Interview
Author: Andrew Walton
“Hidden in His Own Story; Discovering Jesus in the Parables of the Gospels”
Host: Ronald Way
Ron Way:
Hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of AuthorTalk and Rising Light Media, where we interview some of the most fascinating religious and spiritual authors in the world.
Today our guest is Andrew Walton. He's a pastor in the Presbyterian church and has served congregations in Georgia, Washington DC, and Florida. Walton is currently pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church. Clearwater, Florida where he and his wife live. [Laughter] I'm laughing because I called him a Baptist yesterday, and Andrew had to stop me in my tracks and correct me. Today we're visiting Andrew because of his new book entitled Hidden in His Own Story: Discovering Jesus in the Parable of the Gospel. Welcome to AuthorTalk, Andrew.
Walton:
Thanks, Ron.
Ron Way:
I want our listeners to know you, Andrew as a person. I've just mentioned that you are a pastor, but no one starts out just a pastor. Tell us how Andrew Walton became the man that he is today. Did you just wake up one day as a young man and say to yourself, "I want to be a minister?"
Walton:
Well, I didn't, but it's close to that. Maybe your intuition is better than you think, Ron, because I did start off as a Baptist. [Laughter]
Ron Way:
Ah. See I knew I felt it there. [Laughter]
Walton:
Yeah. I grew up in a southern Baptist family. Very devout and learned a whole lot about the Bible, and actually experienced a call into the ministry as a child, but that was on the back burner and went dormant for many, many years. I had gone through many phases of faith, as so many people do.
Ron Way:
Sure.
Walton:
As a matter of fact, as a teenager and college student, I just left the church altogether. When I came back in to the church, I came back in as a Presbyterian and I was in my mid 30s when all of this childhood experience came back to me and I just went through a discernment process there in my mid 30s. The short version of that is at 37 years old, I entered seminary. Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia and did a degree there for three years. Came out at 40, was ordained, and I've been a pastor ever since.
Ron Way:
It's interesting, our childhood experiences. I know that this interview isn't for me, but I have to tell you that when I was a child, my parents were not religious. I was. I joined the boy scout troop sponsored by the Episcopal church in my home town. I wanted to belong to the church. I joined the choir, and joined the youth group, but I couldn't take communion, which is what I desperately wanted because I had never been baptized, never been confirmed, so they wouldn't do it until my father or my mother joined the church. My father said he would take communion classes with me and join the church—under protest. We went through the confirmation classes, and of course all I learned was that the Episcopalians are just better dressed Catholics. [Laughter]
During this experience, I got to the alter rail. I got baptized that morning with the babies of the church, and then I went to the alter rail for First Communion with other kids and adults. The priest wouldn't start communion for the rest of the congregation until the first congregants were done, and I was still there praying because I knew once I had the bread and the wine, I was going to see Jesus. I don't know what they told me to make me believe that, but that's what I believed. Finally, the priest took me by my elbow, walked me back to the pew where my father was sitting. I had refused to leave the alter rail because I hadn't seen Jesus, and I wasn't leaving until I did see Jesus, so they forcefully took me away. It took me a long while before I came back to the church. Let's go on. I'm sorry. I usurped you. We are here to hear your story, not mine.
Walton:
No. Let me also add that during all those years, my young adult years from college until I went to seminary, I worked in the theater. I was a director, producer, designer, occasional actor, and so I had nearly a 20-year career in the theater before going to seminary.
Ron Way:
That sure steads you well with what you're doing now, communicating with people.
Walton:
I hope so. I hope so.
Ron Way:
Your book, Andrew, is about the parables told by Jesus. Many of Jesus' parables refer to simple everyday things such as:
I think this is very important folks. Like you, this is a Jesus I personally resonate with, and I think that it's so critical we understand this. I could expand for hours, but I want you to tell us why it's important and what the human Jesus was like. I want you to listen to this because when I read this book, conceptually it blew me away from the get-go, because the concept to this book is that the teachings of Jesus came from somewhere. They didn't come out of thin air. Right” Go on. Andrew, I'll shut up. Honestly, Ihink that I can talk about your book longer than you.
