The Parables after Jesus New Edition

Delighted and honored that the new edition of my book, The Parables after Jesus: Their Imaginative Receptions across Two Millenia, now can be ordered via the publisher, Baylor University Press (and Amazon, etc.). 

I am grateful to Cade Jarrell, BUP Managing Editor, the other members of the editorial team, and the University Press Committee for their enthusiastic "reception"of and support for this project. In particular, I am thankful for the excellent work of David Aycock, Jenny Hunt, Kasey McBeth, and Bethany Dickerson that culminated in the publication of this volume. The entire BUP team is truly impressive.

 

"The Calling of St. Matthew," Caravaggio

Here is part two of my recent article on how the parables of Jesus can be relevant for today: "The Domestication of Jesus's Parables" (Credo Magazine, December 30, 2020). The first part may be found here: “'Go and do Likewise': The Continuing Relevance of Jesus’s Parables” (Credo Magazine, November 13, 2020).

The Domestication of Jesus’s Parables

David B. Gowler · December 30, 2020

This is part two of David Gowler’s analysis of Jesus’s parables. Click the link to read part one: “Go and Do Likewise.”

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The Domestication of Jesus’s Parables

By far, in my view, the most important and also the most difficult aspect of making Jesus’s parables relevant today is recognizing their prophetic perspective, learning more about the socio-economic situation in the first-century in which Jesus created his parables, and avoiding the all-too-common “domestication” of Jesus’s prophetic message.

In my course, “The Ethics of Jesus,” at Oxford College of Emory University, I have found that the best way for students to grasp major differences between the context of Jesus’s message and their own situations is for them to read Howard Thurman’s classic book, Jesus and the Disinherited, which was first published in 1949.[1]

Thurman correctly argues that the religion of Jesus was born in the context of a people suffering persecution and oppression. Thurman realized that Jesus, a poor first-century Jew, spoke to others who, like him, were poor, oppressed, disinherited and dispossessed—those with their “backs constantly against the wall.” Countless interpreters of the parables over the centuries have recognized the importance of this perspective in the parables of Jesus, including John Chrysostom, Augustine, Ephrem the Syrian, Gregory the Great, Theophylact, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others.[2]

Some interpreters, however, tend to gloss over the socio-economic contexts of Jesus of Nazareth: Jesus, a first-century, non-elite Jew, was a member of a politically, militarily, and economically oppressed minority. The New Testament Gospels portray Jesus as speaking against the oppressors of his people with prophetic words of judgment that focus extensively on issues of money and power, such as proclaiming good news to the poor and release of the oppressed (Luke 4:16–20) as well as blessings on the poor and woes on the rich (Luke 6:20–26).[3]

Jesus, a poor first-century Jew, spoke to others who, like him, were poor, oppressed, disinherited and dispossessed—those with their “backs constantly against the wall.”CLICK TO TWEETThe parables reinforce this vision of Jesus and his message. The parable of the Sheep and Goats (Matt 25:31–46), for example, argues that giving hospitality to those in need, such as strangers/immigrants (25:35, 43), is the same as giving hospitality to Jesus himself and that God will judge human beings on how they treat the “least of these,” the hungry, thirsty, stranger/immigrant, sick, ill-clothed, and imprisoned. Since some scholars—incorrectly, in my view—interpret the “least of these” as being Christians,[4] it is important to note that the critical importance of these acts of hospitality is found throughout the teachings of Jesus.

Jesus also repeatedly condemns the rich and powerful, declaring that it is difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God (e.g., as likely as a camel going through an eye of a sewing needle, which is often incorrectly domesticated as denoting a gate in Jerusalem). Parables such as the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31) and the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16–20) portray how God will condemn those who live lives of conspicuous consumption in the face of human need.[5] In the parable of the Great Dinner (Luke 14:15–24), however, Jesus offers a way for the wealthy and powerful to avoid God’s condemnation: to extend hospitality to “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” If such elites would help the poor without expecting anything in return, God would reward them “at the resurrection of the righteous” (e.g., Luke 14:12-14; cf. Matt 19:24//Mark 10:25//Luke 18:25).

