"Living Gospels…We’re Walking Talking Parables!"
2 Corinthians 6: 6-21; Mark 4: 21-34
June 18, 2006

Have you ever tried to retell a funny story or joke only to see it fall flat as a pancake the second time around? The same setup, the same characters, the same punch line that brought laughter to yesterday's lunch crowd, leaves today's coffee clutch yawning as they sip their coffee.

We've come up with some standard comebacks to cover ourselves and explain these freakish occurrences: "I guess you just had to be there." "It loses something in translation." "You just don't get it."

But the fact is, storytelling of any sort, amusing anecdotes or tragic tales, is an unrepeatable art form. The variety of people listening, the inflections in your voice, the mood of the day, the color of the sky -- they all combine to create a one-time-only atmosphere for the words you speak. A story may bring a tear or a smile at one telling, and yet, the very next audience experiences the same words in a completely different way.

Mark's gospel tells us that Jesus chose to speak in parables. Some people find that very annoying, or maybe think Jesus is a trickster. Why didn't Jesus come right out and say what he meant? Why did he leave behind all these cryptic sayings, loaded with innuendo, instead of a crisp code of laws or a stack of essays with titles like "How to Be a Good Disciple," "A Brief Definition of the Kingdom of God" or "Seven Key Features of the Coming Kingdom and What This Means to You."
But no. Instead we have this cross-eyed, cryptic, incomplete, awkward, and at times seemingly absurd collection of sayings known as Jesus' parables.

But a list of rules never changes, never adapts. Written essays are like insects encased in amber -- beautiful and precisely formed, but no longer vital and alive. It takes the fluid format of a story -- a tale that can never quite be told the same way twice -- to keep breathing new life into the Good News. If you still think Jesus would have gotten his points across better with hard and fast rules, try remembering the last time you sat down and really enjoyed reading Leviticus or the first few chapters of Numbers. Without the easy ability Jesus' parables have to engage us and entice us into their world, even God's Word becomes a hard read.

By preaching to his followers in parables, Jesus let each listener make the Good News become his own story, her own experience. As we are swept up in the story, we ourselves become part of a new parable -- the parable of our lives. Taken all together, our individual experiences of the kingdom, our personal stories of God's work and witness in our lives, end up creating a new gospel.

We are greatly mistaken if we think our tradition stems from only four canonical gospels. As well as "The Gospel According to Matthew," "The Gospel According to Mark," "The Gospel According to Luke" and "The Gospel According to John," the church has almost 2,000 years' worth of other gospel books to celebrate. "The Gospel of Augustine," "The Gospel of Martin Luther," "The Gospel of Thomas Merton," "The Gospel of John Wesley." All these "gospels" have remained vital parts of our tradition because of their eternally rechargeable parable power.

Other gospels may not be quite so well-known, but they work just as persuasively in our lives. How many of you know that the personal parable stories making up "The Gospel According to Grandma," or "The Gospel According to Aunt Mary," or "The Gospel According to That Kid at Camp Whose Name I Can't Even Remember," have affected your lives dramatically?

All of us are in the process of writing our own gospels -- our own accounts of experiencing the Good News of the coming kingdom in our midst. Writing a gospel through the very act of living is part of being a disciple of Christ. It is why Jesus gave the power of the parable to all those listening to his words. Storytelling is one of the most basic practices common to all human communities. Stories connect us to one another, to our ancestors, to our world and to our God. In this week's gospel text, Mark notes that when Jesus spoke to the crowds around him, he "spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables" (v.33). Jesus knew that only parable power had the ability to make the Good News of the kingdom a potent reality for every listening ear.

What chapter did you add to your gospel this week? How did the parables acted out in your life witness to the Good News you say you believe? Do any of these titles remind you of this week's additions to your work in progress?:

The Parable of the Crabby Boss and the Overtly Christian Coworker.
The Parable of the Kids Who Won't Clean Up Their Rooms and the Mother Who Is Threatening to Ground Them for Life.
The Parable of the Flat Tire and the New Suit.
The Parable of the School That Doesn't Feel Safe and the Kids Who Must Attend There.
The Parable of the Parents Who Don't Have a Clue.
The Parable of the Empty Cupboard and the Overflowing "Bills To Pay".

Don't worry if these, or the particular parable stories you experienced this week, didn't seem to have any grand significance, any definitive "gospel" quality to them, as you lived through them. The power of a parable is partly its ability to stand up to scrutiny and self-examination at a later time -- and there to reveal its true meaning, its gospel heart. Jesus spoke in parables to the crowds. Only later did he explain to his own disciples the kingdom kernel that lived within his stories.

It is the job of all of us, as Jesus' disciples, to come together and plug into the parable power running through each other's lives. Because we know the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- the gospels of Augustine, Aquinas, Abelard and Avila -- the gospels of Luther, Calvin, Wesley and Edwards -- the gospels of grandpa, our Sunday school teacher, Cousin Emilio and our little sister -- we, as a community of faith, can work together to discern in what new direction each week's parable power has taken us.

Let us return to the world Monday morning and tell the parables of our lives and live our faith. In this way we become living gospels of Jesus Christ.