Very Reverend Michael Demkovich, O.P.: Parable Preaching, Our Easter Call to Conversion

Parable Preaching, Our Easter Call to Conversion

Easter is the great testimony to the life and mission of Jesus Christ and His preaching. It is the victory of life over death no matter the dangers that assail us, the fears that plague us. The Gospel that Jesus preached was simply and clearly this: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). Or as Mark’s gospel tells us: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14). The Gospel is always one of personal conversion in this moment so that we might enter the kingdom of God. The Christian never abandons this call to real Gospel change. We need to remember that unless each of us faces the hard reality of our own conversion of heart, nothing makes sense. Lent is a time of such profound conversion, and it is the reign of God, the rule of God’s mercy and love, that we strive to embrace. But Lent is not an end in itself, it is the preamble to Easter, a prelude and overture that makes life more meaningful.

Throughout His ministry, Jesus confronted the unrepentant heart and the wayward spirit. But He always did so not with force, but with life stories that placed before each person their need for conversion of heart. He did this so beautifully and simply in the close to 50 parables He told. We know many of these by heart – the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Unjust Steward, the Ten Virgins and many more. Each parable takes everyday circumstances and puts before our imagination an invitation to conversion of heart. This idiom of the parable or parable preaching holds a worthwhile lesson for us today. It instructs us in how we might share this gospel, Jesus’ call to personal conversion. But how?

It seems to me that we ought to look at the contexts that gave rise to Jesus preaching in parables, realizing that the parable itself is timeless. St. Asterius of Amasea, in the fourth century, described the parables as “examples enshrining holy truths” (Office of Reading Thursday First Week of Lent). In the parable of the shepherd, who leaves the 99 to seek out the one lost sheep, we see how “parable preaching” must encounter the lost soul. Asterius writes of the lost sheep or for us the lost soul: “When he found it, he did not chastise it; he did not use rough blows to drive it back, but gently placed it on his own shoulders and carried it back to the flock. He took greater joy in this one sheep, lost and found, than in all the others” (ibid.). There is an important lesson for us, especially when even now within the church we find a tendency to brutalize those we deem “traitors” (traditores), like the Donatists did of old. This should not be the case, for there is a gentleness to the ministry of the Good Shepherd

who calls to us, who uses parables that draw us to change our hearts. Perhaps we should do the same? It is for this reason that I see “parable preaching” as showing us a way to learn from Jesus how to enter a person’s context, how to find a way for the Gospel to find its way into a person’s heart and there to take root.

I would say that there are really two major contexts where we see the parables being used. They are used for teaching, to instruct about the kingdom, and preaching, the genuine call to conversion, a call to real repentance. Jesus uses parables to teach people about the Kingdom of God, for example about the reality of Jesus’ unique mission (new cloth not sewn on old; new wine burst old wine skins; lamp not put under a bushel). They are also used to teach us about discipleship, what does it mean to follow Christ (the foolish builder; the barren fig tree; the seed and its soil; the wheat amid the weeds). And they are used to teach us about the eschatological or ultimate meaning of life (the mustard seed; the leaven in bread; the hidden treasure; the pearl of great price; the abundant catch of fish). Jesus teaches with parables because he knows how cluttered our minds and dulled our imaginations can be. We need to have something break through our walls and barriers. In Matthew 15 Jesus credits Isaiah who said “You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s hearts have grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them” (Matthew 13:14-15 NRSV). Parables have a way of entering into a person’s awareness in simple and subtle ways so that they might find the good soil in a person’s soul.

Jesus also used parables to preach the gospel, which is that genuine call to deep personal conversion. This “parable preaching” is what we are most in need of today, for it confronts us, no

that doesn’t say it, “I am confronted” and called to honesty and integrity. The New Testament word is metanoia which means a profound heart-felt transformation of one’s self. It is the core of Jesus’ preaching and it means repentance, a new way of thinking and being, a re-ordering of one’s life. These are the contexts today where we are most called to enter and engage. This American malaise we face is missing what the transformation of life is all about, we rot in the tomb of our own making when we ignore this call to conversion. It isn’t a “hey, maybe if you aren’t doing anything and you want to try this conversion thing out cause it’s really cool and everybody who does it really likes it” kind of a thing. No! It is a “I have been hit in the gut and my whole life has new meaning, life has a greater purpose” kind of a thing! But with God, it creeps into our marrow, it seeps into our soul, it leaves no bruises no scars, but it does cut to the deep down me I’ve been hiding and afraid to show. When Jesus uses parables to preach he is lifting the sinner on his shoulder, carrying the sinner so as to discover their place of belonging, but the moral choice remains theirs. Each person must decide to change or not. Jesus uses parables to preach a challenge, calling us to do what is right (the persistent widow; the obedient and disobedient sons; the wicked tenant; the wedding banquet; the sheep and goats). Jesus also uses the parable in His preaching to call one to moral conversion, humility, and a deeper awareness of God’s mercy (the lost sheep; the Good Samaritan; the lost coin; the Prodigal Son; the rich man and Lazarus; taking the lowest seat). This call to conversion, to real genuine conversion, is the core of gospel preaching. In the New Testament, the common context for these parables is a person’s inability to see how their own self-justification or their self-righteousness, is in fact their greatest obstacle (the lawyer who wanted to be vindicated so he asked who is my neighbor; the Pharisees and scribes who question Jesus’ association with sinners; even the disciples and their ambition to find who will be the greatest). Parables are our best way to hear the call to conversion, to a change of heart, and a new way of life.

Today our evangelization, our teaching and preaching can benefit from Jesus’ style of “parable preaching” that takes the life stories of real people and allows them to speak to our hearts and to our imagination, to challenge both the self-righteous and the sinner in us all. The parables that need to be told for today may include stories of LGBT persons seeking to find God’s love; or the displaced person looking for somewhere to call home; or the Democrat and the Republican who find the evil they fear is of their own making; or the barren earth left untended; or the lost street children left abandoned. The core of Jesus’ preaching is a call to genuine conversion which, no matter the season, is always personal and profound. It calls me now, in this moment, in the fullness of this hour to recognize God’s kingdom, the mercy and love of a God who cares for each one of us. But be careful, to preach is a dangerous business as Jonah realized when preaching to the people of Nineveh. People do change. We each must face our own call to conversion, our own need for God’s mercy. While it is dangerous, it is our Easter call to preach the Good News –change, for the kingdom of God is at hand!

By Very Reverend Michael Demkovich, OP, Episcopal Vicar for Doctrine & Life