Parables of Matthew
- Jesus and His Parables (from Lesson 1)
- Parable = story equating a scene from the familiar world with the Kingdom of God
- often includes metaphors and similes.
- interpreted on multiple levels
- taking into account setting and context in which it was told
- Central message does not change but often the significance of and nuances within a parable shift from person to person or over time.
- Parables both explain and hide truth
- Jesus represents spiritual ideas in a way people can understand
- clarifying his teaching
- Jesus hides the truth
- As an act of mercy.
- Once you understand something, you are responsible for it
(Matt 13:10,13) - As a test of hunger.
- They expose people’s spiritual state (John 12:29)
- Those who hunger after God will dig deeper.
- It is the glory of God to hide a matter. It is the glory of Kings to search it out. (Prov. 25:2)
- These stories catch the hearers and call for a response.
- Those who understand the parable must make a decision one way or the other.
- To ignore the parable once you understand is a decision to do nothing.
- There is not middle ground.
- Aesop’s Fables (http://tomsdomain.com/aesop/aesopmain.htm)
- The Father, his sons, the bundle of sticks
- An old man on the point of death summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice. He ordered them to bring in a bundle of sticks, and said to his eldest son: "Break it."
The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the bundle. The other sons also tried, but none succeeded.
"Untie the bundle," said the father, "and each of you take a stick." When they had done so, he told them: "Now, break," and each stick was easily broken. - Meaning: [United we stand, divided we fall]
- The Donkey and the Mule
- A muleteer started on a journey with both a Donkey and a Mule, both loaded. The Donkey became tired and asked the Mule to assist with part of his load. The Mule ignored the Donkey who became more tired and eventually died. The muleteer, not being able to carry the load, loaded the entire Mule's burden onto the Donkey; who had to carry the entire burden alone.
- Meaning: [If you do not help another in need, you may find your own work increased]
- The Donkey in Lions Skin
- A Donkey once found a Lion's skin which the hunters had left out in the sun to dry. He put it on and went towards his native village. All fled at his approach, both men and animals, and he was a proud Donkey that day. In his delight he lifted up his voice and brayed, but then every one knew him, and his owner came up and gave him a sound cudgeling for the fright he had caused. And shortly afterwards a Fox came up to him and said: "Ah, I knew you by your voice."
- Meaning: [Fine clothes and station may disguise for a time, but a fool is know by his words]
- Interpreting Parables
- Interpret Sower together as class
- Possibly interpret several more as a class
- Group work.
Parables
Jesus used parables to teach complex truths to his followers. It is important that when we study Jesus’ parables we see the richness and complexity of his teachings. The following is a guide to help you. Not all sections will be completed for every parable.
Parable: _The Parable of the Sower_ Matt 13: 1-23
- The context in which the parable was told.
- Cultural background of and Old Testament References within the parable.
-No specific references.
- Symbolism within the parable.
Types of soil = the people who hear the teaching of Jesus
Birds = devil
Weeds = Cares of this world
Rocks = people who have no depth of faith
Good soil = people who hear teaching and do what it says
- Meaning of the parable (may have been supplied by Jesus).
- Application for the original audience and for us.
-We need to make sure we faithfully respond to God’s Word and do not let the worries and trials of life interfere. We also have a responsibility to bring Christ’s message. People may not always be receptive, but we need to plant the message abundantly because we don’t know on what type of soil our witness may fall.
Then, go in-depth into Jesus’ parables:
-Matt 5: Lamb under a basket
-Matt 7: Wise and foolish builders
-Matt 9: New cloth on old garment, New wine in Old wineskin
-Matt 13: Kingdom parables (7)
-Sower, Weeds, Mustard Seed, Yeast, Hidden Treasure, Pearl, Net
-Matt 18: Lost sheep and Unmerciful servant
-Matt 20: Workers in the vineyard
-Matt 21: Two Sons (Prodigal Son), and Tenants of the Vineyard
-Matt 22: Parable of Wedding Feast
-Matt 25: 10 Bridesmaids, and Talents
(19 parables in total)
Particularly, we will talk about the following parables:
Lost Sheep, Wise and Foolish Young Women
Parable of the Lost Sheep (18 and Luke 15)
All information is from Kenneth Bailey’s exegesis of Luke 15 from Poet and Peasant.
Addressing Pharisees as shepherds
We know from Luke that Jesus addresses this parable to Pharisees to answer there grumblings about his association with “sinners”. He addresses them as ‘shepherds’.
In Jewish writings, the figure of a shepherd was a noble one: Moses, Abraham, Kings, God, all referred to as shepherds over the people of Israel. In contrast flesh-and-blood shepherds who in the first century wandered around after sheep were despised and considered unclean (Bailey, Poet, 147). “It is difficult to know how the rabbis managed to revere the shepherd of the Old Testament and despise the shepherd who herded the neighbor’s sheep. But this seems to have been the case” (147).
