Christianity retold
The Three Employees is based on Matthew 25:14-30
There is a variation on this parable in Luke 19: 11-27; the parable in Matthew seems to be a more basic version, missing out Luke’s explanation of the journey and omitting several characters. Matthew places this parable between Jesus’ visit to the Temple and the Last Supper, and states that Jesus told it privately to his disciples rather than to the crowd.
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The Ten Budgets is based on Luke 19: 11-27
The basic form of this parable – servants entrusted with money by someone going on a journey – appears in the Gospels in two versions. The version in Luke is told just before Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and is a parable for the crowd. They thought the Kingdom of God was going to appear immediately; this parable (according to Luke) is partly a warning that it won’t.
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Mushrooms and Toadstools is based on Matthew 13:24-30
Fields and wheat and an enemy coming along to sow weeds – all of this was well known in Jesus’ day. Sowing weeds like darnel was a well-known revenge tactic, one that happened often enough that there were laws against it. This isn’t a parable based on folk-tales, but one based on everyday life – a series of events so familiar that the disciples and the gospel writer include the explanation (Matthew 13: 36-43) to be certain the reader understands that Jesus wasn’t just talking about some village scandal.
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The Tiny Speck and the Giant Tree is an adaptation of Matthew 7.1-5
The first comment to make about this parable is that it really doesn’t need retelling – even after nearly two thousand years, the meaning is still immediately accessible. What can be explored are the translation choices; for example, I replaced ‘plank’ or ‘beam’ with ‘giant oak tree’.
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Growing from Seeds is based on Mark 4: 26-34
These are two agricultural parables, one about a field crop and the other a garden plant. Both crops still grow in the UK – so the question would be, if these parables were being told for the first time in the modern UK, would these plants be familiar to the people hearing them?
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The President’s Celebration is an adaptation of Matthew 22:1-14
The imagery of God’s Kingdom as a wedding banquet draws on Isaiah 25:6-8, where God invites Israel to a banquet, as well as Hosea’s and Jeremiah’s extended metaphors/parables about Israel as God’s unfaithful wife. Jesus seems to have combined the two images – the Kingdom is a wedding banquet; unfaithful Israel is being called to start again.
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