‘Teaching’
Scripture Collage – Teaching
1 – Jesus came as a healer and miracle-worker, but he also came as a remarkable teacher.
2 – They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority (1:21-22).
1- In fact, Jesus developed quite a following among the people of Galilee. It got to the point where he couldn’t easily get away – even when he tried to sail off to a deserted place for some rest and relaxation.
2 – Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things (6:33-34).
1 – What sort of things? Well, mostly things about the Kingdom of God and how to live faithfully as God’s people. But Jesus had a funny way with words. He liked using images and telling stories. Things that make you go: “Huh”. He talked about wedding guests and bridegrooms, wine and wineskins, lamps and bushel-baskets and the true nature of family. But what Jesus loved to talk about most, it seems, was seeds.
2 – Listen! A sower went out to sow some seed… And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. But still other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold! (4:3-9).
1 – And he didn’t stop there…
2 – He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head (4:26-28). He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs (4:30-32).
1 – It wasn’t always easy to make sense of Jesus’ teachings. He really did insist on speaking in parables.
2 – With many such parables he spoke the word 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)
1 – Yes, his closest followers were the lucky few who got a few extra words of explanation. Jesus seemed to create an inner circle with his teaching.
2 – When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything comes in parables” (4:10-11).
1 – Why the circles, and why the secrets? There’s a mystery here. Something that can’t just be told straight. Something tied up with who Jesus is and not just what he says. You’ve got to know the teacher as well as the teaching. As it was, Jesus’ friends struggled to get it. Even when Jesus put it to them a bit more plainly.
2 – Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him (8:31-32).
1 – This was a hard teaching – not only that Jesus would offer his life, but that his followers would too.
2 – He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will save it” (8:34-35).
1- The seed would have to fall into the ground and release its life to the earth – sometimes landing in fertile places and sometimes inhospitable places. Much is beyond our control. But by God’s grace, there can still be a harvest of thirty, sixty and a hundredfold. A mighty shrub from the tiniest of seeds.
2 – The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes” (12:10-11).
1 – He taught with words, he taught with stories, he taught through compassion, he taught with his life.
2 – “Let anyone with ears to hear, listen!”
Sermon
I remember the first time I used a parable as a teachable moment to address a pastoral care concern. This did not happen with lots of pre-planning and intentionality. I more stumbled into the idea. I was not really a pastor yet either. It was my second year of Mennonite Voluntary Service at Welcome Inn Community Centre and Church. Part of my role that year was a pretty informal pastoral internship role – one part of my VS role in that low income community. I explored and tested some worship and preaching gifts and did some visiting of folks. There was maybe the first awakening of a pastoral identity, but certainly not in any formed way. I did visit some of our seniors, so one day I had a visit with one of them. She was in a wheel chair, on social assistance, and lived in what was called at the time an unregulated second level lodging home. She had had a hard life, of which I could only begin to imagine – it was so outside my experience. She was not generally a happy person, and I didn’t blame her. She would launch into a list of complaints about life and family and her community, and yes, about church and about Welcome Inn, even as she was one of the most faithful, dedicated and committed persons there.
I was young and ill equipped to visit or provide any real sense of care or hope or solutions to her many expressed problems and complaints. I will still learning about myself, and who I was as a person, let alone trying to understand and listen deeply to another person with such different experiences. I was just starting to learn about listening before talking, and that the goal isn’t’ fixing problems. But I showed up. I can’t remember anymore what the particular circumstances were that were so upsetting to her that morning. Something about being at odds with some other people at the church or her lodging home, and having lots of disagreements and arguments about how to understand the situation. I listened and in my fumbling way tried to suggest solutions or other ways of viewing the circumstances. It was getting us nowhere. When somewhere out of the recesses of my mind, I pulled out a simple parable – the parable of the blind men and the elephant. I might as well give it a try I thought. It goes like this:
A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable”. So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, “This being is like a thick snake”. For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, “is a wall”. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant) The parable goes on with the men all fighting about the true shape and form of the Elephant from their perspective – each absolutely convinced they were right and knew what they were talking about. None of them really knew the totality of the elephant, which could have been discovered if they simply pooled their shared experience.
