All four gospels focus on the teachings of Jesus. What does He teach about? God’s love for humankind, the reign of God, loving our neighbors as ourselves, ethics and morality, and more. How did He teach? Mostly through parables, which he expanded on with his disciples, sharing with them the meaning of his parables. Parables are an interesting choice. Why did using stories (parables) consume so much of Jesus’ teaching? 

I find it interesting that in both the 21^st century business world, and in the world of nonprofits, which I’ve worked in for more than forty years, suddenly storytelling has become a hot buzzword. You can attend conferences just on storytelling for nonprofits. You can take courses in storytelling. You can hire consultants to help you tell your organization’s story to donors or customers. Maybe Jesus was way ahead of His time! I think the reason storytelling has become so popular in the nonprofit and business worlds in the past few years is because people are starting to realize that the best way to get their point across is to put a human face on their story. In the nonprofit world this means making your case for support, why should people donate to your nonprofit. It’s not because you need money, need a new building, or hire more staff, it’s because they want to help the people you serve, they want to change lives and save lives. In the business world, it’s not selling the features on your product, it’s selling the benefits of it—in other words, “sell the sizzle, not the steak.” Jesus did this through parables. He asked us to put ourselves in the position of the people, or sometimes the objects, in his stories.

Think about the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example. (Luke 15) When we hear this story, we tend to identify with one of the characters. At times, we might identify with the father—worrying, watching every day for his son to return home. At other times we may identify with the prodigal son—seeing that our choices were the wrong ones and wanting to come home and seek forgiveness. At other times, we may identify with the brother who resented being a steadfast support for his father and now seeing his father welcoming the son who was not there when his father needed him. Jesus could easily have just said—be patient and good things will come, repent of your sins, and don’t resent those whom God loves even if they haven’t made good choices. But this story shows us real human beings who struggled with the same things with which we struggle and how they overcame their struggles.

Similarly, in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Matthew 5:43-48), Jesus again uses His gift of storytelling to tell us how important compassion is and that we should love or neighbor as ourselves. Again, this story finds us identifying with different characters at different phases of our life. Sometimes we may feel like the man who was beaten and robbed, left to die alone in a ditch by the side of the road. Perhaps we haven’t literally been beaten up, but we feel we’ve suffered wrong at the hands of someone, a stranger, a friend, a family member. We feel emotionally beaten down and hopeless because we are alone in our suffering and perhaps feel no one cares enough to help us. At other times we may feel like the priest or the Pharisee; perhaps we pass by others in need because we are busy with our lives and don’t won’t to get involved with other people’s troubles. We may even feel like those in need deserve their situation—if they would get a job, they wouldn’t be homeless; if they didn’t drink or gamble, they’d have money to buy food; if they had planned better, they wouldn’t be out of a job; if they’d taken better care of their health, they wouldn’t be bankrupt because of their health care costs. If they hadn’t travelled to take refuge for themselves and their families in a strange land, they wouldn’t be separated from family members, treated like criminals, or deported. And sometimes we feel like the good Samaritan who showed compassion and gave without expectation of being repaid. Once again, Jesus could have just said love your neighbor, and everyone is your neighbor, even the priest and the Pharisee who ignored the suffering of a stranger, but instead, He told us a story so we could see that these situations happen in everyone’s life and His teaching about loving all God’s creation has meaning today just as it did then.

Sometimes, His parables spoke more in terms of things, not people, such as in the parable of the mustard seed (Matthew 13: 31-32) and the parable of the good and bad soil (Matthew 13 1-8). We sometimes can relate our lives to nature as well. The mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, becomes a haven for the birds to take shelter. Even if we think we are insignificant, we can do great things. And we can identify with the different types of soil—sometimes our lives may be rocky, sometimes we feel the “weeds” are choking us, sometimes the wind scatters us in too many directions, and yet, if we are open to God’s word, if it is planted it good soil (an open mind) it flourishes. 

Jesus used parables that the people of his time understood—farming, fishing, and so on, so his stories would be relatable to his audience. But they are just as relevant to us today when we understand the deeper meaning of the story. It is interesting that most of the time when he taught using parables, later as He was alone with His disciples, he elaborated more on the story and revealed the meaning. Was it because His disciples were dense and didn’t understand His message? Or because He wanted them to develop their own stories so that they could then relate to the truths He preached in a way that would be understandable to their various audiences? St Paul certainly told stories in his letters that related to his different audiences. 

This is an excerpt from my book, See This Christ, 2^nd Edition. Get it here: See This Christ: 2nd Edition - Kindle edition by Lysakowski, Linda . Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.