Never Has a Man Spoken the Way This Man Speaks: The Parables of Jesus (Florida College Annual Lectures)

Perhaps the greatest shock came when people listened to the parables of Jesus. On their surface they are simple stories drawn from familiar parts of everyday life in the ancient world. Listen to them carefully, however, and they are strange stories indeed. We hear of a man who got rid of everything he had just to buy a pearl. We hear of people who were forgiven debts of millions of dollars, or of a father who took back his traitorous son. Truly, many things in the parables are strange and even up-side down from what we would expect to hear. More than that, they are shocking. Their unusual elements hit us with unexpected force. The people who heard Jesus’ parables could not help but wonder, in what kind of world would a tax-collector be more righteous than a Pharisee? Or why would a man pay an entire day’s pay to men who had been working for only one hour? And what kind of person would build a house on sand? Who would praise a money manager who gave his client’s money away?

The answer is that these things describe what it is like in the kingdom of God. It is not like any kingdom that has appeared before, nor that will appear after. It is truly a kingdom “not of this world,” a kingdom where heavenly values rule the lives of its citizens. These values are so different from those that operate in the world that the appearing of the kingdom among men causes them to wonder at its strangeness. It is into this world, God’s world, God’s kingdom, that the parables of Jesus invited men then and invite us today. They are, as it were, introductory pictures, or maps, of what the kingdom is like.