Summary: By teaching in parables, Jesus simultaneously revealed truths to his disciples, and concealed truth about himself from those whose hardened hearts had already rejected it.

Isaiah 6:1-10, Romans 11:1-11, Matt. 13:1-3, 10-16

Why Parables?

In preparation for today’s homily, I went to Amazon on the internet and punched up all the titles they had with the word “parable” in them. I got about a thousand hits. Next, I requested a listing of all the titles they had with they subject keyword “parable,” and I got about 1,500 more titles than I had before. Finally, I went to an internet site that helps to locate books which are no longer in print. I repeated the same exercise, and I got 10,000 titles with the keyword “parable” and over 20,000 titles with the word “parable” in the title.

Amazing, huh? I’ll bet you didn’t know that parables had generated a minor publishing industry all by themselves. Of course, not every book with the word “parable” in the title is an exposition of Jesus’ parables in the gospel. One title that came up read like this: Cranks, Knaves, and Jokers of the Celestial: Chinese Parables and Funny Stories. But, if you try this exercise, you will find that almost all the books with the word “parable” in the title are somehow connected to Jesus’ parables in the gospel.

Ninety-nine percent of these, of course, are an attempt to expound the parables, or in the case of the parables which Jesus himself interpreted for this disciples, to apply them to some current situation. What most of them do NOT broach is the question which the disciples themselves asked Jesus. WHY are you teaching them in parables?

The disciples very likely were NOT trying to get an explanation out of Jesus. Their question was very much like the question that wives ask their husbands when they say “WHY did you do THAT?” They don’t really want to know, you see. They ask the question in order to say, “Stop DOING that! It’s NOT helping!” And, I suspect this is what the disciples were about when they asked Jesus why he was teaching the crowds in parables. After all, even THEY didn’t understand Jesus’ parables. You know they must have been concerned about all these people being as confused with Jesus’ teaching as they were.

Jesus, however, took his disciples’ question at face value and answered it. And, as he did so, he told us things that don’t get put into books about parables very often, because they’re ideas that are not particularly confortable, and book publishers don’t usually make much money publishing books that make the book buyers uncomfortable.

So, let’s turn out attention to Jesus’ answer to his disciples questions and learn from him what we will not very likely learn from a book on parables.

Jesus’ answer is quite straightforward and to the point. He speaks to the crowds in parables because of two things: First of all, he says that it has been given to the disciples to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. But, to the crowds, it has NOT been given to them to know these things. Jesus doesn’t immediately identify the one who is doing the giving and the withholding – but from the larger context that person must surely be Jesus Himself. For, for when his disciples ask him, he gives them an interpretation of the parables they’ve asked about. As far as the crowds are concerned, however, we have no record that they were pressing Jesus to explain himself. Mostly, they grumbled and complained that he was obscure and confusing, and the religious authorities no doubt had a hey-day smearing Jesus’ reputation with these observations.

A parable, you see, is a two edged sword. Simultaneously, it can do two contradictory things.

On one hand, a parable can reveal truth. It does this by sketching out a parallel between the truth to be revealed and some commonly understood principle, or event, or process. Last Sunday, for example, when we looked at the Parable of the Tares, we saw Jesus telling a story about a field which was sown with wheat, and an enemy of the farmer following afterwards to sow tares among the wheat. As far as the story goes, it is understandable on its own terms. But, as a parable, it does something else – it reveals something about the kingdom of heaven that Jesus wanted his disciples to understand.

On the other hand, the fact that Jesus revealed this truth about the kingdom of heaven with a parable shows us how a parable can not only reveal something, it can simultaneously CONCEAL something. The things on Jesus’ mind were truths about the kingdom of heaven; but he speaks those truths in the form of parables – so the parables actually conceal what it is that Jesus is talking about. Parables both reveal and conceal, and they can do these contradictory things at the same time to the same audience.

So, how is anyone going to understand the point of a parable? Jesus says that in the case of the parables he is speaking, the ones who understand are the ones TO WHOM Jesus gives understanding of the parable. To the others, those who Jesus does not want to understand the parables, he speaks to them in parables in order to conceal what he is actually talking about.

Now, WHY would Jesus do such a thing? That’s what he explains to the disciples next.

“For whoever has, to him will more be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away.”

For a while back in the 70s and 80s, there was a popular left-wing religious movement within Western Christianity that went by the name “liberation theology.” It was essentially Marxist dogma festooned with Bible words. To hear them speak, Jesus was the first Marxist. But, of course, these people conveniently ignored something like what Jesus has just said to his disciples here in Matthew 13.

The Marxist would say, “the one who has in abundance must give to him who has nothing; and the one who has nothing is entitled to take what he needs from the one who has plenty.” But, here Jesus says just the opposite – “those who have get more, and those who don’t have lose even what little they have.”

So, what is it that the disciples have so that they get more? And what is it that the crowds don’t have, so that even what they have is taken away? Obviously, in this context, we’re talking about understanding – in particular, understanding of who Jesus is, what Jesus is all about, how Jesus is setting out to accomplish his mission, in short the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. The disciples have received Jesus’ message, and because they have, they get more and more understanding of Jesus and his mission. The crowds do not receive Jesus’ message. Oh, to be sure, they crowd around him because he’s interesting to watch! He might do a miracle! And, for sure, he’s going to tangle with the Pharisees and Sadducees, and that’s ALWAYS a good show! But Jesus has the crowd sized up correctly. He knows that eventually these same crowds are going to be screaming, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

And, so he teaches them in parables. The very things which are useful to reveal truths about the kingdom to his own disciples, Jesus uses these very same things to conceal truths about the kingdom from the crowds who are following him around.

