This Sunday, March 1, through Easter at Woodridge UMC, Pastor Danita and I are preaching a sermon series, The Parables of Lent (aka #ParablesofLent when you tweet, post, & pic about it each week 😉 ). We decided we needed a group effort of some kind in order to help us navigate these tricky stories Jesus loved to tell. But we thought Parable Support Group was a little too depressing. So instead…Welcome to Parable Club!

Before we get this series started, there are a few rules that must be followed here at Parable Club.

The first rule of Parable Club is, You do not talk about parables as if they are Aesop fables. “Fables are short stories which illustrate a particular moral and teach a lesson to children.”

The second rule of Parable Club is, You. Do. Not. Talk. About. Parables. As. If. They. Are. Aesop Fables.

The third rule of Parable Club is, Be ready to laugh. There is almost certainly a joke in there somewhere.

The fourth rule of Parable Club is, to paraphrase Fred Clark, The story is the point. “The meaning of the parable isn’t some lesser, shorter thing to be distilled; the meaning was greater, vaster, too unruly and immense to be contained otherwise.” [read more]

The fifth rule of Parable Club is, Be ready to laugh at yourself. The joke is almost certainly on you (and me).

The sixth rule Parable Club is, to paraphrase Amy-Jill Levine, Let your eyes be opened. “Parables tease us into recognizing what we’ve already always known, and they do so by reframing our vision. The point is less that they reveal something new than that they tap into our memories, our values, and our deepest longings, and so they resurrect what is very old, and very wise, and very precious. And often, very unsettling.” [read more]

The seventh rule of Parable Club is, The story is not an allegory. It’s entirely possible not even one of the parable’s characters is a stand-in for God.

The eighth rule of Parable Club is, The story almost certainly has to do with the kin-dom of God on earth. If I tell you the parable is about your disembodied soul escaping this plane of existence in order to reside in some ethereal, Other, non-place, I’m almost certainly doing it wrong. I should probably sound more like this guy:

The ninth (What? You didn’t think this was a completely direct parallel, did you?) rule of Parable Club is, We almost certainly won’t hear the same thing. And not only is that ok, it is as it should be. Parables are notoriously sneaky, slippery, confounding, challenging, funny, transformative, and irreducible. To think that multiple human beings will react to them in the exact same way is either sure folly or extremely arrogant. Or both. We will do our best to be neither of those.

The tenth and final rule of Parable Club is, Whether this is your first time at Parable Club or your 490th, you must ask questions. Parables invite us into in interactive relationship with the storyteller. Parables want us – need us – to be engaged. So think, wonder, listen, dream, imagine, and ask away.