"Parables About Jesus" (Mark 14:12-16 & John 19: 31-33, 40-42)

For the past several weeks my sermons have focused on the parables of scripture.  Using John Dominic Crossan’s book The Power of Parable as a guide, I have shown how parables in scripture were of three types, the most powerful being the challenge parable.  I mentioned that challenge parables were those which challenged the hearer’s prejudices and preconceived notions, and presented an entirely different worldview than that which is commonly held.  In other words, they turn things upside down.  I have presented the books of Ruth, Jonah, and Job as Old Testament examples of challenge parables, and have discussed a number of the parables Jesus told and showed how they employed this traditional type of storytelling.

Those who wrote about Jesus could not help but be impressed by the parables he told.  I’m talking specifically about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  In fact, the way they wrote about Jesus led John Dominic Crossan to say that, in many ways, what they did was write parables about Jesus.

I’ll explain that a little more in a few minutes.  But first, I want to tell you about how I spent my summers while I was in college.  Every summer, I would spend a couple of weeks on the staff of a camp for mentally disabled adults.  These campers were adults of all ages (but all over the age of 18) who had autism, downs syndrome, and other intellectual challenges. 

This experience followed several years in high school when I volunteered to help run a boy scout troop for a group of developmentally disabled scouts.  We ran meetings and took these scouts on outings, camping trips, and even camporees where they competed in events alongside scouts from many other units.  The support they received from their fellow scouts always amazed me.

Because of these experiences, when the movie Rain Man came out, people asked me how true it was.  In that movie, Dustin Hoffman plays an autistic savant named Charlie, who demonstrates a number of remarkable abilities.  People asked me if the story seemed true, if Dustin Hoffman’s character seemed true.

Well, I said, yes; I had met people who could do what Dustin Hoffman’s character did in Rain Man.  However, I hadn’t met one single person who could do all the things he could do.  It seemed to me that his character was a composite, incorporating the traits and abilities that any number of people might have.  However, a movie about “any number of people” would get tedious and confusing and boring.  So those “any number of people” were combined into one character.  And even though that one character does not exist in real life, the portrayal in the movie of people with autism is very, very true.

In other words, that character isn’t a literally true depiction of any one person in real life; and yet, it is a very true depiction of people with autism.

In fact, if the characteristics of that one character were divided up into multiple characters in order to be more accurate to real life, the meaning and deeper theme of the movie would be lost; and if the meaning and deeper theme were lost, then the movie would actually become less true, even though it is more accurate.

Make sense?

A few years after Rain Man, Dreamworks Animation produced the movie Prince of Egypt, an animated version of the story of Moses.  And in that movie, they made some changes to the story.  For example, the Bible says that the daughter of Pharaoh discovered baby Moses in a basket; but the movie changed it so that it was Pharaoh’s wife, not daughter, who discovered Moses.

According to the Bible, Moses was 80 years old when he returned to Egypt and confronted Pharaoh.  In the movie, I must say he looked remarkably good for 80.  And then, of course, he led the people through the wilderness for another 40 years before dying.

In the movie, he never looks older than perhaps mid 30s.

And the movie had a number of religious leaders serving as consultants.  And these religious leaders had no problems with the changes made by the moviemakers.  Why?  Because they recognized that the themes of the story were still present, and in fact, the changes made by the movie makers helped bring out the meaning of the story better than if they had strictly followed the Biblical account.  The way the story was told in the movie expressed the truth of the biblical story better than if it had followed exactly every detail that we read in the book of Exodus.

And besides, there is good reason to suspect that the book of Exodus itself was more concerned with bringing out the meaning of the story and its deeper truth, than with being accurate with all the details.  I mean, come on:  a man of 100 years old, 110, 120, leading people on a strenuous wilderness journey?

It’s possible that this story – the story of the exodus – could be considered a parable, and perhaps even a challenge parable since it conveyed a deep truth and featured the reordering of society.  But unlike many of the parables Jesus told, which were fictitious stories told to reveal truth, the story of the exodus, it seems, had its origins in historical events, even if everything in the story isn’t historically true. 

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true true.

Ernest Hemingway once said that “all good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.”  Does that make sense to you?  In the greatest literature of the world, stories of fiction have a way of conveying powerful, important truths in a way that historical accounts just can’t.

Someone once asked well-known Disciple preacher Fred Craddock, who has a reputation for weaving wonderful stories into his sermons, if all the stories he’s ever told were true.  And the answer Craddock gave was: “Of course they’re true; they happen every day.”

Then again, I’m not really sure that Craddock said that.  It could just be a story told about him.  But it’s true nevertheless.

So… the gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – in writing about Jesus, they were inspired by how Jesus wove meaning and deep truth into the stories he told, and they did the same in the stories they told about Jesus.

