by Roland

The answer is not: Two male cattle.

We are starting to get into the parables of Jesus.  To get the discussion started, here’s my take.

Jesus saw his mission/vocation as announcing the long-awaited Kingdom of God, as envisioned in the Hebrew scriptures…and everything that that entailed. Parables are a literary genre common to the ancient Greeks, Romans and Hebrews. Matthew has 18. A parable is a form of metaphorical analogy using human characters and human characteristics to teach important principles and to change behavior. Jesus thought them useful to supplement and enforce his straight forward teachings (e.g. the Sermon on the Mount) for three main reasons: 1) To get his followers to use their imaginations to better understand his teachings (“The Kingdom of God is like a…); 2) To open up new perspectives (e.g. reversals of common thinking; turning the social order upside down); and 3) To, at the same time, obscure or disguise his messages in the minds of the religious elites (“If you’re telling a story about a blow-heart, hypocritical jerk, you surely can’t be talking about me.”)—the time was not ripe for all-our confrontation.

The Biggest Mistake We Make In Interpreting The Parables Of Jesus: “What does this story mean to me?” Jesus had specific intents in mind in teaching with parables.  He wanted to convey certain meanings. For sure, those intents and meanings may have various levels of interpretation and may serve multiple goals, such that there may not be one, single “correct” interpretation. But we cannot allow parables to degenerate into subjective experiences. Through the centuries, the interpretation of parables has devolved, through the misuse of psychological and sociological approaches, into supporting whatever unexpressed cultural or contextual biases the reader may have. Jesus was making a point-or perhaps multiple points-but he unquestionably had an intent(s) he wanted to convey.  It’s our job to discern and discover those intent(s), not to use the story to support our own agendas.  “What is Jesus trying to say here?” “Where in the story is something that somehow has to do with the inbreaking of the now-and-yet Kingdom of God into the minds and life of first century Palestinian Jews?”  Here, I worry, we may be seriously hamstrung and limited by church traditions.

Understanding the intent of Jesus requires some level of understanding of the ancient contexts concerning such matters as marriage, slavery, agriculture, family dynamics, traditions, and culture. “The bible was not written to us…but it was written for us.”  Further help comes from appreciating the texts that come before and after a particular parable or the stringing together of several parables addressing a similar theme.

The parables of Jesus are like [See, there’s a similitude right there] the revolution in Impressionistic art at the beginning of the last century. By non-“realistic” techniques, artists could (counter intuitively) actually get the viewer to see things more clearly.  They fit nicely with the prophetic role of the Jewish Messiah.  They are like a diamond [another infectious similtude]…every time you turn it just a little bit, you see (discover) something just a little bit different.  New vistas and new perspectives open up.  That is what learning is all about.

Perhaps the most important feature of these stories, as surely intended by the gospelists and Jesus himself, is their usefulness in launching and sustaining endless conversations concerning the Kingdom of God.  Jesus and his biographers talked about proclaiming the Kingdom of God (not how his followers would go to heaven when they die) well over 100 times.  This is a really big deal…and these parables are one of the prime ways Jesus used to talk about the Kingdom and New Creation.  What better fodder for a bible study than a host of captivating and fascinating short stories designed to engage readers 2000 years and half a globe away in talking about what Jesus launched and what he will complete when he returns?