Walton:
I think a good example of this, Ron, is the way we began our conversation today. How did we start our conversation today? By telling stories. We each told just a little bit of our own life, our own experience. Those stories, those experiences that we had are what make us who we are today.
Ron Way:
Right.
Walton:
At the very core of my book is this idea that Jesus was a human being. Because Jesus was a human being, Jesus would have had his own stories, and his own stories are the experiences that made him who he was. Unfortunately, the Canon blots out the time in his life from when he was 12 years old until he was 30.
Ron Way:
Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Of course, that has led to stories about that missing period.
Walton:
Yeah and you and I just shared stories of our own lives of that exact time frame which was extremely formative.
Ron Way:
Right. It was pivotal.
Walton:
These years that disappeared, I thought, "Wow. When I sit down around a dinner table or a campfire or do an interview with someone like you and start trying to tell people who I am, what do I do? I tell my stories. If Jesus did the same, and if his stories were later developed into parables, then we may have a glimpse into that time frame that we had never known about.
Ron Way:
I think—and I'm trying to get our audience to really picture this—that when Jesus was growing up, he ran into problems and set false expectations for himself. And, at the same time, there were expectations of him by others, for he was probably a bit of a different child. Capricious or whatever, but he was bright. We know that. He was experiencing life for 20 or 30 years. Those stories didn't come out of thin air, they were from his own experiences of life.
Walton:
Gotcha. Yeah.
Ron Way:
We read the Gospels… The Gospels—everybody should know this—the Gospels weren't written down (the first one being, Mark), until around 70 AD. You must remember what was happening during this time in history. The world had changed. The whole center of our faith, the Christian faith, was centered around Jerusalem until then. With one fell swoop, within about a two, three-year period, the Romans came through, wiped everything, and everyone out, including Jerusalem; and if the Christians hadn't escaped before then, and there's some stories of some of them doing just that, trust me, they were killed or hauled off into slavery. That's it. The faith changed tremendously at that point in time, and people decided they better get this written down—thus the Gospels began to be written. Let's take a look at that. The 30s, when Jesus died (in AD 30 plus or minus), the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s. It ended up being 40 years before they started actually putting these stories that Jesus told down in writing. Then it becomes pretty codified. The stories had been told between people for 40 years, and now, finally, they were getting written down in the form that we know them. They're codified, but we miss all of that if we don’t know the history behind the words.
What Andrew is picking up is, we generally miss that really human touch of Jesus who's sitting there on a hillside, as he says, "You know, I had an experience like that. Let me tell you a story." Is that the way it goes?
Walton:
Exactly.
Ron Way:
Yeah.
Walton:
Let me share something, Ron, right here that piggybacks on your comments there. This comes from the preface of my book which is… actually I call it the backstory. The paragraph says, "Among all the scholarship and words, all we really know about the man Jesus of Nazareth, beyond what is in the Bible and other religious texts is that he lived, had a brother named James and was crucified by the Roman perfect Pontius Pilate for insurrection. We know these things primarily from two brief extra-biblical references; one, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephu, and the other the Roman historian, Tacitus. All else we know about Jesus comes from people who believed him to be the messiah to the Jewish people and/or the Christ of Christianity. I.e. God in the flesh. In most cases, these believers are quite up front about making a case for their beliefs."
See, all we have in the Bible, the biblical record is not really about the man, Jesus. It's about the man believed to be the messiah and/or the Christ.
Ron Way:
Right.
Walton:
My book is trying to get back behind that.
Ron Way:
Yes, I understand, and another subject we should talk about offline eventually says Paul was ... Actually, Christians took another step further away from the human Jesus when Paul began to write.
Walton:
Oh, absolutely. It's a totally different story.
Ron Way:
Totally different story. He didn't know Jesus.
Walton:
Which, by the way, had already taken place before the gospel accounts were written.
