~ By Derek Lang
Awhile back, I picked up Robert Short’s book “The Parables of Peanuts.” I thought it would be some light reading – after all what could be more enjoyable than reading cartoons about Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy?! But references to Kierkegaard, Barth, and Nietzsche were early indications of some heady theology on its way. Contrary to what we may have been taught in Sunday School, parables are deceptively not so simple.
Short explains that parables, such as those told by Jesus or Charles Schulz’s lovable Snoopy and Charlie Brown, are an art form which can be described as sugar-coated pills – treats that are treatments – that bring people to swallow medicine that is deeply needed. He defined three categories or purposes of parables:
· The Lens – The least threatening and most direct form, these stories use words and examples to bring sharp focus. An example: The Good Samaritan. [Luke 10:25-37]
· The Mirror – We follow and enjoy listening to these stories that poke at the characters until we realize that the story is about ourselves. An example: Laborers in the Vineyard [Matthew 20:1-16]
· Through a Glass Darkly – “It is the art-parable that is deeply puzzling, that cuts all understanding out from under us so that initially we do not know which way to go. Many of the parables of Jesus were designed to do just this: not to give an easy answer, but to provoke an altogether new kind of question.” An example: The priests and scribes asking Jesus by what authority he did miracles [Luke 20:1-8]
Over the next few weeks, we will dig into the Parables of Jesus. Instead of yawning at old stories of our childhood Sunday School, I invite us to not only hear a new twist but also be in wonderment about how true they are about us or about life in general. These are not just stories for the Christian to tell non-Christian; rather it is just as important for us as Christians to learn from.
Now, I do not want to scare you away Parables, so I will offer a thought that we learned in our Conference Lay Ministers class on Christian Education about teaching the Bible. The lesson was to teach the stories and not worry about teaching the lesson. The students will simply enjoy the stories. But as they grow and mature, it will someday dawn on them that their current life situation actually relates to a story they heard long ago in the Bible. And at that point, they will realize how marvelous, how wise, and how meaningful God’s words really are. May that same light bulb turn on for us.