“The decision to address Pharisees as shepherds is culturally and theological conditioned decision of some significance” (147). He says “which of you”.
Cultural background for shepherding
Because the man is in charge of 100 sheep most likely he does not own them. The word “owned” in v12 can also be translated as “being responsible for”. Often a number of families get together and hire a shepherd to take care of their combined flocks. The shepherd is usually a member of the extended family. This means he naturally feels “responsible before the entire family clan; any loss is a loss to all of them” (148)
Interesting distinction between Luke 15 and Matt 18. In Luke the shepherd loses the sheep and in Matt the sheep wanders away. The responsibility for the loss is different in the different tellings of the same parable. In Luke the shepherd is negligent.
Flocks are almost never attended by a single person. When one of the sheep is lost, one of the shepherds goes to look for it while the other one or two shepherds take the sheep home for the night.
Interpretation
“He is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off” (Matt 18: 13)
Is 53:6 “We all like sheep have gone astray.” Most likely Jesus is using irony. Everyone wanders off. Everyone needs to repent.
“For first-century Judaism repentance was a way of bringing in the kingdom. In the preaching of Jesus repentance was a response to the kingdom already come” (155) –good distinction
Wise and Foolish Builders (Matt 7)
All information is from Kenneth Bailey’s book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes
-Given a place of prominence at the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
-Reminiscent of Is 28:14-28. Isaiah is not unsure of the solidity of the foundation Israel relies on (the agreement with Egypt) and predicts a storm is coming (Assyria) which will demolish the house. Then he says the Lord will lay a foundation which will give strength to the house.
-Anyone who both hears and puts into practice Jesus’ teachings is building on Isaiah’s foundation. “Isaiah’s parable of the destroyed building and the promised new foundation is not fulfilled in the Qumran or the second temple but in me and my words” (327).
-Hearing and doing are compared to the hard work of digging through hard clay and building a foundation.
-Storms hit both houses. Faith in Jesus does not provide magical protection from hardship.
-Jesus is the foundation promised in Isaiah 28.
Workers in the Vineyard (Compassionate Employer) (Matt 21)
All information taken from Kenneth Bailey’s book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes
The central focus of this story is the amazing compassion and grace of the employer. The classic ring composition finds three surprises in the center: there is a steward, the owner pays everyone a living wage, the master reverses the natural expected order of payment.
Denarius = living wage of the day
This parable actually ends with the phrase “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or is your eye evil because I am good?” Interesting parallel to the teaching on money in Matthew.
The owner needs more workers and goes to find the day laborers in the city square. Halfway through the morning he goes back and finds men standing (not sitting) waiting for work. It’s surprising that the vineyard owner keeps going back. Surely he knows how much work needs to be done. The master’s motive is compassion for the unemployed. Every 3 hours he goes back. At the end of the workday he returns yet again and finds men standing (not sitting) still enduring the humiliation of not finding work. Instead of humiliating the men by giving them a handout, he hires them for an hour.
1st surprise: an estate manager comes on the scene. If there is a manager, why was the owner traveling to and from town all day?
2nd: “the wage” = a full day’s pay
3rd: order of payment is unexpected. He wants those who worked all day to see his grace.
The story focuses on the showing of great grace and compassion which is resented by those who feel that they have earned their way to more. No one is underpaid in the parable. The complaint comes from the justly paid who cannot tolerate grace.
Possibilities for Complainers:
-Pharisees: Jesus welcomes into the kingdom those who have not spent their lives keeping the law and making such types equal to the law-keepers. Jesus’ opponents thought that God’s grace should be uniquely available to the ‘righteous’ who keep the law.
-Disciples who believed Jesus early on and may feel superior to the later ones.
-Those who obey the will of God AND seek to dictate God’s will as regards to others. They seek to control the master’s grace and pressure him into denying grace to the needy.
Justice is more than equal application of the law; it include respect for the dignity of those in need and a deep concern for their welfare.
Tenants (Vineyard Owner and His Son) (Matt 21)
All information taken from Kenneth Bailey’s book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes
This happens after the cleansing of the Temple. The response from the Sanhedrin is to send a delegation of Priests, scribes, and elders. They want to know by what authority he takes over the Temple mount. He refuses to answer directly but instead tells this story.
Many parallels to Isaiah’s vineyard in Is 5. Jesus retells and gives new shape to Isaiah’s story.
Servants wounded and cast out are the prophets. The owner has a right to contact the authorities, who will storm the vineyard and arrest the violent men and bring them to justice. The question is what will the owner do with the anger at the injustice shown to his servants.
