One of the reasons I enjoy teaching stories in jail is because we almost always experience new perspectives on them. Sometimes the tellings are particularly creative as women interpret the stories in ways that make sense to them.

They may use an image that is a “dynamic equivalent” to the biblical image—different words reflecting our contemporary context, but preserving the meaning of the original context. Learning about how people who first heard the story would have understood it is a dimension of what we do in Circle of the Word.

The theme this May-June is “Love Your Enemies.” We are learning stories from all four Gospels, starting with Jesus teaching his disciples, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-48). After that we will engage three stories about Jesus practicing what he preaches, where he demonstrates love for his enemies.

At the end of the Circle when the women learned Jesus’ teaching from Matthew, I encouraged them to continue working on it as homework. The second week they were invited to tell it to the group. It was a week that Roberta Longfellow, Sharlyn Radcliffe, and Ellen Patton led the class. They told me about one particular telling that included a poignant example of using a dynamic equivalent.

In the third part of the Matthew teaching-story Jesus says, “If you love those who love you, what reward do you have?” Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?” One woman told this part of the story this way:

If you love those who love you, what reward do you have?
Don’t even the drug dealers do the same?

What a powerful connection this woman made with Jesus’ teaching. Her telling reflected understanding of the story in its original context and meaningful interpretation of it now.