All the Parables of Jesus: A Guide to Discovery

Copyright © 2012 by David M. Brown.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-5165-4 (sc)

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WestBow Press rev. date: 07/27/2012

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 An Introduction To Parables

Chapter 2 What Is A Parable?

Chapter 3 Components Of Story

Chapter 4 Spiritual Analogy

Chapter 5 Identifying Parables

Chapter 6 Replicated Parables

Chapter 7 Classifying The Parables

Chapter 8 The Why Of Parables

Chapter 9 Singletons And Dyads

Chapter 10 Triads And Quarternaries

Chapter 11 When Parables Are Portholes

Chapter 12 When Parables Are Cracked Windows

Chapter 13 When Parables Are Mirrors

Chapter 14 Interpreting Parables

Appendix A The Parables Of Jesus By Subject Matter

Appendix B The Parables Of Jesus By Subject Matter

Appendix C Parabole In The Gospels

Appendix D Parables In Matthew

Appendix E Parables In Mark

Appendix F Parables In Luke

Appendix G Parables In John

A Sampling Of Resources

For Ellen

who is a parable to me

Acknowledgments

I first started looking seriously at parables when I was asked to offer a Bible study for a group of missionaries. Those few sessions stimulated my attention, and for the next three years, I studied, honed, and focused that interest. In that time, my attraction for the parables and my appreciation for their complexities has only intensified. I stand awestruck in their presence.

This book is a study guide rather than a detailed interpretation of each parable. The study began when I wanted to discover how to isolate and interpret these stories for myself. I wanted to examine and analyze their structures, and think through what Jesus must have intended by using so many of them. But, as is most often the case, when I started writing (which took place seriously and intentionally for over a year), even deeper and more challenging insights became apparent, in ways that mere thought would not have accomplished. As I have put this book together, then, the chapters and the ideas have been challenged and refocused and have continued to emerge, even after the completion of the manuscript. It has been a joy.

I also decided, in putting these reflections together, to present this material in such a way as to encourage you to do your own reflection about the parables. These observations, then, are designed to help you wrestle with the parables, to encourage you to allow them to go deep in a way that will influence, impact, and transform you. So, by design, this book is intended to help you process hermeneutical issues related to this most interesting and significant body of material left to us by Jesus and those who wrote about him.

I thank all those who have been patient with me during this time, especially where unintentional but insensitive behaviors resulted from taxed energy, lofty rather than relational thought processes, and attention focused on matters unrelated to my responsibilities. I thank, especially, the staff and missionaries of International Ministries who first tolerated these emerging studies so long ago. I thank those few members of the First Baptist Church of Twin Falls, Idaho who endured Wednesday evening sessions as I (often unsuccessfully) attempted to share some of this material with them. I thank my loving and encouraging brother, Steve, and his wife, Laurel, for their generous provision of living space—for a longer period of time, even, than it took to do this work.

Most especially, I thank my wife, Ellen, for her patience and loving support through all the years we’ve spent together. We have shared many marvelous, God-blessed experiences, and it is to her that I dedicate this book, on her birthday.

Of course, this work could not have been undertaken were it not for the Master story-teller, Jesus of Nazareth, who came both to tell us and show us what his heavenly Father is like. My devotion to him and my appreciation for his teaching ministry has increased exponentially through this study. I pray that your relationship with him, too, may climb to new heights through the work represented in this book.

David M. Brown

Lebanon, New Hampshire

04 October 2012

Chapter 1

An Introduction To Parables

INTRODUCTION: INSIDE EXPLOSION

Here are two stories. I suppose they are parables of a sort:

On a fourth of July many years ago, my wife and our two young sons were camping in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and we attended the local fireworks program just outside Custer. The area’s volunteer Fire Department ran the show. We sat in our cars, honked when the name of our State was called over a booming loudspeaker system, and then, after a lengthy delay, the fireworks got underway. We heard the crack and whistle that sent rockets high into the air, were inspired by those streaming, gleaming fingers of cascading color, and we shuddered at the booming high white detonations.

The fireworks came slowly and seemed few and far between, but throughout the program, one of the local firefighters gave us a continuous, blow-by-blow personal commentary on what was happening: Hey, that was mighty pretty! I love the red and green ones! and Wow! That one hurt my ears! and I saw one like that three years ago! We watched the twinkling colors and shied away from the big boomers. The whole experience was wondrous! I admired both those who construct these things and the people who spent the money to offer them to the public. It was a grand (and memorable) experience, but, all in all, it was pretty tame. The organizers didn’t want anybody fussing around with the fuses or getting too close to the showers of sparks. Fireworks programs are essentially passive entertainment.

