We have already found short parables of Jesus in 2: 19-22 and 3 :23-27 and Mark now gives his readers a collection of parables and sayings about the Kingdom of God. A parable can be defined as a developed simile. It explains something by the use of comparison. It may be very short (2:21) or longer (4:3-8). Jesus did not invent the form of the parable -we can find some in the bid Testament, for example, ~ Samuel 12 : 1-4- but Jesus' use of parables was uniquely brilliant. In teaching ordinary and often uneducated people about spiritual truths, it would have been useless to use the kind of theological language used by the teachers of the Law, so Jesus presented the most profound spiritual truths in clear, brief, pictorial language, using familiar, vivid and homely comparisons. The brevity and clarity of 2 :21, for example, makes it very easy to memorize and remember. In each vivid little story there was spiritual truth about which the hearer could think for the rest of his life.

The purpose of parables in the teaching of Jesus is indicated in 4: 10-12, in which the words of Isaiah 6 :9-10 are referred to. When Isaiah was called to be a prophet, he was warned that many would hear his words but reject them because they did not sincerely want to know God's will. When challenged about their relationship with God they would become spiritually more deaf and blind to God's truth than before. In the parables of Jesus he illuminates the nature and truth of the Kingdom of God but his teaching will not be accepted by all who hear it because it conflicts with their false and distorted ideas about God. People's own responses to the parables of Jesus divide them into two groups, those who are seriously and genuinely seeking to find the Kingdom of God, and those  who are not. The latter do not want their outlook and attitude to be challenged and do not want to admit that they may be wrong; they can hear the parables but be deaf to their meaning; there were many who saw Jesus during his ministry in Galilee but they were blind to who he was.

We may say, then, that the result of the parables was to divide the hearers into those who were true seekers of the Kingdom of God and those who were not. The parables are challenges to decision; they are intended to provoke serious thinking and questioning. In the situation in which Jesus taught, his teaching had to meet the obstacle of the wrong ideas which many of his hearers had about the Kingdom of God and which made them very resistant to God's truth. Parables are clear to those with the insight to look for the truth in them, but mean nothing to others who do not want to look for that truth.

All the parables in Mark's gospel may be described as parables of the Kingdom, challenging the hearers to see that the Kingdom of God is a present reality which the hearers may find now. This is the message to the disciples, the inner group (4: 11).

The gospel writers used collections of parables in their presentation of the teaching of Jesus and we cannot always be sure of the situation in which Jesus first gave individual parables. As we have them in the gospels, the parables reflect the use to which they were put by the early Church, in the catechesis.