June Edition: Parables For Peasants
The Peasant Times-Dispatch - Issue 03
From The Editor
Welcome to the June Edition of the Peasant Times-Dispatch. Since the last issue, paid subscribers have enjoyed a few installments of the Adventures of Tylus Worran, a science fiction peasant parable. Things are getting interesting and I have received some positive comments, so please consider subscribing so you don’t miss out on the adventures!
We also had the inaugural post from Hambone, which you can find here. Hambone is a long-time friend of mine, tales of our discussions will be familiar to readers who have followed me here from Wordpress.
I am also building up towards getting a podcast started here. Is that something that would interest you? Please leave a comment and let me know.
He Spoke To Them In Parables
Throughout the Gospels, Christ speaks to his apostles and to the public in parables. Yet only to the Apostles was deeper knowledge of the Church entrusted. This dynamic was confusing to the apostles, as we read in Matthew:
And his disciples came and said to him: Why speakest thou to them in parables?
Who answered and said to them: Because to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven: but to them it is not given. For he that hath, to him shall be given, and he shall abound: but he that hath not, from him shall be taken away that also which he hath. Therefore do I speak to them in parables: because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
Jesus knew that not everyone would be disposed to understand the fullness of his thought and teaching. The Apostles are repeatedly sent forth as shepherds, and everyone else is repeatedly regarded as a flock of faithful sheep. To the Apostles, greater knowledge was given, and greater responsibility to care for the flock.
This is why the opposite of a Peasant is what I will refer to as a Theologian. There is a need for Theologians, and they provide a tremendous service to the Church and the faithful. But not everyone is called to be a Theologian. So if the deeper truths were entrusted to the “Theologians” that are the Apostles, what is it that Christ wanted we peasants to take away from His ministry? Let’s consider a few parables.
The Parable of the Sower
The same day Jesus going out of the house, sat by the sea side. And great multitudes were gathered unto him, so that he went up into a boat and sat: and all the multitude stood on the shore.
And he spoke to them many things in parables, saying: Behold the sower went forth to sow. And whilst he soweth some fell by the way side, and the birds of the air came and ate them up.
And other some fell upon stony ground, where they had not much earth: and they sprung up immediately, because they had no deepness of earth.
And when the sun was up they were scorched: and because they had not root, they withered away.
And others fell among thorns: and the thorns grew up and choked them.
And others fell upon good ground: and they brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
This is the first parable in the New Testament, and tellingly it is about farming. Christ is speaking to the crowd in the agricultural language they would understand.
We have all heard this parable before, for sure, and we have probably heard just as many interpretations of it. Uniquely, in this case, we have Christ’s own description of its meaning, because the Apostle’s pressed him for clarification. I am not going to reprint it, because it is not what Christ told the crowd, but it is there for you to find, later in Matthew 13.
What every peasant farmer could understand is that the quality of soil matters to a crop, and it is likewise immediately obvious to a farmer how the soil quality is. A farmer can tell just by the feel of it whether a soil is rich and fertile or dry and arid. A farmer achieves a rich and fertile soil through work and attention all year round, not just when it is time to plant. I don’t know the intricacies of farming in the Levant in the first century, but I can assume there was something akin to crop rotation, fertilizing with manure, and other such. It takes work from before a seed ever enters the ground for a crop to grow well.
So likewise, these spiritual truths: we are the soil in this parable. Do we worry about the quality of our spiritual soil? Are we putting in work now, to make sure that the crop we raise up is good? Christ is telling these peasants that taking care of their spiritual well-being takes as much work in the same kind of way as preparing a crop.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
And behold a certain lawyer stood up, tempting him, and saying, Master, what must I do to possess eternal life?
But he said to him: What is written in the law? how readest thou?
He answering, said: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind: and thy neighbour as thyself.
And he said to him: Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
But he willing to justify himself, said to Jesus: And who is my neighbour?
And Jesus answering, said: A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, who also stripped him, and having wounded him went away, leaving him half dead. And it chanced, that a certain priest went down the same way: and seeing him, passed by. In like manner also a Levite, when he was near the place and saw him, passed by.
But a certain Samaritan being on his journey, came near him; and seeing him, was moved with compassion. And going up to him, bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine: and setting him upon his own beast, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two pence, and gave to the host, and said: Take care of him; and whatsoever thou shalt spend over and above, I, at my return, will repay thee.
Which of these three, in thy opinion, was neighbour to him that fell among the robbers?
37 But he said: He that shewed mercy to him. And Jesus said to him: Go, and do thou in like manner.
The context for this parable is that Christ has just commissioned his apostles to go forth two by two into every city, and he has given thanks to God in the Holy Ghost for the occasion. Christ is followed, I believe, by a crowd nearly all the time at this point, so I can imagine that once Christ has commissioned his Apostles to go forth, one of the crowd stands up and says “Hey what about me?”
Christ bears patiently with the man and gives to him (and the crowd) this parable. The question is an old one and if you are like me one of the early questions in our spiritual journey: Who is our neighbor?
In this parable, Christ is not comparing his interlocutor to the Samaritan, but rather to the Jew in the ditch. Our neighbor therefore is one who helps us. We can take the inverse from this, too: If we wish to be neighbor to someone, we must help them. To first century peasants, this parable contains a few notable elements. First, the prominent role of the Samaritan, a people against whom the Jews were deeply prejudiced—and not arbitrarily, either. Christ is saying it does not matter from whence help comes, only that it does come. The Samaritan is more neighbor than two of the Jews wealthy, priestly class, even though the latter were his own people. Combine this idea—the hated Samaritan is our neighbor—with the fact that we ought to love our neighbors—and we have a truly radical shift in thought.
Second, being in the position of needing help: again, Christ puts us in the place of the Jew in the ditch. Every peasant was probably aware of the threat of highway robbers, and every peasant is familiar with injuries borne of honest work. Every peasant can relate to needing help. When the answer is that the neighbor is “He that shewed mercy to him”, every peasant probably first thought about all the people that have helped them—how many actual neighbors do they have? The second thought is probably about how many people have they helped? In other words: Who is my neighbor? To whom am I a neighbor? These are good questions for all of us to contemplate. Christ is trying to jump-start a cycle of kindness, and these are just the thoughts that we ought to have, in order to participate.
A Challenge
I found a list of parables at this link, here. Forget everything you know about your faith, and try to imagine yourself as a peasant, hearing these parables told for the first time. Look at the context, what was Christ doing, who was He speaking to? What lessons ought we get from it? Find a parable I have not described here and let me know in the comments what you get from it. Thinking of Parables as a kind of “Gospel for Peasants” opened a whole new way of thinking about scripture for me, and I hope it does the same for you.
Thank you, as always, for reading, I hope this has been fruitful. I look forward to sharing more with you next month! God bless!
Ad Jesum Per Marium