In Isaiah’s story, the entire vineyard is destroyed. To the surprise of the reader, the owner responds by sending his son. The vineyard owner’s hope is that the violent men in the vineyard will sense the indescribable nobility of the owner who sends his beloved son alone and unarmed into the vineyard in response to the violent acts they had committed against the owner’s servants. The implication is that if the renters accept the authority of the son and pay their rent, amnesty will apply.
Story of king of Jordan: Hussein bin Talal
One night in the early 1980s, the king was informed by his security police that a group of about seventy-five Jordanian army officers were at that very moment meeting in a nearby barracks plotting a military overthrow of the kingdom. The security officers requested permission to surround the barracks and arrest the plotters. After a somber pause the king refused and said, “Bring me a small helicopter.” A helicopter was brought. The king climbed in with the pilot and himself flew to the barracks and landed on its flat roof. The king told the pilot, “If you hear gun shots, fly away at once without me.”
Unarmed, the king then walked down two flights of stairs and suddenly appeared in the room where the plotters were meeting and quietly said to them:
“Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that you are meeting here tonight to finalize your plans to overthrow the government, take over the country and install a military dictator. If you do this, the army will break apart and the country will be plunged into civil war. Tens of thousands of innocent people will die. There is no need for this. Here I am! Kill me and proceed. That way, only one man will die.”
After a moment of stunned silence, the rebels as one, rushed forward to kiss the king’s hand and feet and pledge loyalty to him for life.
“inheritance will be ours” The renters think that if they can occupy the vineyard for three years the vineyard will become theirs by law.
Unlike Isaiah’s vineyard, the renters are criticized not the vineyard itself. The renters forgot they were renters and began to assume that they were owners. The parable was directed at the ‘scribes and chief priests’ and they knew it. Something is to be taken from them and given to others. Most likely the ‘others’ are Jesus and the disciples or new leaders God will raise up—not the Gentiles.
In the 1st century the house of Annas, with his five sons (each of whom became high priests) and Caiaphas (his son-in-law), controlled the high priestly office for decades. By means of his brief occupation of the temple area, Jesus challenged the assumption that they would always control it. Jesus saw himself and his disciples as having the right to define what it meant to be faithful to the God of Abraham, Moses and the prophets, which was for him the inheritance that mattered.
After the telling of the parable, the religious leaders are shocked and Jesus quotes Psalm 118 and Isaiah 8. In Psalm 118:19-28: 1) a procession going up to and through the gates of the temple 2) the cry “Hosanna” 3) the affirmation, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” 4) the carrying of branches in the procession. The center of this is the phrase “The stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone”. The triumphal entry occurred along with the normal singing of the songs of assent to Jerusalem (namely Ps. 118). He is basically saying, I am the center of the new thing God is building.
Then he quotes Isaiah 8:14-15 attributing the verses to himself which speak about God in the original context. He says, anyone who follows him gets sanctuary and peace, those who do not are destroyed. Jesus offers grace and judgment.
Summary:
1) The parable exposes God’s willingness to give himself through is son, in total vulnerability, in order to win his people back to himself. The incarnation is affirmed and the cross is forseen.
2) Jesus is in the line of the prophets and is also the beloved son. Language describing God in the OT is quoted and applied to Jesus.
3) They imagined that if they controlled the vineyard long enough, and if they could kill the son, the vineyard would become theirs. The fruits of the vineyard must be offered to the owner.
4) The fruits are “justice” and “righteousness”
5) The rights of the messianic king that were affirmed in the triumphal entry are hear repeated and clarified.
6) Judgment in the parable focuses on the temple leaders and their demise, not on the people.
Wise and Foolish Young Women (Matt 25)
All information taken from Kenneth Bailey’s book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes
The style of the parable is very Hebrew. the center of the story is the climax “Behold the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!” (269).
Background for 1st century Jewish Weddings
Wedding banquets often take place in the home of the groom. People from around the town come to the house to celebrate. As the crowd gathers, the groom and several of his close friends make their way to the home of the bride (either across town or in a nearby village). The bride is placed on a riding animal and is escorted back by the raucous young men. Usually, they take the longest most circuitous route possible in order to include everyone in the fun. This can take a very long time. When the parade reaches the house of the groom, the party begins.
Women, both young and old, always carry lamps at night. “Their reputation, and in some cases their personal safety, depends on the lamps” (272).
All the young women act in similarly appropriate manners in the parable: all have lamps and each of the lamps is burning.
The parade takes longer than all the women expected. When the cry comes that the Bridegroom is here, they all wake up and adjust the loose unattached wicks of the olive oil lamps.
“The reader of the parable is left hanging. In the Middle East the word ‘no’ is never an answer, rather it is a pause in the negotiations. Does the bridegroom relent and let them in or not?” (273)
What Jesus says
-You cannot borrow preparations for the Kingdom. Commitment and the discipleship that follows can be neither loaned nor borrowed. (274)
-Jesus is disappointed at the lack of readiness to receive the Kingdom when it arrives.
