An excerpt from my sermon, The Seventh Sunday after Trinity:
The word parable is a Greek word similar to parallel; it means to cast alongside; or lay alongside. It is an extended simile. It is a story, long or brief, that is of a familiar custom or occurrence in every day life. It is something familiar used to illustrate something less familiar. It will be true to life, though it may contain a slight symbolic element or something out of the ordinary as it seeks to make its point.
If it is a story being laid next to something, then what is it being laid next to? It is laid next to whatever was being said or done in the context of the parable. For example, see Luke 13:11-21. On 18 & 19: As for the context: Jesus' efforts to bring in the kingdom are being opposed; he is facing adversaries. Now note the character of the mini-parable: it is a story from common, everyday experience. What’s the point? The irony of what a carelessly cast seed became. It was as if the gardener didn’t care what happened to it. It was insignificant to him. But it expands into a significant plant in the garden; greater than all his other herbs. The kingdom is something that extends successfully – perhaps unexpectedly, for those who do not esteem it.
For 20 & 21: Here we have extension again: the meal grows. Same point: growth. No opposition will hinder.
So we see how important context is. If we ignore that, we will have problems. Without context, one starts looking for other clues, such as similarities of details with other parables or Bible passages. In other words, we do not treat the parables as parables.
Problem: people want to turn parables into allegories. An allegory is not a simile but a metaphor. It’s a story whose images are symbols representing something else. The story is not the point, but the symbols in the story. If one thinks that way, the parable is treated as a mystery whose secrets are unlocked by treating the various words as symbols of something.
Let’s say we read the story of Peter Rabbit. Peter’s mother tells him to stay out of Mr. McGregor’s garden patch, but he does not do so and nearly loses his life. The story has a pretty obvious morale: naughty children can get into serious trouble, so behave and especially listen to your mother. If we were to use that story in such a fashion, we are gleaning the morale as a natural inference from the obvious theme of the story itself. This is how we should read a parable: recognising the story as a story and the way the plot is put together gives us the parallel illustration of what Jesus was trying to teach. Now, then, if we take the allegorical approach, something else happens altogether. We read Peter Rabbit and begin to try to assign symbolic meaning to the various elements of the story. Let’s see, the Bible says the Church is the mother of the faithful, so Peter’s Mother must represent the Church. Peter, being such a naughty little boy, must be unregenerate, even though he’s been baptised into the Church. Now, hearkening back to the Seed and the Sower parable in the Bible, the garden must be the world. Mr. McGregor; well! Anyone who would catch Peter’s Father and eat him in a pie, must be the devil himself! Thus, the story is not about the importance of being an obedient child, it’s about how dangerous it is for us to neglect the instruction and wisdom of the Church, because if we don’t, we’ll end up with the devil. You see what happens? It really butchers up Peter Rabbit and sadly Jesus’ parables have suffered the same for a long time.
Take the above story of the leavened meal, for example. People have read that parable and seen the word “leaven.” Aha! That reminds them of the leaven that represents sin in the Old Testament and Jesus’ warning about the leaven of the Pharisees. So! Leaven in this story must be symbolic of sin. Thus the story is not about the extension of the Kingdom but the apostasy of the Kingdom, regardless of who the audience was to whom Jesus spake the parable and what had just happened in front of them all.
It so happens that the Church has treated the parables as allegories for most of her life. But in more recent times, there has been an improvement in the appreciation of the nature of the kind of literature the Bible contains. Passages are allowed to be what they are in themselves, instead of turning everything into allegory or proof-texts for systematic theology. Thus the dear woman in the parable of the leavened meal, who has been accused of fomenting apostasy in the church, can comfortably get back to just simply baking something for her family and we rejoice in how successfully the Church has grown through the ages.
One more comment about this. Sometimes you will pick up a book on the parables and the author is obviously trying to be inventive. He spends a lot of time talking about how everybody else has failed to understand the true meaning of the parables; that he has come up with what is now so very obviously the right way of reading them. Beware of writers who come across in that fashion. They usually are breaking rules of sound interpretation and being overly imaginative. I heard one author the other day who had discovered that the true meaning of the Prodigal Son parable is that Jesus continues to call the people who are already in hell to salvation. This just cannot be. Whatever we are doing with the Bible, we must always recognise that the more difficult to understand passages should be interpreted by the clearer and more easily understood passages. Also, if someone does have a new idea, we should give it a generation or two of review by the Church before we start buying into it. It’s only common sense to do so.…
The most important thing about understanding the parables is that our heart is in the right place. Here I call our attention to the section of Matthew 13 that was read in our Second Lesson.
1: The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.
2: And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.
3: And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;
He was always using parables, but there came a time when he used parables, seemingly, in an exclusive manner, when dealing with the public. This puzzled the disciples and so they asked him:
10: And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
11: He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
Jesus’ parables had a dual purpose. As illustrations and memorable stories, they helped his disciples to understand His teaching and to remember it. But, at the same time, being not direct teaching but parable, they obscured his teaching from those who didn’t want it anyway. It was the beginning of judgment. Those who had ears to hear, hearts to understand, who received John’s preaching and were repentant, they would get it, or, find out from the disciples what was the meaning. Those who listened to him only to mock his words or to trap him into saying something they could use against him, would be hindered in their plans and be allowed to have their own way. If they did not really want the truth, then the truth would not be given them.
Now, this says something important to us. While a study of various rules for interpreting the parables might help us to understand them, yet, according to Jesus, there is a moral requirement, a spiritual requirement to rightly understand them. We have to be willing to accept the truth they bear and to repent of our sins and enter the Kingdom ourselves. If we are not, then no amount of literary learning is going to help us to rightly understand the parables.
All of our hearts are biased. We believe what we want to believe. If we want to believe God’s truth and accept its implications in our lives, we will see what God wants us to see. If we don’t, we’ll invariably find some way around it. Jesus’ parables are truth. It is those who do the truth, that love the truth, that will understand the truth and thus enter the liberty that Christ’s truth brings. May God gives us by the ongoing inspiration of His Spirit such love for His truth in all our hearts. Amen.
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