15th Ordinary Sunday of the Year - Cycle A
Why teach in parables?
We nowadays leap to the conclusion that Jesus was simply a good teacher who knew how to reach his audience. If he used vivid stories and word-pictures the simple people would find it easier to follow, understand and remember.
But that doesn’t sit easily with the hard words Jesus says. He seems to think there are two
kinds of listeners out there. Those who listen and understand and those who can listen and listen but never get the point. Before we think this is too dismissive, we need to remember that not everyone who was listening was trying to understand. Some of them were trying
very hard to find something to use against him as evidence. In this way the parables were both a protection (telling stories is not a crime, but the interpretation might be!), and a way of separating out, from the start, those who
listened with good will.
We know that the only time the enemies of Jesus felt they knew for sure what he meant, was after the parable of the Bad Tenants (Mk 12:1-12). It says that they knew it was a story against them and their reaction was to plot his death. At his trial when the ask him what he is teaching he tells them to ask the people since he taught every day in public. This is a clever answer, since they know that stories cannot be used as evidence against him - and for this reason the court attendant slaps his face.
And in the Gospel of John Jesus says that he judges no-one, but everyone has their judge already: the words that he speaks. Just as cockroaches flee the light while moths fly to it, so different reactions to Jesus’ words show what is going on in the heart.
This gives us cause for thought. Even though we have been taught the meanings of the parables, are we listening with an open heart, willing to learn and to change how we live? Or are we listening with deaf ears, listening and listening but never really hearing what the Lord is telling us, never acting as though we understand him? There is a wonderful wisdom for shaping lives in these parables of Jesus, if we hear them humbly, wanting to understand.
