Sermon starts at 31:56. 

The act of storytelling is one of the most powerful forms of actual honest-to-God magic that human beings perform. So when we hear the little section of today’s passage left out of the reading, “Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing,” we should keep that in mind.

On this Emancipation Sunday, what are we to make of these parables, these “short stories by Jesus,” as Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine calls them? Each one is its own ecosystem. Today let’s just explore three. And as Matthew links them together, so shall we, in a way that takes us on a journey, like all good stories should.