Photo: Cover of 'Opening the Parables'.
Opening the Parables
By M D Hayden
My interest lies in re-imagining Christianity in a way that embraces the truth that Jesus taught: that God equals Love, and that Love is present in the here and now. I am therefore always on the lookout for an idea – for a different way of looking at the teaching of Jesus – that espouses this truth.
For me, an essential premise is that a re-imagined Christianity is rooted in the words of Jesus, and that the words of Jesus must interpret the scripture, rather than scripture (which has been greatly coloured by theology) interpreting the words of Jesus.
In Opening the Parables, MD Hayden, a retired Quaker pastor from Cincinnati, seeks to find meaning in each parable, separate from the theological accruements that have been piled upon these stories by traditional Christian dogma. Hayden, perhaps following up her Masters in Divinity from the Earlham School of Religion, turns to the interpretive methodology of George Fox and the early Quakers. Simply put, the words of Jesus are sufficient in themselves to give meaning without the baggage of traditional Christian thinking.
In regard to the parables, some of that baggage is the insistence that the parables must be interpreted allegorically. This has never made much sense to me. Allegories must be understood by the majority or the allegory falls flat. The Gospels, time and time again, have those hearing the parable walking away shaking their heads. Simply saying they have ‘ears to hear’ doesn’t work. Why present an allegorical parable if no one was going to understand? Remember, the role of the parable was to lay open a truth. Rather than adhering to the allegorical method, Hayden, following the early Quakers, sees the parables as a metaphor with the same singular message in each of them: the Kingdom of God is infinite love in the here and now.
Hayden’s premise dovetails nicely with mine.
Hayden describes Opening the Parables as three-books-in-one. And it is, but I think an even better description is that the ‘three books’ are a trilogy, because each ‘book’ builds upon the previous. While each of them – especially the middle book, ‘The Parables in Real Life’ – could be read on their own, to do so would be to miss so much.
In Book One, ‘Influences on this Book’, Hayden explores George Fox’s premise that the words of Jesus are sufficient for interpretation. Following this she turns to other attempts to isolate the words of Jesus, such as Thomas Jefferson excising any sign of the miraculous or supernatural, and the Jesus Seminar.
Building upon the lead of Fox and other Quakers in asserting that there is but one singular message in the teachings of Jesus, ‘The God of the Good News’ briefly explores implications of claiming that God not only loves, but is love. Hayden returns to this singular message time and time again in ‘The Parables in Real Life’.
One cannot explore the parables without first exploring why Jesus used parables at all. So we have a chapter on ‘Why Parables’ and another called ‘Ears to Hear’. Here, it is obvious that, for Hayden, a parable is not allegory, but metaphor, a story that symbolises something abstract. The abstract in this instance being the Kingdom of God as infinite love in the present. Think about how many times Jesus said, ‘The Kingdom of God is like…’
Chapter five, ‘Traditional Interpretations vs. Quaker Application’, takes on the traditional interpretation of the parables compared to the Quaker idea of applying the parable to real-life, and keeping the application based on the words, not one’s theology. What becomes apparent as one opens the parables in this way is that each of them takes on an aspect of ‘governance’ that sets up the way of the human realm against the way of the spiritual realm (the Kingdom of God), but does so in real-life terms.
‘Hayden, following the early Quakers, sees the parables as a metaphor with the same singular message in each parable: the Kingdom of God is infinite love in the here and now.’
Now, with that said, I am going to skip over Book Two while encouraging you to buy the book and see how Hayden opens the parables to real-life. She won’t disappoint you. More than likely, she will raise a point that you hadn’t thought of. I do hope that anyone reading who comes from a more traditional way of looking at the parables will take the time to read this book. As the interpretations are real-life, you will undoubtedly find yourself both strengthened and challenged. I should also point out that there are valuable footnotes throughout, and an extensive bibliography is included.
What I appreciate about Opening the Parables is that, after doing just what the title says, in Book Three (‘The Church, The Quakers, and the Parables’), the author takes to heart the Quaker application aspect. ‘George Fox and Experimental Christianity’ (chapter sixteen) is about just that: making our Christianity experimental rather than dogmatic. It is about freeing ourselves from what we have been told and allowing the words of Jesus to speak to us. To have those ears that perceive, rather than merely hear. Perceiving leads to walking away from evil, toward the Kingdom of God. But more than just that, perceiving is also about applying Love in real-life to the entirety of life. As I read, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Celtic Christian idea that we understand God from our God-experiences, rather than some understanding of God telling us how to understand our God-experiences.
Once we can do this, we take Jesus out of the ‘locked’ church, setting him free where he belongs – in the disorganised world, what Hayden calls the ‘Disorganized Church’. The church is the world, not buildings and dogma as ‘Jesus Un-Churched’ (chapter seventeen) has it.
I previously noted that each parable takes on an aspect of governance that sets up the way of the human realm against the way of the spiritual realm. In ‘Opening Parables: Discussion, Advices & Queries,’ (chapter eighteen) this is laid out for us, theme by theme, in an easily graspable way. It is a good beginning point for discussion. But what questions we may get? Advices & Queries, using scripture, covers just that.
In the appendix (‘Traditional Interpretation vs. Quaker Application’), Hayden returns to, and expands upon, chapter five. For this reader the appendix provided some in-depth consideration of how we might use Quaker thinking to re-imagine Christianity as a faith that meets the needs of our meta-modern culture, via the concept of the here and now Kingdom of God.
All in all, well worth your time.
