Juxtaposition 2014.04.09

Today we are given the opportunity to ponder the nature of teaching, or perhaps the difference between education and training. Our All Souls reading mirrors the flavor of what is probably the most common statement of the problem: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day, but teach him to fish and you teach him for a lifetime. Of course, teaching someone to fish would clearly be training - if you teach them to fish and then move them to the desert, you have wasted their time, and yours. But if we look at this as fishing for ideas, then the parallel becomes much more apt, for pupils can, we hope, learn to think for themselves and come to their own conclusions, rather than simply be repositories of preselected knowledge.

Today's Lectionary selection is one parable included in a list of several of them. Jesus frequently uses parables as a teaching method, and just as frequently the parables present us with a mental challenge in figuring out why he used that particular example. Often, for example, a good result occurs but it occurs because of actions which were taken for bad motives. This use of parables as a teaching tool resembles the Zen technique of teaching with koans, or stories which are designed to wear out the analytical capabilities of the mind and force it into a new frame where it is open to new ideas. 

It is interesting that the two outcomes of biblical criticism most known for being unkind to the mystical content - the Jefferson Bible and the work of the Jesus Seminar - both retain the parables in their attempts to winnow grain from chaff. The Jesus Seminar, in fact, tends to grant the most authority to those parables which are most obscure. This particular one, which seems to be straightforward, they claim to be not the words of Jesus at all, but simply a screed by Matthew on one of his hobby horses: the need to separate Christians from those who hadn't gotten the message.

A Common Meditation for All Souls:

The aim of education should be to convert the mind into a living fountain, and not a reservoir. That which is filled by merely pumping in, will be emptied by pumping out.(John M. Mason, 1770 – 1829)

Revised Common Lectionary:

Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes." And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." (Matthew 13:47-52)