Generally speaking Jesus\u2019s parables draw on agricultural imagery, daily village life, stock character types, and everyday situations to discourse on \u201cGod, God\u2019s people, and God\u2019s word.\u201d[1]<\/a> They draw on a \u201ccollective store of Jewish imagery\u201d[2]<\/a> by rehearsing Old Testament images of a farmer and a vineyard or that of a shepherd and his sheep which often describe God\u2019s relationship with Israel. Or else they resource common images for God and Israel such as a master and his servant, a king and his subjects, or a father and a son. The parables often explain God\u2019s character, kingdom imperatives, and the nature of discipleship; precisely why they were probably preserved and promulgated by the early church. However, put specifically, the parables are very often \u201cweapons of controversy\u201d[3]<\/a> in the adversarial context of Jesus\u2019s ministry in that the parables retell Israel\u2019s story in shocking ways affronting to the official and unofficial leaders of Israel. The parables redraw Israel\u2019s boundaries around tax-collectors, fisherman, whores, and lepers; they critique those who were supposed to be above critique; they challenge things that were untouchable! Parables explore what it means if Israel\u2019s protracted period of exile is ending, if the new exodus is underway, what does that mean for God, who\u2019s in and who is out, whose way of being Israel avails, who\u2019s in the right, what about the nations, and what are the signs of belonging to the covenant? These are not stories everyone wanted to hear if it left them off the page or put them on the wrong side of the ledger.<\/p>\n Parables invite hearers to nod their heads in approval until they suddenly realize that Jesus is insinuating that the stories people live by are unstable or undercut. That is because parables are, as B.B. Scott suggested, a form of \u201cantimyth,\u201d[4]<\/a> which attack and disorder resident myths, i.e. cultural stories about power, privilege, and proximity to God. The parables make jolting claims like God loves a penitent publican more than a strict Pharisee (Lk 18:10-14), that the kingdom does not come by focus on of the details of legal minutia (Lk 17:20-21), that wealth is a risk for judgment not evidence for divine blessing (Lk 16:19-31), that many audiences are apathetic like people who can\u2019t be bothered for either a dance or a dirge (Mt 11:17\/Lk 7:32), judgment will come unexpectantly like a flood (Mt 24:37-39\/Lk 17:26-27) or a bird caught in a snare (Lk 21:34-35), and Israel\u2019s ruling class are thieving usurpers who have seized control of a vineyard that does not rightfully belong to them (Mk 12:1-12). The parables deconstruct competing agendas for Israel\u2019s restoration and rival accounts of what it means to be God\u2019s Israel. The parables attack assumptions that God is on our side as long as the temple stands, the teaching of the elders is a fence around the Torah, Israel will tower over its neighbors like a cedar of Lebanon, God praises the honorable and casts out the shameless, the kingdom will look like Pharisees forming a phalanx, if Israel keeps three sabbaths then the Messiah will come, separation from sinners is true holiness, etc. This is why Jesus responds with a parable when accused of being in league with Beelzebul (Mk 3:23-30), for not fasting (Mk 2:19-20), for not washing his hands according to custom (Mk 7:1-23), when criticized for eating with sinners and tax-collectors (Lk 15:1-3), and why parables result in plots to kill him (Mk 12:12)! The parables use word pictures to redescribe the hope of God\u2019s kingship and to redraw Israel\u2019s boundaries and vocation in ways that rendered all the other sects and groups as either irrelevant or an obstacle to Israel\u2019s restoration.<\/p>\n Accordingly, by telling parables Jesus was doing more than provocative social commentary against the establishment and more than smugly saying \u201cIt ain\u2019t necessarily so\u201d to offend the scruples of religious conservatives. In the parables, Jesus was taking the stories and assumptions that people lived by, which they simply assumed and often cherished, and turning them on their head. Jesus declares in the parables, often cryptically, that there was another way to tell Israel\u2019s story, there was not just a problem for Israel but a problem within Israel, which required either the repentance of Israel or a rupture within Israel, and in this story of Israel\u2019s deliverance there was a big plot twist, and a stranger ending still to come. It was like Jesus was teaching American colonial history and was saying that King George III was the hero of the American war for independence and his reign over America is eternal and inviolable; or he was telling a class of four-year olds a fairy-tale where Little Red Riding Hood was devoured by the wolf and he lived happily ever after; or he gave a sermon illustration where Methodist clergy turned away a homeless gay teenager and a Muslim family took her in; or he retold the story of Faust except that it turns out that Faust is the Church of England and Satan is the House of Lords; or he was quoting lines from Henrik Ibsen\u2019s play Enemy of the People <\/em>in the European parliament, and while everyone thought he was talking about Russia, he was in fact describing the Europe Union itself. It is the kind of thing you\u2019d hear and think to yourself, \u201cOh yeah, tell it like it is brother!\u201d then \u201cWhat the hell?\u201d to \u201cOMG, is he talking about us?\u201d to \u201cThat\u2019s blasphemy and treason!\u201d to \u201cAway with him, give us Barabbas!!!\u201d Parables are designed to either change the mind or cause people to look for the nearest pitchfork.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Bockmuehl 2006, 216.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Theissen & Merz 1998, 343.<\/p>\n