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.”
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."
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