Parables B-Side edition
Lately I have found myself thinking a lot more about the B-sides of parables. Most of Jesus' parables have a major point, sometimes a minor point or two. They also tend to call us to identify with one, sometimes two, of the characters. And yet, sometimes I think it's worth thinking through what it is like to be in others' shoes....
The father of wayward children (Luke 15)
We most often read this as primarily a parable of God as the Father, and the younger son as the sinner who comes home. This is right and fitting! Recent interpretations have helped us focus our attention on the older son as likewise a sinner, a self-righteous one who also needs to "come in to the feast". This too is right and fitting! And we may find ourselves in either of those positions, needing to hear the compassionate father's call to come home.
But, are there times when we find ourselves in the shoes of the father? Insofar as human patterns of grace, compassion, forgiveness, are to be modelled on divine ones, the father too provides us a model. Are their ways in which we stand in the place of the father, in our human relationships, and are to be extending compassionate forgiveness to others? How did the Father see his son "still a long way from home" if not that he had his eyes regularly lifted up, hoping for his return. Are there others in our life who are outside, angry, and refusing to come in? And what might it look like to go out to them and exhort them to come in?
The injured traveller (Luke 10:29-36)
Jesus tells this story to flip the question from "who is my neighbour?" to "who could I be a neighbour to?", and its primary impact is to recognise ourselves in the priest and the Levite, and see our need to become like the good Samaritan. What happens when we find ourselves in the place of the wounded traveller? When we are so weak and broken that we are in desperate need of help? In the real world, we know that some people's racism and prejudice runs so deep that they'd rather die than receive help from some people. In our imagined world of the parable, the half-dead person is so desperate that they couldn't ward off help even if they tried. The traveller is beyond self-help and self-care. What then, when he awakes a few days later in the inn, nursed back to health, his needs cared for? What will be his response to the grace he has been shown? And so, likewise, what will ours be to the grace we've been shown?
The unforgiven slave (Matthew 18:23-35)
This parable in its A-side version packs a punch that leaves me reeling every time. We are supposed to identify with the slave who owes ten thousand talents (approx 60,000,000 denarii), and is graciously, prodigally, forgiven by the king. So too, we have been graciously, prodigally forgiven beyond our wildest possible imaginings, for a debt far more profound than we can ever realise. How then can we not extend forgiveness to others? The other slave owes 100 denarii, so the comparative debt ratio here is 600,000:1.
The B-side raises the question, what does it feel like to be the unforgiven slave? It is a position of dependence, helplessness, and pain. There is only one source of hope - the king. Either the king's grace working in the heart of the unforgiving slave, or else the king's own merciful forgiveness. In the community of faith, we have all been forgiven boundlessly and lavishly by the king, and so human unforgiveness aches painfully.
Not all Parables admit of a B-side reading, and I think we ought to be cautious about pushing parables beyond the weight of interpretation they can hold; at the same time, they are stories that invite us to think and reflect through how the teachings of Jesus apply to us in other ways, just as somehow we ought to explore the "minor" points of biblical passages rather than always the "main" point - to hear the musical motifs that are not the dominant melodies.