Parables: Stories from Jesus: Weekly Summary
Sunday
Parables aim to subvert our old consciousness and offer us a way through by utterly reframing our worldview.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
God is clearly into abundance and excess, and God’s genuine followers share in that largesse, allowing it to flow through them toward the world.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
God looks for us when our lostness is so convoluted and so profound, we can’t even pretend to look for God. But even in such bleak and hopeless places, God finds us. This is amazing grace. And it is ours.
—Debie Thomas
Wednesday
In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus reminds us that it is because we are so close to each other that our differences are so vexing. But the differences are never as great as we fancy them to be.
—Allen Dwight Callahan
Thursday
Please teach me about myself in this sacred circle so I may know you and reflect you more on this good earth, the whole community of creation, including humans.
—Randy Woodley
Friday
Jesus invites us to withdraw our allegiance from a world of bigness, clarity, immediacy, looking good, and security and to see life instead as smallness, patience, humility, inner wisdom, and risk-taking.
—Richard Rohr
Week Forty-Eight Practice
Considering Our Attachments
Then Jesus told them a story: “A rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops. He said to himself, ‘What should I do? I don’t have room for all my crops.’ Then he said, ‘I know! I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll have room enough to store all my wheat and other goods. And I’ll sit back and say to myself, “My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get everything you worked for?’ Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.” —Luke 12:16–21
Preaching on this parable of the “rich fool” in 1951, Howard Thurman (1899–1981) posed these questions to his listeners:
How are you related to your money? Is it a part of your commitment to God, or is it a part merely of your commitment to yourself? That’s the crucial question. If I give all of my life goods to support causes in which I do not believe, or if I withhold the bowels of my generosity and compassion from the need that always hammers at my door, then I will never find freedom of mind, of spirit, of heart.
Therefore, Jesus raises with awful insistence: What would I give in exchange for my life? Do I give my money, my things? Am I so attached to them that to detach myself from them is equivalent to destroying myself? Or is it possible for me to put at the disposal of [others] the fruits of my labor, bearing in mind that everything that I have, I have it because of a lot of other people’s work, a lot of other people’s labor, a lot of other people’s sacrifice, a lot of other people’s self-denial?…
Are you willing to put the resources of your mind at the disposal of trying to work out the most creative way by which you can live your life, placing your possessions at the disposal of that to which you are committed? And the degree to which you are able to do that, you will find peace of mind and freedom of soul.
What about it? Are you willing to try it? See what happens.
Reference:
Howard Thurman, Sermons on the Parables, ed. David B. Gowler and Kipton E. Jensen (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018), 77. An audio recording and transcript of this sermon can be found at https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/items/show/586 .
Image credit and inspiration: Providence Doucet, Untitled (detail), 2016, photo, Canada, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like Jesus’ parables, we can look closely at fallen leaves and see things new.