The second story also took place many years ago. I was invited to be the speaker at a youth retreat from a local church. We arrived at an isolated mansion in southern New Jersey on Friday evening, found our rooms, unpacked, and had our first meal together. Afterward, the first order of business was to assign the young people their duties for meal preparation, setting tables, and cleaning up the mess that was left afterward. Then we got underway, and everything went according to schedule (as much as a youth retreat can). Until Sunday morning.

We were jolted awake at 6 a.m. with a great whompff! The whole house shook and the windows rattled. We quickly rolled out of our beds and rushed downstairs to see what was going on. There stood Butch, swaying on wobbly legs. He had just come out of the kitchen, a look of wide-eyed astonishment on his red face. He smelled like smoke and seemed utterly bewildered. But he managed to say, It was my turn to do breakfast, and I came down to get the oven ready. I turned the gas on, but there wasn’t any flame, and then I remembered that I had to use a match. So I went to the other side of the kitchen to look for one. When I found it, I came back and lit it. The explosion not only rocked the house, but as it swept past him, it singed his bathrobe, blew his hair back, took off his eyebrows, and cooked his face to a bright crimson glow. Somebody took him to the hospital, and he came back all oiled up and lay groaning on the back bench all during worship that morning.

Fireworks are fascinating. They are fun to watch. But we typically go home and forget what happened until the next year. Butch’s experience, on the other hand, was life-changing. It branded him in ways that he’ll never forget. Fireworks are pretty tame; a gas explosion in your face is not.

Now here’s a metaphor that Jesus uses in Matthew 13:33 (#48):¹

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.

This is an easy image to comprehend: yeast makes dough rise into bread. But its action actually invades every pore of the dough. Its little microbes force the dough to bubble up and grow large. The yeast completely changes the nature of that dough, from the inside, and transforms it into something wonderful. It’s a much more transformational process than what happens when you bake a pie crust that stays relatively flat.

Parables, in that sense, are like yeast. They impact us, explode within us, transform us. Let’s look, then, at a couple of parables that seem to talk about the work that parables do. (While this may not be the actual intent of these two stories, they do provide fresh images that help us understand what happens when we pay attention to the parables of Jesus.)

Take Jesus’ words from John 16:21 (#149), for instance:

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.

Here, Jesus uses the example of a woman in labor: at first it is painful, but when the baby is born, the new mother has great joy. In the same way, the meaning of a parable is often birthed out of some amount of anguish. But when its literal story gives way to its life-confronting truths, everything changes. It impacts us; indeed, it can lead to great personal joy.

Let’s take a look at just one more example that offers a different perspective on how parables work. It comes in Luke 23:31 (#126), where Jesus says:

For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?

Of course, when trees are young, they are green. They are not ready to produce fruit. Some parables are like that. Like trees, they have seasons of life. Some of them don’t necessarily mean too much to us when they are new to us. But later, the tree becomes dry. Here is a different season for the tree; it has matured. The same is true of that parable that might have been a bit confusing. At first, when it was green, it didn’t make much sense. But then it comes into another season when it ripens, and then it is able to yield its fruit.

We’re going to look at a lot of parables in this book. Some of them are long (Luke 19:11-27, #91), some are short (Matthew 13:33, #48). Some are fairly complex with more than one message (Matthew 22:1-14, #77 and #78), some are very simple (Matthew 13:44, #50). Some were extremely confrontational when they were told (Luke 20:17-18, #76), and some are rather touching (Luke 15:3-7, #66). A lot of them aren’t particularly earth-shaking; they merely describe people or situations. But many of them are quite wonderfully complex. They captivate our minds and hearts and do strange work inside us. However, no matter how simple or complex they are, all the parables of Jesus are transformational. Of course, not every one of Jesus’ parables is disruptive like an exploding oven, but they are all consequential. Even those that don’t have much of a punch have an impact. They do this work silently within us. They are components of a process that the Lord uses to change us as his disciples, from the inside out, into kingdom people.

When we take the parables all together, they give us a glimpse of a different kind of kingdom, a new lifestyle, a different perspective on our world. In that sense, they are revelatory. Even those with seemingly-insignificant lessons to teach us bear messages and stories and images that come from beyond our world.

