PreachingToday.com: What are your favorite parables, and why?

Craig Blomberg: Simply because certain parables, like the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, are used so often, I have come to appreciate some of the lesser-cited passages. Because of my heart for good stewardship I appreciate texts like the Rich Man and Lazarus, and in Luke 16, the Unjust Steward. That particular parable for many people seems to be the most puzzling of all.

One major question about interpreting and preaching parables is whether the parables of Jesus are meant to give us one message or many. What do you believe about that issue?

There have been wild pendulum swings throughout the history of the church in interpreting the parables, and as with many controversies, the truth often falls somewhere in between. In my studies I have tried to go back before the era of all of the Greek and Roman allegorizing of parables and other biblical narratives to the way parables of the Jewish rabbis were taken. Some of them might have been Jesus' contemporaries. Typically there were two or three or maybe four, but seldom more, key characters or details that clearly did have symbolic significance. Seldom were narrative stories of considerable detail narrowed down to just one main point, but on the other hand, it was seldom if ever the case that more than just a handful of key details had symbolism to them. The approach I have developed argues that while one may seek a big idea or a unifying proposition for a sermon, when one actually unpacks that in terms of the parables, one should understand how many main characters there are and what their relationship is. Usually one is able to find a key lesson or sub-point based on each of those characters.

How do you carry that off effectively in a sermon? Do you tell the story three different ways for each character?

That's one option. A study on the Prodigal Son, tucked away in an esoteric scholarly journal, did precisely that — three consecutive readings of the Prodigal, from the eyes of the wayward son and then the older brother and finally the waiting father. The conclusion was that the one main point of the story was that repentance is always possible no matter how far you have fallen, and one should not begrudge God's generosity to the wayward, but recognize that God is loving, wishing that lost sons near and far should return. When I read the end of the article, I said, " That's exactly what the parable means, but this guy can't count. That's not one point; that's three. One point for each of the main characters. "

But one doesn't have to structure the sermon that way. If people are used to a more typical three-point or three sub-point message, oftentimes successive episodes of the passage will focus on a different character in turn, and so you can combine traditional exposition moving sequentially through the passage with a focus on the different characters.

There may be other times when you want to do more classic, big-idea preaching and try to take those three prongs and combine them together. Take the parable of the two sons in Matthew 21, which seems to many people like the same structured story as the Prodigal minus most of the detail. A vineyard owner tells his two sons to go to work, and one day the one says he will but he doesn't, and the other says he won't but he does. I had a colleague who suggested a big idea for that passage as " Performance takes priority over promise. " In the three P words you have the three prongs of the passage summarized succinctly. I've never been able to come up with something like that for a text as rich in detail as the Prodigal Son.

How many parables have a multiplicity of characters contributing to the main points of the story?

There's no agreement on exactly how many parables of Jesus there are, but most estimates put the figure somewhere around 40. Roughly two-thirds of those can be classified as triangular in structure where there is a master figure — a God, a father, a shepherd, a slave owner — and then there are contrasting subordinates or sometimes groups of subordinates such as sons or servants or slaves or sheep or seeds. And there is usually a striking contrast between those subordinates: a good example, bad example. Often, though not always, there is a radical surprise as to who turns out to be the good example versus who turns out to be the bad example. About two-thirds of all of Jesus' parables are structured that way.

Another one-sixth have a master figure and a solitary subordinate, or simply two contrasting figures without a master, and they seem to me to fall nicely into two-point structures. The final six tend to be the shortest of the parables where the conventional wisdom of one main point seems to work well.

So the number of primary characters should help determine the structure of the sermon.

That is my contention.

What about those parables with parallels in more than one gospel where we have somewhat differing details? How do we handle those differences?

Determine if what at first glance appear to be parallels are in fact genuine parallels. There are at least three pairs of particularly well-known parables — the so-called great banquet in Luke 14 and the wedding feast in Matthew 22, the two versions of the lost sheep in Matthew 18 and Luke 15, and the talents in Matthew 25 and pounds in Luke 19 — where if we believe the text is inspired and accurate and we pay close attention to the context of those passages, we have to come to the conclusion that Jesus is telling a similar story to what he has told on a separate occasion in a different place at a different stage in his ministry. While it is interesting to compare the similarities between the two, I don't believe we can use the one in interpreting the other.

In the remaining instances, it does seem we have genuine parallels. If one is preaching sequentially through a particular Gospel, then it is important — whether we're talking about parables or any other portion of the Gospels — to do as little comparative work in the other Gospels as we can get by with. There may be something that's necessary to fill out the historical setting or background, but our goal as interpreters preaching a series through Luke — when we get to Luke 20, for example, and the parable of the wicked tenants, which does appear in and as well — is to look for what Luke saw as the key things he wanted to emphasize in light of the rest of his Gospel. The danger for preachers is that we don't preach the Bible, we don't preach what God inspired; we preach an artificial harmony binding texts together. On the other hand, if somebody is preaching a series on parables, or maybe a series on texts on stewardship and along the way you throw in a couple of parables, then it's more legitimate to draw in some of the parallel accounts to see what light they shed on the text at hand.

