Jesus’ Parables in Luke
Popular parables of Jesus in the gospel account of Luke were a highlight of the annual Calvin Symposium on Worship Feb. 5-7 at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Mich. Kicking off, moving through, and closing the event, a series of sermons at the plenary worship services helped to frame the rest of the learning that took place over the course of three days.
The symposium, which brought in hundreds of participants from countries around the world, offered sessions “related to universal design for worship . . . building connections and empathy in divided times, cultural intelligence, and the global and historical nature of Christian worship,” according to the Symposium Overview webpage.
Between workshop times, worship services brought people together, and various groups provided music ranging from well-known hymns to songs of lament and rousing praise songs as well as ethnic songs of worship.
On the opening day of the symposium, Scott Hoezee, director of the Calvin Center for Excellence in Preaching, spoke about the significance of several parables in Luke: “In Luke’s gospel we find several of Jesus’ best-known parables—stories that despite their renown are found nowhere else in Scripture. . . . Our services and sermons at the five plenary worship services will focus on some of the beloved parables Jesus uses to teach us so much about the kingdom of God and the grace that saves us.”
The Good Samaritan: Luke 10:25-37
Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan to call listeners, including us today, to reshape our imaginations about who our neighbor is, said Andrea Bult during the event’s first worship service.
“Jesus asks us to recalibrate ourselves and reenvision the type of community we want to be,” said Bult, pastor of congregational life at Madison Square Church in Grand Rapids.
In the story of the good Samaritan, people pass by a man who has been robbed, beaten, and left to die on the side of the road. Only a Samaritan, an enemy of the Jewish people, stops and cares for the man.
“In telling this story, Jesus addressed the fractures that run deep around culture, religion, and geography,” said Bult. “He is asking us to consider an alternative reality.”
Bult warned listeners not to overspiritualize this story by taking on the notion that Christ was speaking of loving your neighbor in some far-off, heavenly realm. No, she said, Jesus was talking about the here and now, and about real people in need whom we pass by on the side of the road.
“We can be so quick to forget that it is human-to-human connection that lies at the heart of this story,” said Bult. “When we do that, when we forget about the pain and suffering of others, we are settling for a disembodied gospel.”
“Who is our neighbor?” she asked. “Simple – it is the one in front of us whom we need to show mercy to.”
Remember, she said, that Jesus is God who became flesh: “Jesus became deeply involved in our trouble, in the troubles of everyone. He was injured and he suffered for our sake. He took our hostilities to the cross, and he took those divisions existing among all people to the grave, and he rose again and triumphed over them.”
The Friend at Midnight: Luke 11:5-13
In this parable, a friend goes banging on the door of another friend at midnight, said Janet Ok, a New Testament professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, as she preached during the syposium’s second worship service.
The friend arrives so late because he needs three loaves of bread to share with other friends who have come on a journey and are famished.
“This man didn’t have enough bread to set out a decent spread, and he had to find a neighbor who did,” said Ok. “The shocker in this story is that the friend . . . rejects the request.”
This is such a shock, she explained, because hospitality was a crucial virtue in the ancient world, as it should be today. It helped to knit together a community. Social wisdom taught that people should share because they might be in need one day and have to rely on the hospitality of a neighbor.
“The man with the bread was tired, his family was asleep, and he didn’t feel like getting up,” said Ok.
But, Jesus implied, the man outside wasn’t about to give up. And finally the man in the house would get up and give his neighbor what he needed, which brought Ok to her next point.
“Jesus is talking here about intercessory prayer, about asking God for what others need,” she said. As Jesus explained, the man in the house would give the bread because his friend – in a shameless but effective action – wouldn't give up.
This is about becoming advocates in prayer, which, said Ok, “can be brash and annoying and can amplify inconvenient truths. You are asking those who are sleeping to wake up to help those” who are there on behalf of others unable to show up.
True, she added – it was midnight. But it is midnight today, and people are knocking on doors because they need help. “This parable is calling on the church to offer the type of intercession that expands our imaginations of what it means to be a friend.”
Parables of the Lost Sheep, Coin, and Son: Luke 15:1-32
In the third sermon at the symposium, Kevin Adams tied together Jesus’ parables of a shepherd going after a lost sheep, a widow looking for her lost coin, and a runaway son whose father welcomed him back with open arms, by talking about grumbling.
“Some theologians say we may believe the first sin of Adam and Eve was pride because they thought they wanted to be like God,” said Adams, founding and senior pastor of Granite Springs Church outside Sacramento, Calif. But the case can also be made “that the first sin was a grumble,” he said.
In other words, Adam and Eve grumbled that God kept all of the good stuff for himself, said Adams, and they asked, “What was he doing up there anyway, and what were they missing out from?”
Then, said Adams, there were the Israelites who left Egypt to wander in the desert – a group of real grumblers. “They grumbled because they didn’t have water. Then they said it was bad water when it came.” But they didn’t stop there. “They grumbled because they weren’t in Egypt, and they grumbled because they weren’t in the promised land yet.”
