by Paul Johnson
That is the poetry of Jesus’s teaching. But he was also a story-teller, and the particular form of storytelling he favored was the parable. Parables are so important in the New Testament and he is so closely associated with this art form that he is often credited with inventing it. In fact, parables occur in other texts of the ancient Near East, and there are several in the Old Testament. The rabbis who came before and after Jesus used them. But their object was to explain difficult texts: they were a device of that dreary and eternal science called “commentary.” The essence of a Jesus parable is to stimulate thought, to encourage people to think for themselves, to puzzle out religious mysteries—a mystery is a secret revealed by God that would not have been known had he not revealed it. A parable helps to alleviate the problem of expressing supernatural things in natural language. Jesus sometimes indicated why he used parables. Mark suggests that Jesus drew a distinction between his spiritually educated disciples and his general congregation (4:11ff.): “But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples.” When addressing his elect, he said, “Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables.” This episode, in which knowledge is treated as a possession, contains the difficult verse 25: “For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath.” This seems unreasonable, as well as unjust, if seen in terms of material goods. But Jesus speaks of understanding. Those who develop skills in grasping will get more, but those without understanding have to be deprived of their false knowledge in order to start again.
The point is that Jesus’s teaching, what we call Christianity, is both a much more simple religion than the Judaism Jesus was superseding—Judaism has endless observances, each nested in a cocoon of commentaries—and a more complex one, because it involves a change of heart. So its practice cannot be laid down by laws: it requires an inner impulse. Jesus was always aware of this difficult dimension of his teaching, and the parables were designed to set the inner impulse in motion. They are indeed highly emotional, and are intended to be. Jesus was entirely rational but also a very emotional person who evoked and responded to emotions in others. The parable was his particular method of arousing and directing emotions.
The Gospel of John does not speak of parables, though it has some: the vine in chapter 15 and the Good Shepherd in chapter 10. There are four parables in Mark, but the rest are short comparisons. Most of the parables appear in Matthew and Luke. Matthew has eight parables about the Kingdom of God/Heaven in chapter 13, plus others in chapter 18 (the lost sheep and the unmerciful servant), chapter 20 (the workers in the vineyard), chapter 21 (the two sons and the wicked tenants), chapter 22 (the great banquet), and chapter 25 (the ten virgins and the talents). Luke has the most parables; they are bunched up in chapters 10 to 20 and grouped together according to subject matter: trust, anxiety, and final reckoning; feasts; losing things; use and abuse of wealth; and prayer. It is difficult to give an exact total: sixty to sixty-five according to one definition, but another, stricter reckoning reduces the figure to forty. Matthew and Luke often give slightly different versions of the same parable. Seven parables appear in all three synoptics: the new cloth in the old coat, the new wine in the old wineskin, the sower and the different soils, the lamp under the bushel, the mustard seed, the fig tree, and the tenants. These are not necessarily the most important ones. Indeed, the two masterpieces of the parable form, the Good Samaritan and the prodigal son, occur only in Luke (10 : 30-37, 15 : 11-32), as does another striking story, Lazarus the beggar and the wicked rich man (16:19-31). The workers in the vineyard parable is found in Matthew alone, as is the sinister tale of the unmerciful servant and the beautiful fantasy of the ten virgins.
It was a convention of the parable that it be told as a true tale (no matter how improbable) and that the listeners accept it as a factual one. This is particularly important in the case of the Good Samaritan. That the traveler “fell among thieves” on the Jericho road who robbed, battered, and stripped him was only too likely: the route east from Jerusalem was notorious for such crimes, as indeed it still was when I first traveled it over half a century ago. Equally likely was that the priests and Levites “passed by on the other side.” Jesus’s audience was happy to believe the clerical class as a whole to be hypocritical and uncharitable. But the compassion and generosity of the Samaritan merchant—who not only tended the distressed man but arranged for him to be looked after at the inn and his accommodations paid for until he was fit—has to be credible. The Samaritans were hated by the Jews—not least the people of Galilee, who were separated from Judaea by Samaria—with a passion which was irrational and hard for us to understand. It was a quasi-religious fury and a form of local racism of the most ferocious temper. Jesus told this tale in response to the query “[W]ho is my neighbour?” He told it so well and so convincingly that the Good Samaritan has gone down in history and literature, in art and drama, as the ideal neighbor to a man in distress. Jesus was illustrating the universalist principle which was perhaps the most important element in his social message: we are all neighbors, one to another, and our human fellowship depends on kindness and charity, not tribe or race or color or nationality. The tale was meant to shock a Jewish audience into recognizing this truth, and shock them it did, because its artful verisimilitude made them believe it. It is an ennobling story nobly told: for more than two millennia, people in countries all over the world, for whom the term has no meaning except in the parable, have sought to be “the Good Samaritan.”
