McKnight on Parables

Parables are more than cute, homespun illustrations. Jesus' parables are revelatory kingdom dreams. They summon us into the world where God's kingdom takes root and grows and spreads. They summon us to a better world, to the kingdom of God, and they summon us to a kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. The parables of Jesus, in fact, are revolutionary scripts that enter into our heart of hearts, rattle us anew, and call us to complete surrender. One can say this yet another way: The parables of Jesus are opportunities for God's grace to enter into our lives to transform us.

This parabolic dream kingdom begins, Jesus says, with the imagination. First you listen to his stories and enter into them imaginatively, the way you enter into your favorite novel's characters. Then, because you've entered Jesus' kingdom plot, you've discerned kingdom life in a deeper manner. Then you give your One.Life to the Kingdom.Life.

The parables of Jesus are his sleight-of-hand trick. You begin thinking about very ordinary things, like fields and farmers and workers and women baking and men picking wheat and wounded people, and suddenly you find yourself transported into a brand new world and a brand new way of thinking. This vision of Jesus will take a conversion of our imagination; or, better yet, the parables convert our imaginations from self-centeredness to love.

A Christian, then, is one who follows Jesus, devotes his or her One.Life to the kingdom vision, and uses her or his imagination to see what God can do in this world. This imagination is nothing other than kingdom imagination shaped by Jesus' parables.

Scot McKnight, One.Life: Jesus Calls We Follow (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 44.

Allegory and Martin Luther

Even though he called allegorizers "clerical jugglers performing monkey tricks," Luther himself was known to engage in the occasional allegory.

His interpretation of the Good Samaritan:

the man going down to Jericho = Adam and all humankind
the robbers = devils who robbed and wounded us
the priest = fathers (Noah, Abraham) before Moses
the Levite = priesthood of the Old Testament
the good Samaritan = Lord Jesus Christ
oil = grace

from Robert H. Stein, "The Parables of Jesus in Recent Study," in Word and World 5/3 (1985), 249.

Origen

The man who was going down is Adam. Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers. The priest is the Law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ. The wounds are disobedience, the beast is the Lord’s body, the [inn], which accepts all who wish to enter, is the Church…The manager of the [inn] is the head of the Church, to whom its care has been entrusted. And the fact that the Samaritan promises he will return represents the Savior’s second coming.

His interpretation of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Origen, Homily 34.3, Joseph T. Lienhard, trans., Origen: Homilies on Mark, Fragments on Mark (1996), 138.