What is a parable?

some thoughts on next Sunday's lectionary

A number of the gospel readings in this month’s lectionary include parables. Often, when Jesus was asked a question, instead of giving a clear answer he had this habit of telling a parable. It’s easy to assume he was doing this to simplify a complicated idea, as you might when explaining things to a small child. Yet the moment you stop and think about it you realize this can’t be right. For a start, some of the parables seem deliberately to obscure meaning, rather than clarify. And in addition, while some parables seem to make sense read individually, put them side by side and they contradict each other. The Parable of the Sower, for instance, tells us that weeds will choke good seed so it can’t grow, but the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares says the opposite – that they grow side by side, and you can’t tell the difference between them until harvest time.

So what was Jesus really doing with his parables? The first question to ask is what kind of story a parable is – and what it is not. Parables are often mistakenly treated as allegory. An allegory is a particular kind of story in which every figure is taken to represent something or someone else, sometimes to explain a complex idea, or sometimes to describe a metaphysical concept in concrete terms. Allegory, consequently, is assumed to have a fairly precise interpretation. A parable, on the other hand, elucidates some universal truth, not through direct representation but by the listener hearing the resonances between the story and their own experience of life, and of the world around them.

C. S. Lewis got very worked up about people treating his own stories as allegory – he insisted that if you read a story saying that ‘this equals that’ then you diminish its meaning to something far too small, thereby missing the greater point. And Marcel Proust pointed out that a good story is never just about its own subject matter – rather, it does its work if readers ‘find’ themselves in it. ‘Every reader,’ Proust wrote, ‘. . . is actually the reader of himself. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument . . .’. So it is with parables. The trick is not to identify what each character represents, but to see yourself, or your world, reflected in the story.

A further feature of parables is that the clue to their focus is the way they end – so always read the punchline! The parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9) ends with a line about things growing, which takes the focus off from concerns about failure, or wastage, and puts it squarely on the confidence that, come what may, something will grow. The parable of the weeds and the wheat (Matthew 13:24-30) contradicts the parable of the sower in agricultural terms – but the end of the parable shows that the theme is quite different. Here Jesus is talking about the need to let people grow at their own pace, and not interfering too much or too soon.

Jesus’ parables, then, are not meant to deliver the precision of allegory, but rather to focus on one nugget of wisdom at a time, to shine a light on anything from the nature of God, to one’s personal spiritual growth, to the life of the church or the state of the world.

Next Sunday’s gospel crams no fewer than five one-liner parables into one reading, each offering a description of what the Kingdom of God is like, but intriguingly (or frustratingly!) not building up to a single, consistent answer.

The Kingdom of God, says Jesus, is like a mustard seed – the smallest of all the seeds, yet growing into the biggest of trees. Or is that actually what he says? For a start, there are plenty of seeds smaller than a mustard seed, and plenty of trees larger than the trees that grow from them. 21^st century readers will be culturally set up to read this either as an economic challenge -- grow or die! But is it more about the nature of the Kingdom as releasing inner potential, with a generosity of purpose? Growth, in this context, is not a matter of proving yourself or competing with others, but always relational and outward looking.

The Kingdom of God is also like a breadmaking process, says Jesus. And because, in our culture, most bread is made by adding yeast to flour, most English translations say it’s ‘like yeast’. But it really means ‘leaven’, which has a somewhat different effect on breadmaking. If you joined (or observed) the great trend for making sourdough bread during the COVID pandemic, you will understand this: while yeast is something you add to flour to make it expand, leaven is more like sourdough: you add the flour to it, and the new flour is absorbed into the whole. The Kingdom of God is less about making small things bigger, and more about transforming the nature of everything it touches.

The Kingdom of God is like buried treasure. If you know there’s buried treasure in a field, but the field doesn’t belong to you, it makes sense to buy the field, right? Even if that means selling everything you already have, and all the inconvenience that goes with it. You can’t not go for it. On the other hand, it will absorb your entire life to do it.

The Kingdom of God is like a merchant searching for the finest jewels. Find the best one in the world, and again, it might be the thing you’ve always dreamed of, but it’s going to cost you everything you own. The Kingdom of God is free, but it’s not cheap. And note – the kingdom is like the merchant, not like the jewel: it’s less about some product or result you are promised, and more about what happens to you.

Finally, and more darkly, the Kingdom of God is like a fantastically successful fishing trip that ends up with half of what was caught being thrown away. Evil and good will be separated. Evil will be dealt with harshly. Again – the Kingdom of God may be the best thing ever, a matter of immense rejoicing, freely offered to anyone who wants to join it — but it’s not fluffy. It’s free, but it’s not cheap. It demands something of us, and its consequences are serious.

My favorite line in this whole gospel reading is Jesus’ closing gambit. ‘Have you understood all this?’ — ‘YES!’ they all reply. Oh, really? I can imagine Jesus smiling to himself. Parables don’t simplify everything into easy soundbites, or make it easy to understand. They give you a tapestry of meanings, and if you’re listening carefully, it will dawn on you when you’re washing the dishes, or walking the dog, or when you wake up at 3 am – hang on! What did he say there? I might need to go back and read that again.

Jesus put before the crowds another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast (leaven) that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
“Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. Matthew 13:31-33,44-52