Ron Way:
Absolutely. By a decade at least.
Walton:
Exactly.
Ron Way:
Yeah. Paul didn't even consider Jesus’ words and teachings really terribly important. Otherwise he could have talked about them, quoted them, but he didn't.
Walton:
Right. My objective in the book here, Ron, and I try to ... All of what we're talking about is extremely important and very, very interesting and controversial in Christian circles, but that's not what I really wanted the book to be about. I wanted to mention those things at the beginning, but what I really want us to get into are these stories.
Ron Way:
I will interrupt you there, because there's one other short quote, and then we'll go directly to those stories. You wrote, “even the most clever story teller or writer of fiction can never totally disguise or deny their own personal influence on the story. Which means that when Jesus told the story, he probably either experienced it in real life or observed it,” which I thought was an entirely new way at looking at Jesus’ teachings.
Here we go, Andrew. Do you have a copy of your book with you?
Walton:
I do.
Ron Way:
Why don't you pick an example from your book? Tell us a story you think that might have occurred to Jesus during his early life before he started teaching, during that first roughly 30 years of his life, and then afterwards, quote the parable from one of the gospels which starts on page 69. Then I'm going to flip my question and take the opposite with you; I’ll quote a parable, and then you tell the story of what might have transpired in Jesus’ life that eventually elicited this teaching story.
Walton:
Okay. All right. I'm going to pick a short one and I'm just going to read it as I have told it in the book. It begins, and this is Jesus telling the story now. "Rarely did I ever know my mother to be overly anxious or afraid. However, on those occasions when she was anxious, the joy that she normally exuded was transformed into intense determination and persistence. One night, I awoke to my parent's voices. ‘Mary, what are you doing?’ Papa whispered so as not to wake my brother or sister and me. ‘I've lost something.’ Her voice was hushed and deliberate. I saw her sweeping the floor by lamp light. ‘Well, what could be so important? Wouldn't it be easier to find it in the daylight?’ Papa asked.
"’Well, it probably would but I dropped a coin to the floor just before lying down to sleep and after putting out the lamp. It is the only money we have and will buy our food for several days. I cannot rest or sleep until I find it.’ ‘Well, can I help?’ Papa sighed. ‘You go back to sleep. There's no need for you to worry. I will find it.’ From the shadows on the edge of the lamplight, I saw her search for that lost coin. As anxious as she was, she remained calm and focused. My own anxiety began to subside. I had seen that confident believe before and could hear her say to me, ‘Jesus, if you believe something with all your soul and mind and body, you will see your belief become reality.’ ‘How do I do this, mother?’ I had asked.
"’Well, first, you feel it deeply. Next, you think it thoroughly and then you take action as if it is already done’ I fell asleep knowing she would find the coin because she believed she would. I awoke to laughter in the courtyard outside our house. Mother told her friends about sweeping for hours in the lamplight and finally finding the lost coin. Her voice filled the air with joy. I breathed in the joy of her laughter, and also the strength of her face and secretly thought that coin was never lost because my mother always believed it would be found."
Now the parable to reflect the life lesson that he had learned. One version of the parable is in Luke chapter 15 verses 8 through 10. Again, this is Jesus talking. "Or, what woman having 10 silver coins if she loses one of them does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
Ron Way:
There's the lesson.
Walton:
Yeah.
Ron Way:
Right. Now. As we go on, it's my turn. I'm going to pick a parable and you tell me what the story you think might have elicited the telling of the parable like that.
Walton:
Okay good.
Ron Way:
This is the parable of the lost sheep. Luke 15:1-7. "Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.' He told them this parable saying, 'What man among you, if he has 100 sheep and has lost one of them does not leave the 99 in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulder rejoicing and when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors saying to them, 'Rejoice with me. I have found my sheep which was lost.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance."
Okay, Andrew. What kind of life event can you imagine that might have buried that story in his mind for him to tell later to his followers and onlookers?
