Why Parables?? (Devotional on Matthew 13:10-17)

Matthew 13 focuses primarily on Jesus teaching the people through the use of parables. A total of four parables are presented in this chapter. However, right in the middle of this section, there is a small excursus on why Jesus uses parables at all (vv.10-17). In simplest terms, Jesus says that he uses parables to fulfill the prophecy from Isaiah “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”

 

This explanation, when taken in isolation, feels callous. It paints Jesus as someone intentionally trying to hide his message. As someone seemingly trying to mislead people. However, I do not believe this is the intent of this explanation or of Jesus’ fondness of parables in the first place. At the most basic level, what is a parable? It is a morality tale. It is a story told to impart a message of right and wrong or of good and evil. Perhaps, the best analogous modern example are fairy-tales and fables. What does the story of the tortoise and the hare tell us? That pride can be the downfall of the powerful. What about Hansel and Gretel? That greed and gluttony will harm you in the end.

 

Stories like these are how we take hard to understand and high concept ideas and make them more palatable for children. I believe that Jesus is doing the same thing with his use of parables. He is taking concepts that might be difficult to understand and putting them in terms and situations that virtually everyone around him could understand. He is making it as easy as possible for people to hear and understand his message.

 

With this idea in mind, then his explanation of why he uses parables shifts slightly. Now, his use of parables does not come off as an attempt to confuse people into ‘hearing but never understanding’ but rather as an earnest attempt to make his message easy to grasp. By using parables,  Jesus is trying to cast as wide a net as possible, to help as many people as possible understand his message of salvation. This understanding then puts the Isaiah quote in a different context. It becomes less a stance on Jesus gatekeeping and more a disheartened plea for people to just simply open up their hearts and hear the words that Jesus is saying.

 

Jesus uses parables to give us as much information as possible, in a way we can most easily understand. It is Jesus taking the theologically rich topics of salvation, faith, atonement, and divine judgment and framing them so that they make sense and are easy to remember. It is Jesus’ way of making sure that as few people as possible fall into the camp of those who ‘hear but never perceive.’