“Getting the message across?”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Quiet Time – Monday, May 6, 2024
Matthew 13: 1-16 (Forward, p. 8) CEV p. 998
Many people in ‘high places’ in Western countries have rediscovered of late something that many of us have known for years, namely the importance of stories and storytelling. Preachers, poets, writers, actors, and artists of various sorts have known this for years: that is why their works engage and stimulate us and move us into tears or even into action. But now advertisers and executives have discovered this as well. For instance, researchers are now suggesting that company managers seek to put their product or service into story form to present it more persuasively to the buying public.
This is something that Jesus knew fully well, which is why He so often engaged His audience with stories or parables. His stories and parables are such that they caught people’s attention, and moreover were quite memorable. However, likeable as they were, and interesting and engaging, they always held a deeper truth, a spiritual one. Here is where He ‘lost’ many people.
How this could happen is quite easy to see. For instance, just lately I came across the Grimm Brothers version of Rumpelstiltskin. It is, of course, a rather engaging fairy tale, but then I immediately began to question whether there was perhaps a deeper meaning to it, a moral that its authors intended to get across.
I had several initial thoughts about it, which were later confirmed by what I read on the internet. Here is a couple of their offerings:
“The moral of the story is, ‘Always tell the truth, and take responsibility of your actions’. If the miller's daughter had been truthful to the King, she would have never found herself in this situation. However, once she was trapped under the burden of her promise, she had to find her way out of it and honour the deal.”
“Rumpelstiltskin is a fairy tale that illustrates how confused values can lead to problems. One of the themes is about staying quiet when you have nothing meaningful to contribute. The miller could have
avoided a lot of trouble for his daughter by keeping his mouth closed
instead of trying to impress the king.”
But, I must say, how many people have read or heard that story, that fairy tale, without giving it even a second thought—entertained, but no more. That is what happened with so many of Jesus’ listeners.
But there were the few, people who were curious, intrigued, perhaps like me with Rumpelstiltskin, who wanted to know more. And that is exactly what Jesus wanted. His stories, His parables, became something of a test, a kind of weeding out mechanism, to sort out who was truly interested and eager to learn and grow from those who were not.
Nevertheless, this leaves me, and perhaps all of us, with a question, and a challenge, namely whether we will just hear what God has to say, whether in the Scriptures or elsewhere, and leave it there, simply as a story and an unblemished fact, or whether we will ponder and explore further, curious to see whether He is, in fact, wanting to tell us more.
Forward notes: “Then the disciples came and asked him, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’” (verse 10).
“I identify strongly with the disciples asking Jesus why he teaches in parables because I find myself wanting to reach through the pages of the Bible and ask Jesus to just say what he means. Being removed from the context of Jesus by several millennia does not make interpreting the parables any easier. Neither we nor the original hearers are able to grasp the fullness of God’s reign, so it makes sense that Jesus would use metaphor and story to grant us a sliver of understanding, not to obscure the truth but to present it.
“The other gift of his parables is how they make Jesus’s teachings come to life in vivid, memorable ways. The concept of the ‘Good Samaritan’ has resonance outside of Christian circles. Although the parables might confound and frustrate us at times, sitting with them in prayer opens them and us up to new and deeper realities about God and God’s kingdom as we encounter them over and over again.”
Moving Forward: “What parables do you find difficult? Which ones do you hold close?”