Parables are less like fables, and more like (early) M. Night Shyamalan-style twist-ending short films.  They are less earthly stories with a heavenly moral, and more disruptive stories that call what we thought we knew into question.  They start off simply enough, seemingly set in the world we know, dealing with comfortably familiar things:  farmers and seeds, baking ingredients, real estate, fishing, etc.  But then, if you’re paying attention, you begin to suspect that there’s something else going on in these stories.  If you have ears to hear—if you have eyes to see, you start to notice that something is definitely up.  Wait…That sower is just slinging seed everywhere!  What kind of sloppy, irresponsible farming is that?  Who in the world tries to plant seeds on a highway?  

So what do we do with Jesus’s curiously mind-bending stories?  What do we do with these strange, twisty, little narratives that Jesus keeps offering instead of straightforward answers and bullet-points.  To be blunt, we let them bend our minds.  We let them call our assumptions into question.  We let them break apart the certainties that we wear like armor to protect ourselves from having to re-think…from having question ourselves…from having to trust…from having to have faith.  They expose the idols we have made out of our own ideas…the illusion of certainty that we so often worship instead of the living God, who is most clearly seen in Jesus. They free us from our smugness.  They cultivate in us the kind of humility that is absolutely necessary for faith, discipleship, spiritual growth, awe, and worship.  Well, at least they can do all of that, IF we have eyes to see and ears to hear.