James Lileks at www.buzz.mn says they’re having a try-out for the game show, Jeopardy at the Mall of America tonight.

Ah well. If God had intended me to go to the try-out, He wouldn’t have scheduled a Viking Age Society meeting for tonight.

My subject, in lieu of phrasing my answer in the form of a question, is the parables of Jesus.

Most Christians think they know all about the parables. It’s my opinion that most of what we think we know is… not exactly mistaken. But inadequate.

I grew up (and I don’t think I’m alone) with the idea that the parables were essentially allegory. You go to them with the idea of figuring out what this or that symbolizes, and then you have the meaning.

But have you noticed that that approach doesn’t actually work very well when you go to the text?

It works fine for some of the parables. The Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:3-9) is a classic of this form. In fact, the disciples ask Jesus what it means, and He gives an allegorical interpretation. The seed stands for something, and the various kinds of ground on which it falls stand for various kinds of people.

And yet… what does that interpretation tell us? That some people accept the gospel, and some people don’t. Hardly news to anybody who’s ever tried to share his faith.

So it seems to me that Jesus’ interpretation wasn’t meant to be exhaustive. I think He meant us to meditate on the story and read the deeper implications—the fact that people who want to spread the gospel have to be prepared to see most of their work appear to be wasted, holding onto faith that the portion that falls on the “good soil” will bring a return that makes up for the disappointment of the others. In other words, courage and persistence and optimism are the point, as any good salesman could tell you.

Some parables seem to be plain narrative, with no symbolism involved. Take the parable of the Rich Man with the storehouses (Luke 12:16-21). I look in vain here for any symbolism or allegory. The rich man represents a rich man. He’s accumulated so much grain (which symbolizes grain) that he’s making plans to tear down his old storehouses (which I interpret for you to mean storehouses) and build new ones to hold it all. He doesn’t know that he’s about to die, and then all his wealth will do him no good. This isn’t allegory. It’s a cautionary tale. Jesus says, “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God” (verse 21). We miss the point of this story, I think, when we look for symbolism when we ought to be taking it literally.

And then there are the “difficult parables.” There’s the parable of the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1-8). How are we to take a story where Jesus asks us to think of God as being like an unjust judge? (No wonder the Sanhedrin considered Him a blasphemer!). Or the parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13). Here Jesus seems to be holding up an embezzler as an example for His disciples. What’s with that?

This is again a problem of looking for allegory where something else is intended. These two stories aren’t allegories. They’re… I don’t know what to call them. There’s probably a literary term. They’re stories intended to shock, to twist paradigms, to deliver a narrative kick to our pants. Jesus is simply telling fantastic, shocking (and somewhat comic) stories to get our attention. He doesn’t want us to take the Unjust Judge or the Unjust Steward as reliable symbols or role models. He just wants us to look at the things we do from a different perspective. These stories are like the two-by-four with which the farmer in the old joke smacks his mule, just “to get its attention.”

My point in all this is to say that the parables, considered merely as a group of stories, are highly remarkable, and far more textured and complex than we usually think.

It seems to me that even someone who didn’t believe the Christian religion would have to stop a moment in puzzlement if he encountered these stories for the first time, and was informed that they came from an obscure, First Century Jewish peasant. I think he’d say, “This must have been some peasant.”