One of my two favorite class days when I’m teaching New Testament intro is the Parables. (The other is the Kingdom of God, for many of the same reasons). In that light, and with only a couple of weeks before classes resume at Mercer University, I note that Ben Myers is contemplating How (not) to preach the parables:
It’s a curious thing that pastors often find it so difficult to preach Jesus’ parables. In truth, the only hard thing about the parables is that they are so simple, so straightforward in what they claim and what they demand. They are so simple that we need to make them difficult in order to escape the piercing gaze of Jesus. Or perhaps some pastors feel they need to soften the parables in order to protect the congregation from God. After all, it is God himself who bursts through these stories, coming on the scene with the unaccountable strangeness of a seed in the ground, with the disruptive suddenness of a thief in the night.
Read the whole thing. I guarantee you’ve heard the kinds of sermons he’s talking about, and some of you may have even preached them. 
