“The Purpose of the Parables”
(Matthew 13:10-17)
The Greenhouse ~ 5th Sunday after Trinity
Growing up, I loved reading. Stories of all kinds interested me. For a while in my early childhood, it was sports chapter books by Matt Christopher. Then I remember a season of Encyclopedia Brown mysteries. By middle school, I started reading John Grisham books, Jurassic Park, and I recall twice reading The Hot Zone, a book about Ebola and a Marburg virus scare in Reston, Virginia. It was a varied interest, but they were stories that captured my imagination. My reading lulled for the first couple years of high school, but my love was resurrected by a brilliant English teacher my junior and senior years of high school, and after a brief attempt to major in something practical in college, I settled into English and Literature and am forever grateful I did. Now 20 years later, I still love reading, and I have the great joy to teach stories to students for a career.
Stories have long been recognized as a great way to communicate. We tend to remember stories better than a list of facts. Tell me ten things on a grocery list and I might remember 6-7, but tell me fifty details in a story and I will remember most of them. Part of the reason we remember stories better is that the information has a context, not merely an isolated list of information. Another reason stories help us remember is that we, as readers or listeners, become more actively engaged in participating in the story as opposed to being passive recipients of information. All these reasons and many more could explain why Jesus taught so often in parables, in stories.
But if we were to stop here, we would miss something very important about Jesus’ parables. I often hear Christians say that Jesus taught in parables because they made his truths easier to understand. With all due respect to these Christians and their good intentions, this statement is blatantly false. Jesus did not teach in parables because they made his truths easier to understand for the very simple and obvious reason that teaching in parables did not make it easier to understand. In fact, his parables obscured otherwise plain meanings.
The disciples admit as much on several occasions when they fail to understand Jesus’ parables, none so prominent perhaps as Matthew 13 and the parable of the sower, as some call it. After telling the parable of the sower (or alternatively, the parable of the soils), the disciples ask: “Why are you speaking to them in parables?” (v. 10). Ending his parable with “Let anyone who has ears listen” (v. 9) should clue the reader in that not everyone there has these metaphorical ears to hear Jesus’ message. This seems to be the reason the disciples are questioning Jesus. We can almost hear them saying, “Jesus, some of your stories are a little hard to understand, and many people here don’t seem to understand the point. Shouldn’t you be a little more plain and straightforward in what you mean. I’m sure you’ve got a great reason and all…Well, why are you speaking to them in parables?”
We should notice a few things about Jesus’ answer to this question. First, and most obviously, Jesus does not say that he teaches in parables because it is easier to understand. Despite many Christians continuing to say parables make understanding easier, that is simply not Jesus’ point. In fact, we should notice second that such a claim is actually contrary to Jesus’ point about the parables. The parables, he says, are secrets of the kingdom of heaven, and these secrets—in the form of the meaning of the parables—are given to some to know, but not to all. Woah! Jesus’ claim is that He teaches in parables so that those to whom the secrets have been revealed will understand, but that the rest will not understand. Not only does this fly in the face of the claims that parables make it easier to understand, but Jesus is claiming that the parables are in fact a way of obscuring the meaning, making it difficult to understand unless they have received the gift of understanding.
The first time I was confronted with this passage, it took me a while to believe what I was hearing. I had always believed that Jesus spoke a plain message of salvation that all could hear with the hope that all would repent, and so speaking in parables must have been a good way of helping people understand. If you are in the same place I was, I understand your shock and realize it’s likely going to take more reflection than our short time together to convince you otherwise. But read what Jesus continues to say:
13 That is why I speak to them in parables, because looking they do not see, and hearing they do not listen or understand. 14 Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says:
You will listen and listen, but never understand; you will look and look, but never perceive. 15 For this people’s heart has grown callous; their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; otherwise they might see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn back— and I would heal them.
What else can we do with these words other than admit that Jesus has hidden some things from His hearers?
But there is a third thing we must take into account: Jesus has a very good reason for doing this, and it is not the only place in Scripture where such hard truths are revealed. Jesus says just a couple chapters earlier, in Matthew 11:25, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants.” Why are the Father and the Son in the business of hiding truths from the wise and revealing them to children? I propose that Jesus’ answer to this question would be so that no one become righteous in his own eyes. That no one think he is wise in his own eyes. And, most significantly, that no one convince himself that he is a follower of Jesus when he is not.
One of the most profound passages in Scripture to me is John 8. In the first part of the chapter, Jesus speaks and the text says that many came to believe in Him (John 8:30). Yet in the second half of the chapter, Jesus addresses “the Jews who had believed in him” and proceeds to tell them their father is Satan. In the church world I grew up in, the next step after verse 30 was a baptism and a potluck to celebrate. But Jesus takes these seeming converts and tells them that their father is still Satan. Why? In short, Jesus knows what is in their heart, and He knows that they only “believe” because they have seen miracles. However, their belief is not an allegiance to Jesus as Lord (aka., a saving faith), but rather awe and amazement and belief in his power. And what Jesus does, here and elsewhere (I’m thinking especially of the rich young ruler story and the events in John 6), is make sure that no one walks away from Jesus’ presence confused about their standing with Him. Had Jesus walked away after verse 30, there are many that day who would have claimed to be Jesus’ disciples but who had no idea who He was, no understanding about His mission, and no concern for making other disciples. Instead, Jesus makes sure they know the cost of following Him.
The parables, then, serve an important purpose. In Matthew 13:18-23, the verses that immediately follow the ones we are exploring today, Jesus explains the meaning of the parable to His disciples. The explanation (and one we will look at in more detail next week), tells us something about the parables also. On the one hand, for those who are outside, who do not follow Jesus as Lord, the parables make little sense because they defy expectations. Even if one’s intellect would suggest something near the meaning of the parable, the listener cannot accept its conclusions because they turn upside down the expectations of the Jewish people of that day. But for those who follow Jesus, for those who receive Him as Lord, for those attuned to His ways of displaying a kingship that begins with humility, service, compassion, and love, the parables do indeed give deep and meaningful insight into the kingdom of God. Parables don’t make the meaning easier to understand, but they do, for the discerning who have ears to hear, help our understanding go deeper.
One final note. The parables are not hard to understand because they are written in some scholar-speak that only the elite can understand. I still tell stories about David Bentley Hart’s book, The Beauty of the Infinite, that seemed determined to be unreadable to all but the smartest few. No. Jesus’ stories are actually told in the language of the everyday, the language of the people, the images and everyday experiences of the people: soils, plants, relationships, and other seemingly mundane, everyday occurrences. Jesus’ message does not require academic degrees or advanced language skills to understand. They require faith. They require commitment. They require that we give our lives, in love, to the service of Jesus as Lord, and then receive from Him by the Holy Spirit the gift of understanding. Let those who have ears to hear, hear what the Spirit is speaking in the words and parables of Jesus.
Discussion Questions
1. What has been your understanding of the purpose of parables?
2. How does this passage make you rethink the purpose of parables?
3. How might parables help deepen our understanding of the kingdom of God, even if they don’t make it necessarily easier to understand?
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