Jesus, Storyteller

From Matthew in my Everyday Bible Study series, with questions by Becky Castle Miller.

Jesus was a storyteller, and the third discourse in Matthew’s Gospel collects some of Matthew’s favorite stories. We have traditionally named his (very) short stories “parables,” even though today others call his parables fables, analogies, short stories, or riddles. His parables are clever, containing surprising jabs at listeners and readers who otherwise thought they were doing well. But Thomas G. Long reminds us that we can become mesmerized searching for cleverness in a parable only to miss the entire thrust of the parable. As he writes, “the main power of the parables is in their capacity to point to what God is doing in the world, that is, to the kingdom of God. The power is not in the trope, but in the referent.” The referent is Jesus. He closes like this: “it is not a parable, however vivid and full of divine wisdom, that saves us, but Christ” (Long, Proclaiming the Parables, 11). Once we shift reading parables to encounter God’s kingdom, we learn the wisdom of his further claim: “The way we interpret the parables shapes what we understand of God’s kingdom, and then what we understand of God’s kingdom repays the favor, governing how we interpret the parables” (14). Jesus’s parables, then, offer to his listeners an alternative world and worldview. Rodney Reeves wondered aloud that Jesus, realizing he had preached sermons and helped people (amazingly) but the job was not getting done, decided then to tell stories (Reeves, Matthew, 264). At the very least, storytelling is another strategy of Jesus to persuade his contemporaries of the mysteries of the kingdom of God – that kingdom is subversive, irrepressible, invaluable, and mysterious (Reeves, 273-274).

Four locations for seeds

Jesus sits next to the Sea of Galilee, probably along the shore at Capernaum, looking south. From there one can see Tiberias to the right and the Decapolis to the left (see map on p. XX above). Noticeably, “such large crowds” wanted to hear his teachings that he had to sit in a boat and form a shore-side audience. We dare not forget the audience. Jesus saw a large crowd and he spoke in parables. The crowd that wants to hear the words of Jesus corresponds to the family of Jesus who stood outside wanting Jesus to come home to Nazareth (12:46-50).

His first parable is about a planter or farmer and his seeds and the turf on which the seeds landed: some fell “along the path” and others “on rocky places” and yet others “among thorns” and finally some landed “on good soil” (Matthew 13:1-8). Jesus finishes that short story with a word for the wise: “whoever has ears, let them hear” (13:9). This is a commonplace for I just said something important but it requires a kingdom citizen to know what I meant. On first hearing, the parable was suggestive to all and the curious among the crowd began to explore what he could have meant.

What’s a parable?

Jesus was not alone in telling parables as they were favorites of Jewish teachers. Parables are imaginative analogies, that is uber short-stories, designed to offer an alternative worldview. That is, Jesus tells a little story with a character or two or three and the attentive listener enters through the imagination to envision that short story occurring. In entering into that story Jesus often surprises the reader with some little detail that is designed to shift that person’s worldview. Jesus’s parables invite us to “imagine a world like this,” and the world he wants us to imagine is the kingdom of God.

How to interpret a parable?

To interpret a parable of Jesus we need to read the story carefully in a quest to determine the central analogy Jesus is making. The short story is “laid next to” (that’s a literal translation of “parable” in Greek) something about a kingdom worldview, so the quest is to figure out what connects them. That is, what is the comparison? It is important as well to stick to the 1^st Century Jewish world of Jesus to make sense of the parable. We should not think in the parable of the sower and his seeds of farming in Iowa and Nebraska. As well, we can keep our eyes on the Gospel’s themes and bigger context for helping us see what Jesus teaches here. And, remember that reading a parable is more than an exercise in detecting a purpose. These parables are meant to transform the hearers and, now that they are written out, the readers (like you and me).

One warning: avoid getting cute and finding hidden treasures that distract us from the central analogy. The rocky soil is not something specific, like the Sadducees. We can imagine seed falling on rocky soil where seeds can’t take root. That gives us all we need for our imaginations to kick in.

