Long does not see the parables as riddles to be explained, but truth of God’s Kingdom to be proclaimed.
A review of: Thomas G. Long. Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Parables of the Kingdom of God. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2024.
The long green season of the Sundays after Pentecost was misnamed as “Sundays in Ordinary Time” by “liturgical revisionists” following Vatican II. With these Sundays having as a key focus the parables of Jesus, there is nothing “ordinary” about them as His parables are explosive. Indeed, Thomas G. Long cites Clarence Jordan, paraphraser of the “Cotton Patch” version of the New Testament: “When Jesus delivered His parables, He lit a stick of dynamite [and] covered it with a story” (xi). Long, Bandy Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Emory University’s Chandler School of Theology and author of numerous books on homiletics, seeks to help preachers ignite the dynamite.
Pastors of my generation cut their exegetical teeth on such well-known interpreters of the parables as C.H. Dodd, Joachim Jeremias, and Kenneth Baily. Even earlier, there was Adolf Jὒlicher who railed against allegorical readings of the parables, insisting they were similes with only one point each. When Jὒlicher died in 1938, it was asserted that he had changed the course of the interpretation of parables which would never be reversed. Long says this only goes to show, quoting Norman Perrin, “Today’s assured results are tomorrow’s abandoned hypotheses” (6). One of the many strengths of Long’s volume is his engagement with the history of the interpretation of Jesus’ parables. In doing this, Long helps preachers think more critically about the significance (and the blind spots!) of this scholarship for preaching.
Before launching into the body of the volume, Long warns preachers of attempting to follow the form critics in a quest to recover “what Jesus really said” in contrast to the assumed ecclesiastical veneer painted over Jesus’ message. Preachers are given to preach the text as it is given in its canonical shape, not attempting to retrieve a hidden meaning behind the scriptural Word. Long writes:
“There is often, among those scholars who are eager to strip away the churchly accretions and to recover the original parables of Jesus, an assumption, basically a mistake in my view, that the Gospel writers did damage to Jesus’ original message” (28).
Instead, Long urges preachers to listen carefully to the parable as it is recorded by each of the evangelists, not attempting to preach a parable from Mark the same way you would preach it from Matthew or Luke. Long does not see the parables as riddles to be explained, but truth of God’s Kingdom to be proclaimed: “The Kingdom of God is not an idea but an event, and so should be the preaching of the parables” (33).
The remainder of Long’s book is arranged under the headings of three Gospels: Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Before examining the individual parables in the Gospels, Long provides some background observations as to how the parables fit in that particular Gospel. Mark contains only five parables, but Long argues:
“Once Jesus got started speaking in parables, in a way He never stopped... Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom was inextricably parabolic. These parables flow from Jesus’ mouth not because He thought it was a clever idea for a sermon series, but because He lived parabolically, He performed His ministry parabolically, He saw the Kingdom of God and all of life parabolically” (56).
These parables flow from Jesus’ mouth not because He thought it was a clever idea for a sermon series, but because He lived parabolically, He performed His ministry parabolically, He saw the Kingdom of God and all of life parabolically.-Thomas Long
While urgency characterizes Mark’s Gospel, Matthew strikes the note of God’s righteousness and the need for wisdom to recognize His judgment against all that opposes His reign: “To live outside of the orbit of the Kingdom of Heaven is to have one’s life unfold into tragedy” (118). Long says that, in Matthew, some of the parables are “nightmare parables” (120).
If parables in Matthew carry eschatological cargo, the parables in Luke focus on the today, the present:
“This present-tense theological perspective of Luke has profound implications for understanding Luke’s parables. It is no accident that Luke tells parables such as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, which emphasize everyday life, and he does not include parables like Matthew’s Parable of the Sheep and the Goats or the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids, which cast readers forward toward an eschatological future” (249).
The parables in Luke point to the advent of God in the ordinariness of human life.
There is much that is engaging and rewarding for preachers in Proclaiming the Parables. Long is a great storyteller, weaving in illustrations from classical literature, American pop culture, and his own ministerial literature. He is clearly knowledgeable of contemporary New Testament scholarship on the parables and is able to interact with it appreciatively and critically. As we have already noted, he identifies God’s Kingdom as “an event,” but in this reviewer’s mind, there is something lacking here. He does not sufficiently connect God’s Kingdom to the death and resurrection of the King. Furthermore, he fails to fully capture the dynamic of God’s Kingdom as Luther does in his explanation of the Second Petition in the Small Catechism: “God’s Kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His Holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.” One would hope for a stronger connection with the fact that Christ, by His atoning death and rescuing resurrection, has redeemed His people: “That I may be His own and live under Him in His Kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness” (SC II). A thoughtful reading of Detlev Klaus Schulz’s essay, “The Second Petition: Mission as the Expansion of the Kingdom of God,” in Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Applications (526-530), would be a fine supplement to Long’s work.
On the balance though, Long has provided an insightful and sometimes provocative examination of the parables, which will serve as a catalyst for fresh teaching and preaching. Preachers, like the scribe well-schooled in the Kingdom of God, are called to bring forth treasures old and new for the edification of God’s people. Long has provided preachers with a tool for this work.
