Christian Art | Meaning Of Parables
Mark 4 | Why does Jesus speak in parables?
‘And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.’ Isaiah 6: 9
The parables constitute the heart of Jesus’ teaching. In our time, the stories remain to us strikingly vivid and fresh, touching us with an immediate sense of Jesus’ humanity. Indeed, such is their personal character that we have in the parables a sense of being with Jesus.
At the same time, we find ourselves bound to ask: What do the parables mean? We feel called upon to try to explain the parables, and we may wonder why Jesus taught in this way, telling stories with deeper, hidden meanings, which required explanation, and which the crowds might often not understand.
The struggle to understand the meaning of the parables has been present through the history of Christianity since Jesus. Explaining the parables is no straightforward task. Allegorical meanings are often assigned, and this is the way in which the parables are explained in the Gospels, such that, for example, the owner of the vineyard becomes God and the wicked tenants become those Jewish religious authorities who distort the Law to their own ends and reject the prophets, wilfully obscuring true faith and keeping the people from a free and proper relationship with God. Such interpretations are true, but still there is more; the code is not so simple as to say that x in the story means y in reality, and so on.
Meaning Of Parables
To get to the more profound meaning of the parables, we need to know that they are not merely social commentary or veiled attacks on the Jewish religious authorities, the elders, the scribes, and the Pharisees. The parables are not merely teaching us how to be good people or exposing the hypocrisy of those who do not practice the good they preach.
This is not to say that we do not understand the parables on this level. The good Samaritan is an inspiring figure – obviously we want to be like him. The father of the prodigal son is all that a father could be, his heart bursting with love when his son returns to him. We see the justice in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man – of course we feel the emptiness of riches and a compelling need to give what we can to the poor. These are good and worthy responses to the parables.
Jesus, though, is doing more that conveying sound moral precepts and a simplified theology through colourful, pithy stories. Jesus wasn’t crucified for accusing the Pharisees of being hypocrites, or for encouraging people to recognize what is truly of value in their lives, and to live for that. The parables are far more transformative than this. We are in the presence not of Jesus the liberal rabbi, but of Jesus who brings spiritual revolution.
It has been said that all the parables are ultimately eschatological; all point toward the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God. This is crude, and rather too forced in places, but we can see how the coming of the Kingdom clearly features. We will be judged. We do not know when the hour may be. We are warned to watch, to make good use of our gifts, to store treasure in heaven, to be ever alert to the master’s coming. We are attuned through the parables to this order of reality, our understanding of how to live being thereby reconfigured.
This must, then, lead us to consider the question of the coming of the Kingdom of God, when Christ will come in glory and the world will be judged. The parables teach us to watch, and yet the world didn’t end; there was no apocalypse, no cosmic meltdown, no dissolution of the old world and institution for the elect of the new. The parables, therefore, could not have been intended to point to a temporally imminent eschatology.
The parable of the mustard seed teaches Jesus’ disciples of how the Church will grow from small beginnings to encompass the world, offering the possibility of Christian faith and redemption to all. The seed to grow must fall into the ground and die for there to be life. Likewise, the small lump of leaven must be hidden in the dough for all the dough to rise. The veiled meaning of these parables is a further mystery, through which we read the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It is when we understand that, at the heart of the parables, we confront the reality of Jesus Christ that we begin to engage more fully with the deep meaning, and that we begin to understand why Jesus taught in parables, veiling his teachings such as to render them deliberately obscure. As he explains to the disciples: ‘Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.’ (Mark 4: 11-12)
Parables And The Mystery Of Christ
The material for the parables is drawn from everyday life. They engage Jesus’ listeners because there is so much that they can easily relate to. Jesus gets his audience into the story, and then there are the twists, the reversals, the shock of the unexpected – our sense of how things are is briskly overhauled. The final mystery remains, like the leaven or the mustard seed, deliberately buried, such that it may germinate and grow, to encompass the whole understanding, the figure of Christ crucified, the Kingdom come. We become Christ’s disciples, walking with him through the mystery, wholly engaged – with the whole understanding – in ways which would not be available should we not have had to think our way inside the parables.
The very fact that the meaning of the parables is hidden thereby engages the listener as a participant in the drama of Christ’s revelation of himself as the Son of God, our redeemer, and it draws us with Christ toward the cross. It is the mystery which propels Christ there. The Jewish authorities know well enough what Jesus is claiming, with his forgiveness of sin and his authoritative reinterpretation of the Sabbath, centring the Sabbath upon himself. For the people as a whole there is obscurity, such muddied understanding as leads to what at first seems a failure of mission, the ignominious death on the cross, which is in fact Christ’s triumph, enabling the greater conversion, for Christ to draw all of humanity to himself.
To this day Jesus is with us. He comes to us. Just as the parables drew on the everyday, familiar world of Jesus’ time, and within the stories the deep mystery of God, Father and Son, was hidden, so now we are drawn by the parables to recognize God in our modern world. The Kingdom of God is indeed imminent: we have only to open our hearts, our minds, our souls, and to call. The truth, then, is no longer hidden. Our life flows from Christ’s loving sacrifice. We live with the crucified Christ at the heart of the parables.
