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(From the Peace Center @ CAL)

“Why do I speak to you at all!” Jesus yells at the Judean leaders (John 8:25). He has tried to speak to them in metaphor and parable, but they cannot hear. So he tries to speak to them plainly, yet they are still deaf to his message. Although he desperately wants to reach them, he has to face the reality that the truth he speaks is very difficult for people of power and privilege to comprehend.

The masses of the common poor are drawn to his wisdom, but they do not immediately understand it either. Sometimes he has to explain it to them, as with the parable of the sower. (Mk 4:1-20, Matt 13:1-23) In John 16:29, his disciples say to him, “Now you are speaking plainly.” They begin to understand.

Truth, the kind that changes people and heals the world, cannot usually be spoken plainly because it sounds, in this world, like insanity. A world steeped in falsehoods cannot tolerate plainly spoken truth. Truth has to sneak in through parables and riddles. It has to gain entry through a back door.

But there comes a time when it must be spoken plainly. When Jesus spoke plainly to the authorities, he was accused of being demon-possessed (John 8:48) and was finally crucified.

Today we live in similar world where truth often sounds insane. A world steeped in the falsehoods of war and injustice rejects the Word of Truth. Sometimes we must speak in parable and metaphor, as we did last year in the Palm Sunday Peace Parade. Since Palm Sunday coincided with April Fools Day last year, the parade became a performance of absurdist theater, contrasting the “foolishness of God’s wisdom” with the wisdom of the world that leads to war and misery. The theme was “Fools for Christ.”

This year we will try to speak plainly. We are currently forming an “Iran Study Group” that will examine the Bush administration’s case for war against Iran. The findings will be publicly presented to various authorities who represent us in government. We do not know what they will do with the information, but our job is to be faithful to the truth and to continue to speak it, whether in parable or plainly. And this we will do.