I’m suggesting that we see the totality of these parables as a way in which Jesus reveals a new kingdom to us, a new way to see life and to live our lives. Yes, we are happy to accept them like fireworks and watch their little explosions of information, taking them as little nuggets of rational information. But that’s only the first step. They also invade our personal space. If we aren’t careful, they get inside us and transform us and radically change just about everything. They open the door for the Holy Spirit to work out the kingdom (and kingdom values) within us.

I encourage you, then, not to read the parables passively, as nice little stories that have interesting lessons to teach. Read them as if they are explosive. I think that’s the way Jesus wanted them to be—to impact, challenge, disrupt our lives—to blow the hair off our musty old ideas and our worldly ways and force us to reexamine life itself.

Of course, it will take a good deal of thought to understand the parables before we can let them do that work. That’s where I hope this study will help. Once we’ve processed the issues in this book, I hope you will be able to grasp the significance of these little stories and, though them, let the Holy Spirit do His work within you.

THE WORLD OF PARABLES

Before we get there, though, there is some basic information that will help frame the parables for us. It’s been said that about one-third of Jesus’ teachings are parables (though in my estimation, the figure is much higher). That, of course, depends on how we define a parable, a subject that we’ll take up in the next chapter. Suffice it to say that if we want to understand Jesus’ teachings, we must understand his parables. They are probably the most direct (or basic) teachings we have from him. For that reason alone, it is critical that we pay attention to them and try to understand them.

1. The teller of parables: Jesus the carpenter?

If we use parables as indicators of the kind of life with which Jesus was most familiar, we would think he was a farmer, gardener, or householder. If he was trained as a carpenter in Joseph’s shop (standard practice in his day), we would expect to see many parables about the carpenter business, which, in New Testament times, would have included working in stone, wood, and metal (the carpenter could construct and repair plows, walls, and buildings).

But how many of Jesus’ stories do we have that fall into this category? Actually, there are perhaps only three that actually reflect anything even vaguely related to wood-working or carpentry. One has to do with a bit of sawdust in one’s eye (Matthew 7:3-5//Luke 6:41-42, #16); another is the yoke used in farming (Matthew 11:28-30, #38); and the third is discussion related to the cross (Matthew 10:37-39, 16:24-27//Mark 8:34-38//Luke 9:23-26, 14:27, #36). There are also four parables about the construction business: the house on rock (#23), bigger barns (#104), the tower (#114), and the incidental mention of a vineyard owner who builds a wall and constructs a tower in it (#75). So why are there so few parables about woodworking, tools, construction, or small family-owned businesses?

This intriguing problem has elicited two adequate responses. The first is the scant evidence that Jesus was a carpenter. The only direct reference comes in Mark 6:3, where his Nazareth neighbors say "Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of the carpenter and of Mary? (Matthew’s report of that account [13:55] states that Jesus was a carpenter’s son, and Luke’s version [4:22] says he was Joseph’s son," neither of which identify Jesus himself as a carpenter.) So perhaps Jesus was not a carpenter in his pre-ministry days. The Markan reference could indicate that the villagers merely assumed that Jesus had taken up carpentry because of his father, when, in fact, he had not.

The second plausible answer is that Jesus spent more time with people who depended on farming and were living off the land than he did with the merchant class (where carpenters would be found). As such, he was using stories that were more relevant to his listeners than to his own upbringing (an important story-telling strategy). That is to say that Jesus spent more time with the poor of his day than the middle class from which he came, though there are parables that also reflect the merchant class (#51, #54, #117, for example). There are also a few parables that speak about royalty and the very rich (for instance, #105, #119, and #120). This simply means that Jesus spent time with all kinds of people from all walks of life, and if he was to be relevant to them, he would have had to include all types of people from various socio-economic circumstances in his stories.

However we resolve this interesting question, the important point for our study is that we are interested in the parables of Jesus that we do have. The listening audience is implicated only in how we understand these stories, not in how or why they were produced. Jesus was a master story-teller, and either of these responses is quite plausible.

2. The recording of the parables: the four Gospels

Since the Gospels are the only source we have for the stories of Jesus, it will be helpful to review how they emerged and their interplay with each other.

