I'm doing a study of the Prodigal Son story with my men's Bible study. I've already had two introductory sessions. Here is the third: an examination of the basics of parables.
mp3player 3.10 creakMark 4:10-13 is our key passage for understanding parables. Here Jesus says that the parables are a way of speaking to his general audience with the purpose of revealing the condition of their hearts and their attitude toward God in the present. A good example of this is Mark 12:1-11. Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard tenants, and the religious leaders are immediately angry, because they realize he is telling the story about them.
Jesus quotes Isaiah's sarcastic comment that parables reveal the condition and attitude of the hearer more than they change the attitude of the hearer. This tells us that Jesus sees parables as a type of prophetic communication, and that the point isn't conveying information or even persuading people toward decision as much as revealing the basic attitude of the hearer toward God and his Kingdom that has arrived in Jesus.
In that respect, Mark 1:14-15 is crucial for understanding parables. Here Mark says that Jesus' Galilean message was 1) about God 2) about his Kingdom and 3) about the hearer's response to God in the present. I believe this remains an excellent summary of what we will find in almost every parable.
Finally, it appears that Jesus told almost all of his parables to Jewish audiences. He does miracles for non-Jewish people, but the parables are a way of speaking to Israel. This suggests that the parables are Jesus' way of using a shared "story-worldview" to communicate. In almost every parable, there are identifiable elements of the Jewish "story" and the Biblical material that Jews were familiar with.
For example, in speaking of judges, Kings, vineyards, landowners, sons and sheep, Jesus is relating to the "Jewish story." In saying the parables were about the "Kingdom of God," Jesus was relating to a shared concept.
This means that the story of the Prodigal son works the same way. The Father, the sons, the dilemma of the son's rebellion, failure and restoration all related to Israel's story and way of understanding God, the exile, Gentile oppression, Jewish unfaithfulness and the traditions of the Pharisees.
The story of the Prodigal Son, like so many of the parables, uses these elements in surprising and subversive ways to show God, his Kingdom and our response in a new way.
Posted by Michael Spencer at March 14, 2005 08:02 AM