As with any Scripture, we can read into a text all kinds of later New Testament theology that the original hearers didn't have, misinterpret it, or not give the text at hand the weight it needs to have. Preachers must guard against putting together two parables that really aren't the same. We don't want to create a harmony of the parables.

Yes. You combine together two concerns there, and I would agree with both of them. The first concern is the one we talked about a minute ago, but then you also alluded to an equally important concern, and that is not to go beyond Jesus into historically later developments in the New Testament and interpret Jesus, say, in light of Paul. It's at times legitimate to do the reverse, particularly if we have reason to believe Paul is alluding to a teaching of Jesus But it obviously would not be legitimate historically to try to make sense of what Jesus could have expected an audience in Galilee in the first third of the first century to have understood from his words by appealing to something written 20 years later to Corinth.

As we interpret and preach the parables, what are some of the other dos and don'ts of dealing with allegory or symbolic stories?

Scholarly consensus, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, swung the pendulum too far away from the rampant allegorization of so much of church history. That's understandable because trends that take issues to extreme are often met by overreactions in the opposite direction. Nevertheless I would much rather have a preacher err on the side of caution, preaching one central point without much or any allegory, than to revert back to the opposite extreme that still dominates preaching throughout the world. In my experience and travels, that is particularly true in the second and third worlds where many pastors have had no formal education. Better to preach just one point even if you miss a couple than to come up with elaborate hidden significance from every last detail.

Any interesting examples?

In the parables of either the talents or pounds, you have the faithful servants followed by a faithless servant who has done nothing with his master's money and is consigned to outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. In the historical context, Jesus is speaking to Jewish followers of his who are part of God's chosen people, who are part of the entire community of Israel, all of whom believe that they are within the covenant. His point is to challenge them by saying: Not all of you who think you are in are truly in. In fact, a time is quickly coming when you won't be in at all unless you are my followers.

Because people miss that, they jump immediately to the allegorical equation that every time you see a servant in a parable it must stand for a Christian. Now, you have a faithless servant who is thrown into a place of darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth. If you're an Arminian, that's not problem because you just lost your salvation. But if you're a Calvinist, this creates greater problems. To explain it, some preachers say there must be some compartment in heaven for people who just barely get in by the skin of their teeth. It's not the most pleasant part of heaven because there is outer darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth. My reaction is, " Wait a minute. Do you really believe this? Folks, that's hell. Now, let's figure out what you did wrong in interpreting the parable. "

When you preached the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector from Luke 18, you titled it " The Parable of the Recovering Homosexual. " What were you hoping to accomplish with that title?

Some shock. Some interest. Some curiosity. That tends to be one of the better-known shorter parables of Jesus. Pharisees are supposedly understood by just about anyone in our culture today. You don't have to be a churchgoer to have in your vocabulary pharisaic as an adjective that means legalistic, hypercritical, hypocritical — but that's exactly not what the average Jew in the first century would ever have thought of when they heard of Pharisees. These were by far the most beloved of the various Jewish leadership sects in Jesus' day. Jesus shocked his audiences when he pointed out the hypocrisy of particular groups of Pharisaic leaders. I needed to come up with a different counterpart to Pharisees.

And I needed to do the same for tax collectors, because today a tax collector is an impersonal computerized form. It doesn't create the dynamic of someone who is working for the hated, occupying, military imperial forces of Rome. It doesn't create the dynamic of someone whose reputation was that they made their living by charging vastly higher sums of money than they turned over to their superiors. I looked for a contemporary equivalent to someone who is very hated and despised, even by well-respected, contemporary religious, conservative insiders. I don't know of any better example than the ongoing tension in the evangelical community between most practicing homosexuals and a huge percentage of conservative Christians and leaders, at least if we are to judge by the rhetoric.

What one is attempting to do in contemporizing a parable is to recreate in the culture of one's audience the identical impact that Jesus' original story would have had, by examining each detail and asking if it carries the same impact. Look for a contemporary setting where a cluster of details could, as closely as possible, approximate that same impact.

Have you seen this contemporizing done in ways that are not legitimate?

The biggest danger is that one doesn't do one's historical homework carefully enough. As with all narrative preaching on any biblical genre, more time is usually required. The benefits are usually enormous, and it is rare that a well-crafted narrative sermon does not meet with incredible response and appreciation by those who are open to its message. The danger is that one will come up with modern equivalents that really aren't true equivalents at all.

An example that comes to mind deals with the preaching in the marketplaces that occurs in the Book of so consistently. People don't understand that news was disseminated by a daily courier coming to the town square. Even in the smallest village in the ancient Roman empire, a courier gave the news at least once a day. This was the place where people went to buy their foodstuffs for the day in a world without refrigeration. It was also a place where, unlike our supermarkets, people expected to go and meet their friends and socialize.

If we go to shopping malls today and do outdoor evangelism, more often than not we will not be reproducing the dynamic or the intentions of the biblical world, even though we think we are literally following their example. The closer parallels today would be writing letters to the editor of the newspaper, speaking on college campuses — which are key places of social and political preparation for actions groups of various kinds — and creating inroads into secular radio and television talk shows. We need to be more creative and at the same time more historical as we draw these correspondences from the ancient world to today.