We must remember initially that the Gospels aren’t biographies intending to spell out the life-story of Jesus. They are documents of faith, designed to get the reader to respond to Jesus by becoming a disciple. John 20:30-31 spells this purpose out most succinctly: lots of things could have been written about what Jesus said and did, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. This we can take as the overriding goal of each of the Gospels. That is, each writer made certain decisions about what incidents and teachings to include and what to exclude, and how to frame the plot and organize the material. This is important, because it means that the purpose of each Gospel writer, given his own perspective, culture, and understanding of the people to whom he was writing, drives that particular Gospel. It determines not only the material that is included, but also the order in which the text is organized.

According to most scholars, Mark was the earliest Gospel, probably penned between 65 and 70 AD (35-40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection). During these intervening years, the stories about Jesus (and the stories that Jesus told) were so memorable that they were recited verbatim and handed on from generation to generation until this first evangelist wrote them down (though with his own unique purpose in doing so).

Matthew (written about 10 years after Mark) and Luke (perhaps 10 years after Matthew) clearly borrow from Mark, but they also have their own traditions of these stories. Matthew and Luke also share another common source (scholars call this hypothetical document Q, for the Latin word quelle, which means source). However, because these three written accounts present the same type of image, chronology, and teachings of Jesus, they are known as the Synoptic Gospels (that is, they see alike). John’s Gospel, written perhaps 15 to 20 years after Luke, presents a very different kind of Jesus and his teachings.

This is simply to say that each Gospel emerged at a different time, through a different oral tradition, and within a different community of faith. And it was written to a particular community and for a particular purpose. All of them are passionate about presenting who Jesus is and his teachings (according to their inspired understanding). But it does mean that each Gospel is slightly different.

As such, each indicates a unique tradition of the stories of and about Jesus, stories that were formulated as they was passed from generation to generation, first orally and then in written form. This, of course, helps us know why there are variations from account to account.

How does this show up in differences between the Gospels? Well, as just one very noticeable example, look at the story of the temple cleansing. It comes at the end of Jesus’ ministry in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 21, Mark 11, and Luke 19), while in John, it comes at the beginning (Chapter 2). It’s unlikely that the Jewish officials would have allowed Jesus to do this twice, but beyond that, it’s probably a chronological issue for the Synopticists while it is a theological issue for John. John is posing Jesus as a unique messenger from God who has come to do away with the old order of things. He established that at the very beginning of his ministry. There is wonderful symbolism in John 2 when Jesus changes (the old) water (from six stone jars) into (the new) wine of the kingdom, and then he cleanses the temple to make way for that new kingdom (John 2:12-16). The ultimate goal of leading the reader to faith in Jesus allows John (and each of the Gospel writers) the freedom to adjust bits and pieces of the actual events to bring about the purpose for which he is writing. But let’s be clear: the texts are sacred, inspired by the Holy Spirit. No matter how the Gospel is put together and no matter what differences we discover along the way, all bear equal weight.²

What this means for a study like this is that because there are four Gospels, we’re going to run into some difficulties in identifying, categorizing, and interpreting the parables. Further, these stories of Jesus were remembered and recorded primarily because they were directly relevant to certain conditions in the church to which they are addressed. In this sense, they were doing exactly what we do in interpreting and applying these parables to our own lives. It’s just that they had different immediate circumstances.

3. The subject of the parables: The kingdom of God

The parables are directly related to the kingdom of God (or the kingdom of heaven). In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus begins many of his stories with the words, "The kingdom of heaven is like…" Mark, Luke, and John employ the term the kingdom of God for these sayings.³ By comparing accounts, though, it is clear that these terms are interchangeable.

What was this kingdom about which Jesus spoke? Well, first of all, the term kingdom is a striking idea that makes sense to us: it describes a political system wherein we know our place. The king rules and has all the power. But kingdom, for us, also implies fiefdoms and warring knights and serfs who have little say in the matter. Because of these other impressions that we have, perhaps realm or citizenship would be better terms to use.

But for most of his original listeners, the kingdom of God was an earthly domain that meant the overthrow of the Roman occupation. For most, it was yet to come sometime in the future. From what we surmise from his teachings, though, Jesus, of course, had a more far-reaching understanding of such a kingdom. It was a kingdom on earth, yes, but it was personal rather than political. It had already begun with his coming, would work itself out in the experiences of his disciples, and be completed at the fullness of time.