Walton:
Well, it just so happens that on page 35 of my book, Jesus tells that story from his childhood. I won't take the time to read it because this is a longer one, but basically, I have Jesus telling a story of a time when he and his brother were taking care of sheep and it was time to go home. They counted the sheep and one of them was missing. Jesus goes back to where they had been, climbing through rocks and brush and he finally hears the sheep bleating, but it has fallen down a cliff and he looks over the cliff and it's way down below.
Jesus using a series of ropes, his knapsack and his robe, makes a long rope and climbs down that cliff where that lamb is on the ledge. He spends the night with that lamb on that ledge and the next morning wakes up and using the same rope that he had made, he takes that lamb and climbs back up the cliff and takes the lamb home.
Ron Way:
What would have elicited these parables in Jesus' teachings? It has to be out of his early life. You don't make it up out of whole cloth. It's fascinating. In fact, people don't have to take your word for it. They probably can make up their own stories, by just thinking through their lives, because we all have these stories to tell. It's just that Jesus had an ability to transfer these common every day lessons that he learned as he grew up into life lessons for everyone that heard him speak. I think that's amazing. You can find the same thing. Have you heard of the gospel of Thomas?
Walton:
Oh sure. Of course.
Ron Way:
Well, most people haven't of course, but the gospel of Thomas is another gospel that was written, it's one of the older ones because it's what we call a “sayings gospel.” Later gospels tried to tie the stories together and fill in the blanks. It wasn't just, Jesus said this, Jesus said that, Jesus said this. The later gospels tied the stories together and made a story out of it. Jesus was walking down the hill and talked to the people. It made the stories more real; but the early gospels (these are the “sayings gospels”), like the gospel called “Q” and Thomas were just a list of sayings that Jesus was to have uttered. For example, James contains 114 of these sayings, and 11 of them are exactly the same parables found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Walton:
Exactly.
Ron Way:
Jesus was filled with these wonderful stories that people remembered. They were powerful and they remembered them and passed them on orally, because there were no written records at the time. A couple of examples from James, was the parable of the Ear of Grain, the parable of The Grain of Wheat, and the parable of the Date Palm Shoot. They were fabulous little things. If you get the gospel of Thomas—it's available at any bookstore—you can read about some of these parables.
But, I must stop us here, Andrew. I know that you will be shocked when I tell you that the time for our session together is gone. It's gone!
It goes so fast when we're having fun, Andrew, and I want to say thank you so very much for being with us.
Walton:
Oh, it's my pleasure. My pleasure.
Ron Way:
Andrew, I hope that you tell everyone at church about your interview so people listen to you and come to the website.
Ladies and gentlemen, Andrew’s book is called Hidden In His Own Story. Subtitled, Discovering Jesus in the Parables of the Gospels. That's Andrew Walton, W-A-L-T-O-N, folks. If you go to our website you will discover it there, and you can buy the book directly from there. Click on the picture of the book and It'll jump you right to the publisher and you can get the book sent out to you ASAP.
I can't thank you enough for being with us today, Andy, and best of luck on your book.
Walton:
Thank you very much. As I say toward the close of my comments in the book, I just hope that everybody that reads this can allow Jesus to be more human and in doing so discover our own humanity and in doing that, discovering the presence of God in our lives and all the stories of our life.
Ron Way:
It's there in his stories. He's already working in our lives, folks. We're not different than Jesus. Of course, we are, but do you know what I'm saying? We are the same.
Walton:
Oh yeah. I think Richard Rohr capsulizes this in a quote that I use in the book. He says, "Jesus came precisely to put it all together for us and in us. He was saying in effect to be human is good. The material and the physical can be trusted and enjoyed. This world is the hiding place of God and the revelation of God.”
Ron Way:
Amen. I'm not going to add one more word to that.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us again on AuthorTalk. I really am grateful for you having been with us today. I hope you join us again next week as we continue on our quest to find God, the Divine. For now, this is Ron way for AuthorTalk saying God bless.
