NOTES for Luk 8:1-21

Jesus' parables are something between amusing stories from everyday life and riddles: in them He explains the inexpressible—the message of His Kingdom—in simple human language. Many of them begin in just this way: “The Kingdom of God is like what happens when...” Then He describes a situation familiar to His listeners, revealing to them the essence of His Gospel. Thus we have the best-known parable, about how the Word of God, like a seed, must fall into fertile soil in order to bear fruit instead of being lost. The Evangelist complements the parable wonderfully by placing immediately after it the account of Jesus' family, where He gives His disciples a new riddle expressing the same message in different words: “The one who hears the Word and fulfills it has entered My family.” The listeners need only compare these riddle-parables to understand what constitutes the Kingdom their Teacher has brought to earth. Through his book, the Evangelist offers this task not merely to a small circle of disciples, but to every reader of the Gospel.