Christianity retold
Can we understand a parable – or at least, can people start to puzzle out its meaning – without any interpretation or ‘translation’ by a preacher? Even if they’ve never read the Bible in their lives, and may have no concept of ‘God’?
In this blog I’ve asked the question ‘Does this parable need retelling?’ a few times. But there are two parables where I’d give an answer of ‘Almost certainly not’.
[Read more…] about Parables That Don’t Need Retelling
The Sourdough Starter is based on Matthew 13: 33
The original parable is only one verse long; this isn’t so much a retelling as an expansion.
Nowadays, it’s a bit of a judgement call whether people will be familiar with breadmaking. The advantage of factory baked bread is that it makes a staple part of the diet cheap and readily available. A disadvantage is that it’s now possible to not have a clue how to make bread.
Jesus, however, could assume his audience would all be able to fill in the gaps. They’d know that the woman would need to add water to the flour/yeast mix. Then, they’d know that once the yeast was working through, the bread would rise. They’d also realise that only the risen dough would be baked into bread and just how much bread ‘three measures of flour’ would make (a lot). Even if they’d never personally baked a loaf of bread in their lives, they’d have seen it being done.
[Read more…] about Commentary: The Sourdough Starter-Matthew 13:33The Sourdough Starter is based on Matthew 13: 33
God’s nation is like a bowl of sourdough starter. There the starter sat, bubbling quietly away, when a woman took it and hid it. Only she hid it in twenty kilograms of flour, then made it into dough!
[Read more…] about The Sourdough Starter: Matthew 13:33
What’s in the Box? is an adaptation of Matthew 13: 51-52
So Jesus asked his students, “Have you understood all these parables?”
And they said, “Yup.”
Jesus replied back to them, “So, listen, everyone who’s been trained to teach, trained for God’s nation is like someone who’s got a jewellery box in their house. They can bring out the old jewellery, the new jewellery – or both!”
Yes, I know. I usually put the commentary on a different blog page. But this parable is really only one sentence long and it also doesn’t fit thematically with the parables it comes after. Matthew seems to be suggesting Jesus used this parable to round off a teaching session (about parables) with another mini-parable on how to use what he’d just taught.
[Read more…] about What’s in the box? (Matthew 13: 51-52)
The Donations is based on Matthew 13: 47-50
God’s nation is like a charity shop that gets all kinds of donations. When there’s a full load, the volunteers sit down and sort through them. They keep the useable stuff, but throw the unusable out.
[Read more…] about The Donations (Matthew 13:47-50)
The Leaflet Distributors is based on Matthew 20: 1-16
Nowadays, there are very few situations where someone would wait all day in a public place to be hired. Employers find employees by job ads, by advertising with an agency, by putting it their vacancy on an app.
The parable of the Workers in the Vineyard is a ‘kingdom of heaven’ parable. Not only is it introduced as one, ‘Come and work for me in my vineyard’ is quite blatantly building on the Old Testament’s frequent use of ‘vineyard’ as a metaphor for ‘Israel’. That metaphor is partly why I decided to change the job to ‘leafleting’; it’s quite common in mission work to go out leafleting. The other reason is that there are relatively few commercial vineyards in the UK; most of them are located in the South East of the country, where the climate is marginally suitable for grapes.
[Read more…] about Commentary: The Leaflet Distributors (Matt. 20:1-16)