The Good News of Common Sense

The message of Jesus implies that inner rather than outer authority ought to guide us: The time has come; a common-sense world inspired by the power of love is at hand; let this turn your old outlook on life upside down; put your whole heart into living in this good newness! (See Mark 1:15.)

We can group the gospel parables quite naturally into five sets according to the way they relate to this central message.

1. Parables signaling the end of an unjust and exploitative world order.

2. Parables speaking of new life stirring, as in buds bursting, dough rising, and seed sprouting. 3. Parables alerting us to expect the unexpected.

4. Parables challenging us to seize the moment, to act as if everything depended entirely on us yet to trust in God and be patient.

5. Parables about a new order — an order of love — in answer to the perennial question that Piet Hein formulates as: “I want to know what this whole show is all about, before it’s out.” Wouldn’t we all want to know? Jesus offers this common-sense answer: It’s all about celebration; it all leads up to a great wedding feast.

1. The old order is collapsing. As we set out to examine the parables in these different sets, let’s start with the ones that tell us that we need not take the world as we find it or for what it pretends to be — it is not the real thing. It is a world out of tune with common sense. Jesus invites us to judge for ourselves. “A good tree brings forth good fruit.” Right? Of course! “But a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit” (Matthew 7:17), isn’t that so? Of course it is. Well then, look at oppression, violence, exploitation….Do you think the tree that bears such fruit is basically sound? Do you still think our society is basically healthy? What good do you expect from it? “What does one gather from brambles? A cluster of grapes? Or from thistles? Figs?” (Matthew 7:16). Unlikely as it is, most people expect that the thorns and thistles of a political establishment built on force will yield good fruit, if only we wait long enough. As to the religious establishment,

“Can the blind lead the blind?” (Luke 6:39). If life were whitewater rafting, would you entrust yourself to a guide with no better qualifications than having studied books on the matter? To whom are you entrusting yourself in your “exploration into God”? Is the teaching you receive salted with the salt of common sense? “Salt is good, but when it loses its saltiness, with what will you season it?”(Mark 9:50) remains a question worth pondering.

The assessment Jesus makes of his own time makes me wonder how he would assess ours. The state of the world remains bad news.We may not yet know what to do about it, but common sense can tell us at least that a world order based on power and exploitation is not sustainable. “Even if you can’t lay eggs, you can smell when one is rotten,” a proverb from Serbia says.

“Can’t you tell that there is a carcass nearby, when you see carrion birds gathering overhead?” (Matthew 24:28). “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Are you pretending not to be aware of it? “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once,‘A shower is coming’;and so it happens.And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’;and it happens.You play-actors! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” (Luke 12:54–56). The answer to this question is already implied by the phrase “You play-actors!”—usually left in its Greek form, “hypocrites!” We must choose: either act the part that a sick society assigns to us, or stand up for common sense.

2. A new life is stirring. When we grow alert to the signs of the times, we see positive signs, too: a new season is stirring. “When cocoa ripe, him must burst,” a Jamaican proverb says. In Palestine, it’s not the cocoa bean but the bud on the fig tree that bursts open. “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they bud forth, you see for yourselves and know that summer is near” (Luke 21:29–30).“Can’t you see for yourselves?”Jesus asks.The bad news is inseparable from the Good News. “A woman in labor has pain, for her hour has come, but when she has born the child, she no longer remembers her distress for joy” (John 16:21). Can’t you see this happening all around you?

Common sense knows: What is truly new does not make its entrance with pomp and fanfare; it is small, quiet, and hidden. Still, it has the power to transform, “like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened” (Luke 13:21). Three measures of flour make a huge quantity of dough, yet the leaven is completely hidden in it. Seed, too, is hidden in the ground—“like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all seeds on earth; yet, when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs” (Mark 4:31–32).

New growth is vulnerable: much seed goes to waste in the sowing. “A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell along the path, and was trodden under foot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns grew with it and choked it” (Luke 8:5–8). And yet, “Some fell into good soil and grew, and yielded a hundredfold”—amply making up for all the losses. Nor should we pull up the weeds that seem to choke the wheat, “lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest” (Matthew 13:29–30). Why do we so quickly grow impatient? The seed is growing. The bread is rising. All we need is patience.

Our common sense, if we’d but use it, is in tune with the patience of nature, “as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come” (Mark 4:26–29). “Indolence is often taken for patience,” says a French proverb.

when to act. Wide-awake to the right moment for the harvest, the reaper in Jesus’ parable puts in the sickle “at once.” Common sense gives us both patience to wait and alertness to strike while the iron is hot.

3. Now is the moment. Another set of parables gives us flash images to sharpen our sense for the decisive moment. Someone’s sudden death, a lightning flash, a burglary: challenges to expect the unexpected. “The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, enjoy yourself.’” The broad flow of this narrative makes the ending sound all the more sudden: “Fool! This very night your life will be demanded back from you” (Luke 12:16–20). “Death keeps no calendar,” as the English proverb says. Neither does a burglar make an appointment. “If the householder had known at what hour the thief was coming” (Luke 12:39), he would have watched. Watch out! Can you foretell the moment when lightning will strike? Or, in the colorful language of a proverb from the southern United States, “Mule don’t kick according to no rule.”

