Mark 4:26-34
Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark 1:14-15
Back in the beginning of Mark’s gospel, these are the first words we hear from Jesus, himself.
The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news.
And the rest of the gospel tells us what this means, tells us what this kingdom is like.
In the fourth chapter we get the first lessons about the kingdom of God. And the lessons are given – naturally – in the form of parables.
The word parable actually means “thrown alongside.” Jesus scattered these parables alongside our lives, inviting us to see where they might connect with our own paths. A parable doesn’t give us the answers; it invites us to think…and wonder.
Some people love parables, but not everyone does. The downside of parables is that they make you, the listener, do a lot of the work. There is no spoon-feeding here. Parables require us to think and engage our imaginations, to stay open to ambiguity. To listen…to look. A parable never nails down the answer, but instead opens up a lot more questions.
In this series we are asking questions about living as disciples of Jesus in this world; Particularly what we can learn from Mark about discipleship. A life of discipleship, it turns out, is a life of engaging in the questions and the wondering. And the parables of Jesus provide us with endless fodder for questioning and wondering.
It is not an accident. It is not simply because Jesus liked telling stories. It is quite deliberate that he chose to teach in this way.
The first parable in this set, the one we did not read, is one you may be familiar with – the parable of the sower and the seeds.
A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path and the birds ate it. some seeds fell on rocky ground, where it sprang up quickly, but then died quickly because it did not have good roots. Other seeds fell on thorns and the thorns grew up around it and choked it. But other seed fell on good soil, where it grew and increased and brought forth great yields. He ended this story saying, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.”
They may well have listened, but not understood. To some it may have been as clear as mud, but for many the parable will draw them in and invite them to tease the threads apart, to explore the many possible meanings.
And that is, most certainly, by design. The work of a disciple is to be an active participant in the discovery of truth.
Jesus takes a group of disciples aside for further, more in-depth discussion, and he says to them a peculiar sounding thing: that for those who are on the outside everything comes in parables, so they may look but not perceive, listen but not understand. And, in a sense, the purpose of this ambiguity is to avoid mis-understanding among people who are just not yet ready to hear, not yet able to understand.
Because it is clear that the intention is to reveal the truth as far and wide as possible. Jesus says to his followers, nothing is hidden except to be disclosed; nothing is secret except to come to light.
In its time.
Let anyone with ears to hear listen.
And he gives them a little more to listen to.
The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and then go about his life. Somehow the seed will grow, the earth will produce, the harvest will come.
The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, the smallest of the seeds. But when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs. Still a shrub. But a great one.
And so it went on. In many parables he spoke the word of God to them, as they were able to hear it.
As they were able to hear it.
And there was a lot they were not yet able to hear.
In the early centuries of the church, there was a process for guiding new converts to Christianity, a process of preparing them for baptism. During the season of Lent they were guided into the spiritual disciplines of the church. On Easter Sunday they were baptized – a ritual that was and still is considered the entrance into the church.
There is one ancient baptism pool I have seen pictures of that is in the shape of a cross. The baptismal candidate would step down into the pool on one side, move toward the center of the cross, where they would be completely immersed, and then continue moving toward the other side where they would step out of the pool. This was a symbolic journey from one end to the other, from the old life to the new life – through the cross.
And even though there was much preparation for the baptism, the heavy lifting only began afterwards. It was only after they descended into the waters of death and ascended into new life that they were considered ready to learn the hard stuff. Now they could be taught all the elements of belief.
Why did it need to happen in this order? Essentially it is because faith is about more than just words. It is about hearing and also seeing – with the eyes in our heads and also the eyes of our hearts.
The parables Jesus tells in this chapter are all about the mystery of growth. There is nothing much that the sower does except scatter the seeds. There is nothing you can do to make the mustard seed big and strong. This is work that happens in secret, you might say; underground, in the dark.
But the growth is revealed in its time, as is the kingdom of God.
There is so much we cannot see until we are ready to see. So much we cannot really hear until we are ready to hear. And so Jesus spoke in parables – to give little glints of the kingdom; to ignite our curiosity, our wonder; to keep turning these things over and over.
And then, sometime later…perhaps after the arrest and the crucifixion, his death and resurrection…those first disciples began to talk amongst themselves. They puzzled through these things. Do you remember that time he said the kingdom of God is like scattering seed on the ground? Do you remember the time he said the kingdom was like a mustard seed?
And in the remembering together, they begin to piece it together. They begin to see different and new facets in all these things. Now they have ears to hear, eyes to see all that was once hidden. Now they’re ready to do the heavy lifting.
The secret which is revealed is that the real heavy lifting is done by God. The heavy lifting for us is to trust in that, to accept and embrace that.
Martin Luther, the great church reformer of the 16th century, understood his part in the work of God’s kingdom. In speaking about his ground-shifting work of reforming the church, he once said, “I taught, I preached, I wrote God’s word – otherwise, I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank my little glass of Wittenberg beer, the gospel ran its course. I did nothing. The Word did everything.”
As disciples of Christ, we must know what our work is. But just as importantly we must know that the growth, the yield, the harvest belongs to God. The parables of Jesus teach us that this kingdom work is a mystery – one that we are invited to participate in.
There is still much that we cannot see. As the Apostle Paul writes, we walk by faith and not by sight. But to be immersed in Christ, to begin to look through the eyes of new life, we may see, as Paul says, that “there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
May you have ears to hear and listen.
May you have eyes to see and comprehend.
May you journey on this mysterious path of discipleship.
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