Truths without words

    When Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment, he came up with an answer that forever changed the world. You might have thought, as so many do, that all you needed were those ten commandments but Jesus always has a lot more to say. Jesus is always trying to guide us. Apparently words alone are not always enough. We need an explanation, a comparison, a parable. We need something that spells out the Spirit of the words. We need something that touches us inside that expresses the true meaning of something. We had those Ten commandments all written down nice and easy and we flubbed it. So Jesus goes on to tell us the Two Great Commandments. They make the original ten a bit harder to follow but get to the essence of the matter. When Jesus spoke, he spoke in parables to help us get the message as in today's passage from Matthew.

       It seems that in our legalistic and own picayune ways we interpret so many things based solely on words. We tend to like the black and white of things and prefer to ignore the gray.  As humans however, we have a need to get to the crux of the matter, what is the real message. As Spock's mother would probe, "How do you feel?"

       Words so often trip us up. Politicians and religions often use words to lie, obfuscate and control. What methods are at hand to help us? Jesus as we know used parables. What more have we now?

        I think our thirst to seek truth, knowledge and heartfelt communication is why we have such varied arts. Photography, painting, poetry, movies, music, drama and myriad other forms of art are all our attempts to communicate truths about our inner beings, our souls. Just as Jesus used parables, art in in broadest term is our attempt to crash through mere words that can be used to enlighten but often can be used to confuse, mislead and lie.

        One thing I'd like to do today, perhaps this week, is to focus on how the arts touch my soul and the truth(s) that the artist is trying to convey like Jesus offering a parable.

Matthew 13:31-35

He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’

He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’

Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet:
‘I will open my mouth to speak in parables;
   I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.’