In a time of momentous change, we must be awake and alert.We must watch out for sudden opportunity and, when it pops up, go after it.We must be ready at a moment’s notice to let go of the old and invest everything we have in the new order.

Expecting nothing, a plowman plods along. With a clank, his plowshare hits hidden treasure. What would you do? He doesn’t think twice. “In his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44). Another — a merchant in search of fine pearls — is already on the alert. He knows a priceless pearl at first sight — and he goes for broke (Matthew 13:45–46). Common sense is as daring as it is patient. “Nothing wagered, nothing won.”

4. Trust in God, yet act as if everything depended entirely on you alone.

In a particularly colorful series of parables, the main characters are, above all, enterprising. Some industrious servants — firstcentury venture capitalists — double the money their master entrusted to them. With great determination, a man makes a nuisance of himself by coaxing his friend out of bed in the middle of the night and gets what he needs. An obstinate old woman pesters a judge so relentlessly that he promises a just sentence on her behalf even though he is corrupt to the bone. A manager who has embezzled money and is about to lose his job feathers his bed for an early retirement by quickly embezzling a good deal more. These are not edifying stories featuring models to be imitated, but jokes that make a point: Doesn’t common sense tell you that one has to use one’s wits to get ahead in life? You know this? Why then don’t you put some effort into making this a better world, a world run by common sense? Why don’t you start now? As the Bantu say, “If you want to sweep the hut, why do you sit on the broom?”

And yet, in our spiritual practice, the supreme goal of all effort is to make no effort. This, too, common sense teaches us — the sense we have in common with the “birds of the air” and the wildflowers. “Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them… Consider the lilies how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these” (Luke 12:24–27). In the midst of acting as if the outcome depended entirely on us, we can live carefree lives because God cares.

How do we know that God cares? We know that God cares because we care. This answer is the most staggering implication of Jesus’ parables: To follow the guidance of common sense is to share the mind of God. Decades before the parables were written down, Paul put his finger on this crucial point. “The Spirit reaches the depth of everything, even the depth of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10). In the parables, Jesus presupposes precisely this. He often speaks of the unique intimacy and mutual understanding between a father and a son. Is not this deep understanding implied when we call God “Our Father”?

It may seem an outrageous claim that we humans share the mind of God, and yet in some situations most of us spontaneously act on this conviction. For example, when a theologian claims that God predestines some creatures to eternal suffering or excludes from heaven children who died before they were baptized, common sense revolts. We are convinced that this cannot be so. On what could our reaction be based if not on a deep-seated conviction that we can somehow know the mind of God — at least in matters that are vital for us humans?

The finest parables of Jesus evoke strong common-sense attitudes and trigger the insight that God shares these attitudes. “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” (Luke 11:11–12). In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus asks, “Who among you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? If you then… know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?” (7:9–11). Jesus stretches the notion of commonness so far that common sense allows us to sense even God’s sentiments. The pattern “If you

.. then all the more, God” is the basis for many parables.

The best known of all Jesus’ parables is based on this pattern. We call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but it is really about the feelings of a prodigal father. We must not project today’s stereotype of a father on Jesus’ notion of God. The father in this story stands for God, but he acts every bit like a Jewish mother. He sees his wayward son returning from afar (obviously, he has been watching and waiting at the window); he smothers the son’s self-accusations in hugs and kisses; he quickly notices the boy’s dirty clothes and makes him change into clean ones; he cooks up a storm and prepares a feast. (We will come back to that feast.) When the older, law-abiding son objects to all this festivity, the father insists: “We do have to make merry and celebrate, for your brother was lost and is found”(Luke 15:32).

If we rejoice when a wayward child returns home, how much more does God rejoice? There are parallels to this in other parables: the joy of a shepherd over a lost-and-found sheep (Luke 15:4–7); the joy of a woman who turns the whole house upside down until she finds the coin she had lost

(Luke 15:8–10).Who doesn’t know how precious and important something becomes the moment we lose it — or are merely afraid to lose it? Those of us who spend more on repair bills than our old watch is worth will feel deeply with the gardener who pleads with the owner to give an obviously worthless fig tree just one more chance (Luke 13:6–9). Even to such a “silly” sentiment, Jesus applies the pattern, “If you…how much more, God.”What makes this argument so convincing is that it is based on common sense. When we let these sayings of Jesus sink in, we discover how profound they are — and at the same time how outrageous.

