06 - Chapter 06
CHAPTER VI A GENERAL VIEW OF THE PARABLES CERTAIN general points in connection with the parables may now be regarded as more or less established.
(i) In many cases we do not know the historical context of the parable; that is, the people to whom, and the circumstances in which, the parable was spoken. It seems clear that, while collections of the sayings of Jesus were being made, the parables were also being grouped.
Thus all that Mark has to tell us about the parables (except the Wicked Vinedressers in Mark 12:1-44.) he gives in Mark 4:1-41, which partly coincides with Matthew’s larger parable group in Mark 13:1-37.
Luke records five parables in Luk 15:1-32 and Luk 16:1-31, while Matthew groups two parables and three quasi-parables between Mat 24:43-51 and Mat 25:1-46. The fact that the literary context, the position in a Gospel in which a story is placed, is not necessarily the same as the historical context, the occasion on which the parable was spoken, has often been overlooked. It was natural, for example, that Luke should attach the Prodigal Son to the Lost Sheep and the Lost Piece of Silver, since all three deal with the joy of finding the lost. Yet the Prodigal begins with the phrase: ’ and he said,” the regular formula which introduces any remembered saying of Jesus. It need have no historical connection with the preceding parables; and we are at liberty to let the story speak for itself without being prejudiced by the neighbourhood in which we find it.
Again, the position of the Ten Bridesmaids and the Talents, towards the end of Matthew’s Gospel and just before the picture of the Last Judgment, almost inevitably creates the impression that their primary significance relates to the return of Jesus, an impression which is strengthened by the presence of the Bridegroom in the former (cf. Mark 2:19). Yet the position in which we find these two parables need mean no more than that, at the time when “Matthew” wrote, the Church interpreted them with reference to the Second Coming. We are entitled to study the parables for ourselves.
We are accustomed to think of the Sower as the first parable spoken by Jesus, and this has given increased importance to the ’ mystery ’ theory with which Mark connects it. It is true that Mark gives a very definite historic occasion for this parable (Mark 4:1 ff.), but we shall see reason to doubt the accuracy of this. The other parabolic sayings in this chapter are introduced by “ And he said,” the regular phrase used in beginning a saying of Jesus of which the context was not known. In Luke’s Gospel the Sower is not the first parable given (the Two Debtors is in Luk 7:1-50), and in Matthew it is preceded by many parables or quasi-parables (Luk 7:24-27; Luk 11:16 f.; Luk 12:11; Luk 12:25; Luk 12:29; Luk 12:43-45)- To recognize, then, that we seldom know the circumstances in which a parable was spoken frees us from certain limitations in our interpretations, limitations which may help to obscure the true meaning. Yet our ignorance of these circumstances is by far our most serious handicap in our study of the parables. In the case of those whose meaning has been most disputed, it seems certain that the story would be illuminated if only we knew what called it forth. The Unjust Steward would not have been to the Church the problem it has been if only we had known what class of stewards Jesus had in mind, what precisely was the nature of their fraud, and what their method of escape from its consequences. If we knew to whom and why Jesus spoke the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, then presumably all controversy as to its meaning would cease. Could we see the audience to whom Jesus told the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus and know what led up to it, then might we know for certain whether Dives was rich in this world’s goods or rich in spiritual privilege, and whether Lazarus was a social outcast or a moral and spiritual outcast. But we have not this knowledge. In all such cases we are left to interpret the parables as best we may in the light of our general knowledge of Jesus’ life and teaching.
(2) The parables as we now have them are in the form they took after being used by Christian preachers for many years. That this is so is evident from a comparison of the forms taken by the same parable in different Gospels.
Perhaps the most suggestive comparison is that between Matthew’s account of the Great Supper (Mat 12:1-14) and Luke’s (Luk 14:16-24). The first Gospel is specially interested in the Jews and in the rejection of Jesus by the religious leaders; the first Gospel is also the ’ royal ’ Gospel.
