FOLLOW UP TO SESSION 6 - Parables as Lures

We had really fruitful discussion this past Sunday as we considered Jesus' use of parables. The idea behind the lesson is that Jesus likely did not just tell parables to teach one particular lesson through the parable, but to get the hearers to begin COLLABORATING through discussion about what the parable could mean. As an example, consider this parable taken from the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas:

• The kingdom of God is like a woman who was carrying a jar full of meal. While she was walking along a distant road, the handle of the jar broke and the meal spilled behind her along the road. She didn't know it; she hadn't noticed the problem. When she reached her house, she put the jar down and discovered that it was empty. (Gospel of Thomas 97)

What might this parable mean? Could there be more than one meaning? Without a particular context, which the canonical gospels always give us, we discovered in discussion that there are many ways to look at it. Compare the parable of the lost sheep in Matthew 18:7-14 and Luke 15:1-10. Notice that each gospel has a slightly different meaning for the same parable. What if we take other parables out of the context of the gospels; what other possible meanings might we find. Could Jesus have intended more than one meaning - or no particular meaning?

In discussion yesterday, we talked about what Scripture is and is not. In response to that discussion, I want to share some quotes from the book, The Dream of God: A Call to Return by Verna J. Dozier, which is helping to guide our Lenten Study:

• In response to Isaiah 55:11, Dozier writes, "The word of God is an image for the action of God, and that verse, very freely paraphrased, says, God will accomplish what God has set out to do. I think the story the Bible tells is about the activity of God to accomplish God's purposes." (pg. 7)
• " The Bible contains history, but it is also much, much more than history." (pg. 12, emphasis mine)
• "The Bible contains literature, bu the Bible is more, much more, than literature." (pg 12)
• "For me the Bible is primarily a theological record. Theology is making meaning, making sense out of our live in terms of what we believe to be the nature of ultimate reality." (pgs. 12-13)
• "We, too [as the biblical writers did], look at the world and ask what God is doing, which is another way of asking the question of meaning, the theological question. That is the only question to apply to the Bible, I believe, because it is in answer to that question that the Bible came into being. Is there a God? Is God for us? How can we know God?" (pgs. 13-14)
• "Biblical faith posits a God it cannot understand completely." (pg 15) - see Isaiah 55:8-9
• "Because the Bible is a theological book, it is a book of wrestlings, not a book of answers. In each age, the people have to struggle to hear the word of the Lord for their time, and sometimes their hearing is keener than at other times." (pg. 18)
• "What we have in the Bible is the record of hundreds of years in which two communities of faith looked at the experiences of their lives and asked what these experiences meant. The communities have left a record of what it meant to them in that collection of books we call the Bible, and that record can only be really understood from within the continuing life of their spiritual heirs. The question we must put to the records they have left behind is not "Which is right?" but questions like "What does it mean?" and "What did it mean for them?" and "What does it mean for us." (pg. 19)

Do these quotes give you different way of looking at Scripture? Do you agree with what Dozier says? Why or why not? What other insights would you add about Scripture?