PART of what I do is to try to understand how Jesus makes sense in his own context — the idea being that one does not need to make Judaism look bad in order to make Jesus look good. And, if the end of the sermon is “Thank God we’re not like those Pharisees,” the sermon has gone dreadfully wrong. If I can find good things in this material without needing to provide a negative view of his context, I’d like to be able to help you to do that as well.
The word parable is a Greek term, para, from parallel or paradox. You may recall the term Paraclete, otherwise called the Holy Spirit — the one called to stand beside you — basically a defence attorney who pleads your case.
So, para means to put something side by side, and balo means to cast or to throw. Parabolo means you put things next to each other, and, in that juxtaposition, we see something new that we might not have seen before. A parable is a simile or a metaphor — a comparison — which means parables are a form of poetry. With poetry we don’t say, “What does this poem mean?” We say, “What does it do to us? What does it remind us of? Does it challenge? Does it indict? Does it amuse? Does it do all those things?”
Because a parable is a form of art, it’s already open to multiple interpretation. I think Jesus used parables in order to talk with people. He would tell a parable, and then Peter would look at Andrew and say, “What have you got?” And then they said, “Well, let’s go talk to the Marys” — because they’re all named Mary — “What do you think this means?” Parables become an open model of interpretation.
In the majority of parables — and they’re only in Matthew, Mark, and Luke; the Gospel of John is just one giant parable — most of the parables come without explanation. And this is actually a very good thing. It’s an invitation from the Gospel-writers to say, “What do you get out of it? How does the story speak to you?” And, because they’re open-ended, you can come up with multiple interpretations. You can even say to members of the congregation, “Just imagine the Kingdom of heaven is like . . .” and then point to anything. (The problem is, if you do that, then they’re going to start thinking about it, and you’ve lost them for the next five minutes.)
But, at the end of the sermon, you can try this: the Kingdom of God can be compared to anything, and it’s open. Leave it open, and give the congregation the opportunity to come up with their own meanings. You can give them what you think, but then open it up so that they can think about this, too. Let them do a little bit of the work.
In helping the congregation to understand how parables work, you can give them examples of other things that they’ve heard of, which are sometimes are easy to work with. I’m about to refer to Robert Burns: “My love is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June.” That’s my simile. Now, I need to figure out what to do with it.
I have to keep my love in water, lest he wilt? There’s a logic there, but it’s stupid. My love is like a red, red rose . . . better by the dozen? When I was 18, fabulous, right? I’ve now been married for 40 years — less so. My love is like a red, red rose. . . I have to handle my love carefully because of those thorns? Well, that might work. My love is like a red red rose, fresh and wonderful now, but, next week, he will have faded, and I’m on to the next one? Which is actually probably what Burns had in mind.
But my point here is, once you say, “The Kingdom of heaven is like . . .”, then you have to figure out what to do with it, and there will be multiple interpretations, some working better than others.
ONE way to get a control on this is to figure out what it might have meant to people in first-century Galilee, or first-century Judaea. Part of the sermon process, for me, is to do a little bit of history: to look at the Greek, do a little bit of the Hebrew. (If you do a little bit of the Greek, the congregation understands why you’re getting paid, because it’s professional information that they don’t know. So, do a little bit of the history.)
AlamyThe Prodigal Son by Chagall (1975/76)
You can understand parables when you’re kids. Kids can get it that the Good Samaritan means you stop and you help people by the side of the road. And the Prodigal Son means that God the Father forgives you, even if you made a big mistake, because God loves you. And the parable of the Sower means that you put little seeds in a dixie cup, and you get plants.
But what happens is that our imaginations become arrested, and we think of parables as just children’s stories. If you have a favourite parable that you heard when you were six, and you think, “This is terrific,” if it means the same thing to you when you’re 60, something has probably gone wrong, and it hasn’t gone wrong with the parable. So, try to hear them again. And, if there’s a meaning that still works for you — as long as it’s not anti-Jewish — hang on to it, and then let it grow, let it become richer, because this text is inexhaustible.
If we hear a parable and think, “Isn’t that nice?” Well, we’re listening, but we’re not listening as well as we might be. And one of the geniuses of Jesus is at that he indicts us. He makes us laugh. We’re laughing, and we’ve also got this sinking feeling like, “Oh, this is not great.”
