Portrait of the Quintessential Story Teller

In a previous hub, I described the parables of Jesus as truth embedded in stories. The parables throw brilliant light on many subjects, but the first Subject on whom they cast the brightest light is the Teller of the parables Himself. The parables give us clues about some of the things that captured the interest of Jesus Christ and the way in which His mind worked. Some of the parables seem to point to those associations which were earliest and deepest in His consciousness.

Psychology and its study of personality have brought a new realization of the fact that rarely, if ever, a child grows into healthy maturity if during formative years the child feels loved and secure. Unless a child knows love he or she will be afraid; for only love can create the outgoing confidence which meet the world with fearlessness, as the human Jesus met His world.

Through the years in Nazareth, Jesus grew up in the shelter of a homehold endowed with all the rich inheritance of Judaism which Joseph and Mary could transmit to Him. As Winifred Margaretta Kirkland, with excellent insight wrote:

Twenty centuries ago, Judaism dared to have convictions and educated its children in accordance with them and thereby obtained results in energy, spiritualized energy. It is high tribute to the child training which He received as a Hebrew boy, that from the first moment you meet Him you can discover no deviation in the life purpose of Jesus. You cannot split His character into compartments assuming, here we will study His acts, here we will study His words, and here we will study His thoughts, for Jesus is a personality perfectly fused.

In the education of Jesus, from babyhood to manhood, there was never any severance between the beautiful and the ethical, between the material and the spiritual, between the secular and the sacred. One result of this education may be seen in a character which is at the same time profoundly integrated and profoundly energized.

And if it should seem that Winifred’s words equate the development of Jesus too closely with the way we see our own and other lives unfold, it should be remembered that the very meaning of the Incarnation is that He who was to be the Savior, entered fully into our human experience. He did not appear on the stage of life as a full grown man independently mature. He came as a baby laid in a mother’s arms. He grew as a little boy child who followed His mother around and looked up into her eyes, and reached for her hand, like all children do.

So it may be that memories of His growing up life are reflected in some of the most clear-cut parables which long afterwards Jesus framed. As a small child He may have watched with fascinated eyes the bubbling leaven as His mother’s fingers kneaded it into the meal. He had seen her mend the all too precious clothes which could so easily wear out and He knew that there came a time when no more new patches could be put on old cloth. He had gone with her to the village well, and He knew the gratefulness of a cup of cold water taken from her hands.

Jesus may have been thinking of His mother when He told the parable of the woman who lost a coin and, when she had swept her house until she had found it, called in all her neighbors to rejoice. He may have been remembering His stepfather, Joseph, the strength of whose affection must have been the background of His boyhood years, when He said to a crowd in which there were mothers and fathers, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:11.

In His parables we see the reflections of things on which His attention had lingered as He grew and went about the small town of Nazareth and the hills and fields around it noticing the simple, homey things that might mean nothing and yet could mean everything. There were images that must have flashed into His mind and later illuminated His teachings; images such as lilies beautifying the Galilean meadows after the rain, of which He said that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as well. Perhaps He observed a hen gathering her chickens under her wings; birds finding room for their nests in a tree that had grown from a tiny mustard seed; a man sowing in the springtime and the reapers sifting out the wheat from the tares; children playing in the market place; a shepherd going out to look for his lost lamb.

It is clear that Jesus saw things that most other people missed and He saw with a unique clarity what others saw only dimly. He always began from impressions common to Himself and to you and me. It is as though He saw the tangible and in the act of contemplating them, released them from there tie to custom, to tradition, to commonness, to familiarity. The old and customary becomes new and exciting. For Jesus, the ordinary things of earth had an illimitable value because He saw this as His Father’s world, and beheld the spiritual meaning breaking through.

Of course, Jesus’ observation was not limited to the world of materialism. The scene of human life itself arrested His attention. He took notice of its lights and shadows, its nobility and pathos, its struggles and confusions, as well as its victories and defeats. He knew what was in man because He knew actual men and knew the life we lived through the sharing in it in an intimate way.

We learn much about Jesus in knowing that fishermen were His friends. We learn something more about Him when we consider that He felt no constraint or awkwardness when Matthew arranged a dinner and tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him. All life drew Him with a great instinctive compassion, and it was because He had such human understanding that His divine judgment could be so unerring in praise or condemnation.

Through His parables, we see the sort of people He saw, and we see them with the meaning of who they were and what they did: the devotion of the humble widow in the temple; the penitence of the publican; the great mercy of the man from despised Samaria who put a Levite and a priest to shame; the shepherd’s faithfulness; the single-mindedness of the man whose passion was to find the perfect pearl; the father’s love which no rebellion of his son could kill; the patient integrity of the man who built his house on a rock.

Jesus also saw the pompousness of men who push their way to seats of honor; the pride of the rich fool who thought his crowded barns were more important than his soul; the servant indifferent to his trust; the men who sent back their glib excuses for not coming to the wedding feast where they were supposed to be; the silly bridesmaids whose lamps had no oil to keep them burning at the crisis hour. These and other figures belonged to the first century, but they live on in every century and in every place and in every Christian heart.

Thus, the parables bear witness to the intensity of interest with which Jesus looked upon His world. But they also reveal something else about Him that is deeper and more important. They reveal that when Jesus looked at life, He saw in it not only its vivid humanness and its moral lessons, but the meaning of God the Father in relation to humanity. Steeped as He was in the august conceptions of the law and the prophets, Jesus’ mind and soul were filled with a sense of the transcendent holiness of God.

We rejoice in the bright encouragement which the most beautiful of Jesus’ parables teaches us about Him. We praise God for the Synoptic Gospels’ that brings us into the knowledge that the Father’s will and purpose are to some degree reflected in the best that is in His children’s lives. All glory to God!

References

Osterley, William E., Gospel Parables in the Light of Their Jewish Background
Hunter, Archibald M. The Parables Then and Now
Dodd, C.H. The Parables of the Kingdom
Winifred M. Kirkland, Portrait of a Carpenter