Explication
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Biblical commentaries
The word “parable” is often translated as “enigma”. In our context, we could understand that speaking in riddles, Jesus liked to make things even less easy to understand and to trick his audience. If you think about it, the art of the parable rests rather on a triple capacity of its author: the precise knowledge of the deep subject of which he speaks, the knowledge of the habits of the world in which he lives and the knowledge of his interlocutor in order to choose what can help him to achieve a better understanding.
Jesus indeed possesses this triple wisdom. Indeed, if the mustard seed is quite foreign to the daily life of many of us, if leaven is not the ingredient we use the most in cooking, Jesus puts himself on a par with his contemporaries who sow the mustard seeds and prepare the family bread daily. He thus becomes a teacher! And he also opens a space of freedom to his listeners, inviting them through images to draw on their own experience in order to understand a reality larger than words. A parable is an “open” lesson, where the interpretation of the receiver adds further meaning to what the teacher says. So what does this mustard seed and leaven in the dough tell us?
Autres lectures : Jr 13, 1-11 ; Ctq Dt 32, 18-19, 20, 21
