parables

"For most folks, it's a parable if it's a story with a message. Once upon a time there was a vineyard owner with three sons who cast out their nets and caught wheat as well as tares. And the landlord returned in the middle of the night and said to the Samaritan who had sold everything he had in order to buy the pearl, 'You have forgiven much so much will be forgiven you,' but to the one who buried his talents and had no oil in his lamp he said, 'Depart from me, I never knew you, and kill the fatted calf on your way out.' Or something like that. Now that's a parable!"

(Conrad Gempf, Jesus Asked (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), pp. 23-24)