I reflect back to Dallas Willard’s newest work, The Scandal of the Kingdom. Dallas worked to get to the heart of why Jesus used parables. The long and the short of it is this: God’s people have ears… but don’t listen. They have eyes… but refuse to see.

We have our presuppositions of what the Kingdom is about and just aren’t ready to learn more. Jesus doesn’t set a bomb off on us and say, “HERE! HERE IS THE KINGDOM!” All we would be thinking is, “Oh my GOD! A BOMB!”

The parables are merciful because we are incapable. They were the tool used to try and shake loose some brain cells that might begin to say, “Wait. There is another way of looking at this?”

“You see, the parables are an act of mercy to us because sometimes our hearts are hard.” (p. 29)

Jesus would only give so much to his hearers because they had that kind of capacity (like having a teaspoon to receive rather than a buck). We come to Jesus to “learn” and he gives us a teaspoon of teaching. We get mad and Jesus gently tells us, “Look at what you brought to receive this water.”

You look down and realize he gave you a teaspoon because you brought a teaspoon. In our mind, we thought we were bringing a big capacity truck to load up!

Parables are an act of mercy because sometimes our hearts are hard.

Parables were told to help people begin their exploration of the Kingdom of God.

We deal with ears that don’t hear and eyes that don’t see in every generation. We have to deal with it in our own lives. We think we know about the Kingdom of God, so when a teaching is given about the Kingdom of God, we shut off our brains.

“Been there. Done that.”

There is a story (most likely apocryphal) of a student at Princeton who sat on a bench on campus and didn’t realize on the other end of the bench was Albert Einstein. Without Google, how did we ever function? The student wants to engage the older man, probably out of courtesy. They greeted each other and the student asked Einstein what he did at Princeton.

Einstein said, “I am a student of physics.”

The young student said, “Oh. I took that last semester.”

We get like that.

The pastor says, “Let’s all turn to Matthew 13,” and we might think, “Oh, I read that last month.”

We have ears… do we hear?

Parables are an act of mercy because sometimes our hearts are hard.

The parables are Jesus’ way of trying to pull us in. We need to grow in the truth of the Kingdom of God. We need ears that will be opened to hear. We need the blindness of our eyes to be touched by the healing hands of Jesus.

I think of this prayer of Anselm in our Book of Common Prayer (2019):

Teach me to seek you, and as I seek you, show yourself to me; for I cannot seek you unless you show me how, and I will never find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you by desiring you, and desire you by seeking you; let me find you by loving you, and love you in finding you. Amen.