Parable: to throw alongside; a loanword from the original Greek parabolē.
Both parable and its Greek antecedent possess the basic meaning of “comparison.”
The parable was an effective form of popular storytelling and figures often in folk tales and narratives.
The effectiveness of the parable is due to a subversive element at work in the story and a surprise ending which is disjunctive to accepted and expected views of reality.
Jesus was fond of using the parable to instruct and surprise his hearers with the sting in his tales.
I am often reminded that the followers of the Way are called to swim against the tide and go against the grain. The vicissitudes of life itself and the typical social interactions of the everyday present challenges to our integrity and the veracity of our profession of faith in ways which are deeply uncomfortable and sometimes embarrassing. Yet we are called to stick out like sore thumbs when there is a need for sore thumbs. But believing in Christ these days is easy; discipleship is so convenient in many places. As long as we live “good” lives and do as we are told, God should be happy enough. We don’t really want to stick out. The Hallmark stories that will be told of us one day hence can probably be summarized like this, “Oh, what a nice person that was …”
I have been thinking much about sore thumbs, and Jesus and his parable-telling days in Palestine over the last few days. If anyone stood out like that proverbial sore thumb, it was Jesus the Radical and the stinging tales he told. The way he presented the most common of little stories, lulling his hearers into a sense of the familiar, and then unleashing the full potency of the sting at the end, is the thing I like best about Jesus the Great Teacher. He was utterly radical, he refused to toe the line, and made no apology for it. No wonder he had so many enemies! I used to wonder what the characters in his stories felt. Would they have protested his cavalier treatment of them in the way he subversively decided to turn the swing of the tale away from the expected end? Would they have held out a fictional hand to say: “Hey, Lord, wait a bit. That is not how things are supposed to go!” When I reflected on this, it occurred to me that God has not yet stopped telling parables. Except now, we have become his parables. No longer is the dangerous itinerant preacher from Galilee confined to the geographical and physical boundaries of earthly life; now he is free to go where he wills, picking out the stories and characters of his choosing to tell his tales his way. He is even worse now, and more dangerous than he was before the Cross!
I wonder what parable he has been conjuring with my life. Needless to say, the elements within it would have been subversively reformed and rephrased to allow for strange interpretations! This is what makes us so uneasy about following Christ—essentially, he is not conducive to the peaceful life. The human preference is for the familiar, the common, and therefore, the safe. We are social beings, created with the conformity gene stronger and more resilient than the solitary gene of individualism. We like our hierarchies, be they social, political, religious or personal. There is a feeling of comfort to be derived from knowing exactly where you are on the ladder of humanity. Even if you happen to be at the lowest rung, you could rationalize things and say that God put you there for a reason. If you are obedient in remaining in your place and bloom where you are planted, then one fine day, God will reward you justly. Many terrible injustices throughout the course of human history have been made in the name of this ladder. It shows how truly conformist we are in nature and in bent.
Then comes Jesus, blue pencil in hand, and trigger-happy finger on the “delete” button of our pointless desires and petty human fashions. Whether we like it or not, disrupting our contented and placid lives is nothing to him; cutting up our perverse wishes and tame illusions of niceness a matter of needful things to do on his list. Jesus the raconteur of painful parables walks into our settings and tells us things that make our ears burn and our hearts ache. You were made for more than this! he cries. You were made to show off God’s wonderful glory! Breaking up old ground is, therefore, Jesus’ forte. Tearing open closed cocoons and shedding useless skins is his best blessing to us, he says. The raconteur or parabolic storyteller in him cannot sit still, cannot rest, while there are so many lives to be retold, so many hopes to be refreshed, so many lines to be re-laid.
I have always suspected him, I’m afraid. I expect the unexpected from him, never ever the status quo, which I would much prefer. Had the teachers of the Law in his time been clever enough, they too would have come to expect the unexpected from him. It is amusing to see the way they ranted and strove to find schemes to do him in. Their constant questioning, the demands they threw his way, Prove this! Do that! must have been daily annoyances and challenges that he had to feint off. Invariably, though, the sting would emerge from the noise of words tossed back and forth, and catch these teachers unawares. It only took a little push to unman them, but Jesus excelled in it with his innocuous parables. By the time their brains had ticked their way through, they would have realized, mouths full of cottony surprise, that the entire parable he threw in their direction was a subversive curve ball they could never possibly hope to catch. Jesus was tricky to deal with, as they discovered to their maddened dismay. He never kept within the box. That was his trouble: he stood out like a sore thumb. Worse still, he did it with flair, which was why they hated him. They knew with an irritation that would not go away that he rather enjoyed the whole verbal skirmish and watching them jump.
What do you say to a God like this? In truth, he is incorrigible. I am reflecting on the life of Jesus at the moment, and every week, I am challenged to consider how we very contemporary, very “together” Christians would have responded in different situations if we had been there with Jesus in his day. Would we have reacted like Simon the Pharisee, for instance, or the Grateful Woman with her alabaster jar? Would we have approved of his story of the Prodigal Father, or said with the righteous Elder Brother, “What excess of foolish generosity is this, Dad?” to the feast he set up for his Erring, Squandering Son? And what of the Silly Shepherd, who impulsively leaves ninety-nine sheep alone in the pen, just to search for a lost one? By the time it was found, if it could be found, it would probably be weakened and injured, anyway. What does a crippled lamb fetch in the marketplace? If we were honest with ourselves, we would say that as good, frugal and responsible people, we would choose to stay within the safety of our social boundaries. I think we would be more likely to relate to Simon than the crazy, crying woman, the elder brother than the loving father, the conservative marketplace mentality rather than the impulsiveness of the Unwise Shepherd. The sting of Jesus’ parables would prick us too, but hopefully, it would also bring to mind, however uncomfortable, the call he makes us to be his contemporary parables, to disturb and niggle our society with that sense of another life that can be lived in another kingdom, another way.
It is for good reason, therefore, that God often disrupts the accustomed security of our crusty lives with the searing touch of his too-real hand. We are people with a difference, he reminds us, forever disrupted to become better and truer than the world could ever imagine. Sore thumbs, he says, are the identity markers issued out in my upside-down kingdom. If you have the Son’s imprint on you, how else could you possibly live? What else could you possibly be, when I have made you a living tale for the times?
