Parables, by their very nature, are not easy to understand… at least, not at first.
A parable is a unique type of story designed to promote observation, meditation, and action. A parable that does not invite this sort of deep thinking and eventual active response to the meaning contained within the story is not a parable after all. Although parables are challenging to understand, they are not impossible to understand. In fact, Jesus told his parables expecting his hearers to understand after they had reflected deeply enough on it. We can see this point made in two particular places within Matthew and Mark. We’ll look at Mark first.
After Jesus tells his parable about a very small seed that becomes a very large tree, Mark gives us some insight into Jesus’s motivation with his parables. “With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand” (Mk 4:33, NIV). Interesting, huh?
We can sometimes get into the habit of thinking that Jesus told parables with one motivation in mind—to keep his hearers from understanding. But it’s not that simple. One of the results of the parables is that some do not hear and thus do not understand. Another is that some folks do hear and understand because of the nature of the parables. Jesus wanted people to hear and understand his message about the kingdom of God and their place in it. So he told parables in pursuit of this goal, all the while knowing that there would be some who closed their ears (and eyes) to the message he was announcing. Even though Jesus knew and made it clear that there would be plenty of people who refused to listen to what he was saying, we must not suppose that Jesus’s sole motivation in speaking in parables was to keep people from understanding what he meant.
If Jesus wanted to he could have made it impossible for anyone to understand anything he was saying (Jn 3:12). But he didn’t do that. On the contrary, he told stories his hearers could understand. He talked about farmers, and land, and seed, and families, and houses, and money, and weddings, and kings. Things the people of his day were immediately and intimately aware of. And the things that in our day are pretty well known, too.
Matthew is quite helpful here as he reaches back to the psalms to explain why Jesus taught like this. He writes, “So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden from the creation of the world’ ” (Mt 13:35, NIV). If we thought Jesus’s only goal with parables was that things would remain hidden forever, Matthew helpfully corrects us.
According to him, Jesus told parables because there were things hidden for a long time that he was now making known to the world. Jesus wanted people to know these realities that could only be expressed in stories that invited its hearers to reflect and wonder—so he told parables. Stories that require us to think and meditate on what was said. Stories that offer to show us things we haven’t seen before. We’re able to do this because that’s what parables do, and that’s why Jesus told them.