Author: Andrew Walton
“Hidden in His Own Story; Discovering Jesus in the Parables of the Gospels”
Host: Ronald Way
Ron Way:
Hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of AuthorTalk and Rising Light Media, where we interview some of the most fascinating religious and spiritual authors in the world.
Today our guest is Andrew Walton. He's a pastor in the Presbyterian church and has served congregations in Georgia, Washington DC, and Florida. Walton is currently pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church. Clearwater, Florida where he and his wife live. [Laughter] I'm laughing because I called him a Baptist yesterday, and Andrew had to stop me in my tracks and correct me. Today we're visiting Andrew because of his new book entitled Hidden in His Own Story: Discovering Jesus in the Parable of the Gospel. Welcome to AuthorTalk, Andrew.
Walton:
Thanks, Ron.
Ron Way:
I want our listeners to know you, Andrew as a person. I've just mentioned that you are a pastor, but no one starts out just a pastor. Tell us how Andrew Walton became the man that he is today. Did you just wake up one day as a young man and say to yourself, "I want to be a minister?"
Walton:
Well, I didn't, but it's close to that. Maybe your intuition is better than you think, Ron, because I did start off as a Baptist. [Laughter]
Ron Way:
Ah. See I knew I felt it there. [Laughter]
Walton:
Yeah. I grew up in a southern Baptist family. Very devout and learned a whole lot about the Bible, and actually experienced a call into the ministry as a child, but that was on the back burner and went dormant for many, many years. I had gone through many phases of faith, as so many people do.
Ron Way:
Sure.
Walton:
As a matter of fact, as a teenager and college student, I just left the church altogether. When I came back in to the church, I came back in as a Presbyterian and I was in my mid 30s when all of this childhood experience came back to me and I just went through a discernment process there in my mid 30s. The short version of that is at 37 years old, I entered seminary. Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia and did a degree there for three years. Came out at 40, was ordained, and I've been a pastor ever since.
Ron Way:
It's interesting, our childhood experiences. I know that this interview isn't for me, but I have to tell you that when I was a child, my parents were not religious. I was. I joined the boy scout troop sponsored by the Episcopal church in my home town. I wanted to belong to the church. I joined the choir, and joined the youth group, but I couldn't take communion, which is what I desperately wanted because I had never been baptized, never been confirmed, so they wouldn't do it until my father or my mother joined the church. My father said he would take communion classes with me and join the church—under protest. We went through the confirmation classes, and of course all I learned was that the Episcopalians are just better dressed Catholics. [Laughter]
During this experience, I got to the alter rail. I got baptized that morning with the babies of the church, and then I went to the alter rail for First Communion with other kids and adults. The priest wouldn't start communion for the rest of the congregation until the first congregants were done, and I was still there praying because I knew once I had the bread and the wine, I was going to see Jesus. I don't know what they told me to make me believe that, but that's what I believed. Finally, the priest took me by my elbow, walked me back to the pew where my father was sitting. I had refused to leave the alter rail because I hadn't seen Jesus, and I wasn't leaving until I did see Jesus, so they forcefully took me away. It took me a long while before I came back to the church. Let's go on. I'm sorry. I usurped you. We are here to hear your story, not mine.
Walton:
No. Let me also add that during all those years, my young adult years from college until I went to seminary, I worked in the theater. I was a director, producer, designer, occasional actor, and so I had nearly a 20-year career in the theater before going to seminary.
Ron Way:
That sure steads you well with what you're doing now, communicating with people.
Walton:
I hope so. I hope so.
Ron Way:
Your book, Andrew, is about the parables told by Jesus. Many of Jesus' parables refer to simple everyday things such as:
- A woman baking bread, which is a parable of the leaven.
- A man knocking on his neighbor's door at night, a parable of the friend at night.
- The aftermath of a roadside mugging. Parable of the good Samaritan.
I think this is very important folks. Like you, this is a Jesus I personally resonate with, and I think that it's so critical we understand this. I could expand for hours, but I want you to tell us why it's important and what the human Jesus was like. I want you to listen to this because when I read this book, conceptually it blew me away from the get-go, because the concept to this book is that the teachings of Jesus came from somewhere. They didn't come out of thin air. Right” Go on. Andrew, I'll shut up. Honestly, Ihink that I can talk about your book longer than you.
