we
1)Prepped for our Parable Presentations due next Fri
2)had some helpful conversation for our first "Friday Freshman Seminar"
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1)HERE"S WHAT WE"LL DO IN CLASS 2/24 for your Parable Presentations assignments (You do not have to work ahead and prepare for this, but if your party would like to, it would be useful. Note: info below was previously given on the bottom of the 2/10 post, but we have gave even more help today).
>)Sit at the table marked by your party name.
>>>From 11-11:11:30
For the first fifteen minutes read, as a group, the parable assigned to you. Discuss it, use some "three worlds theory" to decide what you think the main point is. Consider the literary context: what comes before/after the parable, etc. Take into consideration any info from the "historical world" you may be aware of; you might want to peek at what the Bible Background Commentary has to say about yout parable (linked below, and one is in class to be shared).
(Note: you are not reading as if you were a member of your "party" this time)
Sadducees Party
The Lost Sheep, Matthew 18:12-14, see whole chapter for context here
(see pages in the BBC here)
Pharisees Party
The Good Samaritan Luke 10:25-37, see whole chapter for context here
(see pages 217-218 in the BBC here)
Zealots Party
The Friend at Midnight, Luke 11:1-13, see whole chapter for context here
(see page 218-220 in the BBC here)
Essenes Party
The Prodigal Son ,Luke 15: 11:32, see whole chapter for context here
(see page 232-233 in the BBC here)
For the last fifteen minutes , discuss and prepare to act out (in NO MORE THAN 3 MINUTES) a modern-day version of the parable: a modern-day situation, modern-day characters. In other words, if Jesus were telling this parable to us today, how might he get his point across to our world? [NOTE: there is a difference between simply changing a few elements to set the same story in modern terms, and using a different story to communicate the same message. The point of this activity is the latter.]
Remember, Stein offers these three possible reasons Jesus teaches in parables:
1. To conceal his teaching from those “outside”
2. To illustrate and reveal his message to his followers
3. To disarm his listeners—they force a response somehow, leave you wrestling, are provocative
>>>From 11:30-12;00
Three minute presentations in class! Read the parable to the class, and then give your presentation .
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Do you remember how this video of Ignatius that we watched today
is a parable?
It is snealy, subversive.....terrible (Erin's word) on purpose......and a parable.
Partly because it is inductive, subversive, a "loud fart," and has one primary point. What is it?
12 POINTS ABOUT PARABLES:
(NOTE: WE COVERED THREE OF THESE ON THE 2/10 post).
1.Story or word-picture about the KINGDOM.
2. a comparison or contrast between two things that have "nothing in common," and asking what they have in common.
literal meaning of Greek word "parable": Taking two things that have nothing in common and asking "What do they have in common?" A creative comparison told in story form. Thus the point is often "hidden" or "unobvious" at first..
A parable is a succinct story, or word-picture/picture in words.. in prose or verse, that illustrates a lesson. It is a type of analogy.[1].
..The word "parable" comes from the Greek παραβολή (parabolē), meaning "comparison, illustration, analogy",[3] ...often comparaing two items that seem incongrous, disparate, and have nothing to do with each other... Christian parables have recently been studied as extended metaphors,[5] ..
Unlike the situation with a simile, a parable's parallel meaning is unspoken and implicit, though not ordinarily secret...The New Testament parables are thought by scholars such as John P. Meier to have been inspired by mashalim, a form of
3) "a .loud fart in the salon of spirituality."
This is a quote from Eugene Peterson helps us get how offensive Jesus' parables were to religious folk:
"gnostics delight in secrecy. They are prototypical insiders. They think that access to the eternal is by password and that they know the password. They love insider talk and esoteric lore. They elaborate complex myths that account for the descent of our spiritual selves into this messy world of materiality, and then map the complicated return route. They are fond of diagrams and the enlightened teachers who explain them. Their sensitive spirits are grieved by having to live surrounded by common people with their sexual leers and stupid banana-peel jokes and vulgar groveling in the pigsty of animal appetite. Gnostics who go to church involuntarily pinch their noses on entering the pew, nervously apprehensive that an insensitive usher will seat a greasy sinner next to them. They are however enabled to endure by the considerable compensation of being ‘in the know’ (gnostic means ‘the one who knows’). It is a good feeling to know that you are a cut above the common herd, superior to almost everyone you meet on the street or sit beside in church.