Such prophetic parables are more difficult to hear when they are stepping on our toes and not, as we incorrectly assume, only on the toes of others. As we read about the lawyer, priest, Levite, and others involved in Jesus’s parables, it is easy to think, as did the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, “God, I thank you that I am not like . . .” those other people (Luke 18:11). Instead, if we allow Jesus’s parables truly to speak to us, we sometimes find that, in the words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

The truth is, Jesus told his parables to and about religious people, and there are times we have to admit they are indeed aimed directly at us. As Craig Blomberg notes, for example, there are “frightening parallels” between the rich man in the Rich Man and Lazarus parable and “countless professing Christians” today.[6]

Responding to Jesus and His Parables

If we allow Jesus’s parables to speak to us, we sometimes find that, in the words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Jesus told his parables to and about religious people, and there are times they are aimed at us.CLICK TO TWEETHoward Thurman is correct, I believe, when he concludes that an existential encounter with the teachings of Jesus must lead to concrete action in the world, including a profound moral obligation to reflect, decide, and act accordingly with the poor, oppressed, and disinherited of our own era. The inner, personal, spiritual transformation of individual human beings should create a community of faith that is dedicated to and active in personal and social transformations based on the teachings of Jesus and in response to the human need that surrounds them.

The parables of Jesus cohere with his other teachings about the love of God and neighbor. Jesus assures his hearers, then and now, that God is good and that God loves us, cares for us, and showers us with good things (e.g., “look at the birds of the air;” “consider the lilies of the field”; Matt 6:25–33). Included in that message is the call not to worry, because God takes care of us now and will continue to take care of us, and, in our response of faith to God’s love, God commands us to treat other human beings as God has treated us: with love, compassion, and by working actively for their well-being.

When Jesus tells the lawyer—and all others who truly hear his parables—to “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37), he not only is telling us to be like the Good Samaritan; he is also telling us to become like the loving father in the Prodigal Son parable and like the “sheep” in the story of the Sheep and Goats who take care of the “least of these”—to be as loving, kind, forgiving, and generous to other human beings as God has been to us.

Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”

That message, especially in troubled times, will always be relevant.

 

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Endnotes

[1] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1949). The book served as an inspiration for many civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. See also Howard Thurman, Sermons on the Parables, edited and introduced by David B. Gowler and Kipton E. Jensen (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018).

[2] Detailed extensively in Gowler, Parables of Jesus. Cf. Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s view of evangelic faith and social action, which is similar to Thurman’s view of how individual Christian’s faith leads to social/moral responsibilities (see below).

[3] Barbara Reid’s Parables for Preachers is an excellent resource for pastors who wish to include these perspectives in their sermons: Parables for Preachers, 3 vols. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999, 2000, 2001).

[4] For a nuanced discussion that correctly concludes that “least of these” means all “the unfortunates of the world,” see Arland J. Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 309–30.

[5] For detailed arguments, see David B. Gowler, “‘At His Gate Lay a Poor Man’: A Dialogic Reading of Luke 16:19–31,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 32:3 (2005) 249–65; and David B. Gowler, “The Enthymematic Nature of Parables: A Dialogic Reading of the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16–20),” Review and Expositor 109:2 (2012) 199–217.

[6] Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012), 262.

 

The Visual Commentary on Scripture: The Good Samaritan

I am delighted that my four brief essays on the Good Samaritan parable's receptions by the Rossano Gospels, Jacopo Bassano, and Rembrandt were just published in The Visual Commentary on Scripture, The King's College, London.

Here are the works I discuss:

The Good Samaritan, from the Rossano Gospels (Codex Purpureus Rossanensis), 6th century, Painted purple vellum, Diocesan Museum, Rossano Cathedral, Italy, Codex Purpureus Rossanensis, fol. 7, © A. De Gregorio / De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman Images.

Jacopo Bassano, The Good Samaritan, c.1562–63, Oil on canvas, 102.1 x 79.7 cm, The National Gallery, London; Bought, 1856, NG277, © National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY. 

Rembrandt, The Good Samaritan, 1633, Etching, engraving, and drypoint, 253 x 204 mm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Henry Walters, 1917, 17.37.192, www.metmuseum.org

I like the last paragraph of this entry: 

The dog most likely functions primarily as a playful marker of verisimilitude, yet it illustrates the fact that life inherently includes the sublime and the everyday, the unusual and the banal, the sacred and the profane, with the latter—in each of these polarities—often more prevalent than the former (Gowler 2020: 154–58).

The three main entries are about 300 words each, and the integrative essay is about 600 words.

