[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)
A blog by Dr. David B. Gowler (Oxford College of Emory University) about the reception history of the parables of Jesus. It includes reflections on issues from four of my books on the parables: Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Good Samaritans, What are They Saying about the Parables?, The Parables after Jesus, Howard Thurman: Sermons on the Parables (Orbis).
[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)
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.
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.
From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans
To repeat: 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 are some quotes from the book that are found in the study guide for chapter 2 of the book (Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans):
Thurman claims that ‘the underlying unity of life seems to be established beyond doubt.’…This sense of Oneness—the underlying unity of reality—is what God desires for all of creation. Human beings should live their lives in accord with such unity, and this unity—true community—is the end purpose of life.
The child of God realizes others as children of God and seeks to cultivate relatedness with others; out of that sense of relatedness emerges community.
True integration developed from unifying experiences that were multiplied over extended periods of time. Integration could begin to create a beloved community, defined by ‘the quality of the human relations experienced by the people who live within it.…It cannot be brought into being by fiat or by order; it is an achievement of the human spirit as men seek to fulfill their high destiny as children of God.’
Luther Smith observes that the aims of Thurman’s innovations involving art and meditation were twofold. They were designed (a) to help evoke religious experiences that ‘magnified the essence of religion’ as opposed to dogma and (b) to affirm and facilitate unity within a religiously, socially, and philosophically diverse congregation.
[William] Blake’s argument that what is not too explicit ‘rouzes the faculties to act’ is a key component of this book’s arguments: parables as works of art function in the same way that Blake envisioned visual art should ‘work’: They ‘rouze the faculties to act.’
Some additional information that didn't make it into the book because of some final cuts that had to be made:
From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans
As noted yesterday, 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 are some quotes from the book that are found in the study guide for chapter 1 of the book (Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans):
In a religion such as Christianity, the image of God in the mind of many Christians is that of a kindly, benevolent, bewhiskered white man, seated on a white throne, surrounded by blond and brunette angels who stand ready to serve Him in praises or as messengers. The Devil, on the other hand, is the Prince of Darkness while the imps of the Devil are black.…Now this is strong medicine even for the pure in heart. What a vote of confidence it must have been to a white person to feel that the Creator of the Universe was made in his image. Of course, there is nothing unusual about the notion that God is imaged in accordance with the ideal of the beholder. The advantage is obvious (The Luminous Darkness, 60).
If a Roman soldier kicked Jesus into a Galilean ravine, he was merely a poor Jew in a ravine. In that context, Jesus offers to other poor disinherited Jews ‘a technique of survival for a disinherited minority.’ Jesus’s message assures the disinherited that they are children of God and therefore they should believe in their inherent worth and that of all other human beings, who are also children of God (JATD)
“The teachings of Jesus, Thurman argues, provide a creative solution to a disinherited minority struggling to survive, but Christianity became an imperial world religion much different from the religion of Jesus, the Galilean teacher and prophet. As a result, the disinherited minority in the United States of which Thurman was a member should be dedicated to the teachings of Jesus, which are ‘on the side of freedom, liberty, and justice for all people.’”
“Thurman argues that the logic behind Jesus’s love-ethic is that hatred ‘destroys finally the core of the life of the hater. While it lasts, burning in white heat, its effect seems positive and dynamic. But at last it turns to ash, for it guarantees a final isolation from one’s fellows. It blinds the individual to all values of worth, even as they apply to himself and his fellows. Hatred bears deadly and bitter fruit.’”“The religion of Jesus…centralizes the love-ethic in Jewish law: The love of God and the love of neighbor as oneself are the two greatest commandments. This love-ethic extends to all people by responding ‘directly to human need across the barriers of class, race, and condition.’ Jesus thus stood firmly within Judaism and envisioned himself a ‘creative vehicle’ for its ‘authentic genius.’”
From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans
I participated in a "No Kings" protest last Saturday, and the community among the people there led me to reflect further on 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.
In that light, I will be posting a brief summary of the parts/chapters in my recent book, Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans, This summary is found in the Introduction to the book, and I'll post it in "bite-sized pieces."
The Plan of the Book
The thesis of this book is that Howard Thurman’s interpretations of the Prodigal Son and Good Samaritan parables illustrate his understanding of how to (re)establish community with God (Prodigal Son) and therefore with other human beings (Good Samaritan). The book itself and the free online chapter study guides weave together major aspects of both my own and Thurman’s interests that integrate responses to what these parables “mean,” how they “work,” and what they “want” from us in response: (1) in-depth exegesis of the parables themselves; (2) Thurman’s insights into these parables and their implications; (3) the intersecting ways in which parables and visual art work, create a dialogue about their meaning, and encourage an ethical response; and (4) the ways in which parables and visual art can heighten spiritual consciousness and be used to create and deepen community:
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 b...