This past Thursday, my men’s faith-sharing group did some lectio divina1 with the parable from Luke’s Gospel where Jesus is preaching about seeds and different kinds of ground that seeds fall on (Luke 8:1-15). After spitting some game at the crowds, Jesus oddly tells the disciples, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.”
This caught us off guard. The statement, oft-quoted by gnostics to prove that Jesus was passing down “secret” knowledge (some translations render the Greek musteria as “secrets” 2), struck us as a bit funky: why do the crowds need parables? why must they remain incapable of seeing, or of understanding? why were the disciples so privileged as as to not need metaphor?
One dude proposed that it’s all about the imagination, as the crowds had not spent time walking with Jesus, drowning in his presence. Unfamiliar with the person and personality of the incarnate God, diverse crowds traveled near and far to see him do his thing; with such a fleeting glimpse, they had not yet really come to intuit what the Nazarene was all about. And thus, he must engage their imaginations, for straight up theological throw down couldn’t cut it with the throngs. An abstract discussion of demonic influence, or hardness of heart, or cultural stubbornness, wouldn’t suffice. The people would forget, because as strangers to Jesus, they had not yet seen what exorcism or personal refusal of conversion looks like. Stories, however... these remain unforgettable.
Much of our entertainment is parabolic. We fill our imaginations with stories of good and evil, of heroism, of suffering and perseverance. Literature and the arts humanize us, teaching us more about our human condition than we would be capable of understanding on our own. Comic books formed my moral imagination as a kid, as did the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood. Plop down the Nicomachean Ethics in front of 12 year-old Dave, and he would have been lost. Engage his imagination with Spider-Man and the Holy Grail and an English bowman and his merry men, however, and that stuff will form him as a person. These fictions imbued within his mind an awareness of the realities of the battle between good and evil, of the constant quest for sanctity (whatever that is), and of liberation theology and social justice. Before there was Katniss Everdeen, there was the hooded Robin of Loxley.
Likewise, Jesus first had to engage the imaginations of the apostles. In chapter 5 of Luke, Jesus teaches some crowds from the boat of Peter, then miraculously catches some fish, and proceeds to invite Peter, James, and John to join him. Even the miracle presents an engagement of the imagination, if we consider what thoughts ran through the heads of Simon and the sons of Zebedee: “With this fisherman, what other things are possible?!” While the miracle is all well and fine and good, it’s the invitation that snags these guys: “Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men.”
The Evangelist does something very interesting here, because he messes around with Jesus’ words. In Matthew, Jesus tells the first apostles that they will become “fishers” -- halleis -- but in Luke, Jesus tells them that they will be “catching” -- zogron -- men. One passage uses a noun to describe the apostles’ new ministry, the other uses a verb, but things go deeper.
The verb zogreo is not a maritime term, as my undergraduate mentor and New Testament professor Alan Mitchell taught our Gospels seminar.3 In other Greek writings, it occurs in the contexts of warfare narratives and medical treatises. With regards to the former, zogreo means to rescue prisoners of war from certain execution, and with regards to the latter zogreo means to resuscitate, to bring a person back to life from death. I remember the beauty of this causing me to tear up in class a little bit.
Writing about fifty years after the crucifixion and resurrection, Luke knew what Jesus was really about, and puts this word in Jesus’ mouth4 to reflect the reality of the call. Christ’s invitation to become fishers of men does not present some lukewarm call to draw people into some common mission. More accurately, it’s about life and death. It’s about rescue and revival. It’s about saving people from destruction of soul and charging their existences with joy and meaning. One can easily imagine the oral tradition at work here: the essence is preserved, though the means of communicating that essence morphs. It’s a slight morphing, but a morphing nonetheless, and it’s intentionally undertaken to capture the imagination. Fishing, blach. But saving from death?! That’s a different story.
To return to the Parable of the Sower -- really, the Parable of the Ground -- I’m one of the crowd. I don’t really get it, and I need my imagination engaged; in our technocratic 21st century, agricultural metaphors remain difficult for the modern mind to penetrate, but to the first century mind, the parable must have sung. Praying the Examen of Consciousness5 helps me to clarify those moments where there’s spiritual warfare and demonic interference going on, or where my rubbled-over heart has failed to be fleshy. And I realize that there’s a little bit of each sort of ground going on within my own soul, for I am not a homogeneous soil. I do not defend myself from the Enemy at every turn, and I can be a pretty shitty dude in a variety of ways. With this attentiveness, I can move forward: I can adjust, and seek graces were they need be sought (courage, perseverance, patience, generosity, et cetera). I can till that soil, let it lay fallow, remove some stones, set up some scarecrows, and prepare it for a new crop.
1 Lectio divina, or “divine reading” is one of the oldest forms of prayer, and is super simple. Put formally, its four stages are: lectio (reading, where the passage is read slowly and deliberately, two or three times over); meditatio (meditating, or reflecting upon any words or phrases that especially strike the ear); oratio (praying, expressing one’s needs, desires, thanksgivings, hesitations, et cetera to God as a result of this reflection); and contemplatio (contemplating, sitting in silence and feeling the present love of the Creator). Put more simply: read, reflect, respond.↩
2 Christianity isn’t about secrets. It’s about Mysteries… like, you know, capital “m” Mysteries. God isn’t a secret, God is a Mystery; secrets can be solved and puzzles can be unlocked, but Mysteries must be experienced.↩
3 Forgive me, Professor, if I am leaving out some nuance here. I don’t have an eidetic memory.↩
4 From a historical-critical perspective, it’s impossible to definitively posit which sayings of Jesus are historical, which are embellishments, and which are pure fiction. In my personal spirituality and engagement with the Gospels, I have no issue with merging the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith; this isn’t an intellectual cop-out, it’s just that I’m not bothered with such questions of parsing factuality when it comes to loving the guy. This being said, given that zogreo is such an unusual word, I’d bet that its usage here is a theological gloss, a Lukan commentary on what Jesus was getting at.
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5 For those of you unfamiliar with Ignatian spirituality, here’s a lovely piece on the Examen. While there are infinite methods to praying this way, Father Hamm’s outline has become my favorite over the years.↩
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