GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 4:2
Parables
A father taught his son the value of a dollar. He said to him, “Son, make money. Make money honestly if you can, but make money.” The father practiced his own lesson and grew wealthy, having little time for his family. The son also grew fabulously wealthy, practicing what he had been taught. The father was asked once about contributing to a charity to help a family whose house burned, destroying all their belongings. “No one helped me,” he said. “It’ll do ’em good to start over. It’ll build character. Teach ‘em the value of a dollar.” The father became old and frail, and he called on his son to help him in his declining years. “I have no time for such drivel,” the son said. “I have investments to look after. Everything I have is invested. Buck up, Father, it’ll do you good… teach you character.”
This story is a parable. If framed correctly, the lesson should impress itself upon the reader. St. Mark said about Jesus, “And he taught them many things in parables, and he said to them in his teaching.” (Mark 4:2) The word “parable” is a compound word meaning something thrown beside something else. In Jesus’ use of this teaching method, it meant an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Jesus used parables as a teaching method to gain the attention of his audience. He was not teaching in the synagogue where people were more or less expected to remain quiet until the end of the lesson. He was talking to a crowd milling about on the side of the sea; he needed to get their attention. So he began a story with something familiar to them—a farmer. His audience was surely a mixture of people from various backgrounds, so he needed a way to take his audience from the concrete to the abstract. He could talk about preaching and evangelism—important but abstract subjects. But if he talked about planting seeds, a concrete, familiar activity, everyone could grasp his subject. And parables require that a hearer think for himself—think about a farmer, about seeds, about soil, about what makes a seed grow, and what destroys it.
Finally, parables are timeless. The lesson taught in a parable is always applicable. So it is with Jesus’ parables—just as applicable today as when he spoke them.
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