The tale has a secondary meaning: like twelve other parables, it deals with the money factor. First-century Palestine had a money economy; we hear nothing of barter. Moreover, since Jerusalem was a place of annual pilgrimage for the enormous number of Jews living within the Roman Empire, many different coins of copper, alloy, silver, even gold were in circulation. The money changers of the Temple were needed to enable pilgrims to buy the doves and lambs for their sacrifices—Jesus’s complaint was that they encroached on Temple precincts. Jesus had a robust attitude toward money, commerce, and wealth. All his sympathies lay with the poor, as many parables testify. He never made the mistake of supposing that poverty made people virtuous. But he was painfully aware that wealth offered endless opportunities for corruption. The parable of Lazarus the beggar and the wicked rich man, so vividly recounted in Luke 16 : 19-31, shows how wealth can dominate the life of a thoughtless and self-indulgent person who “was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.” By contrast Lazarus, who was sick—“the dogs came and licked his sores”—lay at the rich man’s gate to get the crumbs which fell from his table. Jesus taught that “there is a great gulf fixed” between rich and poor in this life, and that the rich who do nothing about it will discover the gulf exists in the next world, where the poor will be “comforted” and the rich “tormented.” Luke 15:8-9 tells the story of the woman who had ten pieces of silver, lost one, lit a candle, and swept the house diligently until she found it, then called her friends and neighbors together and said, “Rejoice with me.” Jesus does not reproach her for being miserly or avaricious—he implies she was poor and the lost coin was a serious matter—but uses the story to make the lost coin stand for the “joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” Jesus’s general point about wealth is that it all depends on what you do with it. As the philosopher of universal philanthropy, the process whereby the instinct of compassion is made generally useful among mankind, Jesus was eager to encourage all who had wealth to distribute a generous portion of it to the poor. He did not foolishly suppose that in his life poverty could be eradicated by reforms, let alone charity (indeed, he admitted that “the poor always ye have with you” when encouraging a woman to anoint him with precious ointment). But he insisted it was right for all to exercise charity, even if their means were slender: one of the most touc
hing images in the entire New Testament is of the poor widow who insisted on contributing to the Temple charity box her “two mites, which make a farthing” (Mk 12:42). This was all she had to spend each day.
In telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus describes a case where money promotes virtue. This merchant was industrious and provident. He did a good trade and used its proceeds to help others as well as his own family. A less successful man might also have felt compassion for the battered traveler but could have done little about it. The Samaritan had earned and saved the means to enable the poor man to make a complete recovery, and he used them for this purpose. Here was money honestly made and judiciously spent.
Many of the parables deal with the theme of lost and found, a favorite image of Jesus’s; he used it as a variant on his light-and-darkness metaphors. Just after Luke presents the story of the woman who found her lost silver coin, he adds the prodigal son tale, the most luminous, perhaps, of all the stories Jesus told. It raises many issues, which is one reason why it has attracted more comment, and has been the subject of more illustrations by artists, than any other parable. The younger son of a wealthy man demands his portion, receives it, then wastes it on “riotous living” in a “far country.” A famine comes and he falls into want. He becomes a swineherd, “and he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.” He repents, concludes he has sinned against God and his father, and decides to return home in humility and say to his father, “[I] am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.” Instead, when his father sees him “when he was yet a great way off,” he receives his son with open arms and kills the fatted calf for a feast of thanksgiving. The well-behaved elder son protests in the name of justice. But his father tells him, “[T]hou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.”
The primary point of the parable, then, is the repentance of the sinner and the joy this brings to the righteous. Jesus often stresses that the return of the penitent brings more rejoicing in heaven than the goodness of many worthy persons. This is unjust, perhaps—and certainly the elder son thought so. But heaven is not so much about justice but mercy. In strict justice no one would be saved, but thanks to the infinite mercy of God, even the worst sinners have a chance provided they admit their wrongdoing and strive to lead a different life. The story is so vivid, however, and the three men concerned emerge so clearly in a few brilliant strokes of narrative, that endless comment is provoked. Is not the father foolish, or at least thoughtless? Foolish in giving his pleasure-loving son his portion in the first place: inevitably he would waste it. Thoughtless in not letting his good elder son, who is out working hard in the fields, know that his prodigal brother has returned and that a feast is being prepared. Instead he goes ahead, and the first the good son knows of it is when he comes from work, tired and sweaty, and hears the sound of “musick and dancing.” No wonder he is “angry, and would not go in.” One suspects that the prodigal has always been the father’s favorite—and one wonders what will happen in the sequel. Will foolishness start again? Will the good son, in exasperation, finally demand his portion and set up his own farm? One wonders about the mother, too, and her absence. Dead? Marginalized into insignificance? Or were there two mothers? The surmises aroused by the story are endless: a sure sign it is a good one.