Remember, parables did not come with names. Jesus was not walking around with little note cards labelled “Prodigal Son”, “Good Samaritan”. Whatever you name these things, it’s going to take on new meaning. [Take the] Good Samaritan. Why not talk about the parable of the man who fell among the robbers? Once you relabel, then people become more interested.
“When we hear a parable, we have to do the interpretation. We have to figure out what, in our cultural context, that parable speaks to. When we look at a parable, there are certain things we should look for, such as surprise or humour or exaggeration. Parables frequently trade on exaggeration. (Mustard seeds, which are, by the way, not the smallest seed. Jesus was a carpenter. He didn’t do horticulture.)
[Take] the parable of the Prodigal Son, which I prefer to call the parable of the man with two sons. If you begin a parable, “There was a guy who had two sons,” every single Jew knows the plot line, because that’s Cain and Abel, and Ishmael and Isaac, and Jacob and Esau. So, you look for those connections, because people in Jesus’s own environment have the text of what becomes the Old Testament, and they will zero in on those connections.
There was a man who had two sons. Now, at this point, because I’m a Jew, and because I’ve read the scriptures of Israel, I’m thinking, “I know the plot line.” Go with the younger son, because there’s Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, and — granted — Abel spends most of Genesis 4 dead, but it’s his sacrifice that’s accepted.
Abraham has two sons: Ishmael, by Sarah’s enslaved woman, but also Isaac, the so-called child of the promise. When Hagar is pregnant with Ishmael — this is our first example of domestic abuse — Sarah abuses Hagar, and she runs away, and she goes to a well in the wilderness, and she meets God there, because this is Genesis. And an angel says to her, “Hagar, you’re pregnant,” which she knew. And then he says to her, “Your child will be a wild ass of a man whose hand will be against his brothers.” This is not good prenatal news. You want something like “Your child will be a dentist.” And the angel sends Hagar back. A little bit later, Sarah becomes pregnant, and, jealous of Ishmael, arranges for the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael.
So, go with the younger son. Despite being traumatised by his dad, at a point where dad almost kills him, Isaac goes on to inherit the promise. Isaac has twins, Esau and Jacob. Esau is the older one. He comes out of Rebecca’s womb all red and hairy. Jacob comes out a bit more smooth. A little bit later, when the boys grow up, Esau is out hunting in the field. He doesn’t catch anything, which is not a good sign. He comes in, he’s very hungry, and Jacob, who was cooking up a bowl of lentil pottage, manages to barter for Esau’s birthright, and then later steals his blessing.
So, I’m thinking, I’m going to go with the younger son. But that’s not what I get, because parables don’t go the way you think they’re going to go. What I wind up with is the younger son who says to dad, “Give me my share of the inheritance.” This is not, by the way, an insult. It was fairly common in both Jewish and pagan households for the father to give younger children a cut of the income, because it did not damage the household materially.
At this point, dad liquidates some of his assets, gives the kid some money, and the kid goes off to a foreign land and spends the money in dissolute living. Spending all your money on parties is not necessarily sinful: it’s just stupid. A famine hits the land; so he begins to be in need. He hires himself out to a man who sends him out to feed the pigs, which is a big come-down for a Jewish kid. He would gladly have fed on the pods that the pigs were eating, but nobody gave him anything.
WE CAN stop here to figure out what went wrong with this kid — and this becomes something that’s based on where we live. When I ask people what happened with the son, the general response is twofold: fiscal irresponsibility — he didn’t know how to take care of his money — and bad parenting. He was the baby: he got away with everything.
So, whether it’s his parents, his own lack of responsibility, the weather, or the neighbours, everything has gone wrong, and then the fellow thinks to himself — in the Bible, when we have interior monologue, it’s usually a sign of conniving — he says to himself, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread and enough to spare? And here I am, dying of hunger. I’ll go to dad, and I’ll say, ‘Dad, I have sinned against heaven and before you.’” Which sounds just like Pharaoh saying to Moses, “I have sinned against the Lord your God, and against you.” Pharaoh’s not repentant. He just wants the plagues to stop.