Yes, a rather odd story to introduce in a pastoral care situation. Not sure what got into me. A Supervisor might have failed me. But it worked. The woman got caught up in the story. She laughed at the humour of the story and caught the vast differences in perspective. And she made her own internal leap to the differences and perspectives she was dealing with in her own life and the people around her. She put herself in the story. She pondered whether she might just be like one of the men who thought the Elephant was a rope and not a tree trunk. She opened herself to the possibility that someone else in the situation might be right too, or have a different and legitimate way of expressing themselves, and that was okay. The parable seemed to diffuse the crisis of the day, and put her in a much better space. Over the next months she was the one who would bring up this elephant parable a number of times and remind me of it, and we would laugh again, and use it to solve or re-shape whatever was the problem or issue of the moment – the needed change of perspectives. She kept teaching me through this parable. The parable was the break through moment of teaching and understanding for both of us.
This was also one part of a larger break through experience for me during those 2 years at Welcome Inn. I had grown up in an academic family that valued formal education and I excelled in our school systems. I knew what it meant to learn in that system and get good grades. I didn’t yet know how limiting that system can also be in terms of the many and varied ways people learn and grow in wisdom and understanding. The two years at Welcome Inn turned that upside down. I had come into VS assuming I had much to share and teach and give to the community, and there were certainly gifts that were shared and appreciated. But I found myself the one learning much much more. The community kept teaching me over and over again. Through the lives of those around me I learned firsthand about the issues of poverty, homelessness, racial discrimination, city planning and neighbourhoods, abuse, and systemic violence, but also I learned about amazing resiliency, and hospitality and perseverance and righteous anger and self-advocacy, healing journeys and unbelievable compassion and love. I learned about the depth of community in all its diversity and beauty. I learned about listening, about truly hearing different perspectives, about learning through experience, through story, through pain, through our lived experiences and embodied lives. I became a different kind of learner. I realized that I had earlier only touched one part of the elephant, and there were so many more parts to touch to get the full picture and understanding. When I ended at Welcome Inn, I returned to the academic world of seminary and I continue to value the strengths and gifts of formal education and study and academic work. But I asked very different kinds of questions there, some of which could not be answered without a much broader wisdom. I continue to be enriched by and learn in so many other settings – through First Nations wisdom – aural teaching and ceremony and story and circle; through nature and wilderness – the physical elements, the water and trees and rock, the plant and animal life, the grandeur and simplicity, the very geography; through our bodies – our senses, our intuitions, our guts feelings; and through the embodied lives and stories of real people and communities. A few more parts of the elephant are coming into focus.
We have been reading the gospel of Mark. One of the significant strands all the way through is Jesus as teacher. We heard that in the Scripture Collage this morning. Jesus taught as one having authority. He had compassion on the crowds and taught them many things. He spoke in metaphor , images and parables. ‘With many such parables he spoke the word 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.’ To those gathered around him, including the disciples, he says ‘to you has been given the secret of the kingdom, but for those outside everything comes in parables.’ Why parables? Why this mystery, this sense of secrecy and this inner and outer circle? This is a unique feature of the gospel of Mark – that there is a secret to the Kingdom of God. This is how the good news is framed. Let anyone who has ears to hear, listen. Only some can truly listen and hear the meaning of what Jesus teaches and live into this kingdom way of living. We find out pretty soon that this inner circle that ‘gets it’ are not the powerful or the learned. They are not the Scribes and Pharisees and religious leaders. They are not the rulers or decision makers. They are the outsiders, those needing healing, the women, the children, the ones haunted by demons, the unclean, the sinners. They are the ones who catch what Jesus is teaching, who listen, hear and understand. It is in that catching, that ‘getting it’ that they become a part of the secret, part of kingdom good news.
Many of these words about parables and the secret of the kingdom and who can understand are found in Mark 4 – the chapter that has all of the seed parables. The image of the seeds planted and sown becomes the teaching metaphor for faith and for the mystery of how the Kingdom of God works. In 3 subsequent parables, a Sower sows and scatters seeds. In the first parable, most of the seeds fall in ways that don’t end up producing fruit for various reasons – on the path, on the rocky soil, among the thorns – but for those who hear, on the good soil there is abundant growth and increase. Is the Sower God and we the various kinds of soil – receptive or not? Or are we invited to scatter the seeds of God’s good news, not knowing where they will land and how they will be received? Or are there parts of our lives, alternative priorities, that block us from good growth or block others – and the kingdom remains a secret we don’t get? In the second parable, the Sower scatters seed and then sleeps and rises night and day but has no idea how the seeds might spout or grow, but then it does and gets harvested as full grain. Is it still God as Sower who doesn’t know how seeds grow? Or us people? Or is it our own growth that we can’t control or even recognize, but then comes to us as a gift? The last parable is the kingdom of God being like the small little mustard seed that grows to become a great shrub, offering hospitality to the birds of the air. Again this unexpected growth from a seed with a purpose that moves outward, with the questions of who are the seeds and the Sower and how does this growth happen. Maybe it is more important to live within the mystery and ambiguity of these Sower and Seed images than to try to precisely figure them out and define everything one for one.