“The Continuing Relevance of Jesus’s Parables” (part 1)

 

Here is part one of my recent article on how the parables of Jesus can be relevant for today: “The Continuing Relevance of Jesus’s Parables” (Credo Magazine, November 13, 2020). 

Here are some key quotes they highlighted:

The challenge we face in interpreting the parables . . . involves “modernizing” the message of Jesus authentically—making it relevant for contemporary society—without anachronizing or domesticating his message.

So, for me, the most important aspect of parable interpretation is to explore what parables want of us. Parables make demands on their hearers/readers; they have ethical implications. Their goal is not just to persuade people to see the world, God, themselves, and other human beings in strikingly new ways; parables also demand that their hearers/readers respond by putting those new or changed perceptions into practice in concrete ways in their everyday lives.

The parable, with deep roots in Jesus's Jewish tradition, thus demolishes any distinction between neighbor and the “other” in a way that honors the juxtaposition of “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”—quoted by the lawyer and affirmed by Jesus—and the “you shall love the alien as yourself.” The alien, the “other,” is also one’s neighbor that one must love as oneself in word and in deed. This parable, in a number of ways, breaks down prejudices, shatters stereotypes, and demonstrates how we are to treat each other.  

I will post the second half as soon as it appears. I also have some reception history pieces soon to be published that I will share soon as well.

Selfish and Proud: The Good Samaritan, Octavia Butler, and Wearing a Mask

Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images

I wrote this essay in late May--started it shortly before the murder of George Floyd-- but did not post or publish it. In light of the recent spikes of COVID-19, it seems appropriate to post it now.

May 24/25, 2020:

“Selfish and Proud,” the sign proclaimed at a protest outside the Pennsylvania Capitol Building. After years of people saying the quiet parts out loud, that message should not have been so jarring.

But it was to me.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the fissures in American society, divisions always present for those with eyes to see, but now even more visible to everyone. It’s more than tribalism; it includes racism; it involves the fact that many in the United States must have an enemy to hate—hatred of the “other”—even if it means creating an enemy to build, ironically, a “community” at least partially based on a shared fear or hatred of the “other.”

Even the approaching Memorial Day or the grim milestone of approximately 100,000 dead, probably more, of COVID-19 has not stemmed the tide of hatred. One need not look further than the twitter account of the president of the United States, who retweeted vicious attacks against his opponents—false charges of murder, mocking others’ appearances in various ways, and calling one former opponent a “skank.” Or some of his followers who recently hanged an effigy of their governor with the song “Proud to be an American” blaring in the background and with a sign “sic semper tyrannis” attached to the effigy—more likely, under the circumstances, a reference to John Wilkes Booth than to Brutus, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar.  

During this pandemic, Octavia Butler’s novel, Parable of the Sower, has rightfully regained its reputation as a “prescient vision” of a dystopian future society. Butler considered her works as “cautionary tales,” critiques of current society that included consequences that will occur in the relatively near future if society does not change its patterns of behavior. Butler extrapolates from what she saw as current trends—the increasing divide between rich and poor, the changes in the earth’s climate, the fear of crime, and all of the centrifugal forces that were “tearing . . . society apart,”—and she examines the resulting issues of social power and its effects, examples that she “pulled out of the newspapers.” Specifically, the two books in the parable series she called “fairy tales” that highlighted problems in society and suggested how to make the world a better place: “It just calls people’s attention to the fact that so much needs to be done and obviously [there] are people who are running this country who don’t care.”

The novel’s main character, Lauren Oya Olamina, lives in a small, enclaved community, inside walls that they hope will protect their community from the dangers of their dystopian society. One by one, however, people in the community begin to be killed. Thieves regularly break in to steal food or other valuables. The attacks worsen, and eventually Olamina and two other survivors escape certain death and travel north to find a safer place to live.

As they travel north toward Oregon, Olamina begins to build a community of fellow travelers,  especially after she acts as a “Good Samaritan” to help people in trouble (Olamina was born with a condition called “hyperempathy syndrome” that causes her to intensely feel the pain of others). They eventually reach what appears to be a safe place, and there they build their community, “Acorn.” The narrative ends with the New Testament parable of the Sower to make clear that the quest of Olamina and the community gathering around her are to be seeds sown upon the good soil that bring forth good fruit, just as in the parable.

