TRUTH THROUGH STORIES

            I’d like to think about the words we’ve just heard:

With many such parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

            We all know that parables are Jesus’s most characteristic teaching method. We know and love the parables; they stick in our minds; we can hear them again and again and still get something new out of them.

            Mark’s Gospel, which we’re reading this year, doesn’t actually contain that many parables, and they’re nearly all in this chapter 4 where he brings together a collection of different parables. And the collection ends with this observation about how Jesus “spoke the word” through parables. Actually Mark seems to be saying here that Jesus spoke exclusively through parables, which is a bit of an exaggeration, but anyway.

            So what is a parable? Basically the word means “comparison”. A parable is a simile, a likeness: very often they begin: “the kingdom of heaven is like this...” Some parables are very short one-line images, but the ones we most often think of are more extended comparisons, in the form of short stories. The parables of Jesus are quite variable in shape, but all of them, in one way or another, give pictorial form to some aspect of Jesus's message.

            Parables are not unique to Jesus, of course. For a start, other Jewish rabbis used parables. And many sages from a variety of  religious and philosophical traditions have used stories and parables to convey moral and religious truths.  Think of the ancient Greek fables or, more recently, the fables of La Fontaine, familiar to all French schoolchildren. You might also think of those simple yet profound stories from Zen Buddhism which Father Bernard Durel used in the retreats he led for us. And so on...

            The fact is that we all like listening to stories, adults just as much as children. Stories make us sit up and listen. And you’ve got to listen carefully, because otherwise you may miss the point.

            Stories make abstract ideas concrete. They speak to us  more compellingly than any amount of logical analysis and carefully constructed arguments. Like many others, Jesus knew this and so he built his teaching on homely illustrations and stories from the everyday world of his hearers. So there’s a lot about farming and fishing, but we also hear stories about property and business.

            However, having said that parables and stories are very effective teaching methods, I think one has to go on to say that, despite that, they’re actually not always as straightforward as they seem. Indeed, you look back through the history of Christian preaching to see that at different times and in different places people have understood the parables of Jesus in very different ways, and some of them seem indeed very fanciful and far-fetched to us today.

            Not only that, but if you look back earlier in this same chapter 4, St Mark presents a really surprising theory of parables. He says that Jesus used them in order to make it difficult for people to understand his message. So the question arises: did Jesus use parables in order to reveal his message or to conceal it?

            Well, despite what Mark seems to be suggesting, and despite all the different ways in which the parables have been interpeted down the centuries, I do feel pretty sure that Jesus used parables in order to make his message clear. But what we can say is that the whole point about parables is that they put the message across in an indirect way.

By using parables, Jesus doesn’t force his message on you; he doesn’t tell you what you’ve got to think. He tells you a story, and then says: so what do you think about that? He makes people  think things out for themselves. He leaves it to us to work out the meaning and application of the story.

Because Jesus knows that if we work the meaning out for ourselves, the message is far more likely to stick than if we’ve simply been told what to think. I suppose these days we might call this interactive learning: not just the teacher conveying information, but learning as a process, an exchange, between the teacher and the pupil.

With this method of teaching, a great deal depends on how the hearer receives the story. A parable is rather like a joke: you have to think about it, and maybe you won’t “get” it, maybe you will miss the point completely. Whether the parable “works” depends on the condition of the hearers: their degree of spiritual and personal maturity and insight, their openness to think new thoughts, and so on.

And when it comes to putting across truth about God, I think there’s no doubt that the indirect method of parables and stories is the best approach. It’s simply impossible for us humans to “describe” God, and we know that our attempts to do so are hopelessly inadequate. We can't say what God is; all we can really do is to say what God is like.

So when Jesus wants to tell us about God’s kingdom, he does it by piling up many, many different illustrations: “the Kingdom of heaven is like this...or this...or this...”.  And so we build up an album of images, which, taken together, bring us a lot nearer to understanding things which really go beyond our capacity to grasp. What we end up with is something like a many-facetted diamond which gives us lots of different flashes of light, each one bringing out a different aspect of the truth.

All this means that when we want to try and spread the news about Jesus Christ, we won’t get very far if we just give people abstract theological propositions. You won't convert anyone by teaching them the Nicene Creed. You won't convert people by teaching them the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. But what you can do is to tell stories that show how we experience God as being now like a Father, now like a Son and now like Spirit.

Or to sum it up another way: St John says “God is love”, but Jesus tells the story of the Prodigal Son.

All this seems to be particularly true in our own day. Both at the Archdeaconry Synod and at the Diocesan Synod, we’ve been thinking a lot about mission in our secularised twenty-first century society.  We’ve heard some excellent speakers, and one of the points that is constantly made is that we live increasingly in a visual culture. It’s no good just giving people words: we have to give them images, pictures, stories - parables.

This is why there is increasing interest in discussing films and novels as a way of getting at gospel truths. If we want to share the Christian message, we have to be on the look-out for good stories. But if we think we’re not really very good at this sort of thing, well there’s one story that we all know, and that’s our own life-story. And the one story we can get other people to tell us is the story of their lives.

Because another point that the different speakers have been making about contemporary culture is that people are no longer prepared to accept an idea just because it comes from a traditional authority (whether that be parents, or schools, or government - or the Church). What people are prepared to trust is experience, genuine lived-out experience.

So if we want to share our faith with others, the best place to start is somewhere we can all start: talking about our own experience of life, and encouraging others to talk about theirs. Because in sharing our own stories we shall start to discover the points of contact with the “old, old story” of God's love for us all.

Reverend John Murray, Strasbourg Anglican Church

14 June 2009

Proper 6, Year B        Gospel: Mark 4.26-34