Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (includes a sermon by Thurman and a Dürer visual exegesis; Chapter 5 study guide, part 1)

   

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

How Howard Thurman's insights benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today: highlighting parts of my recent book, Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans.

Today's post focuses on chapter 5, which is the first chapter on the parable of the Prodigal Son: "Listening for the Whisper of God: 'You have to churn the Milk.'" 

As preparation for the chapter, I first recommend readers listen to an audio of one of Thurman's prodigal son sermons: "The Prodigal Son," (September 23, 1951). In that sermon, Thurman notes that God is like the loving father, and anyone could be one of the two brothers, estranged from their father. But God always welcomes us back, and when the prodigal “comes to himself,” he comes to his very center and comes face-to-face with God within him.

In further preparation for the chapter, I then recommend a visual exegesis of Albrecht Dürer's The Prodigal Son amid the Swine:

The longer version is found in David B. Gowler, “What Can Renaissance Art and Howard Thurman Tell Us about the Prodigal Son?” but here is a quick summary of the visual exegesis: 

In this striking engraving, the urgency of the pigs’ scramble for food matches the urgency of the prodigal’s physical and spiritual hunger, and the prodigal’s pose portrays the moment when he “came to himself.” Similarly, Thurman believes that the famine in the land reflects the prodigal’s physical hunger and internal spiritual famine, and the parable illustrates how human beings can move from such isolation to an assurance of community: When people “come to themselves,” it is in response to “a seeking and beseeching God,” and Thurman muses about how the degradation of the prodigal’s spirit led to “a stirring down at the bottom of his being” that said, “You are lost. You are out of contact with your family. You are out of community. Why don’t you go home?” Thurman thus argues for a deeper spiritual meaning of when the son “came to himself” and envisions it as an exemplar for one’s spiritual journey: human beings can discover God within themselves, realize who they really are, and return “home.”

The next post (on chapter 5, part 2) will focus on some key quotes from the chapter and some "digging deeper" insights.

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Some Quotes and "digging deeper" ideas: Chapter 4 study guide, part 2)

  

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

How Howard Thurman's insights benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today: highlighting parts of my recent book, Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans.

Today's post focuses on chapter 4, "What do Parables Want?" which argues that Jesus, and Thurman following behind him, aimed his parables in a historical context in which he and his audience were among those who had their "backs against the wall," and the parables, among other things, were aimed at spurring hearers to action.

Here are some key quotes from the chapter. As a whole they illustrate that Howard Thurman understood the first-century socio-economic context of Jesus's teachings better that most New Testament scholars did in 1949:

“People living on a bare subsistence level thus viewed patronage—where the elites distribute goods to the nonelites—as a moral obligation; people who had resources were expected to help in difficult circumstances.” 

“Jesus was an impoverished first-century Jewish artisan who was a member of a politically, militarily, and economically oppressed minority and who spoke prophetic words of judgment against the oppressors of his people. His parables and other teachings focus extensively on issues of money and power, including condemnations of the wealthy elite because of their oppression of the poor. Such socioeconomic contexts thus are essential for understanding numerous aspects of the parables of Jesus.” 

“Jesus’s message affirmed the inherent worth of the disinherited as children of God, the necessity of the love- ethic to pervade all relationships, and the power of love to create community in the midst of and even over against the forces of evil.” 

“How should wealthy elites live…? Jesus demands that they operate with vertical generalized reciprocity—a redistribution from the advantaged to the disadvantaged that expects nothing in return. Since God showers humankind with vertical generalized reciprocity, humankind should follow God’s lead in their relationships with each other (e.g., 11:11– 14).…The elites’ concern for money is linked to their lack of concern for human beings, and this connection between riches and unrighteousness can only be broken through vertical generalized reciprocity (14:12– 14; cf. 16:9, 19– 31).”

The "Digging Deeper" observations drive home the main points above:

• The Gospel of Luke was written by someone in a higher socioeconomic position than Jesus. Although Jesus’s perspective as being “disinherited” is clear in his parables, the author of Luke in many respects interprets the parables for those who like him, economically at least, could be included among the “inherited.” The focus thus shifts slightly from Jesus’s greater emphasis on the condemnation of the elite—which Luke still includes—to Luke’s greater emphasis on Jesus’s teachings serving as a warning to such elites (which Jesus also still includes). 

