Meditations on the Parables of Jesus E-Book

Thomas Keating

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 143

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Revising much of the content originally published in The Kingdom of God Is Like, and adding selected material from Awakenings and Reawakenings, Thomas Keating continues to stir the Christian imagination with insightful commentary on the parables of the Bible. Including the Mustard Seed, the Narrow Door, the Penitent Woman, the Sower, the Prodigal Son, and others, this collection of corresponding meditations renews the voice and vigor of each parable's deeper meaning—so often overlooked through familiarity and fame. Originally told to seekers in an ancient land, each parable—packed with clues about the meaning of life, the nature of God, and the purpose of creation—has as much relevance and resonance as ever for both teaching the lessons of God and his mercy and for understanding the daily struggles of today’s fast-paced world.

Leseprobe

OTHER BOOKS BY THOMAS KEATING

Journey to the Center

The Heart of the World:

An Introduction to Contemplative Christianity

Intimacy with God:

An Introduction to Centering Prayer

Crisis of Faith, Crisis of Love

Open Mind, Open Heart

The Mystery of Christ:

The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience

Invitation to Love:

The Way of Christian Contemplation

Awakenings

Reawakenings

The Kingdom of God Is Like …

The Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit

Manifesting God

The Human Condition:

Contemplation and Transformation

The Better Part: Stages of Contemplative Living

The Crossroad Publishing Company

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First printing, 2010, in the United States of America. Compilation ©2010 by The Crossroad Publishing Company. All material first published in the U.S.A. by The Crossroad Publishing Company. Here represents a continuation of the copyright page.

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company. For permissions, please email [email protected].

In continuation of our 200-year tradition of independent publishing, The Crossroad Publishing Company proudly offers a variety of books with strong, original voices and diverse perspectives. The viewpoints expressed in our books are not necessarily those of The Crossroad Publishing Com-pany, any of its imprints, or of its employees. No claims are made or responsibility assumed for any health or other benefit.

Project Management by

The Crossroad Publishing Company

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For this edition, numerous people have shared their talents and ideas. We thank especially:

Acquisition: The Crossroad Publishing Company

Cover design: Einat Blum

Text Design: Eve Vaterlaus

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8245-26078 (paper)

EPUB ISBN 978-0-8245-02355

MOBI ISBN 978-0-8245-02508

Books published by The Crossroad Publishing Company may be purchased at special quantity discount rates for classes and institutional use. For information, please email [email protected].

TABLE OF CONTENTS

OTHER BOOKS BY THOMAS KEATING

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

FOREWORDby Bernard Brandon Scott

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

PART I. GOD DWELLS IN THE ORDINARY

1. THE PUBLICAN AND PHARISEE

“The sacred has moved to everyday life.”

2. THE MUSTARD SEED

“We do not have to wait for an apocalyptic deliverance. The kingdom is available right now.”

3. THE LOST COIN

“There is no place to go to find the kingdom because it is always close at hand.”

4. THE LEAVEN 1

“Look for the kingdom in the most unexpected places.”

5. THE LEAVEN 2

“The kingdom of God manifests itself in solidarity with other people, in sympathy with their misfortune, and in unconditional love.”

6. THE LEAVEN 3

“A difficult situation can be a great blessing, an opportunity for God to heal us at the deepest level.”

7. THE LEAVEN 4

“Our ideas of God and the kingdom need to be expanded and to grow continuously.”

8. THE BARREN FIG TREE

“The God of pure faith is closer than breathing, closer than thinking, closer than choosing, closer than consciousness itself.”

PART II. GOD LOVES INFINITELY AND ALWAYS

9. THE PRODIGAL SON 1

“True security, independence, and affection were all present in his father’s house.”

10. THE REIGN OF GOD 1

(The Hidden Treasure, The Pearl, and The Net)“If you find the reign of God, you don’t need anything else; it relativizes all other treasures.”

11. THE REIGN OF GOD 2

“The living tradition alone passes on the full Christian life.”

12. THE SOWER

“Where are you?”

13. THE WIDOW AND THE UNJUST JUDGE

“Will not God in his goodness provide the help that you need if you keep asking?”

14. THE WORKMEN IN THE VINEYARD

“The invitation of grace to enter the kingdom goes forth again and again and again.”

15. THE HIDDEN TREASURE

“The treasure of eternal life is given without our seeking it. It is already there.”

PART III. GOD KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES

16. THE GOOD SAMARITAN

“The kingdom of God is open to everyone.”

