Hyperstory

My family listens nightly to Brian Hardin’s Daily Audio Bible Podcast, which you can check out at Daily Audio Bible.com.  Anyway, in the past few days he has been reading the New Testament portion of Scripture specifically in the Matthew.  It has elicited a great deal of reflection for me on the parables that Jesus used.  I realize that he was a master teacher yet had a great handle on multimedia as well.  One parable that has really stood out for me is The Wicked Tenants. 

The Wicked Tenants is a confounding parable that really displays Jesus' masterful storyteller skills, as well as his awareness of multimedia.  Now, one might see his stories as masterful, in that they are still dissected today for the genre, prose and content of message, but to say he understood multimedia might seem a stretch. 

However, this story is actually an example of a hyper-story because Jesus gave the participants the opportunity to choose how it would end.  What was so unique about this parable was that he sucked the rulers of the day in so deeply to the riveting story that they could not help become emotional with their response.  They collectively wanted to grind those wicked tenants to powder, and only after they responded did they understand that they were explaining what should happen to them.  Interestingly, Jesus confirmed their assessment in such a confounding way, that they really couldn’t figure how they were targeted through the metaphor of the cornerstone.  The prophetic elements of Jesus’ allusion to Old Testament Scripture are so striking that it is amazing.

 Looking at how Jesus used the hyper-story with ending options to create powerful platform for learning.  Jesus’ intent with this parable hit the mark exactly.  Even though they didn’t seem to get the message, they got the right answer which was exactly as he intended.  The appeal of this story to multiple sensory modalities as well as the emotional demand is a powerful manipulation of language that makes one experience overwhelming empathy for the landowner.  Putting it into context of God the Father being the landowner and Jesus being the son adds to a desire to Love on the Father who endured such agony as well as the son.  What a wonderful picture of the Father’s personal agony and Love not only for his son, but his “vineyard” as well.