, because too often they turn out to be empty clichés, platitudes which impede thoughtfulness.
And, indeed, one piece of advice commonly given, a piece of advice we have all heard and largely accept this CEO says is inadequate. Catmull says he would replace “Trust the process” with “Trust the people”— rarely “Trust the process”— always “Trust the people.”
Even good people, he notes, get trapped by process when they follow it thoughtlessly. But when good people bring thoughtfulness— thoughtfulness— to bear on their work, you get results— results like 27 Oscars with 14 movies. Therefore, people are more important than process. (Slight pause.)
We find these words in the work known as Matthew. “Then the disciples came and asked Jesus, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’” (Slight pause.)
So, what is a parable? (Slight pause.) Although Jesus has previously used metaphor in Matthew, in the Eleventh Chapter we, for the first time, encounter a story the writer of this Gospel labels as “parable.”
Parables purposefully use words and stories which have a wide range of meanings and functions. The categories used by parables include a figure of speech, a proverb, an aphorism, a riddle, a lesson, an allegory. In short, the term parable can apply to almost any kind of speech which is indirect, imprecise.
This kind of storytelling is indirect. Hence, the meaning of a parable cannot be settled on in as if it had a singular message. However, some meaning, if not a precise meaning, can be gleaned from the way parables function within the Gospels.
Put another way, it is not what parables mean which matters. It is how parables spur our thought process which matters.
Let me offer a definition of parable considered one of the best (quote): “The parable is a metaphor, a simile, a method of speech drawn from nature or common life. It engages the hearer by its vividness and/or its strangeness. Hence, it leaves us with doubt— it leaves us with doubt— about its precise application. Thereby, the function of a parable is to tease us into active thought.” The function of a parable is to tease us into active thought. (Slight pause.)
I often say this about the witness of Scripture. Scripture is not like checking the video tape in slow motion to see if a runner was tagged out. So, never, never, never ask what Scripture says. Always, always, always ask what Scripture means. (Slight pause.)
That brings me back to Mr. Catmull and Pixar. As I said, he has one rule, one mantra: trust people. Why? Why trust people?
When you just trust the process— meaning when you do not put people first, when you fail to trust people— when you just trust the process, that is an invitation to passivity. Trusting process invites an individual to abdicate personal responsibility.
And when process is trusted over people, people become lulled, seduced by dull repetitions. When process is trusted too much, people produce empty versions of what was done before and limit their vision for the new.
I probably don’t need to remind you the eleventh commandment of the church is, “We’ve never done it that way before.” The unspoken implication of “We’ve never done it that way before” is: why should we try something new? Why should we do something different? Trust process!
Why, yes! That’s what we in the church should do— use the same process over and over and over again. Don’t trust people.
That doesn’t sound right to me. I hope it doesn’t sound right to you. (Slight pause.)
If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard the parable of the sower many times and may even have heard many sermons about the story. There are two obvious ways people tend to look it. One is to picture us, church people, as sowers. One is to picture church people as seed.
But I don’t think either of those tease us into active thought. Both the sower and the seed have to do with process. And active thought, not process, is the goal of the parable.
This suggests in order to glean any lesson in the story of the sower you should not look at any one aspect of the story. You need to look at the totality of the story.
And what constant is here? The soil— I think if there is any lesson in the story, we need to consider the ground, the dirt, the soil onto which the seed falls.
The sower will sow every time there is a planting and do so on all kinds of soil. The seed falls where the seed falls. But the ground— the ground is receptive or it is not.
Despite the fact that the ground just sits there, I want to suggest the ground is the active aspect of this story. And I want to suggest that we are the ground.
Are we receptive or we are not? Are we willing to be thoughtful or not? If we are receptive, thoughtful, then the process can live. But it’s people who make the process live. The process has no life on its own. (Slight pause.)
Now, what really interests me here is that God has an expectation of us. The expectation is that we, each of us, will be a part of the covenant God makes with humanity. When we participate in the Dominion of God, when we participate with the will of God, when we participate in the work of God, new life becomes possible.
Indeed, the expectation of God here is that we will be (quote:) “good soil.” Indeed, the expectation of God here is that we, the good soil, will yield (quote:) “a crop of grain some thirty, sixty or even a hundredfold of what was sown.” In short, I think the parable asks a simple question of us: ‘are we willing to be participants in the Dominion of God?’ (Slight pause.)
In a couple of minutes we will have a Ceremony of Shalom for Brooke Bonney, as she is off to college. I know Brooke fairly well. If memory serves, she has been with us at least since the age of three. (She is nodding her head ‘yes.’) And she has just been Confirmed.
I suspect she is, pardon the expression, good soil. We, the community of faith, have tried to surrounding her with our love and our support. And I, personally, have no doubt she will strive to pass that nurturing on. (Slight pause.)
Well, I suppose that’s what all this is really about is are we willing, ourselves, to be good soil? Are we willing to be a people who cultivate, a people to continue to think and grow, a people who do not become trapped by the process? (Slight pause.)
And why did Jesus speak in parables? Perhaps it was to tease us into active thought. Amen.
07/06/2014
United Church of Christ, First Congregational, Norwich, New York
ENDPIECE— It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Congregational Response and Benediction. This is an précis of what was said: “The words of Closing Hymn, Lead Us from Death to Life, say this: ‘Lead us from death to life, from falsehood to truth, despair to hope, fear to trust, hate to love, war to peace— let peace fill our hearts.’ It occurs that doesn’t happen without out thoughtful participation.”
BENEDICTION: May we love God so much, that we love nothing else too much. May we be so in awe of God that we are in awe of no one else and nothing else. Amen.
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