Four Teachings from Jesus that Amy-Jill Levine Gets Wrong

An article by Vanderbilt professor Amy-Jill Levine has been popping up on my Facebook newsfeed lately. The title is catchy: “4 teachings from Jesus that everybody gets wrong.” Levine claims to offer the right interpretation to four of Jesus’ parables. She also claims that “everybody” has wrongly interpreted these teachings – everybody, that is, except Levine herself. (Gee thanks, right?)

Though this little blog is nowhere near as popular as CNN’s, I can’t help but offer a rebuttal of Levine’s interpretations. I’ll address each one in order.

1.       The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)

According to Levine, Jesus’ parable about the prodigal son is not really about sin and forgiveness (i.e. our Father in heaven forgives those who repent of their sin and return home to Him). Rather, it is a parable “about counting, and making sure everyone counts.”

The father “counts” the younger son who returns. The older son “counts” himself when the father fails to invite him to the celebration. The moral of the story? Everyone counts.

According to Levine, we can reach this conclusion when we consider the parables preceding this one, namely the Parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin. Those parables are not about the “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents,” but about making sure each and every person counts.

The problem? Jesus himself says those parables are about the “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.” But Levine attributes Jesus’ words to “the evangelist” (presumably Luke) and then goes on to dismiss them as an incorrect interpretation.

If one does not attend closely to Levine’s argument, it’s easy to miss what she’s doing here. But make no mistake, she is taking Jesus’ interpretation of his own parable, attributing that interpretation to “the evangelist,” and then saying “the evangelist” got it wrong.

If, contrary to Levine, we believe those words (about “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents”), then the Parable of the Prodigal Son is again about God our Father’s graciousness toward repentant sinners. It is again about not begrudging God’s grace toward our brother who has sinned. And it is again about the joy of going from death to life, from lost to found.

2.       The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)

According to Levine, this parable is not really about loving our neighbor. Nor is it about the fact that our neighbor is each and every person we come across, no matter how unlovely he or she may be.

Nope, this parable is about how “our enemy may be the very person who will save us.” According to Levine, our enemy is represented by the Samaritan and “we are the person in the ditch.”

Never mind that Jesus concludes the parable, “Go and do likewise.” Though Jesus himself wants to interpret the parable as a lesson about who our neighbor is (everyone!) and how to treat him (love!), Levine prefers her own interpretation. After all, through Levine’s scholarly eyes, “we can see the import of this parable for the Israeli/Palestinian crisis.”

Um, really? I have no problem putting ourselves in the place of the man in the ditch, but if we’re going to do that, then we ought to interpret the Good Samaritan as Jesus. He’s the one who bandages up the wounded (sinners!), pours on him oil (the Holy Spirit!) and wine (the Eucharist!), brings him to an inn (the Church!), and tells the innkeeper (the pastor!) to take care of the now-recovering man. Sin has ruined this man; Christ has saved him and put him on the way to recovery.

And yet, even if we put ourselves in the place of the man in the ditch, we cannot stop there. Jesus’ desire is that we, in turn, emulate the Good Samaritan. Levine’s intentions aren’t malicious, but somehow she misses the command to “go and do likewise.” We are to be like the Good Samaritan, loving and caring for each and every person we come across.

3.       The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16)

The workers work for various periods of time, the master pays them all the same wage, and then the longer-working workers complain. In the conclusion, the master tells them not to begrudge his generosity.

According to Levine, this parable is not about God’s grace toward those who’ve served him only a short period. It’s “not a parable about salvation in the afterlife but about economics in present.”

Okay, I get it: Levine wants people to have jobs and also thinks a fair wage is important. I agree. However, that’s not what this parable is about. The master is not just some random employer, and the vineyard is not just a random place of work. “Master” literally means “lord,” and “his vineyard” is a long-used metaphor for his Kingdom. (See Isaiah 5:7.)

Jesus is indeed teaching about the economy, but not the economy of mammon Levine has in mind. He’s teaching about the economy of grace, in which each person, no matter how long he’s labored to walk in the ways of the Lord, receives the same grace. “Well done good and faithful servant” will be said just as much to the thief on the cross as to John of Patmos.

Not convinced? Apply Levine’s method of interpretation to the Parable of Talents in Mathew 25:14-30. In that parable, the man who turns his five talents into five more talents is lauded by his master. Likewise with the man who turns his two talents into two more. But then there’s the man who hid his one talent in the ground. He’s called a wicked and lazy servant, and his talent is taken away from him.

The conclusion? “To all who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” (Matthew 25:29) Would Levine say that this, too, should guide our economic policies? Somehow I doubt it. Again, lest we fall into downright absurd interpretations and applications, we must read these parables as parables of God’s Kingdom. They are about economies not of mammon, but of grace.

4.       The Parable of the Pearl of Great Price

Levine points out that this parable never identifies what the pearl of great price actually is. And so, she assumes that the pearl is whatever each person wants it to be. She asks, “What if the parable challenges us to determine our own pearl of great price?”

Yeah, what if? What if I determine that my pearl of great price is sex, or money, or fame? Many people have thought that some created thing is the pearl that will fulfill them. But to turn a created thing into one’s “ultimate concern” (Levine’s language, perhaps borrowed from Paul Tillich) is called idolatry. And in the end, all idols fall apart and break the hearts of those who worship them.