• Parables include Jesus’s prophetic critique “from below” of the wealthy elite. The rich fool parable (Luke 12:16–20), for example, illustrates Jesus’s admonition about rapacity (Luke 12:15; cf. 12:21). Jesus then elaborates the point when he enjoins his disciples not to worry about material possessions but to strive for the kingdom of God instead (12:22–31). The section concludes with an exhortation to sell their possessions “and give alms” (12:32–34; cf. 14:12–14; 18:18– 23). For Luke, then, the rich farmer exemplifies what to avoid: someone who does not strive for the kingdom, who does not care for those around him (especially those with their backs against the wall), whose treasure is material goods not the “unfailing treasure in heaven” (12:33), and whose life consists “in the abundance of possessions” (12:15).

• Recent scholarship has increased our understanding of the “weapons of the weak” and “hidden transcripts”—sometimes used by Jesus to give ambiguous (and subversive) answers in threatening situations (see page 50 in the text)—so Thurman’s arguments in Jesus and the Disinherited could be reevaluated considering these insights. 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Chapter 4 study guide, part 1; includes a sermon by Thurman)

  

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

How Howard Thurman's insights benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today: highlighting parts of my recent book, Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans.

Today's post focuses on chapter 4, "What do Parables Want?" in which I continue  to illustrate how parables and visual art can function in similar ways, in this case using the parable of the Persistent Widow and John Everett Millais's engraving, The Unjust Judge and the Importunate Widow. I argue that the dialogues with interpreters that parables and works of visual art create encourage (and sometimes demand) ethical responses and concrete actions. Jesus, and Thurman following behind him, aimed his parables in a historical context in which he and his audience were among those who had their "backs against the wall," and the parables, among other things, were aimed at spurring hearers to action.

In preparation for the chapter, I ask readers/students to listen to an audio of one of Howard Thurman's sermons, “Resistance to the Social Order” (April 20, 1962). In that sermon, Thurman asks, “For what do you stand, really? And are you willing to back the thing for which you stand with your mind, with your heart, with your resources, with your life?” The answer he gives is “If you are, you join the great army of those who stand as the pathfinders and in the ranks of those who are the redeemers of the world.” 

John Everett Millais's, 

The Unjust Judge and the Importunate Widow 

Then I ask readers to consider a short piece that I published in The National Catholic Reporter, “Making ‘Good Trouble’: What We See in Jesus’ Parable of the Persistent Widow,” where the conclusion states: 

The parable of the persistent widow unrelentingly pursuing justice from an unjust judge is best seen as an example of not how our prayers for justice should be continuous— although they should be— but instead as a paradigm for how we should unrelentingly pursue justice for those denied justice in our society, with a reminder that justice should not only be fair and equitable; it should be compassionate and restorative. 

Recovering the radical message of Jesus’s parable means that we should both recognize the widow as causing “good trouble” and realize that she should not be acting alone.

The brief essay uses Jesus's parable, Millais's engraving, and insights from John Lewis to build the case for how I will combine detailed interpretations of the parable of the Prodigal Son and the parable of the Compassionate Samaritan and then illustrate Thurman's interpretations and applications of them that are found in the succeeding chapters of the book.

The next post will include some quotes from chapter 4 as well as information that allows readers to "dig deeper."

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Chapter 3 study guide quotes and "digging deeper")

  

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

Today's post focuses on chapter 3, "How do Parables Work?" in which I use Rembrandt's The Money Changer (Der Geldwechsler) or The Rich Fool to illustrate how parables and visual art can function in similar ways. This is part two of the posts on chapter 3, and it includes quotes from Thurman and the chapter and some "digging deeper" thoughts that didn;t make it in the final edits of the book itself because of word count.

Quotes about the nature of parables:

“One meaning of mashal can be ‘riddle’— which means that the response of the hearer/reader is essential to the process of creating understanding about the possibly inferred meanings and implications of the mashal.” 

“Despite the presence of a moral before or after a fable/mashal/parable, the parable itself does not seek to impose a singular response but instead creates a dialogue and invites or challenges its hearers/readers to participate. Parables, in fact, can be created with and have inherent in their transmission the possibility of having multiple morals, meanings, and applications.” 

