In a recent talk, Haddon points to a connection between Luke’s parables and Nathan’s parable in 2 Samuel 12. Luke’s stories are not like the puzzling parables which begin ‘the kingdom of heaven is like …’. They are more like Nathan’s parable in 2 Samuel 12. Nathan tells David a parable about a cruel rich man, who slaughters the only precious ewe lamb of his poor neighbour rather than one of his own many animals. David hears the story, and at first does not get what it has to do with him. But David is filled with anger at the rich man. Then, Nathan tells David, ‘You are the man’: you are the cruel man in this story, and this story demands a response from you.
Are Luke’s stories like Nathan’s parable? Haddon suggests the following questions as a way of reading these Luke-Nathan parables. Would these questions help to read other parts of the Bible too?
- Who (or what sort of people) is the story addressed to? (Could this story possibly be addressed to me/us?)
- What question about who you are and what you are doing does the story open up?
- What goodness and grace is the springboard of the story’s movement – even though it may be hidden as an assumption?
- What call, invitation, does the story carry? What response does it ask for? What way forward does it point to?
- What resistance is the invitation already meeting? What resistance is deep in the character, interests and habits of the people it is addressed to?
- How does the story try to get through the resistance, to out-flank the defence against it?
- What is the challenge and cost of turning round, of living with the story, not against it?
- Why is such a good invitation turned down? (Lk 9.57-62)