Lest we are tempted to fault Jesus for being unfair or vindictive, Jesus tells his disciples how the crowds came to be this way. “Therefore, I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand, and in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled …” And, then, of course, Jesus paraphrases the prophecy from Isaiah 6 which we heard read in the first lesson.

When you heard that lesson, did you find yourself questioning God’s justice? How is it that God can send his prophet out to the nation, and give to that prophet the commission that God gave to Isaiah? Isaiah’s commission in verses 9 and 10 of that chapter are some of the hardest words in the Bible, for God tells Isaiah to MAKE the hearts of the people dull, to MAKE their ears heavy and to SHUT their eyes, so that they cannot see, hear, and understand.” Those verses were so striking and startling to me that I chose to write my master’s thesis in seminary on those two verses of Isaiah 6. And, while I will not take time now to review that thesis with you, I will tell you this – God was not unjust to judge his own people for their blindness. For, long before he gave this commission to Isaiah, the people had already corrupted themselves to unbelievable degrees. Listen to how God describes Israel in the opening verses of the Prophet Isaiah:

2Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! For the LORD has spoken: "I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against Me; 3The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master’s crib; But Israel does not know, My people do not consider." 4Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, Children who are corrupters! … 9Unless the LORD of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been made like Gomorrah.”

The blindness of the nation Israel was not something that God willy-nilly imposed on them against their will. They were already blind, heavy of heart and ear, they were already people who though seeing did not see, and though hearing did not hear. So, what God did with them through the prophet Isaiah, was to give them what they were determined to have in full measure.

That awful ministry of the Prophet Isaiah came to its fullness in the days when Jesus was preaching and teaching. If ever there was a time for Israel to rejoice and to welcome God’s mercy, it was when the Messiah came. They were looking for this Messiah to come rescue them, and – by a terrible irony – most of that messianic expectation can be traced back to the Prophet Isaiah. For the final chapters of his prophecy are filled with stunning prophecies of God’s anointed coming to earth to rescue Israel from all their troubles and to blast the gentile nations to bits. But, interlarded among those prophecies are some which speak of a suffering servant, one who bears the sins of the nation, one who is persecuted to death in order to atone for the nations sins. This is exactly what the Jews of Jesus’ day ignored; this is exactly what they wanted no part of. And that is why Jesus says here that in them – the Jews of the first century – the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says, “hearing you will not hear, and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive. For the hearts of this people have grown dull, their ears and hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed.”

I wonder what Jesus’ disciples were thinking as he said this? None of the gospel writers record any further questions. None of the gospel writers record any objections. What could they say? What would they be thinking? We don’t know, of course. But some years later, Paul raised a question which I think must have been on the minds of some of the disciples. It’s the question that begins the second lesson we heard read a while ago. Paul asks it in Romans 11:1 – I say, then, has God cast away His people?

And, then Paul answers it – “Certainly not.” And, how does Paul know this? He tells us – “For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” Paul’s point is simply this – If God had utterly cast off his people – the seed of Abraham – then Paul would not be Jesus’ apostle. Indeed, this was true in Isaiah’s day. Remember what Isaiah wrote: “9Unless the LORD of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been made like Gomorrah.” But, even in Isaiah’s day, there was a very small remnant of faithful Jews. And, in Elijah’s day there was a small remnant of faithful Jews. And, in Jesus’ day, there was a very small remnant of faithful Jews – among them the Apostles themselves.

And, that is why Jesus says to them, “to you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.”

These are very sobering words, and they do not make for popular devotional books on the parables of Jesus. That is why you will not find these kinds of things on the book shelves of Christian retailers. It’s odd, in a way, for so many of the Christian publishers and retailers would tell you that they wish to find things to publish and to offer the market which are encouraging and uplifting and comforting. But, that is exactly how Paul finds these ideas: Listen again to Paul from the second lesson for today:

“I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But, through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Now if their fall is riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness.”

But, what Paul points out is this: the judgment upon the nation Israel—a judgment which continues to this very hour as they persist in disbelief – it is a judgment which has abounded to the salvation of the Gentiles – which means, the salvation of every one of us here in this room. But, that is not the end of the matter, for our salvation – God’s abounding mercy to the gentiles – is intended by him to provoke Israel to jealousy, and one day it will, for Paul writes this as well:

25For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; 27For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins."

What, then, should we think? Paul would tell us to be grateful, rather than puffed up. When we were in our own sins, we were no less deserving of judgment than the Jews of Isaiah’s day, or the Jews of Jesus’ day. And, because they were shut up in their own blindness, the gospel went out into the world, the gentile world, and it has come to each one of us here today.

We should be grateful for something else as well – we are among those to whom it is given to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. The apostles themselves were among the first of these, and they wrote down what they understood, and we have that today as well, in our Bibles. Jesus’ words to his Apostles are words to us as well: Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears for they hear. For assuredly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.

God grant that we may receive in all its fullness the truth which comes to us in Jesus Christ. We who have received, may we get more and more, until we have in abundance.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.