Confronting the Ancient world!

 After the resurrection of Jesus, his followers were faced with some hard choices. The previous two or three years had been the most exciting time of their lives. They had listened with wonder to his teaching, and watched with growing expectancy as Jesus actions made it plain that God's long- awaited new society had really and truly arrived. The kingdom was here, because Jesus was the king!
 Then came the crucifixion, and with it all they had hope for seemed doomed to certain failure. Even the resurrection left them disillusioned, and when they realize that Jesus would no longer be physically present with them they must have been under intense pressure simply to forget him.
 Not to forget him entirely, perhaps-but to write off those three years. as an experience which had taught them a lot, but which was no longer of immediate concern, to their continuing life style.
 It must have been a great temptation for them to drift back home and pick up the threads of their working lives where they had left off before they joined Jesus. There, they could still share their memories of him-perhaps even try to put some of his teaching into practice in the local synagogue of rural Palestine. Yet, the more they thought about Jesus, the more they knew how impossible such a reaction would be.  Jesus had demanded their radical and wholehearted obedience when they first met him. And his final message to them was just challenging and uncompromising :' Go, then,  to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples... you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Matt.28:19, Acts 1:8).
 BACK TO JESUS: Jesus had never really been an establishment figure. People who had met him often recognized him as 'rabbi', and gave him that title (Luke 9:25; 19:18,39). Right from the very beginning, they all knew that he was different and that his message was distinctive. In His very first report of Jesus public teaching, Mark comments: The people who heard him were amazed at the way He taught, for He wasn't like the  teachers of the law; instead He taught with authority. (Mark 1:22).  That does not mean to say that his teaching was completely new and unique. Many Jewish writers have rightly pointed out that disciples to be faithful 'shepherds' of the church. It is of course not conceivable that Jesus may have told the same story more than once. and drawn different lessons.
"Remember Grace!" on each occasion. Many preachers re-use a good illustration. But the fact is that these parables are exceptional in having any background information at all attached to them.
  We know nothing about the circumstances in which Jesus told most of the parables. This is emphasized by the way they are collected together in blocks in the various Gospels. Matthew has a complete section devoted entirely to parables (Matt. 13). Mark contains a similar ( though not identical collection, Mark 4).  While Luke also has a long section predominantly composed of parables. ( Luke 13:18-16:31).
 To make his message clear to the people Jesus used many illustrations from everyday life,  nor is it really profitable to try to discover the use to which the parables were put in the early church. Students of what is called 'redaction  criticism'  have examined the ways in which different  parables are used in different Gospels. For example, we can see that Matthew has a number of parables that refer to the coming of God's kingdom in the future-and we may surmise that this subject was of some importance
in the churches for which Matthew was writing. Luke on the other hand, preserves a number of parables, not found in other Gospels, concerned with the place of non-Jewish people (Gentiles) in God's new society. Observations of this kind can tell us valuable things about Matthew and Luke.
and their respective readerships. But ultimately they tell us very little about either the origins or the  The real meaning of the parables themselves. The real meaning of the parables must be inextricably bound up with the challenge they bring to those who read or hear them. They give us a picture of God and of his new society, and they challenge us to commit ourselves unconditionally  to accept his will.
  It is only as we identify ourselves with the lost sheep, the wicked tenants, or the man who discovers a field of hidden treasure, that that their full impact is felt. In the last analysis, the parables are nothing less than God's claim on the lives of men and women. They require both the disposition to understand and the will to obey.