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Gospel readings from Matthew include many instances in which Jesus tells a story – as well as others in which he utters pithy sayings or paints word pictures – all of which are covered by the term ‘parable’. What do we make of Matthew’s portrait of Jesus the storyteller and ‘parabler’? And how might this portrait spark the preacher’s creative task?
Matthew, with characteristic organization, collects a whole string of parables together, in chapter 13. It’s interesting, however, to note what the lectionary (with inevitable, though unfortunate, selectivity) leaves out from these readings: the two passages which offer explanations for why Jesus spoke in parables! The first (13:10-17) relates Jesus’ ministry to that of Isaiah, and identifies him as a prophet whose words meet starkly contrasting responses. But whereas Mark sees the parables fitting into this ministry as signs of God’s judgement on hard-hearted people (Jesus speaks in parables in order that ‘they may look, but not perceive’ etc. – Mark 4:12), Matthew sees the parables as means of breaking through this heard-heartedness: Jesus speaks to people in parables because ‘seeing they do not perceive’ etc. (Matthew 13:13). In keeping with this, Matthew is at pains to emphasise the fact that the disciples really have heard and seen: the words of Jesus have done their work in opening them up to the secrets of the kingdom (13:16,17).
The second passage in Matthew 13 about what Jesus is doing in his ‘parabling’ echoes this emphasis on disclosure and openness. This time Jesus is seen in the role of a ‘prophet’ of a different kind – a psalmist. Like the speaker of Psalm 78, Jesus is one who ‘opens his mouth to speak in parables’, who ‘proclaims what has been hidden from the foundation of the world’ (Matthew 13:35). This is interesting because of what the Psalmist actually does in that long Psalm: he tells the story of Israel’s disobedience, clearly as part of a communal act of remembrance designed to warn, and to encourage a return to a faithful God. Jesus’ ‘parables’ have a similar emphasis on warning and encouragement through narrative. ‘What has been hidden from the foundation of the world’ is not some esoteric mystery, but the meaning of history now coming to full light. Thus Matthew encourages us to hear Jesus’ parables as disclosing the reality of God’s rule.
As preachers it is appropriate to see our task in a similar way. We too can use image and narrative as a means of penetrating hearts and minds that have become dulled to God’s word. As we do so, we will be revealing the truth that God rules over this world which in many parts still resists him. Like the Psalmist, and like Jesus, we will speak words which vividly paint both the blessing of accepting God’s rule and the danger of rejecting it.
But how do Jesus’ parables ‘work’? There is a very ancient tradition of reading them ‘allegorically’, that is by identifying at each point what a character or event in the parable stands for, within an overall scheme of Christian doctrine or ‘salvation history’. Thus, for example, the parable of the labourers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) has often been taken as a picture of the Christian life – however ‘late in the day’ a person comes into God’s service, God’s grace to them is just the same as to the one who has served him throughout life. The parables do indeed open themselves to a rich variety of symbolic interpretations.
However, there are problems with this approach: I will just highlight two. First, this way of reading Jesus’ stories (especially in Matthew) has often led to a crude anti-Judaism. So the parable of the wicked tenants (Matthew 21:33-41) has been read as a blanket condemnation of the Jewish race for their killing of the prophets and of Jesus himself. Matthew’s version appears to add weight to this by adding the words: ‘Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom’ (21:43). But this ignores the particular focus of Jesus’ warnings throughout Matthew to the Jewish leaders; it is clear that people producing the fruits of the kingdom are not only Gentiles, but faithful Jews, the humble ‘poor’ who hear and respond to Jesus’ teaching (cf. Matthew 5:1-12).
