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.

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Quotes from chapter 2)

  

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

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):

One thing I always encourage is for people to listen to Thurman himself, so I'll begin with some links to some of Thurman's recordings as context for this chapter.

Thurman’s sermon “On Forgiveness” (September 30, 1951) uses stories about the woman caught in adultery (John 8:2–12) and the “sinful” woman who anointed Jesus’s feet (Luke 7:36–50). Thurman also cites John 8:2–12 in the second part of his lecture, “The Search for Meaning in the Experience of Love” (November 5, 1975). For background on the “Mysticism, Social Change, and Civil Rights” section, see the 1978 “Mysticism and Social Change”: Part 1; Part 2. For context on the “Role of the Fine Arts in Building Community,” see Fra Angelico in the 1953 “Men Who’ve Walked with God” series. For background on the spirituals, from “We Believe” (1958): “Deep River, My Home is over Jordan”; “Deep River; Nature of Life”; “Balm in Gilead”; “The Blind Man; Heaven, Heaven.”

Thurman also used the fine arts to deepen understanding, community, and spiritual consciousness. So as preparation for this chapter, I recommend the brief essay, David B. Gowler, “Painting Urges Viewers to Speak and Act as Jesus Did in an Inhumane World” about a Max Beckmann painting. It portrays a story to which Thurman refers many times (about “the woman caught in adultery,” John 8:2–12) as a model for how human beings should treat each other in an often-inhumane world.

Some quotes from chapter 2:

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: 

• As Luther Smith notes (2007, 50–51), the love-ethic extends to all of God’s creation, including plants and animals. All life is related; all exist in an underlying unity. See especially Thurman’s discussions of a common consciousness that all humans share and how this consciousness extends to communication between those of different languages as well as with animals and even plants (e.g., Thurman 1986, 56–75).
• In their 1936 meeting, Gandhi requested that the delegation headed by Thurman sing a few spirituals. Led by Sue Bailey Thurman, they sang “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” (which Gandhi’s personal secretary Mahadev Desai said represented every disinherited community’s hope and aspiration “to climb higher and higher until the goal was won”) and “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” (which Gandhi said expressed “the root experience of the entire human race under the spread of the healing wings of suffering”): AHH, 7.
• Amanda Brown cites the pragmatist John Dewey’s ideas about art as influencing Thurman in the sense of art being able to dislodge people from old habits of thought and feeling and connect them on a new level: “Art intensifies the feeling of living, and the process of experiencing art can have a lasting effect on one’s life.…Artistic expression, performance, and observation were means to attain new and elevated consciousness—a sensibility in accord with mystical experience” (2021, 149–50).
• Thurman argues that “the genius of the slave songs is their unyielding affirmation of life defying the judgment of the denigrating environment that spawned them” (WHAH, 216–17). The spirituals are works of art of great depth that can comfort and inspire others who are oppressed and disinherited. They are realistic about that which is not under their control but insist on their common humanity with their enslavers as equal children of God. Cf. Eisenstadt 2023, 149, 155.
• The Khyber Pass is significant historically because of its vital role as part of the trade route between central Asia and the Indian subcontinent (e.g., the Silk Road) and as a gateway for military invasions (e.g., Alexander the Great). For Thurman, however, his “vision” experience at Khyber Pass confirmed the possibility of true human community.
• The program for the April 11–15, 1956, Festival of Religion and the Arts at Marsh Chapel at Boston University noted that religion is a “total response” to our Creator that “finds unique expression through the arts.” Whenever art reflects the ultimate concern of human beings, it is religious art, whether or not it appears as what is deemed “traditionally religious.” Humans need the witness of religion in art as a declaration of human worth and dignity, since humans are created in God’s image, as a response to the “contemporary culture of alienation, anonymity, and materialism”: HTC: Box 62, Folder 51, xxi.

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (Quotes from chapter 1)

 

Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: 

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):

I'll start with direct quotes from Thurman:

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)

Here are some quotes from my book that I offer up for discussion in the study guide: 

“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.’” 

To make the book more affordable, I had to cut tons of material. Some of that information I included in the study guide as context for the leaders of any discussion about the book. Here are a few from chapter 1's study guide:

• Thurman continually challenged himself to succeed. While a student at Morehouse College, for example, Thurman claimed that he and his friend James Nabrit Jr. read every book in the Morehouse library. 
• When Thurman lived in Rochester, a member of the Ku Klux Klan showed him a notebook in which the man had recorded almost all the places Thurman had spoken, the subjects of his talks, and the number of people who attended.
• Thurman joined Boston University when Martin Luther King Jr. was finishing his doctoral course work. King attended some chapel services that year—his last year at Boston—and was deeply impressed by Thurman’s sermons.
• Thurman wrote, “The core of my preaching has always concerned itself with the development of inner resources needed for the creation of a friendly world of friendly men.…It was my conviction and determination that the church would be a resource for activists.…To me it was important that individuals who were in the thick of the struggle for social change would be able to find renewal and fresh courage in the spiritual resources of the church” (WHAH, 160). 
• One example of Thurman’s experiences with possible violence took place in 1947 at State College in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Thurman arrived late on the day before he was to give the commencement address. For two days the threat of a violent, white mob had caused men with rifles to guard the campus, including Thurman’s host in the house in which he stayed. The man asked Thurman to relieve him on the armed vigil, and later that night Thurman, a lifelong pacifist, found himself for the first time since he was a boy holding a gun. He sat at a window, deliberating over what he would do if an armed mob attacked: he would either (a) return their fire or (b) lay down the gun, walk outside, and be willing to sacrifice his life. That moment never came, but, as Thurman noted in 1978, the “ultimate logic of social action may be some form of martyrdom.” See “Mysticism and Social Action,” HTC Box 8, Folder 39, pp. 22–23. 
• Some of Thurman’s descriptions of first-century Jewish groups (e.g., Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots; JATD, 1–25) are outdated because of advances in scholarship (e.g., the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947), but his study of such works as Louis Finkelstein’s The Pharisees led him to reject uninformed (Christian) scholarship about Judaism. Note his comments about “the genius of the Pharisaic movement in Israel” and rejecting the “judgmental attitude” and “prejudice” against them in his 1951 sermon, “On Forgiveness” (see chapter 2 below).