parables

Jesus’ parables discourse in Matthew ‘s Gospel gets off to a rollicking start. Fist he tells the Parable of the Sower, with its public message of an exorbitantly generous God but private message about the variability in reception to his message. Then he tells the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, on the need … Continue reading The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven

Last time, we looked at Jesus’ Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat. We saw how it offers a profound and surprising message of forbearance and lack of judgmentalism, insisting that it is better in God’s Kingdom to let a ‘bad seed’ thrive in the here and now than to risk uprooting one of the … Continue reading The Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat: Part 2, Jesus’ Interpretation

The last two posts we looked at both the Parable of the Sower and its interpretation. We saw that Jesus took advantage of the ability of stories to carry multiple meanings, telling a story that could mean one thing in public, but another for his inner circle. The next parable in Matthew 13 is another … Continue reading The Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat: Part 1, The Story

In the last post, we looked at the Parable of the Sower. We saw that the emphasis of the story is on the generosity of the sower, who sows liberally without regard to potential yield. But that isn’t the whole story. For this is one of the rare times when the Bible records Jesus interpreting … Continue reading The Parable of the Sower: Part 2, Jesus’ Interpretation

So far this series on Jesus’ parables has dealt with introductory material, looking for a definition of what a parable is, and trying to understand Jesus’ surprising rationale for using them. While I thought it was important to tackle this last piece before jumping into any of the parables themselves, all three of the Gospels … Continue reading The Parable of the Sower: Part 1, The Story