By Dr. Garwood Anderson, President & Provost, Professor of New Testament

With the spectacular response to our first free, online course, The Bible & Theology in Color, offered by Nashotah House alumnus, Fr. Esau McCaulley, we wondered if more of these offerings might be welcomed by our friends and supporters. So, when Labin Duke asked if I’d teach a short course on the parables of Jesus, I was happy to do my part. The good people at Church of the Redeemer in Sarasota, Florida, provided the occasion and the hospitality to make it a reality, and off we went. 

If I remember correctly, my interest in studying the parables goes back to a visit to a used bookstore in 1987. Barely a master’s student in seminary, and intent on building my theological library, I came across a book, Rediscovering the Parables, by Joachim Jeremias. I had heard that he was an important New Testament scholar and that he had written an important book on the parables. Novice that I was, I didn’t even know how to pronounce his German name, but I thought this might be a good place to start. In truth, being new to the methods and assumptions of biblical criticism, I found the book a bit scandalous, but it sent me down other paths under the mentorship of my New Testament professor at the time. Soon that little book was surrounded by dozens of others, and the parables of Jesus became something of a scholarly hobby for me – one that would eventually bear fruit in a PhD dissertation and a few professional publications after that.

But the fascinating scholarly questions and the history of interpretation are not my primary interest in the parables of Jesus, even if they were the doorway in. At the risk of sounding overly pious, my real interest in the parables is Jesus.

What I mean is this: Jesus told stories to make us his disciples. Every story has a way of revealing insights, establishing norms, confirming identity, commending the good, exposing evil, and so on. This is why bonded persons, families and institutions, have their lore. The stories we remember and retell explain who we are and mark us indelibly. So it is with the parables of Jesus. Here Jesus reveals a world – the kingdom of God – by juxtaposing its customs, norms, and values in a narrative collision with the world as we know it. That narrative collision takes place between the ears of the listener, who, having heard the “familiar made strange,” is invited to take up the ways of Jesus and the kingdom he proclaims or to double-down in allegiance to the world as we know it, resisting Jesus’ new visions of rectitude and his unexpected heroes and villains. 

In the world as we know it, things go a certain, expected way: farmers are careful about where they sow seed; austere parents make sure their children bear the consequences of their choices; religious leaders do the right thing; people get what they deserve – for better or worse. In these stories of Jesus, however, nothing is for sure; we find our well-known world meeting a previously unknown alternative and we’re either caught up in its thrall as disciples of the storyteller or we leave the scene of accident with hardened hearts. 

This, no doubt, is why Jesus implores us, “Pay attention to what you hear” (Mark 4:24 NRSV). Having heard the good news of the kingdom of God, we won’t remain as we were before. We will either be softened, tilled, and mulched into good soil, or packed down and baked hard by the sun, where nothing good can grow. But we won’t be the same as before.

When we listen to the parables of Jesus, we meet a three-dimensional God of love and justice, of longing, long-suffering, and wrath. We meet the people of God, occasionally at their best, but more often at their worst. More importantly, we find out that the people of God are not the bounded set, as we had supposed. Perhaps this, more than anything else, caused the greatest offense among Jesus’ listeners – and offered the greatest hope the once-excluded. Although scholars love to debate this, we also meet Jesus, a son of the vineyard owner, a sower of seed, a traveling nobleman, at once a champion and a curser of fig trees. 

Perhaps most importantly of all, we meet ourselves, now seen as through the eyes of the Son of God, and as we listen, we are asked if we really see ourselves. Are we beaten, robbed, and left half-dead? Or are we priests and Levites, avoiding inconvenience? Could we possibly be once-contemptible, now-compassionate Samaritans? And are we okay with that?

As David was laid bare by the prophet Nathan, the parables have a way of saying, “You are that man!” whether we would have thought of ourselves that way or not. Or, like Mary singing the Magnificat, the parables tell of kingdom that “scatter[s] the proud in the imagination of their hearts,” “lift[ing] up the lowly.”

What they won’t let us do is to see our natural face in these story-mirrors and go our merry way unchanged (James 1:23-24). 

“Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you” (Mark 4:24 ESV).

Consider taking this five-part Parables of Jesus course for your own personal or small group study, compliments of Nashotah House. Visit https://nashotahchapter.com/courses for more information.

The preceding article was originally printed in Nashotah House’s Spring 2021 Missioner magazine, volume 35, number 1, pages 16-17.