There is only one pearl of great price, and his name is Jesus. To know his grace and to have his Spirit is to lay hold of what really matters: the love of God. That alone is worth forsaking everything for. Anything less would be absurd.

A Final Word

Ultimately, it seems Levine wants to discount the possibility of these parables being about God and about his Kingdom of Heaven. In fact, she makes the same a-theistic move in all four of her interpretations, leaving each parable bereft of God and void of anything supernatural.

Those who would follow Levine cannot do so without jettisoning the notion of “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.” They must jettison the all-too-obvious reality of sin, the all-too-necessary call to repentance, and the all-too-hard-to-believe promise of grace.

Maybe I’m wrong or just not scholarly enough, maybe I’m Levine’s “everybody”, but I believe in all those things that her article wants to dismiss. That is to say, I believe in the God whose grace saves sinners from ruin and whose Son is Jesus.

Jonah's Dis-ordered Heart

An Ugly Ending

The final chapter of Jonah is not a pretty one. First Jonah is upset about God’s graciousness toward the Ninevites (a people who had done him wrong, but now repented of their sin), and then he is “angry enough to die” when God destroys a bush that had shaded Jonah from discomfort. Jonah would have preferred the exact opposite of what God was doing – that is, he would have preferred that the bush be spared and the Ninevites destroyed.

The Lord’s response to Jonah pinpoints the prophet’s error: “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:10-11)

Jonah’s Sin

Jonah’s sin was to love things more than he loved people. Things are temporary and relatively unimportant; people are eternal and thus have eternal significance. Nevertheless, Jonah’s heart was set on the temporary things that brought him comfort, rather than the eternal people that brought him discomfort.

This dis-ordering of values is common to man and makes him a hard-hearted creature. More than that, it is contrary to God’s original order. To love things (no matter how lovely they may be) more than one loves people (no matter how unlovely they may be) is to flip the order that God has ordained from the beginning. God created man to love people and use things; a dis-ordered heart will do the opposite, loving things and using people.

Imitating God

God himself loves people above all else. Man was created to reflect God, which is to say that man was created to love people above all else. Thus, the love that one has for temporary things must be subordinate and subservient to his love for people.

This is the order God has ordained, and it is also the order the Spirit of Christ restores when he gives new birth to those who believe. That new birth in the Spirit is the beginning of a transformation, one that needs constant exhortation. And so, this post will conclude with just that:

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God…Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” (Ephesians 5:1-2, Romans 13:14)

Love and Law: Friends or Enemies?

Love and the Commandments

Does love nullify God’s moral law? Many think so. The argument goes like this: “Jesus shows us that love is what matters, not the commandments. Therefore, just love people and forget the rules.”

But is that true? Does the New Testament ever assert such a thing? In some churches, this Sunday’s reading from Romans 13:8-10 might be used to answer “yes” to those questions. The passage reads thusly:

“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Something to Ask Oneself

It’s easy to use St. Paul’s words to justify the nullification of God’s moral law, but such an interpretation is patently wrong. To make this clear, one should ask oneself, “Can I dishonor my parents (Commandment 4), murder someone (Commandment 5), commit adultery (Commandment 6), steal from someone (Commandment 7), bear false witness against someone (Commandment 8), and covet someone’s wife and possessions (Commandments 9-10), and then still say, ‘I am walking in love toward people.’”?

In the words of Romans, by no means! One cannot break the commandments and act as if he is still walking in love. In fact, the commandments are the very content of love. They show the one who wants to love his neighbor what not to do to him. (This includes acts of sexual immorality, regardless of how “loving” one thinks such acts may be.) Ultimately, as the above question shows, violations of God’s moral law cannot be called love.

The Nature of Summaries

Another way to arrive at a correct interpretation of Romans is to consider the nature of summaries. It’s written in Romans 13:9 that the commandments are “summed up in this word: ‘Love you neighbor as yourself.’” The Greek word translated “summed up” is anakephalaiosis, which literally means “recapitulate.” So what does a recapitulation or a summary do? Put simply, it distills the message or the plot of a larger body of literature. Notably, a true summary does not contradict that which it summarizes.

It would be awfully strange if the so-called summary of a story contradicted the story itself. Say the story was about a child who ran away from home but was sought after and found by his father (hooray!), but the summary says the child had neither home nor father but instead just roamed the world aimlessly (lame). The summary would be contradicting the story, and thus would be no true summary at all.

Those who would say that love can contradict God’s commandments are like those who would write a summary that contradicts a story. Try as they may, their summary will never be faithful to the story itself. They may get the characters’ names right, and they may even use the word “love” till blue in the face, but the plot will have been altered drastically, and the biblical meaning of “love” will have been misconstrued to the point of unrecognizability. The child who had run away from home will still be lost, the father who saves him never even mentioned.

Final Word

If one wants to know what love looks like, he ought to dwell on the commandments. As Martin Luther wrote in his Large Catechism, “These are the fount from which all good works must flow.” Even better than dwelling on the commandments, one ought to dwell on the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), in which Jesus shows the much deeper meaning of the commandments. Or even better still, one ought to dwell on Jesus himself, who is the embodiment of love and the incarnation of God's Torah. He came not to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill. (Matthew 5:18) And so his words deserve the final word:

“Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:19-20)