One of the more intriguing things about Jesus is how often he told stories. Think about it: God with us, the very Word of God, the miracle working King of everything, the all-powerful Son of Man spent a lot of time telling stories. And not just any stories. He told stories that are simple and yet profound. Easy to understand and yet full of wisdom for any who has ears to listen.
What are we to do with the stories Jesus tells? What is their function? How can we understand them better? How might we preach them well? My hope is that this short article gestures towards answers. Neither this article, nor any article, or even a full-length book could fully plumb the depths of Jesus’s stories. This is not due to a lack of effort, knowledge, or skill. Rather, it is a feature of the stories themselves.
The stories to which I refer are called parables. So, what is a parable? A short, simple-yet-profound story based in the real world that provokes the listener. Like anything, there are many ways to define something. This way is just the one I have come up with that I find helpful. But some explanation is necessary.
What is a Parable?
Parables are short. Even the longest parables take just a few minutes to read. The beauty and challenge of a short story is that they require great economy of words. But their power is in their smallness. Every word matters.
Parables are also simple yet profound. What they say is readily understandable to anyone who hears them. This would have been particularly true of those Jesus was speaking to. But within their simplicity also lies great depth. This is one reason the parables are so beloved and why people have written so much about them. It also accounts for how much debate surrounds the meaning of each parable.
Parables are based in the real world. This point largely follows on from the last. They almost always have to do with ordinary aspects of life: Searching and finding. Planting something. Dealing with a challenging situation. The real world the stories refer to is the world of the first century, so at times some cultural understanding can enrich our understanding (a point to which we will return shortly), but ordinarily the stories are understood by any twenty-first century listener.
Parables are meant to provoke the listener. Part of the genius of parables is how confrontational they are the moment one begins to think about Jesus’s story. At first the story is simply interesting and perhaps amusing, but the point tends to sit in the listeners’ heart and mind, continually provoking them to think about what Jesus means and how our lives must change in response to what he says.
This is all kind of hard to understand in the abstract, so let’s get concrete. For the remainder of our time we will consider one parable in particular, The Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9–14). I have chosen it as I preached it at a friend’s church.
Our task in what follows is twofold: 1) learn how to read parables well and then 2) understand how we might share them well. My hope is that this strategy will help not only preachers, but all Christians to read the parables well and then share what they have learned with others—be they fellow Christians or someone who has yet to become a Christian.
Reading Parables Well
To begin to read the Parables (or any part of the Bible), we should begin by reading for pleasure. Seriously. Far too often we skip this step and move straight to the technical stuff. But if you don’t learn to love the way the text is written, you are going to have little chance of understanding it well and teaching others profitably. So, start by enjoying the ride. Here’s Luke 18:9–14:
9 He [=Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:
10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus:
‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’
13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying,
‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
For example, in our passage, it is interesting to me that we have the purpose of the parable before the story is even told in Luke 18:9 (this rarely happens with parables). I also find it interesting that the whole story revolves around two men, especially their prayers in the temple. Intriguingly the Pharisee’s prayer is way longer than the tax collectors. The Pharisee’s prayer is also self-evidently rather pretentious. I note these things not merely as technical exegetical notes, but because they capture my imagination—in other words, because they interest me and cause me to enjoy the story more. Other things might have stood out to you. What matters most is that you get interested in what you are reading.
So, what do we do with what we have taken pleasure in? We should begin by understanding the flow of the story. With the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, this is very, very simple. Two completely different men go to the temple. Once there, they pray completely different prayers. Jesus closes by commenting on the story by explaining which one is right with God on the basis of a very simple principle.
Now that we understand the flow of the story we are helped by coming to an understanding of the cultural context. This involves elements of the story that would have been obvious to those who first heard the story, but not necessarily by people today—mainly because we live in a different time and place. In this case, there are a few things we need to understand: the significance of the temple, and what tax collectors and Pharisees are. If we have read our Bibles up to this point, we would know that the temple was the high holy place for the people of God before and during the time of Jesus. This is where God promised to meet with his people. Thus, it makes sense that people would pray there. Worship took place twice a day and prayer was a regular part of that worship time.
The two people Jesus brings up could not be more different. The Pharisee’s presence at the temple makes sense for they were experts in Jewish law and its strictest practitioners. They were well-respected and considered righteous and godly—and they knew it. Tax collectors, on the other hand were despised. They collected taxes for Rome, the power of the day, and made their living by adding a bit on top of the expected fees. Thus, it is a huge surprise that someone like that would be headed to the temple.
This understanding is important when we get to the prayers. The Pharisee’s prayer focuses on who he isn’t and who he is. He even throws the tax collector under the bus, as exhibit A of those whom he was glad he was not like. The prayer in shorthand is something like “God, I’m awesome. You are welcome.” Based on the prayer, it is clear that Jesus is addressing those like the Pharisee with the parable, for the Pharisee was confident in his standing with God and despised others. The tax collector, the man we otherwise expect to be proud, gives a prayer grounded in humility, asking for mercy. He has good reason to do so, for God is a merciful God. He was merciful the moment humanity rebelled against him in the garden (Gen. 3:15). He was merciful when he led his people out of slavery (Exodus 12–14). He was merciful when he brought his people into, kicked them out of, and brought them back into the promised land (Josh. 21:43–45; Isa 54:7). God is a merciful God . . . even to people like tax collectors. The key is understanding oneself to be a sinner. Which is just what the tax collector does.