Quote about the nature of parables and visual art: 

“Parables and visual images can omit premises of one kind or another, thus leading to ambiguity and multiple meanings. In many instances, such gaps are intentional.…That aspect of parables can give them tremendous power to affect their hearers and readers in many ways—challenging them to change their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. The process provokes divergent responses as interpreters endeavor to understand them, since not every audience member envisions the missing premise in the same way.” 

Quote about the nature of parables, Thurman, and the interpretive task: What do parables mean? How do parables work? What do parables want?: 

“Thus, a key role for interpreters seeking to make the parables relevant for today is to attempt whenever possible to fill in missing premises or gaps with historical, social, and cultural information, such as Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited did. One’s interpretive task does not end there, however. Because Jesus’s parables want something from their hearers or readers, interpreters should then attempt, as Thurman’s book also did, to contextualize the parables of Jesus authentically, making them relevant for contemporary society without anachronizing or domesticating Jesus’s message.”

In the "digging deeper" section I include further information about parable interpretation in its first-century context and the Rembrandt painting, The Money Changer:

In fable collections, morals could be included in a promythium before the fable (cf. Luke 12:15) or in an epimythium after the fable (cf. Luke 12:21). The emphasis is on inculcating ethics. Quintilian argues, for example, that a critical aspect of education was “the formation of a child’s moral character,” which he believed was more important than “any excellence as a speaker.” Fables played a role (e.g., in primary education) to help students learn “what is right and what is wrong” (Strong 2021, 137–38).

Rembrandt’s painting resembles an earlier Gerard van Honthorst painting, An Old Woman Inspecting a Coin (~1623/4), which personifies greed. Rembrandt substitutes an old man for Honthorst’s elderly woman, but the similarities are striking—an elderly person in a dark room, wearing a pince-nez, holding a coin with the right hand, and examining it in the light of a single candle. 

Rembrandt uses chiaroscuro—contrasting light and shade—as a dramatic means of portraying a scene and suggesting inner character but with a sense of mystery. Rays of light are reflected in sundry ways and places, just as parables are reflected in different ways in different contexts and heard in numerous ways by various hearers. Rembrandt illuminates some objects clearly, while other aspects remain obscure, placed in the shadows, creating uncertainties and provoking debates. In a similar way, Jesus’s parables illuminate some things as clear as day. Other aspects become clearer as we learn more about the first- century contexts in which Jesus created and his followers preserved, transmitted, and transformed his words. However, still other elements—because of the nature of the parabolic word—remain in shadows, provoking our responses as we endeavor to understand Jesus’s parables more clearly in his context and ours and seek to change our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors accordingly.

Trump, Trump Voters, and the Parable of the Snake

 

Vincent van Gogh's The Good Samaritan 

It is hard not to respond to every outrage that we are experiencing now in the United States because of Donald Trump and his Republican co-conspirators, but the damage being done to the United States (e.g., masked, heavily-armed agents kidnapping human beings off the street, the Republican budget bill that will decimate the lives of millions of people and benefit the ultra rich, and so much more) and the world (e.g., the bombing of Iran) is impossible to describe, a damage that will last at least decades.

For those who were deluded into voting for Trump this second time after seeing all he had done during his last term (including fomenting an armed insurrection), I think of one of Trump's favorite stories, the parable of The Snake.

The fable of The Snake is about a "tender-hearted woman" who finds a wounded snake on the road. She takes it home and nurses it back to health, but when the snake recovers, it bites her. As the woman is dying from the bite, she asks the snake why it had bit her after all she had done for it. The snake replies, "You knew full well I was a snake before you helped me." 

Trump has used that fable numerous times, and after all he has done--and all we have seen from him--Trump personifies the snake of that parable (e.g., think of Rick Wilson's "Everything Trump Touches Dies").

In contrast, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus told the parable of the Compassionate (good) Samaritan after a lawyer “tested” Jesus by asking what the lawyer had to do to inherit eternal life. The lawyer already knew the answer when Jesus asked him what the law had to say: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” After the lawyer gave that answer, Jesus responded by saying: “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live” (10:25–28). 

The lawyer then asked Jesus: “And who is my neighbor?” (10:29), and Jesus replied with a parable that describes the extraordinary actions of a man, a despised-by-many Samaritan, who assisted another human being in need, a man half dead by the side of the road who had already been ignored by two religious people who had “passed by on the other side.” The Samaritan, in contrast, had compassion for the man, demonstrated that compassion in concrete ways, and “took care of him” (10:34). 

