AJ: I think the parables, a lot of them are really provocative. And one of the reasons parables are sometimes listed as difficult to understand is because they tell us stuff we actually really know deep down, but we've got it so repressed we don't want to acknowledge it. So we resist it. It's like, you know, your mother telling you you need to write the thank you notes. Like, yeah, I know I want it, I have to do that, but I really, really don't want to.

Or, you know, you really do need to take care of the poor. Yeah, I know that, but, you know, I've got a golf game next week. So, uh, what we do is we wind up taming the parables, and I think, to a great extent, we take away the more difficult messages, and we turn them into sweet little children's stories, which is how many Christians heard them to begin with, because you hear them in Vacation Bible School, or you hear them in Sunday School, and they're lovely little stories which are designed to be comforting rather than designed to be challenging, designed to be provocative.

Pete: Right. Do you have a favorite parable?

AJ: I have a number of them that I really, really, I really like the Prodigal Son. Yeah.  I have for a number of years been teaching in a maximum security prison, here in Nashville. Uh, and...

Pete: From the inside or from the outside?

AJ: No, I, I bring Vanderbilt students out to the prison and, and we, inside [inaudible] the prison,

Pete: You're not a prisoner yourself? I'm just clarifying for our listeners...

[Group Laughter]

AJ: No, it's a men's prison. And for them, the prodigal son means God will love you even if you have done something really heinous. And, and that's, that is a meaningful and powerful reading. So I don't want to take that away. So this is my sense is I don't want to take away people's theology, I just want to add to it.

I don't think that's what it would have meant to first century Jews. I think it's a good reading for early Christians. First century Jews already knew that you could do something really horrible and God would still hang in there. I mean, golden calf was not one of our better moments, and somehow the covenant still managed to prevail.

What I do with that parable is I read it in light of the first two parables in Luke chapter 15, which is the parable of the lost sheep, which I think really is the parable of the inept sheep owner, and the parable of the lost coin, which is the parable of the frantic housewife. And what happens in each is they're typically interpreted as, oh, you know, Jesus is the good shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, and somehow the woman never gets to be God, but you know.

And then dad in the third parable is God, and the prodigal son is the sinful but repentant Christian, and then the older brother always winds up being the Jew or the Pharisee who doesn't like this, you know, repentant kid coming in and getting back. And I think those are not good readings. What we miss, and the first parable sets this up quite nicely as it starts out, there was, you know, which man among you having a hundred sheep?

So we're not talking about a guy who's fairly wealthy who loses one. Well, as soon as Jesus says who loses one, I know that the sheep owner isn't God, because God doesn't lose us. It went astray, which is Matthew's version, you can make the case, but you know, the guy lost the sheep. So you have to ask, if you have a hundred sheep and you're down one sheep, how do you know?

Cause you can't tell the sheep, "here, line up in groups of 10," because your sheep can't count and you can't do sound off cause sheep don't know their names and God bless them, they do kind of look alike. So the only way you know if you have a hundred sheep and you've lost one is you count. You count, and the guy comes up one sheep short, and he gets an all out search, finds the sheep, rejoicing, brings the sheep home, calls up all of his friends and neighbors, and says, rejoice with me, because I found my sheep, like they care, and then there's a big party.

And then we have a woman who has 10 coins and she loses one. Okay, if sheep don't repent, coins are less likely to repent. You know, when it's Luke who comes in and says like there's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, that's Luke. But no first century Jews get that meaning. If you have 10 coins and you lose one, how do you know?

Because you count. So she counts, she comes up a coin short, all out search, finds the coin, calls up all of her girlfriends, the Greek is in the feminine, and says, "Rejoice with me because my coin that was lost is now found." I think she spent more on the party than the coin was worth. But what Jesus has cleverly done here is we've gone 99 out of 100, 9 out of 10.

And the next parable begins, there was a man who had two sons.

Which is fabulous, because any Jew listening to this knows the plot line. It was Cain and Abel, and Isaac and Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau, and every Jew knows, go with the younger son. So what I'm expecting is, I'll have the younger son, I'll get rid of the older son, he'll turn out to be, you know, hairy, stupid, and fratricidal.

And I'll get rid of him, and then I'll date the younger brother. And that's not what happens. We have the whole story of the prodigal, which I trust your listeners will know, and the prodigal finally comes back and dad sees him and welcomes him back and accessorizes him and puts on barbecue. And there's this huge party.

And the next line of the parable, which I think is one of the most profound lines in the New Testament, it's just exquisite. The older brother is out in the field, and he hears the sound of music and dancing, and, and he calls a passer-by to ask what's going on, and, and, you know, what's happening. And he's told, your brother's come back safe and sound, and your father killed the fat calf.

And the older brother became angry and refused to go in. In other words, they had enough time to call the band and the caterer. And nobody called the older brother because there was a man who had two sons, and he forgot to count.

And what the parable then does is it reminds us whom have we made to feel discounted?

Who have we overlooked? Who have we failed to count? Have we failed to make everybody feel counted? Because it may be that the person who feels discounted or whom we've ignored is a member of our own family who's been there the entire time, and we've never invited that person to the party. That's a whole lot harder to do.

Jared: Wow. That's a really interesting, that's a really interesting read. My, my question off the back of that is, you know, throughout this you talk about, you've talked about domesticating Jesus and having, quote, good readings, but then earlier we talked about the parables inviting multiple interpretations, and how do you, you know, what makes a reading good if on the other hand you invite multiple interpretations?

How do you navigate? Those would seem like intention.

AJ: Ah. I look at parables, it's a good question, I look at parables as a genre. And I want to take the genre as a genre that's designed to challenge. It goes back to that old line about, and I don't know who originally said this, that religion was designed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

And I think that parables are there to do some of that afflicting. I think so in part because the parables I have in the scriptures of Israel are afflicting parables. Like Nathan's parable, the Ulam told to King David in order to indict him for his murder of Uriah the Hittite and the adultery with Bathsheba.

Or Jotam's Parable of the Trees, which is designed to indict his brother Abimelech, who's a false judge, and attempting to establish a throne. A number of rabbinic parables were also indicting parables, sometimes indicting other people, sometimes even indicting God, because if you're Jewish, you can do that.

So I want the parables to come up with some sort of challenge, and I want them to move me. There's enough else there that will assure me, that will comfort the afflicted, like the beatitudes. I want the parables to do some afflicting, and just for another quick example, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, people today typically read themselves as a Samaritan, and we say, you know, of course, we will be the ones to help the guy by the side of the road and all that.

In antiquity, the earliest interpretations we have from the Church Fathers, called the parable, the parable of the man who fell among the robbers, and I think the original interpretations might be something along the lines of, I'm in a ditch, two people who should have stopped to help do not, and the person who's coming near me is somebody I think is going to rape me or kill me, and then I have to realize that this person I think is my enemy is the one who's going to save me.

And that's really hard to picture. But it's essential if we're all to think that we're in the image and likeness of the divine.