Second, the ‘allegorical’ approach tends to deafen us to the resonance of the parables for the people who first heard them – whether from the lips of Jesus himself, or those like Matthew who passed them on. They would have heard them against the immediate background of their social and political situation. Especially prominent in that situation was the might of the Roman empire, the collaborative relationship enjoyed by the Jewish religious leaders with that empire, and the state of economic oppression and hardship endured by the majority of the population of Palestine and neighbouring areas such as Syria, where Matthew may well have been written. Looming up in the midst of all this was the catastrophic event of the Jewish rebellion against Rome, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Scholars disagree as to whether Matthew was written before or after this date, but deciding that question is not as important as imagining the atmosphere of ferment and tension both in the time of Jesus and increasingly in the decades following.
How do Jesus’ stories in Matthew sound when heard against this backcloth? Scholarship on this subject is at an interesting stage with various proposals on offer. My own hunch, which I outlined in my small book Tales Jesus Told , is that they offer pictures of real-life situations which carry an implied, but fairly obvious, warning or encouragement. On such a reading, the figure of a king, landowner etc. is not to be taken as a direct representation of God. Rather, the human encounter in the story reveals what God’s rule looks like ‘on the ground’ – on earth as it is in heaven (cf. Matthew 6:10!).
Consider how this works in two of the parables unique to Matthew. The parable of the unforgiving servant (18:23-35) raises very uncomfortable questions when its ‘king’ is simply equated with God. This is an obvious picture of a human despot, who in a fit of uncharacteristic magnanimity releases a servant from a massive debt, but then quickly changes his tune when the servant refuses to exercise similar clemency to a fellow-servant. What is often missed here is that not only is the servant an example of someone refusing to forgive ‘seventy-seven times’ (18:21): so is the king! Nor is the picture of the king throwing the man into the torture-chamber in any way compatible with Jesus’ image of God as the Father who ‘makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous’ (5:45). Jesus is certainly warning here of the peril of not forgiving, but in the context of a tyrannous social system which in many ways operates on precisely opposite lines from the kingdom of God. Positively, he is pointing out how the kingdom-way can be lived out even in the midst of this social system. The saying in v. 35, ‘So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart’ is thus not to be taken as a sword hanging over our heads, causing us to live in terror lest traces of unforgiveness be found in us. It’s rather a reminder of the principle that Matthew highlights, that ‘earthly’ actions have a ‘heavenly’ significance. ‘Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’ (16:19).
Now for a more upbeat parable, that of the labourers in the vineyard (20:1-16). Here it has been even more tempting to make a direct correlation between the figure of power (the landowner) and God, because in the story he acts with such generosity. However, I suggest that again we should resist this temptation. This too seems to be a picture of God’s kingdom-way embodied in the everyday world of work and wage-earning. In fact we can see the landowner as an opposite to the rich young man of 19:16-22. The landowner takes the step of generosity which the young man was reluctant to take. This generosity is not a matter of mere random ‘charity’ – or of giving money to salve a bad conscience. It is a matter of justice. The day-labourers were near the bottom of the pile, victims of a harsh social system. The denarius was a survival wage. Those who work longer and harder are to embrace the landowner’s spirit of generosity which allowed those hired later to put bread on the table.
Both these parables, then, give us a glimpse of a world where forgiveness, generosity, justice, can and do happen. They encourage those all the way through the social scale from top to bottom to grasp the spirit of that world. They also communicate a sense of sadness when it is not grasped. Through their intense focus on a real-life situation they unveil the truth of God’s rule and the choices it opens up. I’ll have to leave you to explore for yourself how this might work for other parables – particularly perhaps the wicked tenants (21:33-41 – Trinity 20), the wedding banquet (22:1-13 – Trinity 21), and the talents (25:14-30 – 2 before Advent).
I’d therefore want to encourage preachers to preach real-life sermons, as Jesus preached real-life parables. Help people to see the joy and reality of God’s rule and the choices it demands – not by speaking of an abstract, purely ‘heavenly’ kingdom, but one whose signs are seen in the everyday world of employment and unemployment, factory and farm, city and village – right under the nose of this world’s rulers and their systems, which often operate so differently.