Shockingly, it is the tax collector that goes away right with God and not the Pharisee. It is a total reversal of expectations. And yet it makes sense, for those who humble themselves are exalted, and those who exalt themselves who are humbled.
How to Preach Parables Well
The question that remains on the backside of understanding the parable is: how might we preach or teach this parable to others? A key move is to stick to the point. Which point? The one you have established as a result of following the process outlined in this article. In our case, the point is, only the humble find the mercy of God. Sticking to the point of the parable is important as the church has a long history of allegorizing these parables, assigning a “deeper” meaning to every detail (just look up Augustine’s wildly creative, yet wholly fabricated, interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable for one example).[1] We get into trouble when we don’t stick to the point. The story is the means of communicating that point. Often the point is not as clear as we would wish, but in the case of our Parable the point seems clear—only the humble are right with God.
1. See Saint Augustine, Questions on the Gospels, trans. John Litteral, (Litteral Truth Publishing, 2019), 58–59.
The structure of the parable also gives clear direction for the structure of our sermon (even though this will not always be the case). Completely different people, completely different prayers, and completely different prospects. The first verse gives us the audience Jesus is addressing, so that will be brought up in the introduction to set the stage for the Parable. The concluding part of the last verse gives us the reason for such different prospects, so that section will go in the conclusion. Remember, it is hard to listen to sermons and track with the preacher. If you are preaching on this text, do your best to keep things as clear and simple as possible.
How does this passage apply to your hearers? That depends a lot on who you are speaking to but let me provide some examples of how I would apply this in a Sunday morning sermon. The setup seems to be so narrowly focused on one sector of humanity (confident self-righteous people who despise others) that it is easy to let many people think this does not apply to them. Thus, I’ll go out of my way to help my audience realize that we all have the tendency to be this kind of person by asking them questions:
What gives us confidence?
Who are the people we treat with contempt and on what grounds?
Don’t we all do this somewhat, however religious or not we are?
What does Jesus have to say to people like us?
By asking these kinds of questions I get my audience thinking. I have connected the parable to all our lives, believers and unbelievers alike. The impact of these questions is strengthened by the use of a good title to the sermon. In my case, the title itself is a question I will ask repeatedly throughout the sermon—“Who do you think you are?” I want those listening to ask that question of themselves as they look in the mirror of the two men in the sermon. I want them to be asking this question long after the sermon as well, provoking them toward humility and faith.
The initial setup of the Parable is helpful when we get to the completely different people. All kinds of people come to God. What is our reason for coming to church this morning? Since we are not given their background or their motivations for going to the temple I’ll refrain from inventing backstories and motivations. What matters is not who they are as much as what they say when they get to the temple.
When preaching the Pharisee’s prayer it is important to get people wagging their heads at the Pharisee and then to look in the mirror of the Pharisee to see themselves. Who is it we are proudly not like? To be sure, we should not want to be adulterers or thieving tax collectors, but do we draw ourselves away from such people (whether in reality or in our minds) out of a self-perceived superiority? Our religious devotion might be different from the Pharisees, but is it really all that distinct? Take the Pharisee boasting that he fasts twice a week. This isn’t something God asked for. The people of Israel were to fast once a year on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:29–31). The Pharisees added extra fasting as an invented way of demonstrating their extra serious level of devotion. How do we do the same? Religious or not, the temptation is lying at our doorstep. Maybe it is volunteering at church if we are Christians or recycling more than others if we are not. Whatever the case, our temptations toward self-invented superiority are legion.
The tax collector’s prayer is also loaded with application. His petition for mercy is well grounded as we have already examined. We who live on this side of the cross have even more reason to believe God is merciful. The pinnacle of his mercy is found in the saving work of Christ on the cross, for there Jesus took what he did not deserve in the place of all who would trust in him. This miracle of mercy is proven in Jesus’s resurrection. When Jesus comes again he does so to take us to a mansion of mercy, for eternity in God’s paradise will always and forever be grounded in his mercy. Do we understand that? To do so we must understand ourselves to be sinners, for only sinners need mercy. If we do, then we have no reason to hold others in contempt. Sure, they may be different than us, but all who realize themselves to be sinners and look to God are recipients of mercy. Who do we think we are?
Understanding and preaching the Parables is a great joy. These short, simple, and profound stories based in the real world provoke us to great benefit. If we do the work well, we will be spurred on toward faithful discipleship and toward helping others to be likewise affected for good. How do we do the work well? We read the parable with curiosity for pleasure and also to get an understanding of the flow of the story. Then we pay attention to the cultural context to get a better understanding of the details. These steps help us discover Jesus’s point. Once we find this point, we stick to it, seeking to apply it to our lives and the lives of others. And when thousands of preachers do this work well across the globe, sinners are justified, the church is edified, and our gracious God is glorified.
