Parables: Uhn? (Luke 10:25-37)

Who here ever watched the TV sitcom “Home Improvement” with Tim Allen?  There aren’t many sitcoms that I enjoy watching, but “Home Improvement” was one of the few that I did. 

On the show, Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor was always getting himself into trouble of some sort, and after a conversation with next-door neighbor and philosopher Wilson, Tim’s eyes would be opened to seeing and understanding things in a new way.  His whole understanding of the world would be challenged, until he ended up seeing the world in a new way. You could always tell when this moment of realization, of enlightenment, of epiphany, was about to come when Tim uttered his trademark, “Unh?”

Every parable that Jesus told elicited a similar response from those who heard them. 

My sermons for the next several weeks are inspired by a book by John Dominic Crossan titled, The Power of Parable.  Crossan is a former Catholic priest and a New Testament scholar.  He was born in Ireland, but spent much of his career teaching at DePaul University in Chicago.  As it turns out, Crossan will be the featured speaker at Chapman University’s Founders Day next March.

In his book, Crossan says that there were three types of parables in the ancient world.  There were riddle parables, example parables, and challenge parables.

A riddle parable is one in which everything in the story has a second meaning, and the purpose is to figure out what that second meaning is.

There are some riddle parables in scripture.  In the book of Judges, Samson posed a riddle that went like this:

Out of the eater came something to eat

Out of the strong came something sweet

It’s a very short story, obviously a riddle to be solved, and Samson challenged his hearers to solve it.

Now it was a bit unfair, since Samson had himself found, not long before, the carcass of a lion in which bees had taken up residence, and Samson had helped himself to some of their honey: something to eat out of the eater, something sweet out of the strong.

Unfortunately Samson did seem to have a weak spot when it came to the women in his life, and his wife coaxed the answer out of him and gave it to the people who were trying to guess it.

Augustine, an early Christian theologian from North Africa, once explained the Parable of the Good Samaritan as a riddle.  John Dominic Crossan quotes Augustine, who explained the riddle like this – and don’t worry if you get confused, because Augustine was wrong.  But this is how he explained it:

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Adam himself is meant.  Jerusalem is the heavenly city of peace, from whose blessedness Adam fell.  Jericho means “the moon” and signifies our mortality, because it is born, waxes, wanes, and dies.

The thieves are the devil and his angels; who stripped him, namely, of his immortality; and beat him, by persuading him to sin; and left him half dead, because insofar as man can understand and know God, he lives, but insofar as he is wasted and oppressed by sin, he is dead – he is therefore called half dead…

Well, Augustine went on like this, explaining how every little detail in the parable of the Good Samaritan corresponds to something else.  That’s what it means to interpret this parable as if it were a riddle.

But Crossan says that Jesus did not intend for the Parable of the Good Samaritan to be interpreted as a riddle.  So let’s talk about the second type of parable, and that is the Example Parable.

In an example parable, a story is told, and at the end it is implied that the one hearing the parable is to “go and do likewise.”  The parable presents an example of how you are to live.

The story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den is an example parable.  In this story Daniel shows tremendous faith, and in the end, the one hearing the story can’t help but be inspired to show that same kind of faith in his or her own life.

Many people have read the parable of the Good Samaritan as an example parable.  Even Augustine, when he wasn’t trying to turn it into a riddle, saw in the good Samaritan an example to be followed. 

However, John Dominic Crossan wonders why the example in this parable is a Samaritan.  It could have been anyone.  If all that was needed was a good example to follow, why not make it someone more respected?  Why couldn’t the priest or the Levite have been the good example?  Why did it have to be the Samaritan, when Samaritans were so hated by the Jewish people?

It would be like someone telling the story today, with two good people who do what is wrong, and then the one who does what is right being a Taliban, or a gang member, or a drug dealer.  Instead of calling this story the Good Samaritan, it would be the Good Taliban.  There must have been a reason Jesus chose this unlikely person to be the one who does what is right.

And that reason, according to Crossan, is that, when Jesus told a parable, he didn’t tell it as a riddle to be figured out, or as an example to follow.  When Jesus told a parable, he did it to challenge one’s way of thinking about the world.  The thought that a Samaritan could be good certainly does just that.

There are challenge parables in the Old Testament.  You already know one of them, because I’ve preached on it several times already in recent months:  The story of Ruth. 

Remember how, in the story of Ruth, she is referred to over and over as a Moabite?  Over and over, this point is emphasized.  Ruth lived in the land of Moab.  Ruth the Moabite went with her mother-in-law Naomi to Bethlehem.  Ruth the Moabite met and married a man named Boaz.

At the time the story of Ruth was written, the Moabites were looked upon very unfavorably.  In that respect, they weren’t that different than the Samaritans in Jesus’s time.  Anti-Moabite prejudice was strong.