But how do you talk about such a kingdom without playing into the prejudices of your audience? Of course, the word kingdom is a metaphor. In it, a new realm of life, a different domain of existence, is revealed—indeed, a new way of living. But to talk about this very-different type of existence, Jesus decided to use stories. In so doing, he presented these foreign ideas in terms we can understand. But stories are also ambiguous. They say many things at the same time, and that’s where we run into trouble. Suffice it to say, though, that however Jesus might have framed this new world order, it would have had meaning for us. The kingdom metaphor, at least, implies that we who are followers of Jesus have a passport that belongs to a different nation than the country in which we currently (and temporarily) reside.

So Jesus’ strategy in using short stories meant that he could confound the former impressions or understanding and, at the same time, begin to unveil the kingdom for what it really was meant to be. Thus, the parables are little teaching stories that reveal the kingdom of God.

This is to say that the kingdom of God is so different from what we’re used to that we need to have a way of understanding it. That’s why Jesus uses stories that come from our own world. We know these elements of life, these types of characters, these examples, and through them we get a better idea of what life in the kingdom is all about. Through his parables, Jesus is comparing an unknown kingdom to something we know.

It is also true that the only thing we know about the kingdom of God is through what Jesus reveals to us. That’s why these parables are so important. They help us get under the skin of the kingdom and understand it from the inside. But let’s be clear: when we sell out to the kingdom of God, we aren’t simply adopting a new philosophy of life that will help us get along in this world. According to what Jesus says, we lose control over our lives. Our entire thinking, viewpoint, perspective, outlook, and orientation to life changes, so that we have to negotiate life in this world in a new way. We are no longer citizens of this world. We are instructed in how to be a different kind of people in a world that understands only its own way of living, with implications both for our private citizenship as well as our communities of faith.

4. The genius of the parables: The narrative paradigm

There are two basic approaches to thinking about the world around us or appropriating knowledge. The first is what Walter Fisher calls the rational world paradigm.⁴ It says that we live in a scientific age and are convinced that that’s the only way that we learn about the world. As such, we perceive ourselves as rational creatures. We are thoughtful and use argument as the main mode of analysis, reason, and decision-making. In the rational world paradigm, truth comes by plain talk and explanation.

According to Fisher, though, a more natural way of learning truth comes through story-telling. Fisher calls this the narrative paradigm. As Fisher says, this may seem a bit counterintuitive, because we have been so fully trained in the rational way of thinking that we can’t imagine any other way of appropriating information.⁵

The narrative paradigm, then, says that stories are essential to our appropriation of information about our world and social organization. It means that, through story, we understand life. Through story, we meet ourselves. Through story, we grasp spiritual matters. William G. Kirkwood (1983) writes that storytelling has been a widely used strategy to help listeners recognize within themselves obstacles to spiritual progress and then to overcome them.⁶ In terms of the kingdom, this new way of life is learned through parables. It happens precisely because parables are stories, and we must treat them as narrative communication rather than as items to be explained or rationalized. Thus, stories are transformative, because they convey truth in a way that takes us beyond mental recognition.

Narrative theory says that learning through story works something like this. We first hear the story and its details, and we begin to be challenged when we perceive that our experiences, personality traits, and relationships are similar to those of the people in the story. That is, we identify with the characters. Then, when there is movement and/or resolution in the story, we are able to face our own lives and find resolution, too.

The same thing happens when we are wrestling with a question, idea, or relationship. A story or analogy or narrative form will carry us along to a kind of aha experience, in a way that argument cannot do. Stories, in this way, are cathartic. When the outcome of the story satisfies an inner need or answers a question, we experience the truth of the story. We may not rationally be able to identify what we have learned, but somehow we are different.

How, then, does this work with parables? Most of the longer stories of Jesus open up this process to us. The characters are human and our humanity easily identifies with them (as we’ll see more fully in Chapter 13). There are, of course, shorter parables that describe people or situations or experiences. Even in these types of extremely short narratives, we identify with the reality of the situation, and that identification carries us to awareness. (Fisher calls this narrative fidelity, that, because the story is true to life, it is relatable to our situation.) Parables provide closure for our questions that we don’t usually find in our own lives. In that, they help us find manageable answers to the perplexities of life.

But the parables move beyond this catharsis. They also challenge and confront us. They force us to look at ourselves in light of kingdom values. Truth is conveyed through a parable because it forces us to consider our own situation, our thought patterns or theological positions, or our sinfulness. This may be why so much of the Bible is in narrative form. Because stories tend to be captivating, the Holy Spirit is better able to invade our experience and construct truth in us. Explanation rarely has the power to do that.