Thus in Matthew the feast is given by a king, representing God according to the conventional symbolism of the Rabbinic parables. The feast is given in honour of the marriage of the King’s Son, evidently Jesus. In Luke it is not a wedding feast but a “ supper “ and the host is not a king. After the rejection of the invitation by the guests for whom the feast was intended, in Matthew the host sends out only one Mission to procure fresh guests: in Luke he sends two (Matthew’s second mission to the guests originally invited seems to indicate that a second mission had become part of the tradition). In the first Gospel the one mission in search of fresh guests is evidently to the tax-collectors and outcasts in general. In Luke’s Gospel with its broader outlook the second of the two missions for new guests presumably typified the presentation of the Gospel to the Gentiles. In Matthew, before the Mission is sent out at all, there is a military interlude in which an army goes out to attack the guests who would not come and to burn down their city; all this while the Supper was getting cold! We may safely assume that the story was thus spoiled by Christian preachers after the fall of Jerusalem.
Again, Luke with his offer of a free Gospel says nothing of the wedding robe which, to the more theologically-minded “ Matthew,” was an essential of the story. In Matthew’s parable of the Talents (Mat 25:14-30) there are three servants who receive each a number of talents differing according to their capacity: five, two, one. In Luke (Luk 19:12-27) there are ten servants each of whom receives one mina (pound). But the chief difference is that, while in Matthew no explanation is given of the master’s departure and absence, Luke intimates that he went off to receive his appointment as king. This leads to a secondary story, which intermingles with the main story, of the unsuccessful plot of his subjects to refuse to acknowledge his royal authority, and of their fate. A tempting explanation is that, when telling the story of the nobleman who left his country for a time, Christian preachers, trying to make the story concrete, remembered how Archelaus, the son of Herod, went to Rome in 4 B.C. to have his royal power confirmed by the emperor, and how a deputation of Jews followed him to protest against the appointment. It was then an easy matter to connect the story with the question that so greatly interested the first generation of Christians, why the Jews rejected Jesus. It will hardly be claimed that the complexity thus introduced into the parable is an improvement.
There are some interesting differences between Matthew’s parable of the Lost Sheep and Luke’s. In Luke (Luk 15:3 f.) the story is Jesus’ apology for his attitude to the tax-collectors and ’ sinners.” In Matthew the reference is to the ’ ’ little ones ’ whom men must not despise and every one of whom it is God’s will to save. In Luke there is a more splendid optimism than in Matthew. Luke’s shepherd searches for the wandering sheep ’ until he finds it “; and that this feature is deliberate is clear from the other two parables in the chapter: the woman who seeks her lost drachma till she finds it and the father who waits for his errant son till he comes home. In Matthew the result of the search is no foregone conclusion: the shepherd rejoices ’ if he succeeds in finding the sheep.” But there is another, perhaps more important divergence. Matthew’s shepherd is a lonely figure; his joy in finding the sheep that had strayed is a solitary joy, and the God who will not have his little ones perish is thought of as the One and the Alone. But Luke’s shepherd invites his friends and neighbours to share his joy, and this feature is of the essence of Luk 15:1-32. The social joy on earth at the finding of the lost in each of the three parables is but the replica of the joy ’ in the presence of God’s angels over a repentant sinner” (Luk 15:10). In view of the fact that the parables had been repeated countless times by Christian preachers of different antecedents to widely varying audiences scattered through the world, before they were committed to writing in our Gospels, it would not have been surprising if in some versions they had been considerably transformed.