17. THE PRODIGAL SON 2

“You are always with me. Everything I have is yours.”

18. LAZARUS AND THE RICH MAN

“God does not set up barriers. We do.”

19. THE GREAT DINNER

“God comes to those who consent to come to God with their lives just as they are.”

20. THE NEW WINE

“The exuberance of the Spirit cannot be contained in the old structures.”

EPILOGUE:

The Coming of the Kingdom

ADDITIONAL COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

SOME YEARS AGO, FR. THOMAS KEATING published The Kingdom of God Is Like …, a collection of reflections and homilies he had offered to various communities, including especially the community at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. While the title of that collection pointed to the parables that comprised the majority of the book, the book also included other material not related to parables, such as a reflection on the rich young man (Mark 10:17–27) who is invited by Jesus to give his money to the poor.

Since earlier Fr. Keating books, such as Awakenings and Reawakenings, also include some chapters devoted to various parables, readers over the years have asked if Crossroad would gather together in a single volume his meditations on the parables of Jesus. This present volume meets that need. The content, drawn from those three books, appears here virtually unchanged, grouped together according to three central themes. We hope that this book will be of interest both to readers already familiar with Fr. Keating’s writing and those who, discovering Fr. Keating for the first time, seek a trustworthy guide for reflecting on these timeless and always surprising and challenging words of Jesus.

FOREWORD

ABOUT A YEAR AFTER THE PUBLICATION of my Hear Then the Parable, I received a letter from a young minister in Northern Ireland involved in the peace movement, surely one of the most frustrating ministries around. He wrote that my analysis of the parable of the withered fig tree had spoken to his soul for it so accurately described his situation—he just keeps on manuring, hoping that somehow God will give life.

I wrote back thanking him for the letter, but saying that the credit should go to the parable teller, not the parable critic. The parable, not my exegesis, spoke to his soul. This is not some false humility, for I remember clearly the night I first worked up that section of the book. The parable did not impress me, since I thought it a minor one compared to some of the other ones. Furthermore, I was under some pressure to finish the chapter. I thought I knew Jesus’ style and techniques as parable teller. As I mulled over the parable, I was struck by the futility of the man’s effort, by the use of the term “manure” (actually more accurately “dung”), and by the ellipsis, which most translators fill in: “If it bears fruit, well …,” and a shrug of the shoulders. Not much I thought, but typical of Jesus. More typical than I thought, because the stone the builder rejected has become the cornerstone. I’m delighted that Father Keating sees in this parable a symbol of the contemplative life.

Father Keating’s Meditations on the Parables of Jesus is itself elliptical like the parables. His sermons leave unsaid what should not be spoken and to the hearer the story’s remainder. His style of preaching is immensely faithful to the parables, for he does not tell, but listens and joins his audience as co-hearers of the parables. Over and over again, he responds to the parable story with a story, each time leaving us to hear again. Or as Jesus challenged, “the one who has ears, had better hear.”

Father Keating has four sermons on the parable of the leaven, one of the shortest and one might think least significant parables in the tradition, one on which even the evangelists do not comment. He seizes on the parable’s radical nature, its unmasking of monumental evil. The parable is a lens on the everyday, exposing the presence of God where we dare not expect it, where we have been trained to ignore it. He sees miracle where it truly is. Not just in a mother’s forgiveness of and caring for her son’s murderer, but more importantly in the barely perceptible tear in the eye of the sociopath. For him the kingdom is not the bloom of a barren fig tree, but God’s touch is enough.

By turning the parables over and over, Keating allows them to refocus the nonparabolic elements of the Jesus tradition. One might think that Jesus as King would be contrary to the monumental evil, the everydayness of the parables. But Keating shows they are of one piece, that Jesus’s abandonment in death is the monumental evil and his resurrection is the mask that hides that abandonment, but exposes the miracle of God’s great love.

We are perhaps too accustomed to think of the parables as simple stories for simple people. Such an attitude only cloaks our own arrogance. Keating restores Jesus as the artist of the soul, and he responds as an artist. One can only be astounded at how these parables continue to generate insights into the most profound issues of life.

—Bernard Brandon Scott

Darbeth Distinguished Professor of New Testament

Phillips Graduate Seminary, Tulsa, Oklahoma

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

THIS THIRD VOLUME OF HOMILIES, following Awakenings and Reawakenings, owes much of its inspiration to the scholarly and insightful book by Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable. The scripture texts given at the beginning of each chapter omit the settings and conclusions of the parables, which many exegetes believe to be the work of the evangelists themselves. (See Funk, Scott, and Butts, The Parables of Jesus: Red Letter Edition.)

