Once upon a time there was a man who had two sons. One son was prone to like things of the finer nature. The enjoyment of good food was his pleasure. He also enjoyed pretty girls and fast living. This son enjoyed nice cars and big houses. And the other son was diligent, was more interested in making his father proud than doing the work of the farm…

Now I bet you knew exactly where I was going if I would have continued this story. This, of course, is a modern retelling of the parable of the prodigal son. This is one of Jesus’ most famous parables. And I believe it is one of the ones that is most often misunderstood. So many people think that the prodigal son is the focus of the story, right? Prodigal meaning “lavish and excess.” So many people focus on the son that was so interested in getting his inheritance early and then squandering it on fast living. However, many commentators and scholars point to the fact that the real audience of this parable were the religious authorities in Jesus’ day. Thus, perhaps it is the older brother that should be the focus of the parable. Perhaps it was the Israelites who would not allow the Gentiles to worship God in the temple that was the focus.

The simple fact that we are still talking about, still debating the meaning of this parable some 2,000 years later, shows the power of the parables as a means of communication. It is also incredibly frustrating at times to be a reader of scripture and come across these stories. These stories at once captivate and frustrate. They arrest us with their artful nature, their simple, down-to-earth illustrations. But yet they fail to connect sometimes with us because we live in such a different culture. Would these stories fail to connect in Jesus’ own day? And if so, was that intentional? Why would a God who seems so bent on connecting with humanity then use stories that exclude some of the hearers from understanding?

This too has been a perennial scholarly debate. It actually does seem, from time to time, that Jesus spoke in parables as a way to obscure the truth, as a way to hide it behind a barrier that people had to overcome in order to understand. This makes us a bit uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Isn’t the gospel for everyone? Isn’t the truth of God’s kingdom that God desires all to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth? If that is the case, how can we justify the fact that Jesus uses methods that are intentionally obscure?

And at this point, we are exactly where God wants us. Always and everywhere in the scriptures, God is desiring to communicate with God’s people. God uses many methods to communicate to people. Sometimes, God uses the direct method, as he did in the garden with Adam and Eve, with his calling of Abraham, and with his speaking to Noah and his sons. Sometimes, God spoke through the prophets. And yet, other times, God uses stories and signs as a means of communicating. God is incredibly adaptive in the way he communicates with his people.

And moving back to the parables, we see that Jesus also is incredibly adaptive in the way he speaks. Sometimes, the parables indeed are designed to confound the so-called “whys” of the day. Other times, the stories are to be memorable ways of communicating truth. And yet, at other times, even now, the stories defy explanation.

As one scholar, Klyne Snodgrass, often says, “The parables are stories with intent.” And as we approach this definition, we need to talk about both sides. We need to talk about the word story, and we need to talk about the word intent. Stories are powerful means of human communication. Stories, as their name implies, are mostly fictional narratives that captivate their audience and take them into another world. In our own culture, when we hear the words once upon a time or on a dark and stormy night, we know we are in for a story. We are prepared to take that journey that the author desires us to go on. In the same way, when Jesus would say something like, the kingdom of God is like, and follow that up with an explanation or a story, people would know that what he is not saying is literal, but figurative. But just because it is figurative does not mean that it is not true. Oftentimes the greatest truths come through story.

And that brings us to the word intent. When we hear the word intent or intention, we think immediately of motive. Motive describes the reason a person performs a particular action. Was Jesus merely a storyteller and was he using these stories merely to entertain? The vast majority of scholars and I think not. With every story, Jesus had an intent. Jesus had a motive in telling this particular truth in how he does.

And what were some of these intents? Let us look at those. First, we can talk about the parables being a device to aid in memory. Like Aesop’s fables or Grimm’s fairy tales, sometimes Jesus used the parables as a way to make a spiritual truth more memorable. Jesus could simply have said to the Jewish people, “It’s time that we accept the Gentiles back into the family of God.” And the only thing that’s holding them back is the strictures that you have placed on them. But instead, Jesus uses the parable of the prodigal son.

Again, Jesus could have said that Israel was given its land by God to be held in trust, but you squandered it, and you killed the prophets. But again, Jesus uses a story, the parable of the vineyard. And this leads us to our second intent. Sometimes, Jesus used a parable as a way of insulating himself from the charges the religious elite might lay against him that. Jesus never outright said that the Pharisees and the Sadducees were implicated in judgment. But the stories clearly imply it for those with ears to hear. But if an authority would come and Jesus would repeat the story, there would be no connection. At least, directly.