They wandered in the desert for 40 years in the arms of one miracle after another – their sandals and shoes didn’t wear out, and they were fed manna from heaven every morning – and still, said Adams, they grumbled.
In response to the three parables in Luke 15, said Adams, both inside and outside the stories, we can imagine grumbling also:.
Why would a shepherd leave behind 99 sheep just to go after one that was missing? Why would a woman spend so much time looking for one coin and then want to celebrate it when she already had nine coins? And why make such a big deal out of a son, who had squandered all of his wealth, making his way back to his father?
Taking it closer to home, said Adams, lots of people today, whether churchgoers or not, are grumblers. We want what we don’t have; we complain because of how others act; we grumble over clothes that don’t fit, or about the job that remains out of reach.
And we do this in the face of everyday miracles, especially the gifts that God gives us, whether it’s waking up in the morning or the relationships we have that we don’t appreciate.
Toward the end of the sermon, Adams asked his listeners to imagine themselves – along with everyone – being invited to the table for communion. And by everyone, he meant everyone.
“We are asked, ‘Will you come and join the table?’ No one belongs, but everyone is there by grace. ‘Will you come and join the table?’ Will you leave behind the grumble and embrace the arms of a miracle?”
The Rich Man and Lazarus: Luke 16:19-31
As this parable opens, Lazarus, a beggar covered in sores, lies at a rich man’s gate. He is hungry and begs the rich man for food, but not a scrap comes his way. Not only that but dogs come and lick his sores, said Dennis Edwards, a dean at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, as he began the next sermon at the symposium.
When the beggar died, he went to sit at the side of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and he ended up in Hades, from which he looked up and begged Abraham to send Lazarus down with some water.
“Such a parable that we have before us tonight,” said Edwards, “forces us to reckon with the relationship we have to money. It also asks us, ‘Who is our neighbor? Who gets my attention? Who gets my resources? And what happens to me when I die?’”
We miss the mysterious points here, said the preacher, if we ask how the rich man could actually see Lazarus resting against Abraham’s side, presumably in heaven.
“The spatial and social distance here, the gap between them, is what is central to this parable,” said Edwards. “To begin in the parable, the rich man is high in society while Lazarus is low. The rich man eats high on the hog every day, but Lazarus is impoverished.”
The tables, though, get turned in “the upside-down way of God’s kingdom in which things get reversed,” said Edwards. “The rich man goes to Hades, while Lazarus gets carried away by angels.”
Sitting with Abraham, Lazarus is “residing at the banquet table on a seat of honor, with his head on the chest of his host,” said Edwards.
In the parable, Jesus is calling to mind this gap and a reality we tend to ignore, which is that Jesus cares a great deal about money and the attitude we should take, said Edward – “that we should use our money to take care of others.”
Those of us who call ourselves Christians in 2025, said Edwards, should be appalled by the great chasm between the haves and the have nots. Too many of us bow down at the table of the moneychangers, he said. “We cannot be the ones,” said Edwards, “who keep pledging allegiance to money and megalomania.”
In the end, he said, “God’s Word is enough to teach us that we don’t live for personal gain. God’s Word is enough to teach us that we should try to fix things that are broken in this world.”
The Persistent Widow: Luke 18:1-8
We live in a time in which many people seem to believe that if you face an obstacle, “you should abandon your plan and try something else,” said Nichole Massie Martin, founder and executive director of Soulfire International Ministries as she preached during the symposium’s final worship service.
“The idea is that if at first we don’t succeed, then destroy all evidence that we ever tried,” said Martin. “If things don’t go our way, we want to trade in our passports for greener pastures rather than to persist.”
Too few of us, in the face of today’s complex problems, take the path of the persistent widow in the parable told by Jesus, in which the widow keeps petitioning a judge for justice against her adversary until the judge, who tires of her coming before him, finally grants her wish.
“We lack resilience, the ability to recover from challenges. We seem no longer able to be stretched and stretched and then bounce back into shape,” said Martin.
Being resilient is an important part of being persistent like the widow, and our lack of persistence can transfer over to our faith, said Martin.
“We want to follow Jesus to pleasant places. We want him to make us feel good and warm and cozy inside, to sing songs that make us happy. This, however, is not real faith.”
Especially today, she said, with political and social disruptions around every corner, too many of us want to run or simply give in to forces we believe can’t be controlled.
But Christianity, the kind that lasts and seeks better for everyone, isn’t like this. “Trust me,” said Martin, “if you really follow Jesus, troubles will come. Jesus doesn’t lead us to a place where we take up our pillows and comforters and follow him.”
In the face of unrest and injustice, Christians should stand firm and seek change where they can. But they should also be persistent in prayer, said Martin.
“We need to pray and, even if we don’t get what we believe we want, we need to petition God over and over with the insane belief that eventually God will respond.”
We should take inspiration from the widow, said Martin: “Think of this widow – who would normally be on the outskirts of life – and Jesus makes her the hero to model faith for his disciples, essentially telling them they ought to be a little more like her.”
