The Parables of Jesus
Recovering the Art of Listening
- Biblical Studies & Commentaries
- Publisher: Fortress Press (Augsburg Fortress)
- Published: 1997
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Publisher's Description
In this startlingly original interpretation, Ford explores seven of the longer parables attributed to Jesus. Bypassing the assumption that the superior character represents God and the subordinate one the Christian believer, Ford focuses instead on how persons, long separated by inequality, are called upon to collaborate. Drawing on his own psychotherapy training, Ford offers novel insights into ways the characters persist in their mutual misunderstandings. He then shows how Jesus' stories envelop listeners in these same distortions, only to lure them—and ourselves—into the work of imagining reconciliation.
Endorsements (2)
“One feature makes this book special, another makes it extraordinary. It is not new for biblical scholars to move into realms of psychotherapy where they walk as amateurs. It is much more novel for a professional psychotherapist to move into biblical studies with enough preparation to be far beyond amateur standing. But it is this book's subtitle that makes it extraordinary. It is about the lost art of 'listening,' about dialogues rather than twin simultaneous monologues, about personal and social interaction, especially in cases of inequality. With care, delicacy, and tenderness, Richard Ford listens to parable characters reacting to one another, imagines client and therapist in analogous situations, and teaches us all to shut up long enough to hear another's voice.”
“Ford's interpretation of the parables is provocative and creative . . . Preachers will find here loads of fresh approaches to texts that seem to have been preached to death.”
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