Jesus (29 page)

More basically, Jesus uses things (rocks, birds, seeds) and people (the farmer planting his crops, the woman sweeping her house, the son who wastes money) that were part of everyone's daily life. As John Donahue writes in
The Gospel in Parable
, “The parables manifest such a range of images that the everyday world of rural, first-century Palestine comes alive in a way true of few ancient cultures.”
¹²

You can almost see the people nodding in agreement as Jesus spins out earthy tales of people, places, and situations they would have known well. One of the challenges for current-day readers, then, is to learn as much as we can about that time, so that we can better understand these wonderful tales and metaphors. As Gerhard Lohfink says, Jesus's parables betray a “deep love for reality.”
¹³
All the more reason to understand the historical reality of Jesus's world.

A
LMOST TWENTY YEARS AGO
, I worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Nairobi, Kenya. My job was to help refugees begin small business to help them support themselves and their families. One day I was driving my jeep outside of the city, near the Rift Valley, to visit a farmer who had started a cattle farm with some assistance from JRS. As I wound my way up a steep mountain pass, I was transfixed by the verdant green grass that carpeted the hillside. Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, a lone white sheep clambered down the hillside and darted in front of my car. I swerved to avoid hitting it (there were no other vehicles around). Then I watched the sheep gingerly climb down into the valley on the right side of the road.

Just then, from my left, a figure darted across the road. It was a young Maasai shepherd. In the Maasai culture the youngest boys, sometimes as early as five, tend the sheep; the older ones herd goats; and the oldest, including men, take care of the cattle. The shepherd dashed in front of my idling car. Barefoot, he smiled and waved to me as he passed. He scrambled down the side of the hill in pursuit of the sheep, raising clouds of dust, calling loudly all the while. I watched him climb down the hill for a few seconds. Then I looked up and saw the rest of the flock, about twenty or thirty sheep, up the hill on my left.

How stupid!
I thought.
He's leaving behind the whole flock for that one sheep.
Then something dawned on me, and I laughed out loud. It was the Parable of the Lost Sheep in action! In its entirety the parable reads as follows, in Matthew:

If God pursues us with even half the energy as that young Maasai boy, then humanity has nothing to worry about.

That concise parable is just one example of Jesus's use of an image that his listeners would have known well, a shepherd who loses a sheep from the fold. Now, as a person who had never seen a shepherd outside of the movies before coming to Kenya, I had no clue that a shepherd would leave a flock behind. But notice that Jesus says “
Does he not
leave the ninety-nine?” He's not telling his original audience something new; he's drawing on what they already know. That is also clear in Luke's version: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep,” he asks, “does not leave the ninety-nine?” His listeners also know that the search for the sheep is not always successful: the audience grasped the importance of the words “if he finds it.”

The story would have spoken to them of God's profound desire to find us, especially those who are in any way lost, or one who is, as in Matthew's version, a
planōmenon
, a “wandering one.” There is a palpable sense of God's pity on the one who inadvertently wanders off. How often this happens in our lives; we find ourselves, almost without realizing it, far from God and from others. But there is no judgment here, only compassion.

Luke's version adds a touching note. “When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'” With this physical detail Luke evokes both the psalmist's imagery of the shepherd who cares for his sheep and the pastoral practice of the time.
¹⁵
(Ancient statuary shows shepherds carrying sheep in the same way.) This deeply personal addition sounds like something Jesus and his listeners would have seen often. Thus, Jesus offers from his listeners' everyday lives an image that powerfully evokes God's love for them.

In Luke and Matthew, Jesus explicitly connects these parables to God's rejoicing over the finding of “one sinner who repents,” which is greater than God's joy over the ninety-nine who “need no repentance,” as Luke says. To illustrate, he offers yet another image, one of a woman who has ten coins, loses one, and sweeps the entire house to find it.

It is not beneath Jesus to speak about common things, so intent was he on conveying the message of the reign of God. If talking about sheep does the trick, he'll tell a story about a shepherd. If talking about a woman searching for a coin helps, he'll talk about her.

His use of parables, then, parallels the gracious entrance of God into our human existence. Just as it was not beneath Jesus to approach his listeners in ways they could understand, so it was not beneath God to come in a way that we can understand—in Jesus. With a parable Jesus says, “Do you want to know what the reign of God is like? Let me tell you a story.” In Jesus, God says, “Do you want to know what I am like? Let me
be
a story for you, the story of Jesus.” In a sense, Jesus is the parable of God.

Stories, which human beings seem hardwired to remember, are also more likely to “stick” than definitions are. When preaching at Mass, I will often relate a real-life anecdote to illustrate a point. Inevitably, that's what people remember most. “Oh, I
loved
that story about your nephews!” someone will say afterward. The challenge is offering stories that make the point but don't detract from it, a challenge that Jesus mastered perfectly.

Wit is another important element of Jesus's parables. This may seem surprising to those of us who read his parables with a straight face, but we often miss the earthy humor inherent in the stories. Humor is culture bound and time bound; since we don't live in Jesus's day, we can't fully appreciate the humor embedded in the parables, which would have made them memorable to those who first heard them. Father Harrington told me that for people in first-century Palestine some of Jesus's stories would have been “hilarious.” The idea, for example, that someone would build a house on sand instead of solid ground would have struck people as terribly funny.
¹⁶

We may also overlook the humor because, unlike the first audiences, we've heard these passages multiple times—often delivered in dry and didactic ways. And even if we recognize the humor, we're still too familiar with the stories. So we are probably underestimating the surprising and amusing impact they would have had on the first-time hearers in first-century Palestine.