Walton:
I think a good example of this, Ron, is the way we began our conversation today. How did we start our conversation today? By telling stories. We each told just a little bit of our own life, our own experience. Those stories, those experiences that we had are what make us who we are today.
Ron Way:
Right.
Walton:
At the very core of my book is this idea that Jesus was a human being. Because Jesus was a human being, Jesus would have had his own stories, and his own stories are the experiences that made him who he was. Unfortunately, the Canon blots out the time in his life from when he was 12 years old until he was 30.
Ron Way:
Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Of course, that has led to stories about that missing period.
Walton:
Yeah and you and I just shared stories of our own lives of that exact time frame which was extremely formative.
Ron Way:
Right. It was pivotal.
Walton:
These years that disappeared, I thought, "Wow. When I sit down around a dinner table or a campfire or do an interview with someone like you and start trying to tell people who I am, what do I do? I tell my stories. If Jesus did the same, and if his stories were later developed into parables, then we may have a glimpse into that time frame that we had never known about.
Ron Way:
I think—and I'm trying to get our audience to really picture this—that when Jesus was growing up, he ran into problems and set false expectations for himself. And, at the same time, there were expectations of him by others, for he was probably a bit of a different child. Capricious or whatever, but he was bright. We know that. He was experiencing life for 20 or 30 years. Those stories didn't come out of thin air, they were from his own experiences of life.
Walton:
Gotcha. Yeah.
Ron Way:
We read the Gospels… The Gospels—everybody should know this—the Gospels weren't written down (the first one being, Mark), until around 70 AD. You must remember what was happening during this time in history. The world had changed. The whole center of our faith, the Christian faith, was centered around Jerusalem until then. With one fell swoop, within about a two, three-year period, the Romans came through, wiped everything, and everyone out, including Jerusalem; and if the Christians hadn't escaped before then, and there's some stories of some of them doing just that, trust me, they were killed or hauled off into slavery. That's it. The faith changed tremendously at that point in time, and people decided they better get this written down—thus the Gospels began to be written. Let's take a look at that. The 30s, when Jesus died (in AD 30 plus or minus), the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s. It ended up being 40 years before they started actually putting these stories that Jesus told down in writing. Then it becomes pretty codified. The stories had been told between people for 40 years, and now, finally, they were getting written down in the form that we know them. They're codified, but we miss all of that if we don’t know the history behind the words.
What Andrew is picking up is, we generally miss that really human touch of Jesus who's sitting there on a hillside, as he says, "You know, I had an experience like that. Let me tell you a story." Is that the way it goes?
Walton:
Exactly.
Ron Way:
Yeah.
Walton:
Let me share something, Ron, right here that piggybacks on your comments there. This comes from the preface of my book which is… actually I call it the backstory. The paragraph says, "Among all the scholarship and words, all we really know about the man Jesus of Nazareth, beyond what is in the Bible and other religious texts is that he lived, had a brother named James and was crucified by the Roman perfect Pontius Pilate for insurrection. We know these things primarily from two brief extra-biblical references; one, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephu, and the other the Roman historian, Tacitus. All else we know about Jesus comes from people who believed him to be the messiah to the Jewish people and/or the Christ of Christianity. I.e. God in the flesh. In most cases, these believers are quite up front about making a case for their beliefs."
See, all we have in the Bible, the biblical record is not really about the man, Jesus. It's about the man believed to be the messiah and/or the Christ.
Ron Way:
Right.
Walton:
My book is trying to get back behind that.
Ron Way:
Yes, I understand, and another subject we should talk about offline eventually says Paul was ... Actually, Christians took another step further away from the human Jesus when Paul began to write.
Walton:
Oh, absolutely. It's a totally different story.
Ron Way:
Totally different story. He didn't know Jesus.
