Jesus taught through story.
He understood and lived story's power.
Recall his parables--
The Good Samaritan
The Pearl of Great Price
The Prodigal Son
The Lost Sheep
The Sower
The Widow and the Judge
The Lost Coin
--original stories
with layers of meaning,
challenging us to find ourselves in them,
to find God,
but never making it obvious,
leaving us to play hide and seek
with their heart, spirit, soul.
Did you ever wonder
"Where do these stories came from?"
Where do our stories originate?
From our experience
or the experiences of those we know.
So think back to the story of the Prodigal Son:
one son, wanting to escape the confines of home,
requests his inheritance and heads for foreign lands,
hoping for high times and fast living.
He finds both...and is soon broke, unemployed and regretful.
"Ugh!" he says, "this did not go as planned;
maybe home wasn't that bad."
You know the ending:
Amazing, gracious reunion with dad--
no judgment, no recriminations,
just open-armed welcome...
at least from his father;
his hyper-responsible brother, still working away at home,
was not happy to see him.
So what in that story was Jesus' story?
Did he have a typical teenage run-in
with Mary and Joseph?
Was he the older brother
annoyed with his parents' forgiveness
of a wayward sibling?
Of did he find himself in the role of "parent"
to a niece or nephew who'd gone off the rails
and needed someone to welcome them back
just as they were, broken but loved.
Who knows?
But it's likely his life experiences
provided the raw material for his story-telling.
I encourage you to do what I've just done
with other parables.
For example, what about the Good Samaritan?
Was Jesus at one point beaten and left at the side of the road?
Or did he provide the care for someone, no questions asked,
offered by the innkeeper?
Is there a chance he regretted an opportunity to help someone
when he passed them in their pain?
Or was he the one who stopped to help
when all others walked by?
I've heard it said that all stories,
to some degree,
are autobiographical.
So many ways to unpack a parable!
(with thanks to Lucinda Laird from the American Cathedral in Paris)
Text and image © 2018 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.
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