The crowds don’t measure the Messiah

Among the curious were the disciples. Perhaps they chatted amongst themselves about its meaning. What they did do was ask Jesus why he spoke in parables to the crowds. He provided for them his theory of teaching about the kingdom of God in parables (13:10-17). The clear meaning of the parable, which he calls here “knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven,” will be revealed not to the crowds but only to “you,” that is, to his followers. Jesus draws a metaphorical, but deep, line between his followers and the crowds. Insiders receive an “abundance” on top of their blessings, while others will lose even what they have.

What we must see is that the crowds are challenged by the parable of the sower and seeds to hang with Jesus in order to comprehend kingdom realities. Sad to say but Jesus is a truthteller: many in the crowds are like the first three locations where seeds landed. So Jesus connects words of Isaiah 6:9-10 about the spiritually blind and deaf. They hear over and over and they see over and over, and the fail to see and hear the truth of the message for them. The message is to repent because the kingdom has arrived in Jesus. As David Capes writes, “The message reminds the careful reader of how sometimes the presence and speech of a prophet hardens the heart. Who hardens hearts first may be part of the mystery” (Capes, Matthew, 194). That is, does God harden a heart so it does not respond, or does an already resistant, hardened heart refuse to respond to God’s message, leading to an even harder heart? Both are involved, that’s clear (Exodus 9:34-35; 10:1-2). The latter is consistent with the God Jesus reveals.

Jesus’s kingdom citizens are the insiders to whom the secrets will be made known. They have eyes that perceive and ears that hear (Matthew 13:16). Matthew one more time connects the history of Israel to Jesus as Messiah, which was all over chapters one and two as well as at 4:12-17, 5:17-20, 8:16-17, 11:10, and 12:15-21. The insiders are not just “blessed” but they get to see and hear what “many prophets and righteous people longed to see… and to hear” (13:17).

Parables then need this explanation: Jesus sees crowds of people made up of people who have a variety of responses to him and his kingdom mission. Crowds don’t measure the Messiah, even if they disturb Antipas and Pilate and Jerusalem. Responses to his kingdom mission are not all alike.

Seeds and weeds

The intended impact of the parable is more or less the same as the sower and seeds, yet the two are not the same. Remember, the audience is the crowds. The seeds that fell on the path were snatched by Satan (13:3-4, 19) and in the seeds and weeds the parable zeroes in on Satan’s work. Here “the enemy” sowed some zizania – weeds – among the wheat. Kris and I have an abundance of plants in our backyard and it takes an eye of experience to recognize weeds from the real thing before their mature into flowering plants. The farmer knows yanking out zizania could uproot wheats, so the parable urges the farmer to wait for the harvest. The details of his story will become allegorical in the interpretation, just as the sower and seeds had allegorical explanations.

We skip now to the explanation, which morphs into insider revelations (cf. 13:18-23 and 13:36-43). The sower is Jesus (Son of Man), the field is the “world” (not the church), the wheat is “the Empire’s descendants” (Second Testament; NIV: “people of the kingdom”), the weeds are Satan’s offspring, and the sower of zizania is Satan (13:36-39). The harvest is allegory for the final judgment. The Son of Man will gather wheat for the Age to Come and the weeds to be burned (13:40-42). Again, Jesus uses the “whoever has ears…” line used above (13:9, 43).

What may have surprised you, and I know it has me many times, is this: the farmer’s workers wanted to enter into the field and yank up the zizania. Jesus says no. Jesus says wait. Why? Two things come to mind: first, judgment is not ours to do but God’s. Second, we are living in a mixed world and we cannot purge or purify the world enough for it be only for the kingdom. In fact, that desire to push others off the stage is precisely what Jesus informs us not to do! Living together until the end is the reality of the kingdom’s real presence in this world. I quote Thomas Long again:

In the meantime, do not expect in the present set of circumstances to experience the kingdom in pristine purity. Don’t go looking for the kingdom in some unsullied desert sanctuary uncorrupted by the world. The field to be worked is this world; the kingdom is germinating in this world, this real and compromised world where good and evil so clearly coexist. And do not think you have the power to purify the world; you do not. Therefore, do not be tempted to think that human cooperation with the kingdom is purification, draining the swamp, clearing out the dive bar, plucking out all the weeds (Long, Proclaiming the Parables, 147).

