Why Did Jesus Speak In Parables?

 

June 16, 2024

The last lines of today’s Gospel give us food for thought.  Why did Jesus teach largely in parables, since many, including his disciples, would/could not understand?  Furthermore, despite the additional explanations that Jesus gave his disciples (not just the twelve), it is clear that even after the Resurrection they did not get it, and Jesus had to explain to them the Scriptures again and again (Luke 24:27 & 45). But even after all that, he eventually seems to give up and tells them that the Holy Spirit would explain all things to them (John 16:13).

There are many reasons offered by scholars regarding this lack of comprehension by the Jewish religious establishment in general, and the disciples in particular, including some suggesting that this lack of comprehension by the disciples was actually not historically true but was added by Mark (and then taken up by the others Gospel writers) in order to explain why the disciples fell away from Jesus when he was arrested.  Whether those references to the disciples’ incomprehension is historically true or not, I would suggest that such incomprehension was humanly true - i.e. it was natural for human beings NOT to understand what Jesus tried to teach.  

Let me elaborate by suggesting a mind-experiment.  Imagine if we had never heard the Parable of the Last Judgement and imagine if today the Pope suddenly told us this exact same parable, and then used it to teach that  nothing else is really essential for salvation, - no belief in Jesus, no belief in all the dogmas and other teachings of the Church, no Sacraments, no prayers, no clergy, no churches, no Pope even, and that none of these was really essential as long as we loved our neighbour.  Imagine too if the Pope adapted to our Church situation what the prophet Amos said a long time ago: . “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your (church) assemblies are a stench to me.  Even though you bring me burnt (eucharistic) offerings and grain (money) offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,  I will have no regard for them.  Away with the noise of your songs(hymns)!  I will not listen to the music of your harps(instruments). But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:21-23).  If the Pope said all this, I would guess that, like the Jewish establishment, the majority of us Catholics would completely reject such a kind of teaching, wouldn’t we? Because it is difficult to let go of the kind of religion that the large majority of religious people (whichever religion we belong to) grew up with, - in which we have come to believe that the essential part of being religious is to fulfil certain’vertical’ practices (prayers, rituals, special sacrifices/fasts, etc). And that if we do these things, then God will be pleased with us, and then will use power to set things right for us, a God who will punish the evil doer, a God who will reward the faithful ones, and so on and so forth.

However, the God or Abba Father that Jesus introduced us to, is a God who forgives again and again (Mathew 18:22) , who lets the sun and rain on the just and the unjust (Mathew 5:45), who does not have the power to prevent Jesus from dying on the cross (Mathew 27:39-43), and, as our world history shows, doesn’t seem able to stop much evil that happens in our own world.  And it was precisely because he wanted us to relate with this new understanding of God and what it means to be truly religious, that Jesus used parables. 

Parables, like fantasy movies, can push the listener or the viewer to discover truths that they may otherwise be too baggage-laden to see. They let us maintain a distance with the subject matter, and without ‘threatening’ us they invite us to look at life from a completely different perspective. And because Jesus knew that the Jews were so ingrained in a law/rule-driven type of religiosity, which however burdensome was something they had got so used to, he knew that they would find it extremely difficult to change. And that is why he laments that “the hearts of this people (i.e. the Jews in general) have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn (repent), so that I should heal them.  (Mathew 13:13ff)  Of course, the phrases ‘lest they should hear, see and understand’ are not expressing Jesus’ desire/intent, but ironical statements about how most of us respond when asked to question or change what has long been entrenched into our very selves. And so Jesus knew he had to ‘hide’ his message in stories so that people would be able to think about it without being defensive. And that is precisely what he managed to do through his parables!

Unfortunately, many of Jesus’ parables have lost their punch for many of us because we have heard them so often.  But imagine how he must have completely challenged his listeners in his day when he taught them through parables that “there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent”. (Luke 15:7).  Or when he used the parable of the workers in the Vineyard who came to work at different times and yet get paid equally, to challenge the ‘good’ people as to why they resented God’s generosity to sinners - a resentment that many of us may perhaps also share (Mathew 20:1-16).  Similarly, his parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-35) must have challenged them to expand their notion of ‘neighbour’ to go beyond the confines of their neighbourhood, to include all those in need and even those they did not like or even considered enemies (as the Jews and Samaritans were sworn enemies) - something that we probably still find difficult to do today. And so on and so forth.

Jesus realised that this paradigmatic shift in understanding God, and what it means to be truly religious, was so difficult that he tells Nicodemus, with whom he did NOT speak in parables, that unless we are ‘born again’ (John 3:3) we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And so it is more with anguish, than in condemnation, that Jesus says: “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand….. (Mathew 13:13ff)

Today, would Jesus say the same about us?

First Reading: Ezekiel 17: 22-24

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain.  On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches.  All the trees of the forest will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.

I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.

 

Second Reading: Second Corinthians 5: 6-10

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.  So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.  For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

 

Gospel: Mark 4: 26-34

He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground.  Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.  All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.  As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it?  It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth.  Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand.  He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.