That is, through narrative, we understand truth. Stories are not just illustrations or examples that apply truth. They actually convey and generate truth in us, more fully than does rational argument.

WHY THIS STUDY?

I believe that the more different perspectives we have on any biblical material, the greater will be our understanding. And the greater our understanding, the greater impact the teachings of Jesus will have on us. So I’m hoping that this book will add a few new insights to the tremendous body of biblical literature already available.

I also believe that this book offers a new approach to parables, for the following reasons:

First, I am working with a definition that will help us recognize parables (see Chapter 2). Defining a genre is critical to interpreting any of its examples. You may not agree with my definition or how I flesh it out, but I offer it so you will understand its value. As such, I encourage you to use your own mind and skill to define this body of material for yourself.

Second, in attempting to classify parables, I’ve put together clusters of stories according to subject categories of the teachings of Jesus.

Third, there is particular value in the seven fairly lengthy Appendices. They will help you see all the parables in one list, examine a variety of parables on the same theme, or study the order in which each Gospel writer records them. I’m hoping these Appendices will help your future study, whether you are a member of a small study group, a seminary student, pastor, or Bible study leader.

Fourth, this work, is, essentially, an interpreter’s guide. I want to take you through a process of discovery. In one respect, I’ve written this book to guide you through my own reasoning process, but not merely so that you will understand how I’ve reached the conclusions I have. I really want to help you think through some of the issues that you face when you interpret and apply these little gems—or any other Scripture.

I’ve tried not to make the book too academic (I’ve cited only a few sources), but you should also be aware that worthy study involves confronting new ideas and expanding your horizons. That’s sometimes hard to do. I hope, though, that through this study, you will better understand the genre, how these stories are structured, and the purposes for which Jesus uses them. I hope to give you tools to help you discover parables in a fresh way, so they can explode within you and the Holy Spirit can do His magnificent work of transformation.

However, my intention is not to interpret the parables for you (though we’ll do some of that in this book). I am more interested in helping you understand and interpret the parables for yourself. Some of these stories are readily understandable, but others have layers of complexity. Mostly, though, I hope you’ll discover the excitement that comes when you bring a parable and your own local circumstances together, when the combination will create a wonderful spiritual explosion. In essence, your own context and interpretation of parables are more important than mine—that’s why I haven’t tried to explain the parables of Jesus in this book.

I’ve used the New International Version in the book. All quotes and citations come from this translation. Of course, no translation is perfect or ideal, since there is never a direct word-for-word correlation between two languages. This translation (updated in 2011) has its faults (as does any other), but, for the most part, it is very readable and understandable for us today.

I’ve also added titles to these parables (you’ll see them in Appendix A). I ask for your good humor and understanding: these are not the recognizable names by which we already know some of the more familiar stories of Jesus. Indeed, some of my titles may seem irreverent, but my intention is to challenge how we think about them, just as parables are supposed to do.

Finally, at the end of each chapter, I’ve included several discussion questions for those of you who are using this book in a group study. Feel free to use these questions, adapt them, or ignore them. I’m hoping they will stimulate personal thought and open discussion.

Ultimately, through this study, my desire is that you will find a new appreciation of these remarkable little stories of Jesus.

REVIEW

This introduction only touches the surface of some of the important background information that prepares us for a study of parables. But it does provide enough of a context to get us underway. We looked at Jesus as the parable-teacher. We examined the Gospel accounts and why we should expect to see differences in them. We noticed that the kingdom of God is the primary focus of the parables. We also reflected on how stories communicate truth. We’re now ready to move ahead.

We’ll discover, in the pages that follow, some of the complexities of these little stories that reveal truth to us. We may learn new insights about some of these stories, and, perhaps, gain new ideas from those that are already well-known.

In all, I hope that these pages will provide insights that will help you gain a clearer understanding of these stories and the truths Jesus is expressing through them.

ONE LAST STORY

Just after WWII, when communism invaded Central and Eastern Europe, human freedom was severely restricted, and oppression became a way of life. But an underground movement started in Czechoslovakia to help citizens cross the iron curtain from their country into the West. Brave men and women spent their days at their jobs and at night they risked their lives to lead people across the border. They knew where the guard stations were, especially along a 15-kilometer stretch of border that provided possible crossing points. But the border was always patrolled, so escapees would be brought secretly to nearby villages and placed temporarily in cooperative houses. None of them could be seen on the streets—to do so would have aroused suspicion. There was strict secrecy involved in this underground movement, so that even the families of the workers didn’t know what they were doing. And those who wanted to escape could not tell their families that they were leaving, and they could take nothing with them.