The laborious work of Scott and other scholars in seeking the original meaning of the parables brings into sharp focus aspects of Jesus’ teaching and personality that have not been previously emphasized. When rightly understood, the parables help us to see how extraordinary a wisdom teacher Jesus really was, and how revolutionary, in the best sense of that word, was the content of what he taught and to which he bore witness by his life and death.

These insights cohere particularly well with the actual experience of people on the spiritual journey. When contemplative prayer is seriously embraced, we come upon the lived reality that Scott details so well: the reversal of expectations, the gradual and often painful liberation from emotional programs for happiness, and the increasing discovery of the kingdom of God in the ordinary and in the everyday. So often the experience of “corruption”—that which is first looked upon as crisis or catastrophe—is actually the occasion of the inbreaking of the kingdom, as God invites us to change not so much the situation as our attitudes.

I am grateful to Bernard Brandon Scott for allowing me to publish his ideas in popular form and to share the significant implications that I find in them for the following of Christ. And I am grateful to the first hearers of these homilies—the monks and the extended community at St. Benedict’s Monastery, Snowmass, Colorado, and the many participants at Contemplative Outreach Intensive Retreats, where these ideas have first been aired and evaluated.

THE PUBLICAN AND THE PHARISEE

“TWO PEOPLE WENT UP TO THE TEMPLEto pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other.” (Luke 18:10–14a)

The parable of the publican and the Pharisee reinforces one of the central themes of the parable of the good Samaritan. The coming of the good Samaritan down the road to Jericho signals the end of the social landscape and map of the kingdom of God as perceived by Jesus’ contemporaries. This point is somewhat obscured by the manner in which Luke introduces and concludes this parable in his gospel. He predisposes the reader to look upon the Pharisee as prideful. In fact, the Pharisee only did what the temple map required of those who were considered insiders and members of the religious elite of the time. In fact, the social context of the temple, as we now know it from other historical documents, would depict him as the ideal pious Pharisee! His speech is repeated almost word for word in other examples we have of pious prayers from the same period. His conduct and prayers are typical of the devout Pharisee.

The same map determining the proper conduct of one belonging to the sacred precincts of the temple as an insider also determines the place, the stance, and prayer of the publican (tax collector). He belongs to the group outside the bounds of the temple. He stands apart because he knows such is his proper place as an outsider. The place that he took was not a manifestation of his humility, as Luke hints, but simply of his awareness of his proper place as a sinner.

Thus the two men described in the parable manifest their relative places and status in the accepted culture of the time. One belongs to the sacred precincts of the temple and is an insider. The other belongs to the secular world and is an outsider. The social map calls for him to pray apart from the Pharisee who represents the holy. Thus from the text there is no evidence of merit or blame in the conduct or prayers of the two men.

 The sacred has moved to everyday life.

The storyteller stuns the hearers with his conclusion: “The publican went home to his house (to the secular world) justified. The other man did not.” These words come like a peal of thunder to the crowd. Luke attributes this statement to the humility of the publican and to the pride of the Pharisee, but the publican did not even make restitution for his extortions as Zacchaeus did (Luke 19:1–9) and the Pharisee thanked God for his good deeds, as was customary in the prayers of a devout Pharisee of his time.

Thus the main point of the parable emerges with stark clarity. The social map of the time is being abandoned and the kingdom of God is no longer to be found in the temple. The holy is outside and the unholy may be inside. The activity of the kingdom of God has moved from the sacred precincts of the temple to the profane arena of the secular world. The Pharisee represents well the piety of the temple. The publican represents well the secular world. The sacred place is no longer the place of the sacred. The sacred has moved to everyday life.

THE MUSTARD SEED

“WHAT IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD LIKE? And to what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” (Luke 13:18–19)

The thrust of the parables is to subvert the distorted myths in which people live their lives. To understand what we mean by “living in a myth” just think of a couple of our own contemporary myths. Take the myth of “the All American Boy,” for example. This is the young man who gets straight A’s in college and graduate school, climbs the executive ladder, and perhaps becomes the head of a multinational. Or the “American Dream:” two cars in every garage, vacations in Florida, houses in Spain, and so forth. On a more serious level, the American dream has been a vision of America’s invincibility, of its absolute entitlement in the eyes of God.