Office Of Readings | Eastertide Week 3, Tuesday | A Reading From The Sermons Of Saint Augustine | Let Us Sing To The Lord A Song Of Love ‘Let us sing to the Lord a song of love.’ Commentary | ‘Let Us Sing To The Lord A Song Of Love’ By Saint Augustine Saint Augustine’s sermon on Psalm 149, expounding the verse ‘Sing to the Lord a new song’, draws on his deeply theological, philosophical, and pastoral mind to deliver a rich meditation on love, new life in Christ, and the moral integrity of worship. This reading, likely delivered in the context of the Easter season and baptismal catechesis, reflects the tone of joyful renewal that characterizes the liturgical spirit of this time. Singing As The Expression Of Love At the heart of Augustine’s sermon is the identification of song not simply as musical praise, but as a metaphor for love itself. Augustine draws a profound connection: ‘A song is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love.’ In Augustine’s view, everyone loves something, but the challenge of the Christian life lies in rightly ordering that love. This echoes his central theme in the Confessions and De Doctrina Christiana: that disordered love lies at the root of sin, while properly ordered love leads the soul back to God. Augustine’s theology of love is Trinitarian. He cites 1 John 4:19, ‘We love him because he first loved us,’ to emphasize that divine love originates with God and is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Thus, the capacity to love God is itself a gift of grace, not a natural human achievement. This affirms a core teaching of Augustine’s mature theology: human will is insufficient for salvation without divine initiative. The ‘New Song’ And The New Life The idea of the ‘new song’ sung by ‘new men’ belongs to a broader Augustinian anthropology and eschatology. The ‘new song’ corresponds to the ‘new covenant’ and the ‘new man’, who has been reborn through Christ. Baptism, as Augustine suggests, is the gateway into this renewal, aligning this sermon with the mystagogical homilies delivered during the Octave of Easter. It is in the newness of life, rather than in the novelty of melody, that the ‘new song’ truly resides. The liturgical element of the sermon is reinforced by the line ‘his praise is in the assembly of the saints’. Augustine emphasizes that singing praise is a communal act of the Church, the Body of Christ, which is itself the locus of love, truth, and divine indwelling. This is reminiscent of the ecclesiology of the early Church as found in Acts 2:42-47 and carried forward in Augustine’s vision of the City of God. Integration Of Worship And Moral Life Augustine challenges his listeners to ensure that their outward praise is matched by their inner life: ‘Sing with your voices, your hearts, your lips and your lives.’ This insistence on the unity of worship and ethics is characteristic of his pastoral emphasis. It also reflects the prophetic tradition (cf. Amos 5:23-24, Isaiah 1:13-17), where God rejects worship that is not accompanied by justice and righteousness. To sing truly, then, is to live truly. Augustine’s call to his congregation to be the praise of God with their lives mirrors the Pauline exhortation in Romans 12:1, to ‘present your bodies as a living sacrifice’. Thus, the life of the believer is liturgy enacted in the world. Philosophical Underpinnings Underlying this sermon is a distinctly Neo-Platonic structure of thought. Augustine conceives of love as both a participation in the divine and as the means of ascent to God. When he writes, ‘Love me and you will have me, for you would be unable to love me if you did not possess me already,’ he echoes Plotinian ideas of the soul’s return to the One, yet he firmly roots them in a Christian framework where God acts first in love. Practical Exhortation Augustine’s conclusion is a call to moral and spiritual authenticity. He exhorts his listeners, recently baptized or long initiated, to be not only singers of praise but embodiments of it: ‘If you desire to praise him, then live what you express. Live good lives, and you yourselves will be his praise.’ In this, Augustine provides not only doctrinal teaching but a concrete rule of life. This sermon is a microcosm of Augustine’s theological genius: biblical exegesis, Trinitarian theology, pastoral urgency, and philosophical depth converge in his exhortation to sing a new song. In post-Easter joy, Augustine invites all believers to live out their baptismal identity by becoming praise itself. Worship, for him, is not merely what the Church does; it is what the Church is when it lives in love. A Reading From The Sermons Of Saint Augustine | Let Us Sing To The Lord A Song Of Love Sing to the Lord a new song; his praise is in the assembly of the saints. We are urged to sing a new song to the Lord, as new men who have learned a new song. A song is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love. Anyone, therefore, who has learned to love the new life has learned to sing a new song, and the new song reminds us of our new life. The new man, the new song, the new covenant, all belong to the one kingdom of God, and so the new man will sing a new song and will belong to the new covenant. There is not one who does not love something, but the question is, what to love. The psalms do not tell us not to love, but to choose the object of our love. But how can we choose unless we are first chosen? We cannot love unless someone has loved us first. Listen to the apostle John: We love him, because he first loved us. The source of man’s love for God can only be found in the fact that God loved […]
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