How do you interpret and preach the parable of the Unjust Steward, or Shrewd Manager, from Luke 16?

In Luke 16:1-9 there are three statements — two in verse 8 and one in verse 9 — that seem to align exactly with the three prongs of that particular parable. That is not a triangular structure, but simply a straight top-down model. If you were to think of it in terms of modern company flowcharts, it has a master, a servant underneath that master, and then that steward who is manager of his master's estate has various debtors underneath his authority. The master praised the unjust steward for his shrewdness. Then you have the somewhat ironic but often true aside that the children of light often are not as shrewd in their dealings as the children of this world are in theirs.

Finally you have the command, in cryptic fashion, to make friends by means of the tainted material possessions of this world, so that when this life and all of its possessions fail, those people whom you ministered to or who have become believers and have preceded you to glory will welcome you into the eternal habitation. So you have the master's praise, the responsibility for shrewd discipleship on the part of those who are true servants, and then the welcome of the debtors. However one chooses to structure the sermon, your three points are sitting right there in the text to be unpacked.

How about the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard from Matthew 20?

That reverts back to a more triangular structure. It's a bit more complex because at first glance it seems you just have groups of workers hired at different hours of the day, but the only ones Jesus focuses on are the first hired and the last hired. So there is a master figure, the vineyard owner, and the first hired and the last hired. The dynamic is the seemingly unfair, equal treatment of all.

In verses 13-16 the master replies to the complaining servants, " Friends, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous? " Then Jesus concludes, " The last will be first and the first will be last. " That comment has often puzzled people because it sounds like Jesus is treating everyone equally, so how can we than say there is a reversal? But I would argue that if they are all treated equally, he is simply saying that all positions are potentially interchangeable. The points of the parable involve the fact that God is never unjust. He is never less than fair. We probably don't want to demand God to be fair with us because then we're basically asking him to send us to hell. His grace is entirely undeserved.

The second part of the passage stresses that God in Christ is exceedingly generous. He hasn't been less than fair with anyone in the story. All got at least what they were promised. He is simply being much more than fair with those who were hired last. With the little epigram in verse 16 there is stress on the ultimate fundamental equality of all of God's people in eternity in the fullness of the kingdom of God.

What parables, in your estimation, are most frequently misinterpreted and why?

I suspect throughout church history that the Good Samaritan may well have gotten more misguided press than any other. In the attempt to limit it to one point, and given our lack of creativity in thinking of contemporary equivalents, the message often becomes " We ought to stop and help the stranded motorist more often than we do. "

There are all kinds of problems with that. One is simply the question of the modern equivalent. Most stranded motorists are not dying on the side of the road, as the man in the parable was. Another problem is that if there are three prongs to the parable, then imitating the love of the Samaritan is only one-third of what the passage is teaching. The point that Christian audiences probably need more is the lesson of the priest and the Levite. Oftentimes those who are consumed by religious duty either think that excuses them from being loving in situations of spontaneous need or are simply blind to those situations altogether.

But even then I don't think an expositor has gotten to the heart of Jesus' message, which is the shock value of a wounded man being rescued by the hated enemy, the Samaritan. Unless one of my points is something like " Even my enemy is my neighbor, " I'm convinced we have missed the heart and genius and most central part of that passage. To contemporize the story we need to do something like, Americans in 2004 imagining a GI wounded in the Iraqi desert who is rescued and nursed back to health by a member of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. If we don't get some folks upset with us, we have not recreated the dynamic of Jesus' original parable.

How many of his parables would you say were to evoke that kind of response?

Of those 25 or so passages that have three points or a pair of contrasting subordinates, at least two-thirds of the time there is a shocking reversal of who is the hero and who is the goat.

You've intrigued me with the idea that certain parables are often misinterpreted and therefore mispreached. Is there another one that stands out to you that because of our cultural distance we miss the point, we miss the surprise, and we mispreach it?

The next one that comes to mind is the Rich Man and Lazarus, because so many conservative Christians are consumed with interest in eschatology. Precisely because there is so little in the Scriptures that directly impinges on that topic, people turn to this parable even though they agree it should not be allegorized. Even though there are other details that they would never want to teach doctrinally, such as, there are going to be people in heaven who will want to go to hell. Nevertheless, because it looks like a text that could refer to some kind of agony that unbelievers experience after death and before the general resurrection, that passage gets used to support that.

Just about any major recent commentary on either Luke or the parables will point out that Jesus undoubtedly was aware of a number of Jewish parallels to that story. What was different about his account has to do with the way the story ends, where there is no travel from one part of the afterlife to another. People's fates are irrevocably sealed, and even if someone were raised from the dead it wouldn't make a wit of difference, because the rich man was a Jew who knew the Torah; he knew his responsibilities; he had paid no attention to God during his life anyway.

To say we can come up with doctrinal teaching about the nature of the afterlife from this parable violates principles that most of these same expositors would follow everywhere else.

Craig Blomberg is professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary in Denver, Colorado, and author of Preaching the Parables (Baker Academic).