The parables, however, are not simply stories, or even funny stories. As Harrington notes, in each parable something unusual surfaces: a huge harvest, an immense mustard bush, an enormous amount of bread, a pearl discovered by accident.
¹⁷
There is always a twist, often a shocking, jarring, or even incomprehensible turnabout. Some parables are hard to grasp; and some, once grasped, are hard to accept. But Jesus meant them to be provocative—the kingdom of God demanded an urgent, all-or-nothing, do-it-now response—so the parables retain their power to provoke and shock.

And confuse! Even today the most familiar parables may baffle us. There is strong evidence that Jesus himself did not expect all his listeners to grasp the parables. One of the most difficult passages in the Gospels, much discussed by Scripture scholars, comes in Mark, when the disciples ask Jesus bluntly why he speaks in parables. His answer was most likely as mysterious to them as it is to us:

“To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that

Here Jesus is quoting a passage from Isaiah, which speaks of those who are deaf and blind to the word of God.

Some scholars say that “in order that” is better translated as “because.” In other words, some do not grasp the parables because they are hard-hearted. But even given that translation, it is still a troubling passage. An almost identical explanation occurs in Luke and Matthew.
¹⁹

Did Jesus not want people to understand him? I put that question to John Donahue. He noted that those mysterious verses in Mark may best be understood in terms of the Messianic Secret—that is, an example of Jesus's teaching his disciples privately. Father Donahue explained that in the ancient world there were many instances of private teaching to “insiders.” Also, Jesus exhibits a kind of restraint, holding back, as it were, from fully revealing things to everyone at every opportunity. But it was still hard to imagine Jesus not wanting most of his listeners to understand.

“Most likely,” he told me, “Jesus did not
expect
everyone to understand his teaching.” Donahue noted that the first use of the word “parable” comes in the third chapter of Mark, in a setting where his family thought he was crazy.
²⁰
“Then Jesus tells a parable to his adversaries, and the section concludes with his saying that his mother and brothers are ‘outside,' while the true family ‘inside' are those who do the will of God.”
²¹
It is an indication that the parables were meant to be understood mainly by his inner circle.

Donahue reminded me that parables are never fully “understood” anyway. Speaking about “understanding” is a bit rationalistic, he said. “A better phrasing would be ‘enter into the mystery of the kingdom of God.' Remember C. H. Dodd's saying that a parable ‘teases.' To my mind, a parable is a question waiting for an answer, and it does not really ‘exist' until it is ‘appropriated,' but it is never really ‘understood.'”

Adding to the often baffling quality of the parables is another striking feature: we encounter characters Gerhard Lohfink terms “immoral figures.”
²²
In the Gospel of Matthew, for instance, Jesus tells the story of a man who discovers a treasure hidden in a field.
²³
Upon discovering it, he sells all he has in order to purchase the field. Preachers often use this parable as a way of stressing the overriding value of the reign of God—we should be willing to part with anything to attain it.

We may be so familiar with this parable that we overlook something: the man does not tell the rightful owner of the field what he has found! As heroes go, he is a devious one. Lohfink points to several such immoral figures whose presence underscores the urgency of the reign of God. Some of the characters in the parables stop at nothing to get what they want. Jesus seems to be saying that one must be single-hearted in one's pursuit of the kingdom, even as much as the unscrupulous man pursuing that treasure—no matter what.

O
VER TWO THOUSAND YEARS
after parables were introduced to the crowds in Galilee, debates over their meaning continue. Not long ago, Barbara Reid, a Dominican sister and professor of New Testament at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, provided a unexpected explanation about one of the most familiar Gospel parables. In the process she provoked my Jesuit community into a lively conversation about a story we thought we knew.

In the Parable of the Talents, in both Matthew and Luke,
²⁴
a wealthy man entrusts his servants with his fortune before going away on a journey. To the first servant (or slave), he gives five talents, to the second two, and to the third one. As Matthew recounts the story, the wealthy man gave each one funds “according to his ability.” By the way, here is a possible instance of Jesus's playful use of hyperbole: a
talanton
was a huge amount of money, equivalent to roughly fifteen years of wages, so the man is turning over to his servants a ridiculous amount of wealth. The audience would have perked up upon hearing about the largesse of such a generous, trusting, or possibly naive master.

When the master (
kyrios
, or lord) returns, he discovers how well each servant has cared for the money. The first one proudly reports that he has invested the money and has earned five more talents. The master praises him lavishly, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” The second slave has likewise invested, turning his two talents into four; he is similarly praised by the master.

The third slave, however, did not invest the money at all. In fact he buried it—literally, in the ground. Why? “Master,” he says, “I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.”

The master is enraged. Not simply because he's been insulted as a “harsh” man (
sklēros
, hard or severe), but because the servant has failed to increase the man's wealth—even though he was not instructed to invest it. The master taunts him: “You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers.” He instructs the other servants to
take
the man's one talent and give it to the one with ten. “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” The master then punishes the slave, throwing him into “outer darkness,” where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”