And this brings us to the overwhelming majority of the parables. Jesus said quite clearly that many of the parables were spoken so as to dim the meaning of what they had to say. The parables were meant to confuse, to obfuscate, to hide the spiritual truth behind the clever story. And this, even from the disciples, who often had to ask Jesus about the meaning of the parables in private.

And so, we need to ask ourselves why a God who desires to communicate and be in relationship with God’s people would turn to means that were designed to confuse. That were designed to prevaricate, to turn people from their direct intended meaning to the side. To run after false meanings. To debate. To ponder. To think.

Now some Christians, particularly those of Calvinist leanings, would say that this was quite clearly designed for those who are not to be saved. Those that are not chosen by God to inherit salvation, thus are not given the wisdom to interpret the parables. This makes a lot of sense. However, on many points the Calvinist argument fails. Why then, if the disciples themselves, who were very clearly chosen by God, didn’t understand the parables, can we say that the wisdom to interpret the parables is given to those who are chosen? On this and many other counts that we cannot talk about today, the Calvinist argument seems to fail.

If not used as a determinant of salvation, then what is the purpose of the parables? Well, I know we’ve heard this before, and I have said this repeatedly throughout our sermon series. But I think that the purpose of the parables is to teach and inculcate wisdom in the minds of those that hear them.

First, let’s remind ourselves of the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is about information. Knowledge is about knowing facts. Knowing that Babylon destroyed the temple in the year 586 BCE is knowing facts. Knowing facts is knowing that Jesus was born in a manger. It’s knowing the names of the apostles, being able to give a timeline of the Old Testament. Those are things that we would describe as knowledge. Knowledge is things that you might be asked during a trivia competition.

But wisdom would never make an appearance at such a competition, because wisdom is about application. It is about applying the knowledge that one has learned. Knowledge would be knowing the date of one’s anniversary and some of the things that happened on your wedding day. Wisdom would be knowing that if you spent a lot of money, your spouse would be angry instead of happy on your anniversary. Wisdom is how to apply knowledge.

And God desires above all that we who are created in God’s image would be wise. God is not so much in the knowledge business, but in the wisdom business. And here is where the disconnect was in the ancient world. The Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees, those that were the religious elite, had a lot of knowledge. They knew the law. Many of them had memorized the entire Torah, and even beyond that, many of the other scriptures as well. And yet, these people could not apply the scriptures in a way that led to following them as God intended. Loving God and loving neighbor became secondary to obeying the minutia of the law at the expense of love. At times, this even led to loving the law itself above the God who spoke it.

Sometimes, I fear this describes us as well in the church. We have lots of knowledge about the Bible, but do we have the wisdom it takes to apply it in ways that are God-honoring, that love God and love our neighbor? For many years, the church has been focused on behaviors. The church has been focused on the do’s and do not’s, the thou shalt’s and the thou shalt not’s. And I’m not saying that behaviors are not important, that some behaviors are righteous and some sinful is true, absolutely. However, when we focus merely on the outward expression, the outward behavior, and fail to deal with motive and intent, then we are right in the middle of God’s judgment.

For God wants not the end result alone. God judges the motive as well. If you do right things, is that enough to justify yourself before God? What if you only do right things out of fear? What if you only do right things to present a good face to other people? What if you only do right things because someone taught you to do so? My friends, that’s not enough. God desires truth in the inward parts of us. And that means a wholly consistent attitude. A wholly consistent motive for our actions.

This is why Jesus spoke in parables. Because saying things as plainly as I just said it is often uncomfortable. Perhaps even angering to those that would justify themselves based merely on behavior alone. Perhaps you too might feel a little miffed this morning. Thinking that I’ve always tried to do things correctly. I do right, I don’t do wrong. Isn’t that good enough? The short answer is no. And Jesus tells stories about that.

The parables, my friends, are there for us. They are stories that are to provoke us to think, to ponder, to contemplate, even to be frustrated by. These are stories that try the souls of men and women. These are stories that weigh our character, that feed us and deprive us at once and at the same time. These are stories with intent, indeed. The intent is to make us wise, to make us yearn for wisdom and not mere knowledge. To make us yearn for transformation, not merely formation. And if we read them with open hearts and open minds, God can work in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit to make us wise. To transform us from glory to glory into the image of the storyteller himself, Jesus Christ, Amen.