And yet here’s a story where the main character, the one who does what is right – the one who, in fact, becomes the great-grandmother of David, Israel’s greatest king! – is a Moabite.

That is a challenge parable.  That is a story told with the intention of challenging one’s way of thinking about the world.  If it were told in the format of a TV sitcom, it would be a story that makes you go, “Unh?”  It’s a story that leads you to ponder and reconsider some aspect of society which you’ve been taking for granted.  Basically, the point of it is to blow your mind.

According to John Dominic Crossan, most, if not all, of Jesus’s parables were challenge parables.  They were stories that make you go, “unh?”  Crossan says:  “An example parable may be good, but a challenge parable is a far more importantly subversive operation… Challenge parables humble our prejudicial absolutes.  They are tiny pins dangerously close to big balloons.  They push or pull us into pondering whatever is taken totally for granted in our world – in its cultural customs, social relations, traditional politics, and religious traditions.”

Challenge parables burst our preconceived notions.  They turn our world upside down.  They shatter commonly held beliefs.  They blow our minds.

Now.  Here is something really interesting about how Luke presents this parable of Jesus.  Luke prefaces the parable by describing an incident in which a lawyer decides to test Jesus by asking a question.  “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus put the question back to the lawyer, who replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you must love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus then said that the lawyer was correct.

But then the lawyer, still wanting to test Jesus, asked, “But who is my neighbor?”  And then Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan.  At the end, he asked the lawyer, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

And the lawyer replied, “The one who showed him compassion.”

And Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”

Well, that makes it sound like an example parable, doesn’t it?  The fact is that Luke liked example parables.  He liked example parables so much that he could take one of Jesus’s challenge parables, and turn it into an example parable in his gospel account.

Now Mark, in his version of the gospel… Mark liked riddle parables.  He would sometimes take a challenge parable of Jesus’s and turn it into a riddle.  There are even times when the exact same parable appears in Mark and Luke, but in Mark it is a riddle to figure out, and in Luke it is an example to follow.

One of the questions that John Dominic Crossan asked when he began his research was: If Mark presented parables as riddles, and Luke presented them as examples, how did Jesus present them?  And because the parables themselves so often seemed to challenge presuppositions, Crossan concluded that, for Jesus, parables must have been meant as a challenge.  Jesus told parables to blow your mind … to make you think.

Remember last week, when I talked briefly about the parable in which three slaves are given money by their master, and the first two invest their money and earn more for their master, while the third one keeps it safe without earning interest, and returns the same amount… and how this is a challenge to people because it led them to ask in their minds which was better:  to engage in a culturally approved practice like charging interest, or to follow one’s faith not engage in such a practice, even though you might be persecuted and treated unfairly. 

That is clearly a challenge parable, because it’s about much more than the issue of interest; it’s about following culture vs. following one’s faith, and whether it’s better to follow one’s faith even though those who follow the culture get rewarded for it.  When the slave who did what was right according to the teachings of the faith is thrown into the street, it really does make you raise your eyebrows and go “unh?”  An example parable doesn’t have the power to do that, but a challenge parable does.

So that’s what the parables of Jesus do.  They make you go “unh?”  They challenge your assumptions.  They turn your world upside-down.

Challenge parables are dangerous.  It’s always dangerous to have core beliefs or assumptions challenged.  Challenge parables make you question whether or not the teachings you had learned should still be followed, whether or not the Bible verses you had memorized are still valid, or whether their assumptions and admonitions should be revised or even tossed out.  Because, yes, there are some verses of scripture that just need to be invalidated. 

That may be a shocking statement to some, so I’ll say it again:  some verses of scripture just need to be invalidated.  Verses that condone slavery, for example; at one time, these verses were used to justify slavery in this country and in other countries around the world.  Today, we recognize that slavery is wrong, and that Bible verses that condone slavery are themselves wrong.

But you know, you just can’t go around telling people that the scriptures they hold dear are wrong.  You could get yourself into a lot of trouble.  So instead, you tell a story – a parable – that allows the hearers to think for themselves and figure out whether or not a particular scripture is right or wrong.

And that is exactly what several Old Testament writers did, when they found it necessary to challenge the ancient laws of Moses.  You see, using parables to challenge commonly accepted ways of thinking did not originate with Jesus.  The stories of Ruth, Jonah, and Job – which John Dominic Crossan describes as book-length parables – were all written to challenge people’s way of thinking on one particular law, which is what I will talk about next week.

So until then, just remember:  every time you read or hear the parable of the Good Samaritan, or every time you even hear mention of someone acting like a good Samaritan,… remember that, to those who listened to Jesus, there was no such thing, just like, to many people today, there’s no such thing as a good Taliban.  Samaritans weren’t good.  That was the prevailing attitude.  In the world view of the first century, no one thought of Samaritans as good. 

Until Jesus came along, and challenged people to look at things differently.