Nobody Lights a Lamp to Hide It

He has just finished telling a small group why he teaches in stories. What comes next is four short sayings in a row, and every one of them is still about listening.

The lamp comes first. A lamp in that house was a small clay dish of olive oil with a wick lying in the lip, and it was not bright. You lit one and set it up high so the little light it made could reach across a room.

Does anyone bring in a lamp to put it under a basket or under a bed? Doesn’t he set it on a stand?

Nobody would, and everybody listening knew it. The joke is doing real work here. He has been telling stories that keep something back, and anybody sitting there could reasonably wonder whether he means people to stay in the dark. His answer is that a cover is a temporary thing with a reason behind it. You might shield a flame while you carry it across a yard so the wind does not take it, and then you stop shielding it the moment you are inside. Everything he is holding back now is on its way to being shown.

Then he tells them to pay attention to what they hear, because the measure they use is the measure that gets used on them. A measure was an object you could pick up, a container you scooped grain into. Bring a small one and you carry home a small amount. He is not making a threat. He is describing how scooping works, and he is talking about listening.

For whoever has will be given more. But whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

That sounds unfair, and saying so out loud is better than hurrying past it. But consider what it actually describes, because attention behaves exactly this way. Somebody who listens closely understands more, understanding more makes the next thing easier to hear, and it builds on itself over years without anybody watching it happen. Somebody who stops listening loses even the little he was holding, quietly, without ever deciding to. He is not announcing a policy. He is telling us what happens.