The Markan Parables

Like the best riddles, the parables in The Gospel of Mark beckon to the reader, offering metaphors that are teasingly incomplete and slippery. They are difficult for the reader to ignore; but their vitality and interest spring from the way they focus attention on the processes of hearing, understanding and knowing, and consequently on the divisive nature of the kingdom of God. They are self-reflexive - they draw attention to their own medium. In doing so, the parables highlight Old Testament tropes, and especially accent the demise of national Israel augured in Isaiah. Indeed, the parables are part of the judgement they proclaim; and the negative response from Israel's leaders ironically fulfils their design. Mark’s readers, however, sit at a rather safer distance, with the knowledge of Jesus' death and resurrection aiding their understanding.

Within Jesus' teaching in Mark there is no clear demarcation of what material constitutes a parable per se. The word parabole is used of the narratives of the Sower (4:1-9) and the Wicked Tenants (12:1-12); but also of more simple metaphors like the Mustard Seed (4:30-2). The word is also used in 7:17 of Jesus' teaching on defilement; and in 13:28 when Jesus tells his disciples "from the fig tree learn its lesson” Jesus' feeding miracles operate in the same way as parables and cause the same kind of bewilderment among the disciples (8:17-21). What Jesus' verbal teachings – those that can be distinguished as "parables" - have in common is some metaphoric content and an open-endedness that makes them effective as a didactic tool. Jesus' teaching ministry is predominantly parabolic. Even in his repartee with the Syrophoenecian woman (7:24-30) he deploys metaphoric speech; and that she displays competence in this type of discourse appears linked to her success with him.

But what does he communicate through parables? Why are they such a prominent feature of the teaching of Mark’s Jesus? The parables seem alarmingly indirect and inconclusive. The enigmatic character of the parables can be illustrated by a reading of the "strong man' parable in 3:20-27. Jesus responds to accusations of insanity and demon possession 'in parables' (3:23). In 3:23-25 he makes what seem like mundane statements about whether Satan's kingdom can stand divided. 3:26 however is a little less reassuring. Having proven that Satan cannot cast out Satan, Jesus suggests that if he does "his end has come"; which by implication suggests that his end has not come, because here we do not see him divided - we see Jesus opposing him. What follows, the metaphor of the strong man (3:27), is a plan of attack on Satan, but a problematic one. Only one part of the metaphor has an obvious referent: the strong man, because of the previous verses, must be Satan. However, to what does the act of plundering his property refer? Jesus' ability to cast out demons? Has Satan already been "tied up"? How? No conclusions are given, although several are implied. The impact of a parable is not found in a single acicular message, contra the assertions of Jülicher last century, but in what it suggests. The reader/listener has to fill in the missing referents.

Modern and post-modern critics have found fertile ground in this uncertainty. Much of the debate centres around the Sower parable of Mark 4:1-10, naturally enough given Jesus' statement in 4:13:

Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?

For John Dominic Crossan the very point of Jesus' parables is their polyvalence, their lack of closure:

Since you cannot interpret absolutely, you can interpret forever.

Yet Crossan has painted himself into a corner by dismissing Jesus' interpretation in 4:13-20 as inauthentic. For Crossan, the interpretation is inauthentic by definition. It also happens to disrupt the 'serenity' of Crossan's beloved polyvalence.

The general impulse of literary critics has been to agree with Crossan as to the open-endedness of the parables, but to re-insert them in their context: the narratives of the gospels. In his agnostic but erudite reading of Mark, The Genesis of Secrecy, Frank Kermode despairs of finding meaning at all, with the Sower parable as "the great crux" - a promise of meaning never delivered. He too finds "the authorised allegory seems inept”. This only seems enticing to a post­structuralist critic like Stephen D. Moore, who in a virtuoso performance of high deconstruction bungee-jumps gleefully over the “cliffs of fall” that so daunt Crossan and disappoint Kermode:

Parabo!e unsettles speech. It inhabits the oppositions of inside and outside, speech and writing, but only that it might... shake the interpretative (bed)frames so as to keep the interpreters restlessly turning over.

Critics such as Moore, Kermode and Crossan have taken the teasing language of the parables too one-dimensionally. Just because they don't produce meaning as ordinary texts do, does not mean they are meaningless, or endlessly polyvalent, or impossible to confine. It merely indicates that other reading strategies have to be engaged to understand their importance.

A reading of Mark 12:1-12 using such strategies will confirm this. Firstly, the parable immediately and very plainly evokes an Old Testament text, Isaiah 5:1-7. Jesus uses key words: “watchtower”, “vineyard”, “fence”, which immediately trigger associations - thematically, the vigorous judgement of God proclaimed in Isaiah against a recalcitrant Israel adheres to Jesus story. The Jewish leaders understand that the parable is told against them in 12:12 (they "fill in the missing referents"), a connection they must draw from Isaiah.