“I have sinned against heaven, and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” Meanwhile, he’s called the guy “Father”, and now he’s using son language. I think this kid is manipulative. I don’t like him. I would not date him. That’s how I judge biblical characters.
As a former colleague describes it: “I’m going to go to dad and sound religious.” Dad sees him in the distance, and runs toward him. Dad reaches out, throws his arms around the kid, hugs him, and the kid goes into the speech.
PixabayIn the parable, the younger son became a swineherd
Dad doesn’t care. Dad cuts him off and says, “Bring out the robe. The best one.” This is a very wealthy family. Most people have only two garments — which is one of the reasons people cast lots for the garments of Jesus at the cross. “Put a ring on his fingers and sandals on his feet, and kill the grain-fed calf” — the King James Version has fatted calf — “because my son that was lost is now found.” And then they began to celebrate. And that’s what I had in my other two parables: lost and found party.
If we call this the parable of the Prodigal Son, we’ve cut off the end of the parable, and, in Jewish storytelling, there’s something called end stress, where the most important stuff comes at the end. Here’s the killer line. The older brother was out in the field, and he heard the sound of music and dancing, and he calls an enslaved person to ask what’s going on. And the enslaved person said, “Oh, your brother came back safe and sound, and dad killed the fatted calf.”
In other words, the father had enough time to call the band and the caterer, but he didn’t bother to call the older brother from the field.
The father finally realises the older brother is not there. He goes out into the field, and he begins to plead with him, but Jesus is too good a storyteller to say what dad says, because what’s important now is what the older brother thinks. And the older brother says: “Look, all these years, I’ve been working like one enslaved to you” — and there’s an enslaved person standing and going, “No, not so much” — pay attention to the minor characters — “and you’ve never even given me a young goat that I could celebrate with my friends.”
But the father divided his property between them. The older brother could have had the goat any time he wanted. He’s just waiting to grow up. He’s waiting for permission. “But this son of yours” — distancing language, not “my brother” — “who devoured your living with prostitutes. . .” Maybe. But, again, I don’t know what dissolute living is, and I don’t think the younger brother sent him a postcard with a picture of the whore of Babylon, saying, “Having a wonderful time, wish you were here.”
What the older brother is trying to do is distance the father, as if parental love or God’s love is a zero-sum game: in order to love me, you have to love him less. But that’s not the way God’s loves works, and that’s not the way parental love is supposed to work.
So, finally, the older brother said what he needed to say, and the dad says, “Beloved child” — the Greek is teknon. It’s the same word that Mary uses to Jesus in the original screenplay of the Home Alone movies where Mary and Joseph misplaced the Son of God in the temple. And Mary says to him, “Teknon, beloved child, your father — she means Joseph — and I have been desperately looking for you.” It’s the sense of “I’ve lost my child.” That’s the connection.
WHAT do we do with this? Because we have to do something with it. Maybe it sends us back to the scriptures of Israel, to all those older brothers. To Cain, who’s also a child of God. Cain is not executed. He’s given a mark of protection. Or to Ishmael, who is exiled. But, when Abraham dies, Ishmael comes home, and Isaac and Ishmael together bury the body of their father, which is one of the few passages in the Bible that give me some hope for the Middle East.
The end of the parable does not give us an answer. It poses a challenge. Jesus used parables to get people to talk with each other. The good thing about parables is, if you come up with a reading that makes sense to you, and it’s challenging, you’ve got a good reading. Go for it.
The other good thing about parables is that, once we think we understand everything, there’s usually this little thread saying, “There’s more you can do.”
There’s an old comment from the Talmud, talking about the Old Testament. It says: “Turn it and turn it, because everything is in it.” And it also says, “It is not your duty to complete the task.”
You cannot know everything in this text. But you cannot desist from working at it. Keep working on it. Everything is somehow connected to the Kingdom of God. Everything is a challenge, and everything is a blessing, and everything is an opportunity for conversation.
This is an edited version of Professor A. J. Levine’s talk at the recent Festival of Preaching. Post-event live-stream tickets are still available, at: festivalofpreaching.hymnsam.co.uk/cambridge-2024-ticket-page