-He issues a challenge and a warning about his second coming. He knows some who come to the banquet, and are deliberately waiting for his arrival, will not be ready when he appears.
-The Kingdom has a door that can and does close. Those who are unfaithful as disciples will suffer punishment.
-The arrival of the Bridegroom is unknown. Speculation is pointless.
-Jesus is the returning bridegroom who will arrive joyfully at the end of the age.
Talents (Matt 25)
All information taken from Kenneth Bailey’s book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes
Up to this point, it looks like the kingdom of heaven is going to come immediately (Lk 19:11)
Jesus used a political scene familiar to his audience as the background for the parable. Herod the Great made a trip to Rome in 40 BC seeking a Roman appointment as king. His son Archelaus made a similar journey in 4 BC. Herod was appointed. Archelaus was banished.
The nobleman wants to know, “Are you willing to take the risk and openly declare yourselves to be my loyal servants (during my absence) in a world where many oppose me and my rule?” As the nobleman distributes gifts to his servants, he is in effect saying, “once I return, having received kingly power, it will be easy to declare yourself publicly to be my loyal servants. I am more interested in how you conduct yourselves when I am absent and you have to pay a high price to openly identify yourself with me.”
When he comes back and settles accounts with them, he wants to discover the extant to which they have openly and publicly declared their loyalty to him during the risky period of his absence. The focus is not on profit but rather faithfulness to an unseen master in a hostile environment.
The 3rd servant says “I see you as a thief”. For the Bedouins of the past the worth of a man was measured by his skill as a raider. King David was renown for his ability to provide for his people by raiding the surrounding nations. The servant describes his master as one who plunders his neighbors and is successful at it—he takes up what he does not lay down and reaps what he does not sow. But if the master is a nobleman in an agricultural environment this language is an insult. The servant misjudged his master. The faithful servants had no difficulty understanding their master’s true nature, it was the unfaithful slave who completely misunderstood the master; in trying to compliment him, the servant instead insults him.
The master observes “you knew me [i.e. you experienced me] as a hard man…” He does not admit that he is a hard man but says, “ I understand that you experienced me as a hard man.” The judgment he then passes on this unfaithful servant is that the servant is to be left with the twisted view of his master that was produced by the servant’s unfaithfulness.
Our perception of God is how we experience God. Ps 18:25-26. The communities’ attitudes and ethical behavior influence God’s revelation of himself to it. The servant’s unfaithfulness produced a twisted view of his master.
The one who responds with faithfulness to gifts received will receive greater gifts. but the one who proves to be unfaithful will lose the very gift with which he began.
Meaning:
-Jesus, the nobleman, gives gifts to his disciples for them to use in his service. We are always accountable for the resources God gives us.
-The master’s primary expectation from his servants is courageous public faithfulness to an unseen master in an environment where some are actively opposed to his rule.
-The reward for faithfulness is greater responsibility (not vacation)
-Unfaithfulness distorts our view of God.
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Walk through several parables with the class. Discuss metaphorical and allegorical interpretations with the students. Assign groups to split up the parables and present them to the rest of the class.
Assignment:
- Finish Matthew reading questions by the end of this section on parables.
- Read each of the parables in Matthew (with the exception of the ones we’ve done in class together), and fill out a parables worksheet for each. I suggest going in order through the book of Matthew.
-Matt 7: Wise and foolish builders
-Matt 9: New cloth on old garment, New wine in old wineskin
-Matt 13: Kingdom parables (7)
-Sower, Weeds, Mustard Seed, Yeast, Hidden Treasure, Pearl, Net
-Matt 18: Lost sheep and Unmerciful servant
-Matt 20: Workers in the vineyard
-Matt 21: Two Sons, and Tenants of the Vineyard
-Matt 22: Parable of Wedding Feast
-Matt 25: 10 Bridesmaids, and Talents
(19 parables in total)
- Show Mr. Busch completed parable worksheets for all 19 Parables.
Parables for Groups:
Group 1—Easy
Salt and Light 5:13-16
Net 13:47-50
Workers in the Vineyard 20:1-16
Talents 25:14-30
Group 2—Easy
Wise and Foolish Builders 7:24-27
Lost Sheep 18:10-14
Two Sons 21:28-32
Tenants of the Vineyard 21:33-46
Group 3—Medium
Mustard Seed 13:31-32
Yeast 13:33
Unmerciful Servant 18:21-35
Wedding Feast 22:1-14
Group 4—Hard
Garment and Wineskin 9:14-17
Weeds 13:24-30, 37-43
Hidden Treasure 13:44
Pearl 13:45-46
10 Bridesmaids 25:1-13
