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Christianity retold

Mark

Commentary: The Flower Seeds and the Pots (Luke 8:5-8)

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Flowers in pots
Image by Pexels from Pixabay

The Flower Seeds and the Pots is based on Luke 8:5-8.

This was the first parable I retold, rather than just updated. I was writing a book which had a modern Jesus preaching in a modern London. It became very obvious, very quickly, that Jesus wouldn’t tell a parable based on First Century Middle Eastern farming practices to a bunch of modern East Enders – not if they had no previous experience of hearing it. The meaning of the parable would stay the same; the props and setting would be reset.

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Commentary: Growing from Seeds – Two Parables

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Image by kie-ker from Pixabay

Growing from Seeds is based on Mark 4: 26-34

Agricultural Parables

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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Growing from Seeds- Two Parables

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Image by kie-ker from Pixabay

Growing from Seeds is based on Mark 4: 26-34

So, what’s God’s Nation like? Someone scatters some seeds in a window box. Day and night, that seed sprouts and grows; you don’t need to know how it works. Does it all by itself: the stalk, the leaves, the flowers, the little green tomatoes appearing, then growing and ripening. And as soon as they’re red and ripe, that’s when they get picked, because that’s the harvest time.

And again, what’s God’s Nation like? What kind of metaphor could we use to describe it? It’s like a little acorn someone plants in the ground, an acorn small enough for a squirrel to carry. But when that acorn’s planted, it grows to become a huge oak tree, with birds nesting in it and animals sheltering in its shade.

Commentary on Growing From Seeds: Two Parables

Previous Parable: The President’s Celebration

Next Parable: The Tiny Speck and the Giant Tree

Commentary: The Parable of the Tenants

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The retold Parable of the Tenants

Retelling a Parable – Choices

The major change in retelling this parable is the change from ‘vineyard’ to ‘house’. The parable of the tenants that Jesus tells (Matt. 21. 33-46, Mark 12.1-12, Luke 20.9-19) is set in a vineyard, probably because Jesus is drawing on the Old Testament image of the land of Israel as God’s vineyard. Changing that to a ‘house’ loses that direct link to the Old Testament imagery.

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