A Word from Pastor Lisa: The Stories We Tell
10 Jesus’ disciples came and said to him, “Why do you use parables when you speak to the crowds?” 11 Jesus replied, “Because they haven’t received the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but you have. 12 For those who have will receive more and they will have more than enough. But as for those who don’t have, even the little they have will be taken away from them. 13 This is why I speak to the crowds in parables: although they see, they don’t really see; and although they hear, they don’t really hear or understand.”
– Matthew 13:10-13 (CEB)
Nothing makes me more spiritually nervous than people who claim to have a corner market on the Truth. “God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” may make a catchy bumper sticker, but it’s a very poor foundation for a nuanced faith in a complicated world. In fact, it is dangerously narrow-minded in light of the complex nature of our Scripture.
Jesus lived in a contextual culture that was a tapestry of beliefs spun by oral storytelling. Jesus was a storyteller. In the days before internet streaming, storytellers were a form of entertainment, along with sources of values, vision, and community-building. Mark tells us that Jesus didn’t speak to the disciples except in parables, and he explained everything to them in private (4:34). Don’t you wish you could’ve been a fly on the wall?
For the crowds following Jesus, those stories remained open-ended and without explanation most of the time. The Gospel writers in their wisdom left most of the parables as open narratives so that we might engage with them, writes Amy-Jill Levine in Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi. What’s more, the meaning of a parable might change for us over time, depending on our circumstances. Levine adds: “Reducing parables to a single meaning destroys their aesthetic as well as ethical potential.”
Multiple meanings is how storytelling works, and Jesus knew this about his parables. Jesus realized that the crowds would find his stories enigmatic, that is, difficult to see, hear, and understand. That’s because his stories challenge us to look into the hidden aspects of our own lives, such as our values. They force us to question vices we’ve come to accept as virtues. They turn our understanding of the world upside down so that we might catch a glimpse of the kingdom of God where the last shall be first and the greatest is the servant of all.
If we hear a story from Jesus and it confirms what we already think about ourselves or another group of people, then we probably haven’t gone deep enough. Likewise, if we think, “I really like that,” we probably aren’t listening closely enough. If we settle for an easy interpretation without any challenge, then we are probably limiting the parable, and in turn, ourselves.
For the next six weeks, we are going to explore some of the parables of Jesus. My challenge for us is to listen more deeply, which is an act of love. Such listening is also a lost art in a world of division and echo-chambers. It’s easy to use the stories of Jesus as an allegory, morality tale, or platitude such as, “God seeks and loves the lost,” “Be nice,” or “Share what you have.” They can also be manipulated to convince us that all is right with the world as long as we believe in Jesus. These stories aren’t children’s fables or bumper sticker theology. These parables provoke, disturb, confront, and challenge us to see the world in a different way. I hope you’ll join me on this journey to hear the stories of Jesus afresh and to live more faithfully in the reign of God.