But many parables raise unanswered questions. Jesus loved conviviality, and though he might condemn the rich man for faring sumptuously every night—knowing there was a hungry man at his door—he never condemned generous hospitality. Many of his most telling lessons were taught around crowded tables, and he often used feasts to make his points. Chapter 14 of Luke is about two of them. The first he uses to stress his point that presumption is punished and modesty rewarded—if you take an unwarrantably high place at a feast you will be put down, whereas if you abase yourself you may be told, “Friend, go up higher”: “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (14:10-11).
That is straightforward. But what do we make of the parable that immediately follows (14:6-24): “A certain man made a great supper, and bade many”? But his guests made excuses: the “certain man” was not as popular as he thought. So, as the food had been bought, he sent his servant out “into the streets and lanes of the city” and invited in “the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.” And when this still left a place empty, he told his servant to scour “the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that [his] house may be filled.” The feast is plainly an image of the Kingdom of Heaven, but the details baffle interpretation. Indeed, St. Augustine used the phrase “compel them to come in” to justify forcible conversion of heretics. The angry lord says, “[N]one of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.” But why should he suppose they had changed their minds and now wished to come? Was it because they resented the poor taking their original places? One sometimes feels that part of the parable has been omitted. Thus, the story of the unmerciful servant whose debts are forgiven by the king, but who then has an underling cast into prison for comparable debts, illustrates the principle of “Do as you would be done by.” But as Matthew tells it (18:23-35), it is crude, and the king’s anger in having the unjust servant handed over to the tormentors is unmerciful. In the parable of the vineyard tenants in Luke 20:9-20, their behavior is so outrageous to the owner—first beating his servants, then killing his son and heir—that verisimilitude is lost, and interest correspondingly wanes. The lord destroys the husbandmen and gives the vineyard to others. The moral is the same as in the great banquet, and Jesus tells his audience: “The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.” Luke says that “the chief priests and the scribes” believed Jesus had “spoken this parable against them,” and “the same hour sought to lay hands on him.” Hence we conclude that the parable was not of general application but was specifically aimed at a particular group of wicked people.
But what are we to say of the unjust steward in Luke 16:1-8? Facing the sack for wasting his lord’s goods, he uses his lord’s substance to curry favor among his debtors so that “when [he is] put out of [his] stewardship, they may receive [him] into their houses.” He has no other way to live: “I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.” The lord commends the unjust steward “because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” Jesus’s subsequent explanation of the moral mechanics of the parable—at least as recorded by Luke, who may have muddled it or omitted a vital detail—is unenlightening, though his final moral is perfectly clear and sensible: “No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (16:13). Jesus appears to be condemning avarice, for in verse 14, Luke adds: “And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him.” Jesus then drew a sharp distinction between “they which justify yourselves before men” and God who “knoweth your hearts.” Jesus concludes resoundingly: “[T]hat which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God” (16:15).
Here is a case where the moral is excellent, but the story leading up to it is mysterious. The story of the five foolish and five wise virgins and their oil lamps is vivid and delightful (Mt 25:1-13). But the wise virgins are mean and do not share their oil with the foolish ones; and the tardy bridegroom is unjust to shut the foolish girls out. Yet the moral is pertinent: “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.” The parable of the talents which immediately follows (Mt 25:14-40) is akin to the story of the unjust steward in Luke. It takes as a fact of life the economics of worldliness, commends
lending at high interest, and cites the wisdom of a lord who reaps “where [he] hast not sown” and gathers “where [he] hast not strawed.” It includes the notorious verse 29: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Unlike in Mark 4 : 25, in this instance Jesus is not speaking of knowledge but of property. Jesus adds: “[C]ast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: for there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
That, we take it, is the wisdom of the world. For Jesus immediately passes to the judgment where the unworldly are divided from the worldly: “And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left” (Mt 25 : 33). He tells the sheep: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you” (25 : 34). Jesus goes on to explain that those in this world who feed the hungry and the thirsty, and who take in homeless strangers, and who clothe the naked, and who visit the sick and the imprisoned shall be rewarded, and he makes the striking point that whoever befriends “the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (25:40).
The parables, taken as a whole, are a vast dichotomy of contrasts expressed in stories and images. Darkness and light, this world and the next, outward show and inner goodness, sheep and goats, material wisdom and spiritual simplicity, rich in goods and poor in spirit, cunning and innocence. There is every sign that when Jesus told his stories the people listening clamored for more. So the parables should be seen both in groups and in their totality for their meanings to be made plain and consistent. Jesus was sometimes subtle and mysterious and even obscure in detail, but his distinction between right and wrong always emerged before he had finished. He left his hearers to talk and argue among themselves. That was his intention. His gift was not only to teach but to encourage people to teach one another, to take seriously the question of what constitutes the good life and to debate it earnestly.