Walton:
Which, by the way, had already taken place before the gospel accounts were written.
Ron Way:
Absolutely. By a decade at least.
Walton:
Exactly.
Ron Way:
Yeah. Paul didn't even consider Jesus’ words and teachings really terribly important. Otherwise he could have talked about them, quoted them, but he didn't.
Walton:
Right. My objective in the book here, Ron, and I try to ... All of what we're talking about is extremely important and very, very interesting and controversial in Christian circles, but that's not what I really wanted the book to be about. I wanted to mention those things at the beginning, but what I really want us to get into are these stories.
Ron Way:
I will interrupt you there, because there's one other short quote, and then we'll go directly to those stories. You wrote, “even the most clever story teller or writer of fiction can never totally disguise or deny their own personal influence on the story. Which means that when Jesus told the story, he probably either experienced it in real life or observed it,” which I thought was an entirely new way at looking at Jesus’ teachings.
Here we go, Andrew. Do you have a copy of your book with you?
Walton:
I do.
Ron Way:
Why don't you pick an example from your book? Tell us a story you think that might have occurred to Jesus during his early life before he started teaching, during that first roughly 30 years of his life, and then afterwards, quote the parable from one of the gospels which starts on page 69. Then I'm going to flip my question and take the opposite with you; I’ll quote a parable, and then you tell the story of what might have transpired in Jesus’ life that eventually elicited this teaching story.
Walton:
Okay. All right. I'm going to pick a short one and I'm just going to read it as I have told it in the book. It begins, and this is Jesus telling the story now. "Rarely did I ever know my mother to be overly anxious or afraid. However, on those occasions when she was anxious, the joy that she normally exuded was transformed into intense determination and persistence. One night, I awoke to my parent's voices. ‘Mary, what are you doing?’ Papa whispered so as not to wake my brother or sister and me. ‘I've lost something.’ Her voice was hushed and deliberate. I saw her sweeping the floor by lamp light. ‘Well, what could be so important? Wouldn't it be easier to find it in the daylight?’ Papa asked.
"’Well, it probably would but I dropped a coin to the floor just before lying down to sleep and after putting out the lamp. It is the only money we have and will buy our food for several days. I cannot rest or sleep until I find it.’ ‘Well, can I help?’ Papa sighed. ‘You go back to sleep. There's no need for you to worry. I will find it.’ From the shadows on the edge of the lamplight, I saw her search for that lost coin. As anxious as she was, she remained calm and focused. My own anxiety began to subside. I had seen that confident believe before and could hear her say to me, ‘Jesus, if you believe something with all your soul and mind and body, you will see your belief become reality.’ ‘How do I do this, mother?’ I had asked.
"’Well, first, you feel it deeply. Next, you think it thoroughly and then you take action as if it is already done’ I fell asleep knowing she would find the coin because she believed she would. I awoke to laughter in the courtyard outside our house. Mother told her friends about sweeping for hours in the lamplight and finally finding the lost coin. Her voice filled the air with joy. I breathed in the joy of her laughter, and also the strength of her face and secretly thought that coin was never lost because my mother always believed it would be found."
Now the parable to reflect the life lesson that he had learned. One version of the parable is in Luke chapter 15 verses 8 through 10. Again, this is Jesus talking. "Or, what woman having 10 silver coins if she loses one of them does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
Ron Way:
There's the lesson.
Walton:
Yeah.
Ron Way:
Right. Now. As we go on, it's my turn. I'm going to pick a parable and you tell me what the story you think might have elicited the telling of the parable like that.
Walton:
Okay good.
Ron Way:
This is the parable of the lost sheep. Luke 15:1-7. "Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.' He told them this parable saying, 'What man among you, if he has 100 sheep and has lost one of them does not leave the 99 in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulder rejoicing and when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors saying to them, 'Rejoice with me. I have found my sheep which was lost.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance."
Okay, Andrew. What kind of life event can you imagine that might have buried that story in his mind for him to tell later to his followers and onlookers?