The parables are profound because it is common sense that makes them tick, and common sense — like the Tao and the Logos — is the deepest undercurrent of the cosmic flow. They are outrageous because they challenge time-honored conventions: for instance, the notion that we must merit what we receive — wages must be based on service rendered. In one parable, the day laborers are all paid a day’s wages regardless of whether they have sweated all day or were hired only an hour before day’s end. By conventional standards, this is

unfair, but common sense tells us otherwise. How could they have worked earlier if no one hired them? And how could they and their families eat that evening unless they received a day’s wages? Admittedly, even in the God Household there is a realm where merit has its proper place. It does matter what we do, or fail to do, with our talents.Yet, isn’t our very existence pure gift to begin with? Ultimately, all is grace.

5. A new order: Not drudgery,but celebration. What makes a parable tick is the ticking of a time bomb that goes off the moment we get the point. Common sense blows conventional notions to bits.

Even the notion of “serving God” is exploded. No matter how much we are accustomed to thinking of our relationship to God as that of servants to a lord and king, Jesus uses the leverage of common sense to lift us out of that rut. Isn’t the King of Heaven your Father? “‘What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the world take tribute or taxes? From their children or from strangers?’ and when he said, ‘From strangers,’ Jesus replied, ‘Then the children are exempt’”(Matthew

Need breaks laws.

17:25–26).You are princes and princesses: You are tax exempt!

Once we realize this, we no longer drudge along in servitude but freely and joyfully offer our gifts to God. “The spirit you received is not the spirit of slaves, bringing fear into your lives, but the spirit of sonship in which we call out, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Romans 8:15). Such common-sense teaching is heady wine. Will anyone put new wine like this into old wine skins? “If one does, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins”(Mark 2:22).

From early on, however, the followers of Jesus have tried to do just this: tried to contain the new spirit within the old forms.The result is compromise — patchwork. “No one sews a piece of un-shrunk cloth on an old garment; if he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made (Mark 2:21).That’s common sense.Yet, for almost two millennia now, church institutions have suffered rift after rift because of precisely such patchwork.

One handy example is fasting as a prescribed religious observance. Voluntary fasting can be a healthy practice. There are many good reasons for fasting, but earning God’s favor thereby is not one of them. God’s love — like a mother’s — need not be earned, only celebrated, Jesus held. He did not fast; in fact, they called him “a glutton and a drunkard” (Matthew 11:19). His favorite image for life in fullness was a great feast, a royal wedding feast, to which everyone — high and low, rich and poor— was invited. “Can you make wedding guests fast?” (Luke 5:34), he asked. He did not want his followers bound by religious observances but freed for a great celebration. Soon, however, they reinstituted fasting on the grounds that Jesus, the bridegroom, was “taken away from them” (Matthew 9:15), in spite of the fact that, in the same gospel, he was quoted as saying, “I am with you all the days until the end of time”(Matthew 28:20). In this, as in many other points, conventional religious practice won out over the spirit of Jesus. And yet, the same religious institutions that are to blame for this shift of focus deserve our thanks for having preserved for us the common-sense sayings of Jesus. Now, as then, these sayings challenge prevailing practices.

One of Jesus’ most amusing parables addresses the tension between ascetic religious observance and celebration in the Spirit. We might call it the Parable of the House Left Standing

Empty (Matthew 12:43–45). Here the classical pattern of Jesus’ parable telling has not been preserved, but we can easily restore it.

Step one, the opening question: Don’t you know what happens to a house when you sweep it and decorate it and then let it stand empty? Think of a holiday cabin on the shore or in the woods. Say it came to you as an inheritance. You are thrilled; you dream already of parties you will have there and you spend every spare hour fixing it up. Soon it looks spicand- span. But just when all is ready, your children lose inter- est;other plans interfere,weekend after weekend.What do you expect that place to look like when you finally return? Moldy, mildewed, full of mice and squirrels, bugs and spiders.

This is already step two, the common-sense answer to the opening question.We have merely updated the gospel imagery and replaced evil spirits with rodents and insects. A place left standing empty — and empty is the operative word here — will be worse in the end than before you put so much effort into fixing it up. Common sense tells us this.

Hence, step three, the implied question: Why then do you put so much effort into inner “housecleaning,” without ever

Tis a good word that can better a good silence.

— DUTCH

Words are silver, silence is gold.

— GERMAN

The stars make no noise.

— IRISH

getting around to having that party for which you have uncluttered and cleaned and adorned your heart? Once again, the joke is on us, because we are reminded of a truth we know deep down, but fail to act upon: the goal of asceticism is celebration— and not later, either, but here and now. The very housecleaning ought to be done in the spirit of a party.

Throughout the ages and in our own time, countless followers of Jesus have done this and are still doing it.They make ascetical practice come aglow from within. In the midst of misery and in spite of all adversity they suffer for their convictions, they celebrate the great wedding feast. Didn’t we come across this image before in our exploration of common sense? Yes, we did — when we found common sense alive in the hum and buzz of a meadow. Here, at the level of human society, we must lose nothing of what we witnessed there among plants and animals, but we must add the specifically human elements of freedom and responsibility. To build a common-sense society that is in tune with the great cosmic wedding feast — that’s what “this whole show is all about,” and this fact is good news indeed.