For me this morning, I am sitting with these seeds as an overall image of the teaching and learning, spiritual growth and discovery that can happen in our lives. What might it mean for us to be good learners, to be the kind of good receptive soil that can accept God’s teachings and open ourselves to the secrets of the Kingdom of God? It must have something to do with deep listening –to the Scriptures, to the Spirit, to worship, to the people of God, to what is going on in our world and paying attention to where God is present. It means listening to a broad range of voices – to those society so often puts on the outside – to those who in Jesus day did listen and hear and catch the secrets of the Kingdom. I think again about the Elephant parable, and how it takes those many different perspectives to start to put a composite together of the whole.
I wonder too what might it mean for us as individuals and as a community of faith to be good teachers, to be a part of sowing seeds of faith? This joining God in the sowing must be invitational and open and rooted in relationships, rather than some sort of top down power move. The church has a sad history of being a part of colonial power structures and imposing faith on the world. There is repentance needed, and much silence and listening. There will need to be vulnerability, a willingness to open and share from the depths of our own lives, including our pain and doubt and fears. It means giving up control – control of methods, control of process, control of outcomes – the Kingdom remains a secret. It is trusting God, trusting the growth that God can bring, not knowing if or how or where growth will spring up. It means being open to all sorts of learning styles and valuing each one. Black American author, poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou said ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did (and we could add, will forget what you teach), but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/5934-i-ve-learned-that-people-will-forget-what-you-said-people) This means embodied living, and allowing the Spirit of God to speak. We witness to Jesus who taught with words, taught with stories, taught through compassion and taught with his life. In the end, we are both teachers and learners. We are both Sowers and the soil that receives the seed. There is a mystery here, a secret, but let anyone with ears to hear, listen.
I have been thinking lately about some of the teachers and mentors that have shaped my life and who I have become. This past week I heard word that one of my beloved professors from my CMBC days in Winnipeg had died – Esther Wiebe at age 90. (https://birchwoodfuneralchapel.com/tribute/details/6049/Esther-Wiebe/obituary.html) Esther and George Wiebe were the main music professors for over 40 years at what was then called Canadian Mennonite Bible College, now CMU. As very fresh professors, they taught both my parents and most of my uncles and aunts, and then nearer the end of their career taught me, my brother and lots of my cousins and friends. I watched the live-streamed funeral on Tuesday. I am not sure if there was anyone else that shaped and influenced me more in those years than Esther and George. Esther taught me music theory and was the amazing pianist for choir, who could play anything open score and if George asked, transpose it and play it perfectly in another key. She was organized, focused, efficient, precise, and yet open and friendly and welcoming and funny. George was the passionate conductor, dynamic and full of life – I’ve never seen such piercing and yet kind eyes – evoking amazing and profound sounds and musicality out of the singers, even as he sometimes put his foot in his mouth, forgot items on choir tours, or missed out on needed details and planning. That was what Esther was for. They made for a great team. I learned so much musically from both of them. But it was much more than that. They embodied a kind of humble and honest and joyful life and faith that drew out the best in me and others. There was a vulnerability and openness and passion and even fragility, that did not hide behind professionalism or protocols. They were brilliant, and yet real and down to earth, wanting and drawing out the best for their students, their school and their broader community. Their work, their teaching, their music, was covered with love. They are a living example of the seeds of faith received and shared and sown again and again and again, part of the revealing of the mysteries and secrets of the kingdom of God. I gave thanks on Tuesday and shed a few tears.
We are invited to listen deeply for the seeds of faith, sown and scattered by our God in our lives. As we sang ‘These seeds you have sown in our hearts and in our bones, cover them with your loves. Use our hands, use our feet, to show your love and your peace, and cover us, cover us with love.’ (VT 777 Seeds) May it be so. Amen.