There was a king and queen who worried about their son, the prince, for they were getting old and their son was interested only in the material pleasures of life. The queen went to a sorcerer for advice. The sorcerer asked, "What is your son interested in the most?"

         She said, "He is the most interested in horses!"

         "At lunchtime tomorrow," said the sorcerer, "invite your son to come to the palace garden." The next day, the royal family walked in the garden. At the gate stood an old man holding a magnificent white horse. The prince immediately wanted to buy the horse. The old man said, "First, you must ride the horse to see whether it lives up to your expectations." The prince immediately mounted the horse and rode away.

         It was so pleasurable that he rode all afternoon and into the evening. He entered a forest and lost his way. Very tired, he came to a woodcutter's hut. The woodcutter answered his knock and invited the prince to dinner and a bed for the night. The next day, he went on his way but got lost and found his way back to the woodcutter's hut. For many days, he repeated this. He began to notice how peaceful it was in the forest and at the woodcutter's hut and how beautiful was his daughter. He married the daughter and became a woodcutter. They had three children. There was much love; life was good and peaceful and interesting.

         One day, while he was staring into a pool of water that was like a mirror, the prince's children came running to the pool, jumped in and disappeared. He was astonished. Then his wife and her father ran into the pool and disappeared. Then his white horse ran also into the water and disappeared. He was overcome with grief for weeks. Finally, he cried out in despair and fell into a deep sleep. He awakened to see his mother's face bending over him. "Are you all right, my son," said his mother.

         "Oh, mother, I have been away so very long!" he said.

         His mother, puzzled, said, "Why, you fell off the horse and have been unconscious only about five minutes." The prince covered his face, deeply moved by his experience. The old man walked away with the horse.

         The journey to wisdom is never easy but is usually longer than five minutes.

Sermon

         Everybody loves stories. We are more likely to remember a teaching that is embedded in a story. A parable is a short, fictitious story that illustrates a moral, an attitude, or a religious principle. It also seeks to tease our minds into thinking in a different way. The first parables come to us from the scriptures of ancient India and China. But for the western world, the most famous parables are found in Christian Scriptures (or the New Testament) although after the time of Jesus, the Jews began special schools and the rabbinic tradition included parables and, of course, there are the Greek morality fables.

         I wanted to give you some exact history for Indian and Chinese parables and so I logged onto the Internet. What I got was a lesson in "beware where you get your information!" The first article I read said, "It is amazing how totally cool are ancient Chinese parables!" I doubt this was a Ph.D. thesis. Please alert your children not to put just anything from the Internet into their school reports!

         It appears that Jesus was the first to develop the parable as a teaching technique in the Middle East. Jesus said, "I will…speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world." (Matt 13:35) The person in a parable could be any person, a fictitious character, who could be any one of us. The parable the choir sang, is a warning story of judgment to the rich who do not help those in need. Lazarus means "God helps". Lazarus goes to heaven to receive his just reward after dying of hunger and illness and the rich man stays in Hades forever.

         Here is a teaser parable that is found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in different versions. This version is from Matthew (Mat 13:2-9)

         "He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 'Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them 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. And 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. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundred fold.' And he said, 'Let anyone with ears to hear listen!'"

         There are a number of ways of looking at this parable. For me, I first noticed that it began and ended with "Listen!" "Ah," I thought, "this is a listen up parable!"

         It reminded me that I am sometimes in a more receptive state of mind than at other times. I know that some of you were lucky enough (or wise enough) to go and hear the Dalai Lama in Boston at the Fleet Center last Sunday. I suspect that you listened intensely because you thought he had important things to say. The people who gathered around Jesus of Nazareth also listened carefully.

         Why was he talking about seed and the kind of ground upon which they fell? The "seeds" were his own words, ones that, by his acknowledgment, reveal the "foundation of the world." If the words are heard by minds that are like the pathway, the rocky soil, and soil of weeds, these states of mind will not allow the listener to benefit with the kind of understanding that brings about profound change. But if the state of mind is like rich soil, then whatever is planted will bring forth a bounteous harvest, or great understanding that prepares the way for the kingdom of God.

         For myself, the time of the kingdom of God, is the ideal time when there is peace on earth and justice for all. I am mindful that the Dalai Lama was quoted last week as saying that peace can come about only when the people committing violence experience change in their hearts. This is the kind of understanding that Jesus talks about. And nowadays, the Dalai Lama is one of the sowers, one of today's great living teachers though I also believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. was also one such sower. He said, "Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows."

         Now, if you read the Bible, most of the parables and other teachings are actually talking about the end of the world and the reception of believers into heaven because the early church believed that the world was coming to an end soon. My belief is that Jesus was likely teaching about how to live in this world and the words about the end times were added on, though no doubt Jesus may have used some language that made people listen up!

         All this talk about the types of soil makes me wonder about the type of soil at the side of my house. A certain sower, sowed seeds and plants and flowers galore only to see practically nothing flourish. He wonders what kind of soil this is and suspects it has something to do with noxious gases that are emanating from the septic system! You might like to ask him yourself (Leo) at coffee hour what kind of parable this example might be!

         Seriously, though, we liberal religionists might consider cultivating a rich foundation on which to base our religious thinking. The parables can add to our style of thinking about our lives. One parable in particular, a more complex one that gives us food for thought in our lives is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This is the story, abbreviated, from the Gospel of Luke (Luke 15:11-32):

         "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father. 'Father give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.

         "Not long after that, the younger son set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.He said.'here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father.'

         "while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

         "'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'

         "But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet....Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.

         ".[but] The older brother became angry and refused [to participate. He said,] 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you…Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends….'

         'My son,' the father said, 'we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours…was lost and is found.'

         This must be a story for all times. Out of all the parents here with grown children, surely many of us have children who threw their lives into chaos, distanced from us, and were reconciled in later years. Also, there might well be struggles with siblings. What this parable says to me is that when a child, small or grown, wants to be reconciled, the compassionate parent waits with open arms. Having the child say, "I'm sorry!" is an extra bonus and shows growth on the part of the child. (Of course, we also have to consider appropriate boundaries if a child is troubled.) The Gospel author may well have meant the father to be God.

         While I was in seminary, a student told me a story about how he fooled his parents into thinking he was studying in college for two years, whereas as he was actually hanging around with friends and doing drugs. Eventually, he ended up on the streets of Taos taking care of other young people who also panhandled for their next meal. He became very ill with pneumonia and bronchitis and called his father saying that he wanted to come home. His father sent him a plane ticket back to New Hampshire. When he told his father what he had been doing for two years, he found that his father had known he wasn't in school for the last year but he accepted him back. The parallels with the prodigal son story were obvious. The father and son are closer today than they have ever been and the father is very proud of his son who is now a United Methodist Minister.

         So there it is, the power of parables to help us to awaken to our lives, to open our hearts and minds and to call us to compassion. May we examine our lives for what we should awaken to and may we enrich the soil of understanding so that the seeds of wisdom may grow and flourish.

References

The following have informed and inspired this sermon:

The New Interpreter's Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volumes VIII and IX, United States of America: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Dulling, Dennis C. and Perrin, Norman. The New Testament: Proclamation and Parenesis, Myth and History, Third Edition, Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1994.