Proclaiming The Parables - Print

Proclaiming The Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God

By Thomas G. Long

A vital resource for preachers and teachers, offering fresh and theologically rich commentary on the parables of Jesus as windows into the kingdom of God.

• Detailed commentary on each major parable in the Gospels.
• Fresh insights on the theological impact of parables.
• Helps preachers and teachers discover new ways to interpret parables.
• Moves beyond literary analysis to reveal parables as dynamic events in God’s kingdom.
• Provides both exegetical and homiletical guidance for preaching.
• Offers new interpretations that bring the parables to life in contemporary contexts.
• Explores the significance of parables as windows into God's inbreaking kingdom.
• Includes practical commentary for sermon preparation.
• Ideal for preachers, teachers, and scholars seeking deeper understanding of parables.
• Endorsed by renowned theologians and scholars.

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Hard cover 460pp
5.8cm H x 21.6cm L x 16.63cm W (0.75 kgs)
ISBN 9780664268619
Westminster John Knox Press (2024)

[Allow 4 weeks]

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This essential resource for preachers and teachers offers detailed commentary on each major parable, providing fresh, faithful, and creative insights. With endorsements from renowned scholars, this book will rejuvenate your preaching and deepen your congregation's understanding of God's living Word.

Noted preacher and scholar Thomas G. Long moves away from past treatment of the parables primarily as literary devices and moves toward an emphasis on their theological impact as pointers to the kingdom of God.

While the parables are indeed significant poetic literary creations that have enchanted readers over the centuries, their main power, he claims, lies in their disclosure of the kingdom of God, which is not merely an idea, nor even just a complex symbol with generative and centrifugal force, but an event: the inbreaking of the life of God into human history and experience.

Long sees parables not merely as creative figures of speech but as GPS devices taking hearers to those places where the event of God is happening all around us. This book provides preachers and teachers with detailed exegetical and homiletical commentary for each major parable in that Gospel. Two introductory chapters additionally situate this book in the history and theology of the parables’ interpretation and address questions that preachers have about preaching the parables.

Preachers who consult this volume will be informed about each major parable, guided through the controversies regarding interpretation, and stimulated to preach on the parable in fresh, faithful, and creative ways.

“Be very afraid! While masquerading as a book about preaching and teaching the parables, in this splendid volume, the parables begin to do their work of unsettling, rearranging, and finally inviting. They preach themselves. Tom Long’s extended conversation with Jesus’ teaching has born fruit, thirty- and sixty- and a hundredfold. I, for one, am grateful.”
Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Helen H. P. Manson Professor Emerita of New Testament Literature and Exegesis, Princeton Theological Seminary

“Preacher, teacher, scholar, and disciple Tom Long offers readers a lifetime worth of fresh insights on parables we only thought we already knew well. Long provides a historical overview of biblical scholarship on parables, dives deep into the distinctiveness of each Gospel, and then explores the parables with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love. This book will be a helpful addition to preachers’ and teachers’ biblical reference library, but it is also worthy of being read devotionally. Either way, Long’s words invite us to be surprised again by God’s living Word.”
Jill Duffield, author of Lent in Plain Sight