Matthew’s mountain and Luke’s plain, the stories that were his usual way of speaking, and why he said he told them
What He Taught: The Sermon and the Parables
Ask what Jesus taught and most people can quote a beatitude and tell a parable. Both are right, and both come with a question the Gospels raise themselves: why does Matthew set the sermon on a mountain and Luke on a plain, with different words, and why did Jesus say he told stories so that some would not understand?
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Lesson 5 of 12 · The teacher
Jesus taught in two forms: direct sayings, gathered by Matthew into a sermon on a mountain and by Luke into a shorter one on a plain, and parables, stories from farms and households that carried the kingdom inside them. The two sermons overlap and differ; Matthew’s poor are poor in spirit, Luke’s are simply poor, and the difference is each writer’s whole angle. The parables were his ordinary way of speaking, Mark says, and he explained them privately to his followers. Mark also records the hardest sentence about them, that they were told so that outsiders would see and not perceive, and that sentence, quoted from Isaiah, has to be read rather than skipped. The crowd’s own verdict on the teaching was not that it was wise but that it was spoken with authority, as if by someone who did not need to cite anyone.
Mountain and plain
Both Matthew and Luke open the teaching with blessings, and the first blessing shows the difference between the two books.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. — Matthew 5:3 · WEB
Read the comment on The Beatitudes
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Luke’s version stands beside it: blessed are you who are poor, for God’s Kingdom is yours (Luke 6:20). Matthew’s Jesus sits on a mountain, as Moses stood on one, and speaks in the third person of an inner condition; Luke’s stands on a level place, looks at his disciples, and speaks in the second person to people who have no money, and then adds woes to the rich that Matthew does not have. Whether these are two accounts of one sermon or two collections of sayings given on many days, the Gospels do not say. What they show is two writers shaping the same teaching for two readerships: Matthew’s, who will hear the law given again from a mountain, and Luke’s, who have been told from chapter 1 that the hungry will be filled.
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The stories
Mark reports the method, and then the practice.
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. Without a parable he didn’t speak to them; but privately to his own disciples he explained everything. — Mark 4:33–34 · WEB
Read the comment on Seed Growing Secretly, and a Storm
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; without a parable he didn’t speak to them, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything. The parables were not illustrations added to a lecture. They were the teaching, and the lecture, when there was one, happened afterward, indoors, to the few. A sower, a mustard seed, a lamp, a woman with yeast, a man with two sons: the kingdom was described in things everyone in Galilee had handled.
παραβολή parabolḗ G3850
from παραβάλλω; a similitude ("parable"), i.e. (symbolic) fictitious narrative (of common life conveying a moral), apothegm or adage:--comparison, figure, parable, proverb.
A placing side by side; a comparison, and so a short story or saying that sets one thing beside another so that the second can be seen. The word is the Greek translators’ rendering of the Hebrew mashal, which covers proverbs, riddles and taunts as well as stories, and the parables of Jesus have that whole range: some are a single sentence, some a page. The first three Gospels record about forty; John records none in this form, and has long discourses instead. A parable is not an allegory with one meaning per detail, though the early church often read them so; it is a story with an edge, and the edge is usually in the last line.
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Why in parables
Between the sower and its explanation, Mark places a sentence that every reader stumbles on, and it should be read rather than avoided.
He said to them, “To you is given the mystery of God’s Kingdom, but to those who are outside, all things are done in parables, that ‘seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest perhaps they should turn again, and their sins should be forgiven them.’” — Mark 4:11–12 · WEB
To you is given the mystery of God’s Kingdom, but to those who are outside, all things are done in parables, that seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest perhaps they should turn again, and their sins should be forgiven them. The quotation is Isaiah’s commission, Isaiah 6:9-10, where the prophet is sent to a people who will not listen and told that his preaching will harden them. Matthew softens it, because they see and do not perceive; Mark leaves it hard. Two readings have stood side by side since: that the parables were a judgment, hiding the kingdom from those who had already refused it, or that they were a sieve, so that only those who wanted to understand would stay to ask. The text supports both, and the disciples themselves, in the next verse, have to ask what the sower meant.
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Lost things and a Samaritan
“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming close to him to hear him. The Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying, “This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.”” Luke 15:1–2 · WEB
The tax collectors and sinners were coming close to hear him; the Pharisees murmured, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them: the setting Luke gives for the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son, so that the three stories are an answer to a complaint.
“Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?” He said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”” Luke 10:36–37 · WEB
Which of these three seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers? He who showed mercy on him. Go and do likewise: the Samaritan, told to a lawyer who wanted to define neighbor, and the definition refused in favor of a command.
“Jesus spoke all these things in parables to the multitudes; and without a parable, he didn’t speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.”” Matthew 13:34–35 · WEB
Jesus spoke all these things in parables to the multitudes, that it might be fulfilled: I will open my mouth in parables: Matthew, characteristically, finds the method in a psalm.
“When Jesus had finished saying these things, the multitudes were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them with authority, and not like the scribes.” Matthew 7:28–29 · WEB
The multitudes were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them with authority, and not like the scribes: the crowd’s verdict at the end of the sermon, and the word is the one the next lessons turn on.
Luke’s parables are the best known, and most of them are only in Luke: the Samaritan, the prodigal son, the rich fool, Lazarus at the gate, the Pharisee and the tax collector. They have a shape of their own. The person who is in the wrong is the one the audience expected to be in the right, and the story ends before the audience can object.
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What the teaching asks
It asks to be heard the way the crowd heard it, and the crowd’s word was authority. The scribes taught by citing; this teacher said "but I say to you," and told stories that ended with the listener inside them. A parable does not ask to be admired. It asks which of the sons you are, which of the three on the road, whether the seed landed on your rock or your soil. Read one and answer, and you have done what it was for.
Read Luke 15:11-32. Write down which of the two sons you found yourself defending, and then say in a sentence what the story does to that defense by ending where it ends.
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