{"id":31,"date":"2010-08-09T11:42:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T15:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stlydias.org\/blog\/?p=31"},"modified":"2010-08-13T09:45:26","modified_gmt":"2010-08-13T13:45:26","slug":"reading-the-parables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/reading-the-parables\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading the Parables"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During the summer at Lydia&#8217;s, we&#8217;ve been reading parables.\u00a0 The parable of the weeds and the wheat (Matthew 13:24-30), the parable of the mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32), the parable of the fig tree (Luke 13:6-9) and the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32).<\/p>\n<p>What are parables, and how do they work?<\/p>\n<p>A parable is a particular kind of story.\u00a0 \u201cParable\u201d is from the Greek <em>parabole, <\/em>means, \u201csomething cast beside.\u201d\u00a0 They\u2019re stories that take things and throw them together in ways that confuse us.<\/p>\n<p>Parables are not allegories in which each item in the story has a particular meaning.\u00a0 There\u2019s a long history of interpreting parables as if they were, but parables are much more complex.<\/p>\n<p>Parables almost always have a moment of surprise, a moment of turning the expectations of the listener upside down.\u00a0 And that is why they are so infuriating.\u00a0 They don\u2019t offer answers, but only provoke more questions.<\/p>\n<p>Parables relate truths that we can\u2019t fit into regular language.\u00a0 They disrupt our ways of thinking and, as one commentator puts it, \u201cour doubt around their application teases us into active thought.\u201d\u00a0 Parables ask us to stretch our minds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the summer at Lydia&#8217;s, we&#8217;ve been reading parables.\u00a0 The parable of the weeds and the wheat (Matthew 13:24-30), the parable of the mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32), the parable of the fig tree (Luke 13:6-9) and the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). What are parables, and how do they work? A parable is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}