Parables, Symbolic Actions, and a Man Dressed in Tie-Dye

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field.  It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.  It becomes a large bush, and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’” (Mt 13:31-2)

During my first year of college I met many people whose self-presentation, life experience and values were quite different from mine.  Having grown up in the sticks of Southwest Wales, I could count on one hand the number of people with a different skin color I had met.  But exposure to racial or ethnic diversity was only the beginning of what I would meet on a large and multicultural urban campus.  Some of these encounters remain indelibly etched on my memory.  One young man walked around campus clothed in a black cloak and carrying a staff, lacking only the Darth Vader mask that would have completed the look.  One day I almost bumped into him as I was going into a building and he was coming out.  As I recall, his response was to thwack his staff on the ground and stare at me with anathema in his eyes.  Then he continued on his way.  “He’s probably a genius,” I thought, “But his social skills could use some work…”

I was beginning to be primed for the unexpected.  But I carried with me a fear of the unknown and a great reluctance to peer beyond the surface.  I first laid eyes on Tie-Dye Boy at the very beginning of freshman year.  He was sitting by himself on the grass in one of the quads enclosed by the dorm buildings.  Immediately apparent from some distance was his attire: he was dressed from head to foot in tie-died garments.  Popular in the sixties and then again for a short time in the nineties, the style struck me then as passé, a childhood fad left behind without regret.  Why was he dressed this way?  I didn’t know, but I wasn’t about risk getting closer to find out.  There was no staff in sight, but I felt afraid, threatened somehow by this mysterious departure from normal dress.  So I passed him by and went on my way.  But he would continue to appear around campus, often alone, always dressed in the same way.

Why was I afraid?  I knew nothing of this person except how he chose to dress.  Yet how he dressed was an uncomfortable challenge to me.  He didn’t fit, and I didn’t know why.  Did he reject fashion?  Was he a libertarian?  Was he still living in his childhood, a bit unbalanced maybe?  Or was he making some other kind of statement, perhaps a political or social critique?

In the prophetic literature of the Old Testament, we hear of prophets called by God to communicate messages to the people of Israel: words of judgement and correction, and later of consolation and promise.  Ultimately, the people were so hard of hearing and the message so controversial that communication could only come through symbolic actions.  Jeremiah was instructed put a loincloth under a rock, leaving it there until it was rotten and useless (Jer 13).  He was also asked to wear a cattle yoke as he went about his daily business (Jer 27, 28).  Ezekiel was called to lie on his side for 390 days, next to a brick, which symbolized Jerusalem under siege, and then to turn onto his other side for 40 more days.  Next, he was asked to ration his food and drink, making bread from mixed grains considered unsuitable for food and baking it on a fire of human dung (Ez 4).  Perhaps most dramatically, Isaiah was asked to go around naked for three years (Is 20).  Why?  In each case, God wanted the people to realize that their unfaithful actions and depraved way of life were leading them to destruction: they had become rotten and useless; they were under the yoke of evil influence; their city would be besieged and they would undergo punishment for the days of their rebellion; they would be forced to eat unclean food; they would be exiles and refugees who went without clothing or protection.

Jesus makes use of a similar means of communication in the gospels.  His scandalous choice of eating companions, his disregard for strict ritual piety and his use of parables function similarly to bring his audience into recognition of the kingdom of God hidden in plain sight, whose prophet par excellence he is:
“This is why I speak to them in parables, because they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand. … But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.” (Mt 13:13, 16)
The Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor explained in her own words why she used strange and disconcerting characters and ‘grotesque’ imagery in her parable-like stories:
“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”
(Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners)
Today’s parable of the mustard seed takes a common enough concept – a seed sown and growing into a large bush – as an image for the hidden but immanent kingdom of God.  The shocking element, yet one that is part of the audience’s daily experience, is that the tiniest of seeds could produce such a large plant.  And by implication, the most seemingly insignificant elements can grow into great manifestations of God’s kingdom: the great tree that shelters all.

So what of Tie-Dye Boy?  Well, he was like Isaiah for me.  Not naked, but dressed in a way that discomfited me such that I could not ignore or deny it.  Like Jeremiah’s contemporaries, I felt there must be some message, and though I didn’t know what it was, I sensed it was a wake-up call, a blow to the status quo, a symbolic expression of human bondage.  Like those who saw Ezekiel act out siege and exile, I felt that something of my way of life and values was being dismantled before my eyes.  Like the hearer of Jesus’ parables and the reader of Flannery O’Connor’s stories, I was being prodded toward recognition of an uncomfortable reality hidden in plain sight.

After about three years, I found myself unexpectedly in social contact with the young man known as Tie-Dye Boy, through our common involvement with a student-run janitorial service on campus.  It was then that some of my wild imaginings were dismissed.  I found him reasonable and self-possessed, quiet but hardly anti-social, and somehow deeply authentic.  He was not childish, socially naïve, or mentally imbalanced.  Neither was he flamboyant or loudly opinionated.  Most importantly, I did not sense that his non-conformity breathed violence.  I must confess that I never found the courage to ask him why he chose to dress as he did.  Unqualified as I am to speak for that young man, I can only speak to the message I received from him.

He was like a mustard seed for me.  His appearance elicited so many prejudices and ignorant suppositions.  I could not imagine what could be behind it and so I filled the space with my fear.  Perhaps the message of the parable was simply this: Who am I to judge a person by their appearance, or by the clothes they wear?  And yet how many of us are truly free enough to look beyond the exterior?  How many of us have moved from what may be called an ethnocentric state, which normalizes what we are accustomed to and judges everything else by the standards we set?  How many have truly embraced an ethnorelative stance, in which we allow ourselves to be vulnerable by refraining from judgment long enough to let differences speak to us?  What courage it must take to deliberately choose non-conformity as an expression of freedom from bondage – the bondage of judging by appearances.  Maybe his intention was to open people’s eyes to their prejudices, but to do so he must have been willing to receive scorn and rejection.  And if he did it from love and not from hate, then he must have had to train his heart to accept the one who rejected him, even having chosen the conditions that led to his own rejection.  What could sustain him in this other than the joy that might sometimes have broken upon him when he was accepted, recognized, and valued in spite of his appearance?

Tie-Dye Boy was like a great tree for me, confounding expectations to grow tall and produce large branches to provide shade and shelter for all, embracing them without distinction.  One who sees a mustard seed for the first time has no way of imagining the large plant that it is capable of producing.  Yet having heard or seen such a parable and opened ourselves to learn from it, we should know, we should be able to join the dots and open ourselves to the kingdom hidden in plain sight.  “Whoever has ears ought to hear” (Mt 13:43).