There's more to the story.

Don't get me wrong. Dogmas are important. No faith community can survive without certain clear truths that define what is essential to its identity. There needs to be boundaries within which crucial discussions take place.

There needs to be lines across which authentic believers may not step. Yet the obvious need for dogmas only heightens the provocative truth that Jesus taught in parables.

The four gospels, of course, do record Jesus offering some rather dogma-like sayings. However, the most powerful and memorable sayings of Jesus are the parables he sets before his hearers. Parables seem to be his preferred method of teaching. Why then did Jesus choose to teach in parables? A simple answer would be that Jesus was Jewish. The use of parables by jewish teachers both before and after Jesus testifies to their importance in Jewish tradition. Yet the quantity and originality of Jesus' parables seem to reflect a specific preference for this particular mode of speech on his part. How can we explain this attraction?

I suggest that Jesus preferred parables because they are flexible, if not downright slippery. Although you can believe for a while that you have figured out a parable, its meaning can shift dramatically upon a second or third encounter. Parables are difficult to pin down. They always harbor meanings beyond the few we have already captured. They are therefore always on the move, modulating from one revelation to the next, confronting us with fresh possibilities.

I believe that it was this elusive quality of parables that attracted Jesus to them. For Jesus knew that the Reign of God, which he was committed to proclaim, was a reign of surprising newness and pliability. In other words, parables were elastic enough to reveal the most unexpected meanings and to welcome the most surprising people. This made them fit vehicles for the reign of God.

It's time for a little parable magic - time to take a parable we all believe we understand and watch it morph before us. A perfect candidate for this exercise is the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). This parable is so well-known that it has given name to an action recognized even by those who have never read the Bible. To be a "Good Samaritan" means that one helps a neighbor in need. Most people are content to believe that this is the purpose of the parable: to give us an example of how we should help another who is in distress. That such a purpose can be drawn from the parable is undeniable. But to be satisfied with this singular meaning is to settle for much less than the parable has to offer.

What if, in reading the parable, we shift our attention from the deed which is done to the doer who does it? What if we forget for a minute the comforting cliche of helping another in need and focus upon the identity of the one who is helping? The parable then transforms itself from a moral example to an upsetting challenge. For the person in the parable who is helping is a Samaritan.

Most of us have heard enough homilies on this parable to know that the Jews did not like Samaritans. But there is often not enough attention paid to the careful way in which the parable explodes the hearer's expectations by inverting the roles of its characters. The roles of the good and the bad, the loved and the hated are reversed. The most effective way to experience this reversal is to hear the parable in terms of our own culture and its evaluations.

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. Now by chance Pope John Paul II was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise Mother Teresa, when she came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But Saddam Hussein while traveling came near him, and when he saw him, was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, "Take care of him@ and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend."

What has happened? The example of helping one in need is still present, but it is almost totally overshadowed by the characters in the parable. Those who most of us would admire pass the man by. The one who most of us would consider an enemy stops and treats the man as a brother. Everything has been turned upside down. Read in this way, the parable becomes a "parable of reversal" because our basic presuppositions are undone in its telling. Far from comforting us with an example of moral rectitude, the parable shakes us and undermines our world. John Dominic Crossan in The Dark Interval (Polebridge Press, 1988) remarks that our response to such an unexpected inversion is both confusion and annoyance. "I don't know what you mean by that story, but I'm certain I don't like it."

The aim of this reading of the parable is not to give us an example of how to act, but to throw us off balance, to suggest that the categories we use to peg people are inadequate, and often wrong, to shock us into allowing new configurations in our minds and new possibilities in our hearts. None of us enjoys being thrown off balance and knocked to our knees. But parables of reversal attack us in this way to soften us up for the Reign of God.

Most of us require this kind of preparation for the Good News. For once we have decided who the good folk are, how they got to be good, and why others simply cannot be as good, then there is not much room left for God to enlarge the good around us. Once we have pinned down all the possibilities, God needs to shake things loose to do a new thing. That is why Jesus taught in parables. Jesus knew the Reign of God could only take root where enshrined values were challenged and narrow judgments were overturned. When read with attention to the reversal of our expectations, the parable of the Good Samaritan can initiate such redemptive upheaval.

Yet it is possible for the parable to shift again. In its reading we can move our attention away from those who come upon the robbed man on the road and focus upon the man himself. The parable clearly invites us to identify with this character. He is the only character in the parable who is presented without position or profession. The Greek of the text reads simply anthropos tis: a certain person, someone - like us.

We are to see ourselves walking down the road. We are beaten by robbers. We are left half dead in the ditch. We want help. We are discouraged when people we trust and admire pass us by. But then the unthinkable happens. The person we like the least, the person who has hurt us the most, the person we have brooded over in hatred comes down the road. This person has compassion on us. Salvation comes from the hand of an enemy. It is not what we would expect or seek, but it comes nevertheless. It does not come on our terms, and no alternatives are presented. When viewed from this angle, the parable of the Good Samaritan becomes a parable of grace. The parable reveals the way God's salvation arrives. It is not in a way we could anticipate.

The man in the ditch is passive in the story. His wounds render him unable to engage in his own rescue. He must therefore submit to the unexpected graciousness of his enemy. The parable asserts that God's grace is like this. Robert Funk in Parables and Presence (Fortress Press, 1982) summarizes the mystery of grace that this parable presents: "In the Kingdom of God mercy comes only to those who have no right to expect it and who cannot resist it when it comes."

The Good Samaritan as a parable of grace does not give us an example to emulate. Neither is its true aim to shock us with the unexpected graciousness of the Samaritan. Rather it ushers us into the mystery of salvation. Our hope is for God's gift, but that gift need not come as we would expect or desire. The parable tells us that if we are to understand what it means to receive the Reign of God, we must understand what it means to be the victim in the ditch - in need of mercy but unable to determine or resist the quarter from which it is granted. In Luke's gospel the parable is spoken by Jesus in response to a question by a lawyer, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" To this question the parable answers, "Find your place in the ditch and wait."

We have watched the parable of the Good Samaritan modulate before us, shifting its meaning from example to reversal to grace. Such movement can be destabilizing to those who imagine that parables are open to only one understanding. But such flux renders the parable a suitable vehicle for the proclamation of the gospel. For the Reign of God requires motion to carry us from one place to another, from the rigidity that our fears impose to the rush of hope that flows from God's love. Therefore, the proper posture for God's reign is not stooping nor marching but dancing. Parables facilitate this prancing salvation. They keep us moving, taking us into new turns that we could never anticipate. Parables give us room to stretch into new insights and perceptions. Their motion keeps us open and alive, with enough room to invite strangers into the festivities.

The dogmas that fill our creeds and catechisms are important. They give precision to our thoughts and security to our lives. But the Reign of God is wider than our dogmas. It calls us into a relationship of love, which we cannot control and only partially understand. It throws us together with unexpected partners and brings us to laughter as we try to keep step with the music. It reminds us that, in the end, to believe is to celebrate.

That is why Jesus taught in parables. Dogmas are too tight for dancing.