He Spoke to Them Only in Parables
Really?
Do you like parables?
Sometimes people wish that Jesus would get right to a point (like the disciples in tomorrow’s passage). But what if the point is the parable? What if the medium (story) is also the message?
Do you suppose God could have given the message of the gospel by dropping more stone tablets from the sky? That would have gotten right to the point we’d desire. Just give us a statement on every possible scenario.
But God didn’t do that. God came in the person of Jesus. A person who lived in a certain time in a certain place in a certain way with a particular name who walked in actual places across moments of time and conversation and slumber and food.
The movement of events. A story. A parable.
Jesus’ whole life is a parable.
And so is ours.
We want concepts and treatises and words and the like, but God gave us a person and parables.
What does such a move, methodology say to us?
Matthew 13:31-35
He told another parable to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in his field. It’s the smallest of all seeds. But when it’s grown, it’s the largest of all vegetable plants. It becomes a tree so that the birds in the sky come and nest in its branches.”
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast, which a woman took and hid in a bushel of wheat flour until the yeast had worked its way through all the dough.”
Jesus said all these things to the crowds in parables, and he spoke to them only in parables. This was to fulfill what the prophet spoke:
I’ll speak in parables;
I’ll declare what has been hidden since the beginning of the world.
Prayer
God,
Help me plant some mustard seeds today.
By your spirit & in Christ,
Amen.