While there is no slavish adherence to any common document or common tradition, the similarity between different versions of the same story, where these occur, suggests, what we should otherwise have expected, that the parables had in themselves sufficient vitality, and the reverence for the words of Jesus was sufficiently great, to preserve them substantially intact. In comparing the different versions of the Wicked Vinedressers (Mat 21:33-46, Mark 12:1-12, Luk 20:9-19), besides some unimportant differences such as would naturally arise as the story was told and re-told, we find other differences to which more significance may be attached. Both in Matthew and in Mark, some of the rent-collectors are killed. Luke, taking these servants to represent the Old Testament prophets, silently corrects this: the servants are ill-treated, but not killed, for no actual murders of prophets are recorded in the Old Testament. 1 Perhaps also it is not too finical to see deliberate purpose in the way in which the fate of the Son is recorded. In Mark they slay him and cast him out of the vineyard. In Matthew and in Luke they cast him out of the vineyard and slay him. Clearly the vineyard was not Jerusalem, but Israel; but Israel was concentrated in and typified by Jerusalem, and we know that Christian thought found significance in the fact that Jesus was crucified “ outside of the gate “ (Heb 13:12).
John specifically mentions, what the other Gospels suggest, that the place where Jesus was crucified was “near,” not ’in’ the city, (John 19:20)
(3) The parables are an essential, and an important, part of the teaching of Jesus. The determination to find in the parables only teaching that was already familiar apart from the parables has been a fruitful source of inability to see their true meaning. Moreover, it is surely a mistake to regard the parables as just a series of pious reflections. Jesus was never just a philosopher: nor was he even, in the strictly technical sense, a theologian. Abstract speculation about the nature of God had no interest for him, at least as a teacher. His aim was to lead men to God; he would teach men only those truths about God that made it easier for them to come to Him.
1 Unless we except Uriah (Jer 26:20-23).
Consequently the parables of Jesus are not the studies of a thinker, but the trumpet calls of a prophet, calls to rouse ourselves and take action. At the end of each, spoken or implied, is his “ Go and do thou likewise; “ “ Go and be thou likewise; ’ “Go and be thou not likewise.” Even the parables that illumine the nature of God are intended also to lighten the path of men. The father’s arms, wide open for the son, invite the prodigal to reach those encircling arms. The boundless forgiveness of God is for those who in turn forgive. If the queen pearl is worth the sum total of all our possessions, let us sell them all and buy it. The Leaven and the Mustard Seed are a call to that faith and hope that are among the abiding things of life, a call to be co-workers with God in the leavening influence of his Kingdom and in tending the plant that he has planted.
(4) Not least in the parables do we see our Lord’s attitude to the world and to life. If it would be too much to say that Jesus enjoyed life, it would not be too much to say that he was thoroughly at home in the world. To him it was always his Father’s world, and the only foreign element was the sin in the heart of man.
It is not only from the parables we learn that every sight and sound brought to him a message from his Father: the sunshine, the rain, the storm; the flowers, the birds, the beasts. He had the true shepherd’s love and pity for the sheep; he saw with a kind of envy the foxes going to their holes in the earth. To him the mother bird with outstretched wings typified his own brooding love, which was the divine love, for the sacred city of his people. The cock-crow was the herald of a new day with its possibilities of victory or tragic defeat. His heart had bled with the bullocks as they struggled along, weary and heavy-laden, under the crushing load. Without the help of his trusty horse or mule, the Good Samaritan could never have carried through his immortal work; and a humble colt shared with our Lord the glory of his entry into Jerusalem. The fact that in his parables Jesus uses the things and occupations of earth to illustrate the things of the Kingdom is his testimony to the reality, the eternal significance of our life and its concerns. Just as the resurrection is God’s testimony to the abiding significance of the personality of man, of what Paul calls his “ body,” so the parables are Jesus’ witness that the world in which man has to live is not a world of fleeting shadows. Just as the resurrection gives an eternal ’ No ’ to those who say that what we do with our bodies is a matter of indifference, so do the parables rebuke for ever any suggestion that men can be indifferent to, or contemptuous of, this life and its interests. In one group of parables Jesus teaches that the same God who watches over the farmer’s seed in the field watches over the spiritual seed in the heart of man; that the life that is in the seed is the life of God, even as is the life in the heart of the man who responds to divine teaching. In the farming parables and in the Leaven we can see how deeply Jesus was impressed with the mystery of life, with the inscrutable working of God in what we now call the natural processes. He is not illustrating a mystery by something we can all understand; he is comparing two mysteries. To Jesus every new harvest was a new mystery, and the housewife’s leaven was a mystery, even as the growth of God’s kingdom was a mystery. Particle by particle, slowly, irrevocably, the dough comes under the influence of this all-conquering power; even as man by man, sphere by sphere, the world comes under the influence of this new power of God.