This is why John Dominic Crossan divides his book into two sections.  The first section is titled, “Parables by Jesus.”  The second section is titled, “Parables About Jesus.”

The gospel writers wanted to convey actual historical events, but this was not their first concern.  Their first concern was to convey deeper meaning and truth. 

For example: we heard two scripture readings this morning, one from Mark, and one from John.  Did you notice how they contradict each other?

We heard a few verses from Mark’s depiction of the Last Supper.  Mark saw the Last Supper that Jesus had with his disciples as a new Passover meal.  He talked about the Passover, and how the disciples prepared for the Passover meal, and how Jesus added new meaning and significance to this Passover meal.  So obviously, what we call the Last Supper took place on the day of Passover.

John, on the other hand, saw Jesus as the paschal lamb, the lamb that is sacrificed for the sins of those present at the Passover meal.  On the cross, Jesus dies for the sins of the world.  So, in John’s gospel, it makes sense that it is the crucifixion that takes place on the day of Passover, not the Last Supper.  The Last Supper was the day before.

So which story is true?  Marks’ story of the Lord’s Supper being on Passover, or John’s story of the crucifixion being on Passover?

Some people try to reconcile the two stories.  But they can’t be reconciled.  The Lord’s Supper was one day, the crucifixion was the next day, and they both can’t be on the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the first day of Passover.

It’s possible that neither story is true as far as the history is concerned.  It’s possible that both Mark and John are wrong, that neither event actually took place on the day of the Passover meal.  Do we say, then, that neither story is true?

On the other hand, there is great truth in thinking of the Lord’s Supper as a sort of re-invented Passover meal.  This is a meaningful way of thinking of the Lord’s Supper, and therefore we can say that there is great truth present in Mark’s gospel.

And, there is great truth in thinking of Jesus’s death on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, like the paschal lamb.  This is a meaningful way of thinking of the crucifixion, and therefore we can say that there is great truth present in John’s gospel.

For some Christians, it is a real challenge to think that either Mark or John – or both – are wrong, that there are errors in the Bible.  After all, it’s the Bible: God’s holy word.  Every word is true, is it not?

Well, if you want to talk history for a moment, the Bible was not interpreted literally for most of Christian history.  It wasn’t until the Enlightenment that some Christians began to look to the Bible for factual evidence. 

During the Enlightenment, in the period following the great scientific discoveries of people like Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, “truth” came to be identified with actual facts.  People were fascinated with these discoveries about how the universe works, and began looking to the Bible for scientific facts as well.  They began to look for “factual truth” in the Bible.

  But up until that time, the stories of scripture were read more for their deeper truth and metaphorical meaning, with little attention or concern given to whether the stories in the Bible were “factual,” or whether certain events “actually happened.”  This way of reading scripture is actually quite recent in Christian history.

Now certainly, many things in scripture did “actually happen.”  There is no doubt among scholars that a man named Jesus actually existed, that he was raised in a small Galilean town called Nazareth, that he attracted a large following due to his teachings, that he was recognized as having a special connection to God, that he was seen as a threat to many of those in power, and that he was crucified by the Roman government.

But it is in these actual events that the gospel writers saw a deeper and profound truth at work, and their goal was to convey this deeper and profound truth to their readers.  Their goal was not to “get it right” concern all the facts of history. 

And that’s why, for example, Luke says that Mary and Joseph were from Nazareth, while Matthew says they were from Bethlehem.  Each has their own theological reason for saying so.  At least one of them has to be factually wrong; and yet, both are true because of the deeper symbolism involved.

Now, for Christians who have been influenced by the more recent centuries’ emphasis on reading the Bible as history, this is a whole different way of reading.  It’s reading for a different kind of truth, a truth that is deeper, more profound, and more meaningful.  But it is different, and for someone whose faith is based on a literal understanding of scripture, reading the Bible in this other way can turn their world upside down.  It challenges their understanding of basis of their faith. 

And being told that there’s a whole different way of seeing one’s faith really can make you go “Unh?” 

So that’s why John Dominic Crossan says that scripture contains not only parables by Jesus, but also parables about Jesus.  Because the stories about Jesus told by the gospel writers are told with the same purpose in mind that Jesus had when he told stories about good Samaritans, nameless rich people, and laborers who got paid the same whether they worked one hour or all day.

The stories about Jesus that we have in scripture challenge us to look at our world in a whole new way.  They have the power to change our lives and change our world.  It is what makes reading the Bible so meaningful to me, and why I treasure these stories so much, studying them daily to discover the truth they contain.

Next week: a comparison of the four gospels.  How each of them tells the story of Jesus challenges certain aspects in their society… And also, the way each gospel tells the story presents a challenge to the way the other gospels tell the story…