One night in 1951, six individuals were brought to this region of Czechoslovakia. They were tucked away in homes until the right moment (long after nightfall) and then were gathered together and given instructions. They were told to follow along in absolute silence, were loaded into the back of a truck, driven into the night, and then followed their leader as silently as they could on foot through the dark forest where there was no path.

Soon they came to a clearing, and the leader pointed across the way—there was Austria. He then disappeared back into the forest, and the Czechs began to celebrate, hugging each other and cheering. Just then, they heard gunfire behind them, soldiers cursing, and dogs barking, and they began to run at breakneck speed through the trees and down the slope of the next hill. It wasn’t long until they saw the little white stone with the letters CZ on it, marking the border. It came just in time; they were out of breath. And the gunfire and barking stopped—the soldiers had given up the chase. The six had made it safely into the West!

They continued ahead, and very soon came upon a little cluster of tents and a small building, with American jeeps and American soldiers, keeping watch, smoking cigarettes. When the soldiers found out that this little group had just escaped, they welcomed them inside, where there were other soldiers playing cards, talking among themselves, and leafing through magazines. Each of the six Czechs was asked questions about how they had escaped and who they knew in the underground. It was important information for American intelligence. A report was drawn up for each of them, and they were told that they would be taken further into Austria where they would stay for about two weeks and then be flown to America. When they were taken back outside, a beautiful black limousine was waiting for them (they were, after all, important people), and they drove off into the night.

After about three hours, just as dawn was breaking, the car came to a stop and the doors were opened. They got out into the morning sun, and saw that they were in a cluster of buildings back in Prague, the capital city of Czechoslovakia. Immediately, they were ushered into a large building, and separately, each was interrogated about the written statements they had given at the American outpost. Each was severely beaten, and then locked up in separate little rooms in that building.

This was the headquarters of the Czech Secret Police. The prisoners soon discovered that the cluster of tents they found in the forest had been constructed by the Barrandov movie studio in Prague and the soldiers were actors. It was a ploy to discover and destroy the underground movement. Repeatedly, over the next three days, the six prisoners, one by one, were harshly interrogated, beaten severely, and locked back in their rooms. By the third day, each of those six innocent people had either been beaten to death or taken outside and shot.

The building in which those people were killed is now the main administration building of the International Baptist Theological Seminary. It is sacred space now. It has been converted by the living presence of Jesus and his Holy Spirit, who shaped the transformation from the inside out. It is a center where Baptist pastors and scholars come for training from all across Europe, the Middle East, and, indeed, the world. It includes a conference center with beautiful hotel accommodations. The office of the European Baptist Federation is housed in that same building.

That cluster of buildings stands as a symbol of the transforming power of Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord, who is able to take the most tragic and meaningless circumstances and transform them into kingdom use.

And that’s precisely the reason why Jesus used parables.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Can you remember any of the parables of Jesus? What’s your favorite? How has this parable made a difference in your life, or how has it reoriented your faith?

2. From what you know of parables right now, would you say that the fireworks and explosion stories at the beginning of this chapter are parables? Why or why not?

3. As a way of understanding how information is conveyed through story, ask a member of your group to tell a two-minute story about what happened last night (it should be an ordinary event with several details). Have the other group members then identify what they learned about the narrator and the environment in which the story takes place.

Chapter 2

What Is A Parable?

INTRODUCTION: POOR MANNY WHO WENT UNRECOGNIZED

It seems that there was a massive train wreck late one night. The train ran right off the track and smashed into a little fishing village, destroyed the few shacks that were there, and killed the 20 residents. The formerly-quaint scene was transformed into a large pile of smoldering rubble.

The next morning, a governmental agent came to inspect the wreckage. Townspeople from the neighboring village had already arrived. They were standing around dumbfounded, examining the mess, not knowing what to do. It was a pretty gory scene.

The agent called them together and said, Why don’t we start cleaning up? I’d suggest that we begin by sorting the body parts, to make the job easier for the County Coroner. He looked at the pile of debris at his feet and picked up a dismembered leg. He held it shoulder high and asked, Does anyone recognize this leg? One of the neighboring villagers said, Ah, yes, that belonged to Manuel, poor fellow. You can see the little toe is missing, from that time he was bit by a shark. So the official set the leg off to one side.