It is inevitable that gnostics will boycott the creation theater and avoid its language as much as possible, for metaphor is an affront to their gossamer immaterialities and inner-ring whispers, a loud fart in the salon of spirituality.” (Answering God, 75-76)
4) stories that sizzle:
Kraybill, from your Upside Down Kingdom textbook:
your attitude is the opposite of God's" p. 158
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5. The one primary point
of a parable
is
a parable has
one primary point"
(Note that is a chiasm!).
Parables may have allegorical components, but are not usually allegories. Press and push for the ONE PRIMARY POINT>
6. Having said that..they are also a multiplex, multifaceted matrix...and can be entered (not exited) anywhere
7. Parables often have a God (or Jesus) figure, but watch out, it might be a surprising, subversive, "unobvious" character
8. Though they are not allegories, they may have have allegorical components..but with sign-ificant (note the word "sign" in significant. Remember why this is important? )shift in who represents who
9)Stein offers these three possible reasons Jesus teaches in parables:
1. To conceal his teaching from those “outside”
2. To illustrate and reveal his message to his followers
3. To disarm his listeners—they force a response somehow, leave you wrestling, are provocative
10.IRONY!11.Look for open-ended endings (Does the older brother in The Prodical Son ever repent? etc) and clliffhangers that force you to participate in the story, consider alternate endings, and repond yourself.
12. LOL. Since the last point was "open-ended endings," for this 12th, and endng post, I'll leave it opened ended...................
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We spent a few minutes on the parables that the Pharisees and Zealots will be presenting.
(Next class we'll do the same for the other two parties):
Pharisees: GOOD SAMARITAN:
-See p, 161-167 of Upside Down book to get the "historical world" of Samaritans
-Who is the surprising Jesus figure in this story? Of course, the Samaritan is one, but the surprising one is that guy left for dead (as Jesus was).
We so often miss ( see "Parables and Misundertaking")
the point and punch of parables..
In the parable, the priest and Levite signal not a concern for ritual purity; rather, in good storytelling fashion, these first two figures anticipate the third: the hero. Jews in the first century (and today) typically are either priests or Levites or Israelites. Thus the expected third figure, the hero, would be an Israelite. The parable shocks us when the third figure is not an Israelite, but a Samaritan.But numerous interpreters, missing the full import of the shock, describe the Samaritan as the outcast. This approach, while prompting compelling sermons, is the fourth anachronism. Samaritans were not outcasts at the time of Jesus; they were enemies.In the chapter before the parable (Luke 9:51–56) Luke depicts Samaritans as refusing Jesus hospitality; the apostles James and John suggest retaliation: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:54). John 4:9 states, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.” The Jewish historian Josephus reports that during the governorship of Cumanus, Samaritans killed “a great many” Galilean pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem (Antiquities 20.118–136). The first-century Jewish person hearing this parable might well think: There is no such thing as a “good Samaritan.” But unless that acknowledgment is made, and help from the Samaritan is accepted, the person in the ditch will die.The parable offers another vision, a vision of life rather than death. It evokes 2 Chronicles 28, which recounts how the prophet Oded convinced the Samaritans to aid their Judean captives. It insists that enemies can prove to be neighbors, that compassion has no boundaries, and that judging people on the basis of their religion or ethnicity will leave us dying in a ditch. link
See also this article:
Levine: Good Samaritan parable teaches compassion for the enemy
And this video version:
Amy-Jill Levine: Dangers on the Road to Jericho from Chautauqua Institution on FORA.tv
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See a great, hilarious section by Capon:\
The defining character – the one to whom the other three respond by being non-neighbour or neighbour – is the man who fell among thieves. The actual Christ-figure in the story, therefore, is yet another loser, yet another down-and-outer who, by just lying there in his lostness and proximity to death, is in fact the closest thing to Jesus in the parable.
That runs counter, of course, to the better part of two thousand years’ worth of interpretation, but I shall insist on it. This parable, like so many of Jesus’ most telling ones, has been egregiously misnamed. It is not primarily about the Samaritan but about the man on the ground. This means, incidentally, that Good Samaritan Hospitals have been likewise misnamed. It is the suffering, dying patients in such institutions who look most like Jesus in his redeeming work, not the doctors with their authoritarian stethoscopes around their necks. Accordingly, it would have been much less misleading to have named them Man-Who-Fell-Among-Thieves Hospitals...{as if the doctors would stand for that} (p. 210ff, Kingdom, grace, judgment: paradox, outrage, and vindication in the parables of Jesus)
P.S:Animated Parables: Gaga Samaritan
The GaGa Samaritan from ilovepinatas on Vimeo.
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Zealots: FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT:
That the God figure is a crabby old guy, it reminds us that parable have ONE point, and not to trip up when God characters act...well, ungodly. Press for the ONE main point
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