Incidentally some of these parables illustrate Jesus’ faith in the “ energy ’ of God. The life that is in the seed may find obstacles such as rock, or rivals such as thorns or darnel. Unless in these exceptional cases, the life that is in the seed will always be victorious; and when it gives fruit, it gives fruit abundantly; the little mustard seed becoming a great tree, the grain seed multiplying thirty, sixty, a hundred fold, the leaven leavening the whole lump. It is because this miracle of nature’s prolific abundance is with us every day that for us, though not for Jesus, it ceases to be a miracle. Are not the farming parables, also, Jesus’ tribute to the dauntless courage of man? The soil of Palestine made its demand for grit and the farmer had responded. There were rock and thorns and weeds lying in wait to choke the seed, but the farmer had persevered. These parables take us back to an earlier day when it had seemed as if a curse rested on the ground, so that only by the sweat of his brow could man earn his bread; but man had sweated and earned his bread. The earth had produced thorns and thistles, but the persevering energy of man had triumphed over the thorns and thistles. Is not the difference in the point of view between Genesis iii. and Jesus a tribute to the noble qualities of man? The sacrifice of the farmer Cain was rejected; the sacrifice of the shepherd Abel was accepted. It has been suggested 1 that that idea marks the stage when the work of a shepherd is an old and venerable occupation which seems to have the blessing of God resting upon it; while the tilling of the ground is still in the experimental stage, and is the preserve of bold adventurers. May not the belief that God’s face is against the new occupation have been due in part to the ill-luck that attended the first ventures of the inexperienced farmers of that inhospitable soil? But man had conquered, and now Jesus can use the spoils of his sturdy persistence and his ingenuity as symbols of truths of the Kingdom.
(5) The aspect of the world which interests our Lord most is the world as the abode of 1 Dr. J. E. McFadyen in the Hibbert Journal. July, 1921. men and women; the aspect of men and women which he finds richest in spiritual truth is their work. The characters of Jesus’ parables are working men and women: farmers, vinedressers, labourers, fishermen, traders, a shepherd, a pearl-merchant, a steward, a governor of a province, housewives. If bridesmaids are introduced to teach a lesson, it is not bridesmaids as sharing the joy of the bride, but as women on whom has been imposed a task: a joyful task, doubtless, but still a responsible duty, that of bearing the torches to welcome home the bridal couple. The idle fools of the parables, such as the Prodigal and the Rich Fool, were men who were idle by choice. There were other idlers, in the Labourers in the Vineyard; but they were idle only because no man had hired them.
Against their will they had been deprived of the joy of helping to gather in the harvest. They were not rebels against an immutable law of God, but victims of a vicious system, and as such they were treated. We are here a very long way from the conception of work as a curse imposed on man as a punishment for the sin of our first parents. We have needed unemployment on a gigantic scale to teach us the lesson we might have learned from the parables of Jesus: that the normal man is the working man, that the idler can be employed to typify only some human folly. Unemployment is in the first place an economic problem; at long last we are realising that, in an almost greater degree, it is a moral and spiritual problem, that every man who has been deprived of the normal exercise of his faculties is a man who has been artificiallv made halt or maimed.
Human nature is so constituted that the economic problem seems to demand solution far more urgently than the moral and spiritual problem. Infinitely stronger pressure is brought to bear on our statesmen to provide means of subsistence for the unemployed than to provide work for them. But man cannot live by bread alone. When statesmen tell us that we cannot afford to provide work for them, the answer is that we cannot afford to keep them idle. To the credit of the Christian community be it said that there are many who do now realize that it is more blessed to give than to receive, that every potential worker whom we turn into a receiver when he might also be a giver is one to whom we have done a deadly wrong.