As always, Jesus expects a response from his audience concerning his parables, a response that involves both understanding and action, because Luke tells us this is what happened after Jesus finished the parable: 

[Jesus asked,] “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” [The expert in the law] said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (10:36–37) 

The current president of the United States has replaced the parable of the Good Samaritan with the fable of The Snake. If Trump truly believed, as he said last night, "we love you God," he would not act in the ways he does or speak the hateful words he does.

And many of those in the United States who call themselves Christians have joined a man who acts just like the snake in that parable, and they reject the parable that Jesus told as an example of how human beings should treat each other, with compassion and mercy. 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Chapter 3 study guide, part 1)

 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

How Howard Thurman's insights benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today: highlighting parts of my recent book, Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans.

Today's post focuses on chapter 3, "How do Parables Work?" in which I use Rembrandt's The Money Changer (Der Geldwechsler) or The Rich Fool to illustrate how parables and visual art can function in similar ways

Details about how this happens can be found in my National Catholic Review article,  “Rembrandt ’s Technique Sheds Light on How Parables Work”, that summarizes the arguments in chapter 3 and connects them to how Rembrandt’s painting “works.” For an academic article making a similar case, see also David B. Gowler, “The Enthymematic Nature of Parables: A Dialogic Reading of the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12: 16–20),” for more information about Rembrandt’s painting and the parable’s first-century context.

I also include an audio to Thurman's sermon “Possessions” on the rich fool parable (October 28, 1951). This sermon outlines the negative effects wealth, property, and greed have on human beings and their relationships.

This quote from chapter 3 states this about one aspect of how to approach Jesus's parables

Jesus was a pious first-century Jew who led a renewal movement within Judaism and debated with other first-century Jews how best to follow God, determine God’s will, and observe God’s Law.…Parables were part of his teaching repertoire, and to understand better their use and function as well as the creative understanding involved in their construction, we must look at first-century cultural contexts in which these parables were spoken and heard.”

The next post will include more quotes from chapter 3 and some "digging deeper" insights about Thurman and the parables. 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Summary, of part 2, chapters 3 & 4)

 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans

Previous posts noted how Howard Thurman's insights could benefit current discussions about what to do in the face of the injustices that so many people face today. The depth of community, the rejection of hatred and violence, and the dedication to making "Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble," in what Thurman called a (peaceful) "shock to the system, are among the things we should embrace.

So here's the next section of the brief summary of the parts/chapters in my recent book, Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans:

I have already talked about how Part I of the book (chapters 1 and 2) begins with chapter 1’s examination of Thurman’s life and career and an exploration of Thurman’s classic book, Jesus and the Disinherited, which bridges the gap between Jesus’s proclamation to those with their “backs against the wall” in the first century CE to Thurman’s era spanning most of the twentieth century and now to the twenty-first century. Chapter 2 discusses Thurman’s mysticism, its relationship with social change, and his practice of using the fine arts to raise one’s spiritual consciousness, encourage a “sympathetic understanding” of other human beings, and deepen the sense of community. 

Today I'll begin by summarizing Part II (chapters 3 and 4), which builds on the foundation of Thurman’s use of the fine arts by focusing on the parable of the Rich Fool and a painting by Rembrandt to illustrate the ways in which we should envision how parables “work” (chapter 3) and what parables “want” (chapter 4). 

Parables and visual art, for example, can illuminate some things brilliantly, but because of their inherent nature can leave other aspects in the shadows, and by doing so engage the hearts, minds, and imaginations of their hearers/viewers/readers in ways that result in a multiplicity of diverse interpretations, responses, and dialogues. 

The parable of the Rich Fool also makes clear that Thurman was correct in the way he framed Jesus’s message: Jesus spoke his parables in his own historical context as a poor, disinherited, oppressed, first-century Jew, including a powerful critique of the wealthy and powerful, and the Rich Fool parable prepares the way for Jesus’s answer to the disinherited and to the privileged: the Jewish love-ethic of loving God and one’s neighbor—including the restoration of broken community—that are illustrated so powerfully by the parables of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.

Next up: parts of the study guide for chapter 3, including audio clips of Thurman, etc.