Amen! I have to include what Will Willimon once preached: “From time to time we have tried to clean up both God and our act as the church, but we’ve never been quite able to pull it off. We have tried to clean up the church, removing from the rolls all the slackers, dead wood, morally impure. Let’s get this church pared down to the truly religious, the really committed, we said to ourselves. Invariably, we ended up with a church which more closely resembled the people who crucified Jesus rather than the ones who followed Jesus” (Willimon, Collected Sermons, 108-109).

This parable, told to the crowds curious about Jesus and his kingdom vision, reveals not a present judgment but a final judgment in which God separates humans into kingdom citizens and outsiders. The intended impact is to urge the crowds to come inside, to join the kingdom coalition, and follow Jesus. Along with that impact is a parallel one: Jesus reveals to his followers that God alone is the judge. Stay out of God’s business.

Mustard seeds and yeast

Two little parables, two quick analogies, both riddle-like, both revealing the way the kingdom of God works. Like a mustard seed, though a small bush becomes a large bush, large enough for birds to gather in its branches. Like yeast, a little bit penetrates the whole. These two parables purposefully contrast small beginnings with comparatively big endings. As such, the crowds are urged to ponder the seeming insignificance of Jesus and his blooming kingdom coalition in light of their future expansion. The crowd is asked to trust Jesus and to enter into the kingdom in the hope of its future.

A surprising set of challenges for followers

These stories of Jesus contained surprising challenges for the crowds, but crowd-ishness was not enough for Jesus. In the first parable, the location where seeds landed are sorted into four types, three of which correspond to the crowds. Some don’t comprehend so Satan comes along and snatches the seed. Some respond with excitement but for them the kingdom is about spectacle and miracle, and so it does not lead to deep-seated commitment. Some hear Jesus and listen to his words of the kingdom but this “Era’s anxiety and wealth’s delusion suffocate the word,” leading to fruitlessness (13:22; Second Testament). Others, however, like the disciples, respond with fruits upon fruits (13:23). The same is true about the weeds and wheat, as well as for the mustard seed and yeast: what matters is responding now to the what the kingdom is and will be.

Jesus still speaks. The “parables ‘read’ us as we read them” (Reeves, Matthew, 265). The true listener, the true perceiver, hears that first parable and asks herself Which location corresponds most accurately to my response to Jesus and his kingdom? Or, for the second parable, Am I wheat or weeds? And, Am I ready to invest my life in the future the kingdom can be? It’s far easier to be an average church-goer, a light participant, a mediocre Bible reader, and a sometime follower of Jesus. Those correspond to inadequate responses to Jesus and the kingdom message, while what Jesus wants from the crowd – and from us – is a whole-hearted commitment to follow him in the mainstream America, in a boilerplate Western world, in a family and community life that absorbs us into its ways. Each of these parables summon us to come inside, to join the kingdom coalition, and walk with Jesus every day for the rest of life.

Jesus does the separating of the good and bad, the wheat and weeds, the good from bad soils. Ours is to live with one another as we follow Jesus. Klyne Snodgrass, this generation’s expert on the parables, puts it all together with this: “The key to spiritual formation,” which in today’s passage is about fruitfulness, “is the willingness to listen, the practice of the discipline of listening, and responding appropriately to the received word” and “about hearing that leads to productive living.” Further, “People think they can look like giant oaks without putting down deep roots” (Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 175, 176).

Questions for Reflection and Application

1. What is the difference between reading a parable to notice its cleverness versus reading it to find the Jesus it points to?

2. What does it mean when Jesus says, “whoever has ears, let them hear”?

3. Why does Jesus speak in parables to the crowds?

4. What is the difference between a human-led judgment of the world right now and the final judgement God will give?

5. How you can respond right now to what the kingdom is and will be?

Thomas G. Long, Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2024).

Klyne R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus, 2d edition (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2018).

William H. Willimon, The Collected Sermons of William H. Willimon (Louisville: Wesminster John Knox, 2010).