PARABLES E
by Stephen Chambers
veryone loves a mystery, they say. That might be why Jesus’ parables are so popular. They use ordinary language to point toward spiritual realities which transcend our everyday experience, and the gaps between those two worlds are both fascinating and mysterious. “What is the point of that parable?” we ask as we read it. And we’re in good company as we ask that question. Uncertainty about the meaning of these puzzling little stories was common among Jesus’ original disciples, too, as the Gospels make clear (Matthew 13:36; Mark 4:10; Luke 12:41). It’s even hard to decide how many parables Jesus told. The Lutheran Study Bible, for instance, provides a list of 55 parabolic sayings, while Concordia SelfStudy Bible includes only 40. Some of this difference is because the longer list divides up material that the shorter list groups together. For example, does Luke 14:28-33 include one parable or two? Interestingly, though, the shorter list includes Jesus’ saying about the lamp under the bowl (Matthew 5:14-15) which the longer list does not consider to be a parable. The reasons for such differences of opinion can themselves be a bit of a mystery!
Part of the problem is ambiguity about how to define the term parable itself. The Greek word parabole simply refers to a comparison between two things that are set alongside each other. Such comparisons take many forms, including illustrations, proverbs, maxims, and various kinds of figurative speech. Thankfully, the word “parable” is explicitly attached to quite a few of our Lord’s sayings, in many cases by Jesus Himself. It’s clear in those cases that we are in fact dealing with parabolic material. However, in Luke 6:39, the Evangelist calls something a parable that we might otherwise think of simply as descriptive speech. In Luke 12:41, Peter does the same. Complicating the situation still more is the fact that John’s Gospel never uses the word “parable” and does not include any of the comparative stories that most people call by that name. John does, however, use the related term paroimia, meaning “a veiled saying,” to refer to some of Jesus’ teachings (for example, John 16:25). This is why Jesus’ great “I am” sayings in the Gospel of John—including the “Good Shepherd” material in John 10—are sometimes considered to be parables, in an extended sense.
In this sense, it might
help to think of a parable as “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.”
THE CANADIAN LUTHERAN May/June 2020
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