Why Parables?

In church the other day we looked at the three parables in Luke 15: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. What struck me about them was their differences, specifically the difference between how sheep, coins, and sons are lost and found. A sheep is a dumb animal that wanders off, a coin is misplaced by the owner, and a son rebels. Similarly, the shepherd searches for the sheep and the woman searches the coin, but the father waits for the son to return on his own. Is one parable more accurate than the others?

It's interesting that Jesus apparently told these three stories in one sitting, to illustrate the same concept. Why three stories? Why not just one? Maybe he was using repetition to reinforce one main point, and maybe we shouldn't look too closely at the details. An analogy can only be taken so far. (As a friend pointed out, we shouldn't conclude from the shepherd analogy that God intends to shear, sell, or eat us.) But how far? Maybe we should look no further than the punchline of all three parables: that God cares about the salvation of the lost more than about those who don't need to be saved.

But even this doesn't sit well us. Strangely, all three parables include a non-lost group: other coins, sheep, or a son who needed no saving, which doesn't fit at all with our theology. Also, all three stories end completely happily - every sheep, coin, and son is found and restored - which will bother non-universalists. So maybe all we can draw from these stories is that God really cares about lost people and wants them back. (Which makes it sound like everyone start off on good terms with God, and then goes astray. Even this won't be acceptable for some.)

In the light of this, it seems to me that we can't have much confidence that any given element of a parable is accurate or true. Maybe you really like, for example, the way the Father runs out and embraces his son and gives him a ring. It doesn't seem like we have any reason for thinking that this part of the story is in any sense true to life.

This makes me wonder if these stories are less like allegories and more like ink-blot tests. You see what you want to see in them, and you ignore the rest as narrative dressing. So why would Jesus so often use such an imprecise and easily misunderstood method to convey important theological truths?

I don't have a really good answer for this. (I certainly would have done it differently.) But it's interesting to me that Jesus tends to revert to storytelling when he speaks about theology, as opposed to moral issues, about which he tends to speak more plainly. Today we generally try to be as clear as possible about doctrine. We favor creeds, worded as carefully as legal documents, to stories. Jesus never gave a creed. His method seems designed to encourage diverse interpretations. I don't know exactly what to make of this. Does Jesus place little value on orthodoxy? Does he want to hide the truth from those who don't deserve it? Or is it that theological realities are so ineffable that it is better to hint at them in vague stories than to try to pin them down with the precision of a creed?