Secondly, there are key words from elsewhere in Mark that Jesus carefully inserts into the parable. The son in 12:6 is a "beloved son" , which Jesus himself is called in 1:11 and 9:7.

Thirdly, the parables are necessarily part of a narrative. This means we can read them in the light of events past and future. Jesus repeatedly predicts his death and resurrection in the second half of Mark (8:31, 9:31, 10:33). It is almost impossible to read Mark without feeling the ironic presence of the resurrection (a story which Mark, with further irony, feels he has no need to tell). In 12:1-12 it is hard to imagine that the reader does not know what is coming.

Fourthly, we are often given the opportunity to study a particular character's response to the parable, whether it be the disciples' blockheaded reactions or those of the scribes and elders as in 12:12. Their response seems a very good example of "hearing but not understanding".

By such methods, the importance of the parables becomes evident. However, the passage we must inevitably examine is 4:1-34, for here the bulk of Jesus' parabolic teaching gathers in a discourse which seems to be about parables. The text also draws the reader's attention through Jesus' cries of "Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" (4:9) and "Pay attention to what you hear" (4:24). As Fay's analysis attests, the concentric structure of the passage focuses attention on the interpretation in 4:14-20 flanked by two passages on "parabolic method" in 4:10-13 and 4:21-25.

What we discover in the "'interpretation" of the parable itself needs a little interpretative work. Jesus continues even here to use metaphoric language. Some information is given: the different types of ground represent different people's responses to the word. Soils ain’t soils. The processes of listening and responding are foregrounded. But what is the "word" which is sown? And what is the fruit that the good soil so abundantly produces? Again the reader has the advantage over the original hearers in that the end of the story is known. It is possible to see, for example, Jesus preaching his "word" in 1:14; and to see the various responses of characters in the text. The Pharisees have already conspired to destroy him in 3:6; the betrayal of Judas has been foreshadowed (3:19); and we have seen the shallow amazement of the crowds (2:12). Only a few continue to listen. Further, the way in which Old Testament motifs here reverberate adds a great deal to our understanding of the parables. Already we have been pointed to Isaiah 6 in 4:12. Craig A. Evans helpfully points out that Isaiah 55:10-11 likens God's word to the waters which give "seed to the sower and bread to the eater" More potently, Isaiah 6:13 concludes "The holy seed is its stump", a reference to the post-judgement remnant. Noticeably the word "seed" as a metaphor is quite fluid, slipping between "people" and "word". Isaiah 6 connects not only to the Sower parable, but extends to the other "seed" parables. Hence the kingdom of God that Jesus preaches appears small (like a mustard seed) in the context of lsrael. What is implied by the parables in the light of Isaiah is that with the coming of the Kingdom of God comes the punishment of Israel. This theme is extended in the Wicked Tenants parable. The quotation of Isaiah 6:9-10 reveals that the parables are deliberately divisive - they are the means by which the prophecy is carried out, an enactment of God's ancient curse on Israel. There are those toiV exw - "outside" (4:11). But the consummation of a new Israel is at the same time promised: the 12 are appointed in 3:13-19, new wineskins for the new wine. The sinister paradox in 4:24-5 verifies the significance of listening; and the harshness of judgement to those who listen but do not understand:

...from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

To the twelve and those who listen is given "the secret of the kingdom of God" (4:13). The musthrion, however, remains mysterious. It is given, but not revealed. The "lamp under a bushel basket" however raises the hope that the secret might be uncovered. Robert M. Fowler has no confidence that the secret is ever revealed to Mark's readers:

...the secret of the Kingdom of God is…definitely not given to the narratee through the discourse.

This is rather disturbing after the stern declaration of 4:12 that "they may indeed listen, but not understand."

Yet we should remember that the readers sit at an ironic distance from these words. The readers have knowledge that the disciples in Mark do not. For us, Jesus is identified as "the son of God" from the beginning. The reader, with the benefit of narrative hindsight, can see how Jesus taught of his death and resurrection. Heil posits that the Mark 4 parables

...point to inevitable future success despite failure for both Jesus and his disciples.

Indeed, seen retrospectively, the parables of 4:21-32 hint at the resurrection: the seed that sprouts "he knows not how" (4:27), the lamp under a bushel-basket (4:21-22), and the tiny mustard seed that grows into the "greatest of all shrubs" (4:31-32). A further irony is that when it comes to the resurrection, the event to which the whole text has been pointing, the reader is left with an empty tomb, itself an interpretative cavity needing to be filled. Like a parable, the entire gospel asks its reader to complete it - this time with the resurrected body of Jesus.

The parables are important to Jesus' teaching in Mark because they goad the reader to listen and understand. They proclaim a division in Jesus' listeners between those inside and those outside. In them the judgement of national Israel foretold in Isaiah is completed. Mark does not leave his readers as perplexed as the disciples however, or as critics such as Kermode and Crossan would like to presume. He enables them to read the parables in the light of what happened to Jesus on the cross and in the tomb.