A quote from Olamina in the second novel in the series, Parable of the Talents, illustrates why Butler uses parables as the foundation of her moral tales: “My father loved parables—stories that taught, stories that presented ideas and morals in ways that made pictures in people’s minds . . . . Because he believed stories were so important as teaching tools.”

Although the book Parable of the Sower takes the parable of the same name as its primary image, it is clear that the parable of the Good Samaritan is the foundation on which Olamina’s community is built.

The impetus for Jesus telling the Good Samaritan comes in an exchange with an expert in Jewish law. The lawyer asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” and, after Jesus responds by asking him what he had read in the law, supplies the answer:  Love God and one’s neighbor. When Jesus responds that he had given the correct answer, the lawyer then asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replies with a parable that describes the extraordinary actions of a man, a hated Samaritan, who assists another human being in need, a man half dead by the side of the road who had already been ignored by two religious people who saw the man but did not stop to help. The Samaritan, in contrast, had compassion for the man, treats the man’s wounds, brings him to an inn, takes care of him, and then pays the innkeeper to take care of the man in his absence.

This parable of a despised Samaritan demonstrating what it means to love one’s neighbor makes an important transition in the definition of neighbor, one with deep roots in Jesus’s Jewish tradition. The lawyer cited an important verse from Leviticus (19:18b) “you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” The parable that Jesus tells, however, emphasizes a key verse that comes just a few verses later in Leviticus (19:34b-c): “you shall love the alien as yourself . . . . I am the Lord your God.”

The parable thus demolishes any distinction between neighbor and the “other” (e.g., alien, immigrant, or other perceived opponent) in a way that honors the juxtaposition of “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”—quoted by the lawyer and affirmed by Jesus—and the “you shall love the alien as yourself.” The alien, the “other,” is also one’s neighbor.

At the end of the parable, Jesus asks the lawyer who in the parable had acted as a neighbor. The lawyer replies, “The one who showed him mercy.”

What is Jesus’s response?: “Go and do likewise.”

“Go and do likewise” is command that one would assume anyone claiming to follow Jesus’s teachings would take to heart. That would be a false assumption, since it appears that some of the loudest voices in what passes for Christianity today in the United States rejects one of his major teachings: to love one’s neighbor in word and actions.

Contemporary relevance of Reception History of the Bible

I just wrote this unproofed and unedited section for the revised and expanded edition of my What Are They Saying about the Parables?.

Here's the part that seems most germane:

“the burning concerns of the German nation”: (a) the moral indifference of wealthy Christians in light of extreme inequalities of wealth that doomed many to great suffering while others lived in “callous opulence,”

A decade later, Wailes published a second book with a narrower focus: the reception of the rich man and Lazarus parable in German drama during the Reformation.[i] The book examines ten German dramas that begin chronologically with “The Zurich Play” (1529) and end Jakob Ayrer’s Tragedie vom rechen Man und armen Lazaro (1598). Part One examines four “South German Plays” (49-164), since they appear “to have given birth to the dramatic tradition” of the rich man and Lazarus. Part Two explores six “Lutheran Plays” (167-303) In sixteenth-century Germany, the rich man and Lazarus parable inspired more plays than the prodigal son parable, which usually dominates drama elsewhere primarily because of its theme of penitence and reconciliation. In Germany in this era, however, the rich man and Lazarus parable is more popular because of “the burning concerns of the German nation”: (a) the moral indifference of wealthy Christians in light of extreme inequalities of wealth that doomed many to great suffering while others lived in “callous opulence,” and (b) the “strongly etched story line” with few details that “readily accepted” further developments and amplification (304-305).   

The opening sentence in the book’s conclusion, while limited to the Reformation in Germany, is also applicable to many other places and eras, and it underscores the need for careful explorations of reception history and the Bible: “It is not easy for educated people at the end of the twentieth century to appreciate the power of the Bible to organize the beliefs and inspire the actions of Germans during the Reformation” (304).  

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[i] Stephen L. Wailes, The Rich Man and Lazarus on the Reformation Stage: A Contribution to the Social History of German Drama (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1997).

And, Yes, the Last Thurman Quote Sounds Familiar

Compare the post about Doctor Who that I posted in January:


I know I need to get back to posting here from time to time, but until then:

Here's hoping that "The Doctor" is correct (Doctor Who, season 12, episode 2):

"These are the dark times. But they don’t sustain. Darkness never sustains, even though sometimes it feels it might."