“Therefore I speak to them in parables;
because while seeing they do not see,
and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.”
--Matthew 13:13
In our Christianity unit, we are studying Jesus’s parables: Why did he choose to teach by telling stories? And what effect did those stories have on those who heard them? I ask the students to take a parable and rewrite it to take place in a St. Mark’s environment so they can understand how shocking and counter-cultural these stories actually are.
And so yesterday, the “Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:25-37) became a compassionate, rival Groton athlete who comes to the aid of a fallen St. Mark’s cross-country runner after her St. Mark’s teammates ignored her pain in pursuit of their own win.
And the “Laborers in the Vineyard” (Matthew 20:1-16) became students doing a group project for a class: one student spent two days working on it, the other student waltzed in at the last minute, in full view of his teacher, and simply signed his name on the other’s paper. Both students received an A. When the hardworking student protests, his teacher replies: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not earn your A? Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to [the second student] the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish?...Or is your eye envious because I am generous? So the last shall be first, and the first last.”
These were provocative stories for Jesus’s listeners in first century Palestine, and they are just as provocative for my students today. Sometimes stories have to be both provocative and culturally accessible for our eyes to see and our ears to hear, and for us to understand.
--The Rev. Barbara Talcott
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