Walton:
Well, it just so happens that on page 35 of my book, Jesus tells that story from his childhood. I won't take the time to read it because this is a longer one, but basically, I have Jesus telling a story of a time when he and his brother were taking care of sheep and it was time to go home. They counted the sheep and one of them was missing. Jesus goes back to where they had been, climbing through rocks and brush and he finally hears the sheep bleating, but it has fallen down a cliff and he looks over the cliff and it's way down below.
Jesus using a series of ropes, his knapsack and his robe, makes a long rope and climbs down that cliff where that lamb is on the ledge. He spends the night with that lamb on that ledge and the next morning wakes up and using the same rope that he had made, he takes that lamb and climbs back up the cliff and takes the lamb home.
Ron Way:
What would have elicited these parables in Jesus' teachings? It has to be out of his early life. You don't make it up out of whole cloth. It's fascinating. In fact, people don't have to take your word for it. They probably can make up their own stories, by just thinking through their lives, because we all have these stories to tell. It's just that Jesus had an ability to transfer these common every day lessons that he learned as he grew up into life lessons for everyone that heard him speak. I think that's amazing. You can find the same thing. Have you heard of the gospel of Thomas?
Walton:
Oh sure. Of course.
Ron Way:
Well, most people haven't of course, but the gospel of Thomas is another gospel that was written, it's one of the older ones because it's what we call a “sayings gospel.” Later gospels tried to tie the stories together and fill in the blanks. It wasn't just, Jesus said this, Jesus said that, Jesus said this. The later gospels tied the stories together and made a story out of it. Jesus was walking down the hill and talked to the people. It made the stories more real; but the early gospels (these are the “sayings gospels”), like the gospel called “Q” and Thomas were just a list of sayings that Jesus was to have uttered. For example, James contains 114 of these sayings, and 11 of them are exactly the same parables found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Walton:
Exactly.
Ron Way:
Jesus was filled with these wonderful stories that people remembered. They were powerful and they remembered them and passed them on orally, because there were no written records at the time. A couple of examples from James, was the parable of the Ear of Grain, the parable of The Grain of Wheat, and the parable of the Date Palm Shoot. They were fabulous little things. If you get the gospel of Thomas—it's available at any bookstore—you can read about some of these parables.
But, I must stop us here, Andrew. I know that you will be shocked when I tell you that the time for our session together is gone. It's gone!
It goes so fast when we're having fun, Andrew, and I want to say thank you so very much for being with us.
Walton:
Oh, it's my pleasure. My pleasure.
Ron Way:
Andrew, I hope that you tell everyone at church about your interview so people listen to you and come to the website.
Ladies and gentlemen, Andrew’s book is called Hidden In His Own Story. Subtitled, Discovering Jesus in the Parables of the Gospels. That's Andrew Walton, W-A-L-T-O-N, folks. If you go to our website you will discover it there, and you can buy the book directly from there. Click on the picture of the book and It'll jump you right to the publisher and you can get the book sent out to you ASAP.
I can't thank you enough for being with us today, Andy, and best of luck on your book.
Walton:
Thank you very much. As I say toward the close of my comments in the book, I just hope that everybody that reads this can allow Jesus to be more human and in doing so discover our own humanity and in doing that, discovering the presence of God in our lives and all the stories of our life.
Ron Way:
It's there in his stories. He's already working in our lives, folks. We're not different than Jesus. Of course, we are, but do you know what I'm saying? We are the same.
Walton:
Oh yeah. I think Richard Rohr capsulizes this in a quote that I use in the book. He says, "Jesus came precisely to put it all together for us and in us. He was saying in effect to be human is good. The material and the physical can be trusted and enjoyed. This world is the hiding place of God and the revelation of God.”
Ron Way:
Amen. I'm not going to add one more word to that.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us again on AuthorTalk. I really am grateful for you having been with us today. I hope you join us again next week as we continue on our quest to find God, the Divine. For now, this is Ron way for AuthorTalk saying God bless.