He then reached down and plucked an arm from the rubble, held it up and said, Does anybody know to whom this arm belongs? Somebody else in the crowd said, Ah, that’s poor Manny’s arm. I was with him when he had that tattoo put there. So the official carefully laid the arm with the leg.

He then found a head in the rubble. He picked it up by the hair and held it shoulder high and asked, And who is this? There was silence. Anybody? The crowd was silent. He said, See here! This is the face of a man who lived in this village. You should recognize him easily!

Well, said a man in the rear of the crowd, it looks an awful lot like poor Manny, but he was taller than that!

These villagers had a hard time recognizing their neighbor because they were looking for a particular characteristic (Manny’s height), and when it wasn’t there, they were confused. They had certain expectations that weren’t satisfied.

Poor unrecognized Manny is a good place for us to begin to think about parables. We may have certain expectations of what a parable should look like, but if we limit our perspective by that predisposition, we might miss a wonderful parable—simply because we didn’t recognize it.

Let’s look at a saying of Jesus in a kind of silly way. It comes from Mark 2:22 (#30):

No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.

Should we call this little saying a parable? If we expect a parable to be a story about a landowner or a guy on the journey, this saying doesn’t quite fit the form. On the other hand, if we take this simple saying of Jesus as plain talk, it means that Jesus is speaking literally about what we are supposed to do (or not do) with our wine: new goes into new bottles. That’s a possibility. If so, he’s telling us to respect the wine (perhaps he is even talking about the wine we use for communion).

Somehow, though, this saying seems to have another dimension to it. It really isn’t plain talk and it certainly isn’t a story (as we might think of a story). But if we recognize it as a parable, it changes how we think about it. And if that’s the case, Jesus isn’t really talking about wine at all.

This raises the problem of definition. What exactly are we talking about when we think of parables? Getting a clear definition is the best place to start if we want to recognize the parables of Jesus. (I’ve counted this saying as a parable, but only because it conforms to the particular definition we’ll be looking at later in this chapter.)

Why should we work out a definition? It’s important for two reasons:

1. We need to get an accurate count of the parables of Jesus, and we can’t do that unless we first know how we’ll recognize one when we see it. A definition helps with that.

2. It is important to collect all the parables so we can consistently interpret them. We can’t very well proceed with this project of understanding parables if we have no clear determination of what is and is not a parable. Further, we get into trouble if we treat parables like plain talk, since these are two very different forms of communication. They each pass on information in a distinct way, and when we confuse the two, it can lead to some messy theology. For instance, in Matthew 5:29-30 (#5), Jesus tells us to pluck out an offending eye and lop off an offending hand. If we understand this as plain talk, bodily mutilation becomes a worthy discipline for the Christian. That’s quite different than if we accept this saying as hyperbolic or figurative. Identifying this saying as a parable will help us know how to interpret it.

HOW MANY PARABLES ARE THERE?

We want to arrive at a specific body of literature we call parables. That should be an easy task: all we have to do is count them. That would seem to be a simple procedure. But, come to find out, it’s rather complex. So let’s ask a few scholars how many parables there are. They should be able to give us a definite count so we’ll know where to begin.

When I first started to study parables, I went to one of the few sources I had on my bookshelf (Archibald Hunter), and he first raised this question for me.⁷ I then checked the local seminary library. I quickly discovered something I thought was quite peculiar: only two of the 14 sources I examined listed the same number of parables! Many of the stories were common, but there was little consistency among the others. The number of parables depended on which source I was studying at the time.

For instance, Hunter cites several scholars and their determination of which of Jesus’ sayings are parables.⁸ Trench says there are 30. F.F. Bruce has 33 (plus an additional 8 that he calls parable germs). Merrill Tenney (citing A.B. Bruce) identifies 32, while Alexander and Alexander have 39. Joichim Jeremias, in his landmark work from 1954, lists 40 (the same number that Miller and Miller identify). Pierson says there are 48, and the editors of the NIV translation list 52. Jülicher has 53 and Mowry 55. Hunter suggests that there are about 60 (the same number that J.A.T. Robinson identifies, though Robinson also recognizes a few Johanine parables as possibles). B.T.D. Smith has the number at 62. In addition to Hunter’s listing of these scholars, Herbert Lockyer finds 89 in the Synoptic Gospels, plus