Mark 4:1-20
Turn in your Bibles to verse 13. (Don't just stare at me; grab a pew Bible if you didn't bring yours and look up Mark 4:13.)
OK. There are two questions in verse 13. First question: "Don't you understand this parable?"
Jesus is talking to the 12 disciples. We looked at that story last week--the choosing of the 12 disciples from the 70 who were following him. There are a bunch of other people standing around listening in, but mainly this question is being asked to the 12 specially chosen, sharp, on top of it disciples. "The few; The brave; The strong."
Jesus had just told them a parable. A story with a point. We will get to that parable in a few moments. After telling the parable, Jesus asked these 12 chosen apostles if they understood the parable. Did they get it?
Then comes the second question: "How, then, will you understand any parable?" Something happened between those questions. What do you guess it was? Based on the second question, what did all of these 12 sharp disciples answer to the first question?
To a man, they must have all shook their heads NO. No! Jesus, we do not understand your story. We do not get it. We are sorry but it just went right over our heads. Because, if they had all shook their heads YES, that they did understand the parable, Jesus wouldn't have had to ask the second question.
What would you assume was the tone of voice Jesus used when asking these questions? Yes, you might assume angry, frustrated, exasperated. You might think it was the kind of tone Jesus would use that made it sound like he was wondering if they were ever going to get it.
But we are going to have to pay attention to detail here to answer that question. Look back at verse 1. Where does it say they are when this parable was told? "...beside Lake Galilee." What kinds of people, and what kinds of professions of people would you expect to find beside the lake? Fishing people! Not farmers. What was the profession of most of the disciples? Fishermen! Not farmers.
It looks to me that Jesus is messing with the disciples. And they better get used to it, because all the rest of the parables coming their way in quick succession in this chapter are about farming. Therefore, I think Jesus' tone of voice is more playful with a rye smile.
Remember last week I told how Jesus was going to train the apostles how to teach and preach. By telling these parables, these stories, he is not only teaching them what to preach, but how to preach. How to stretch their listeners minds--to make them think for themselves. The Pharisees spoon fed all the answers of the great questions to the people. People didn't have to think when listening to the Scribes and Pharisees. The people just had to memorize the answers.
But Jesus wanted the apostles to teach with a twinkle in their eye, and leave their listeners with a sense of mystery and a sense of humor. Again, make people use their brains, so they can come to that "aha!" moment with an understanding smile on their faces.
OK? Let's get to the parable itself. Put yourself in the crowd, or as one of the apostles. Jesus just sat in the boat to teach, because all Jewish teachers sat when they taught. As you are preparing to listen, what are you expecting to hear? Something really religious! Some good words full of religious meat and potatoes! Some hard rules and regulations that are going to be impossible to follow. That is what almost everyone is expecting.
By teaching this way, one of the first things you learn about Jesus is that he is not going to meet your expectations. Jesus isn't going to teach, or speak to people like all the other Bible teachers did. If the people had some idea of how they thought Jesus was going to preach and teach, those ideas quickly went out the window.
Jesus opened his mouth and told about a farmer tossing seed on farm land. He tells about what happens to that seed. He finishes up his little agricultural lesson with, "Listen, then, if you have ears." Then he just sat there in the boat smiling. He was apparently done. Look at the next line in the story. Verse 10: "When Jesus was alone, some of those who had heard him came to him with the twelve disciples and asked him to explain the parable." Why did they ask him about the parable? They did not get it!
Look at the parable. It starts at verse three. Does it start out like other parables where Jesus says, "The kingdom of God is like..." Nope. Is God mentioned at all? Nope. Is there anything theological or religious in this parable. Nope. Is the law of Moses or the Ten Commandments mentioned? Nope. For all intents and purposes it is a story about a farmer who flung his grain seed all over the place, and what happened to it after it landed and began to grow. That's it! What are you supposed to do with that?
So let's not be too judgmental towards the twelve and the other dense listeners. If we are honest, we would be right there scratching our heads with them. Between those two questions of Jesus I drew your attention too at the start, you would also be shaking your heads, Nope, when Jesus asked the disciples his first question.
It is one of the hardest things I wrestle with when I write my children's stories. I want to write them like parables. Like Jesus' parables. Not overtly religious. But then I worry that you all, especially parents of the children will think, "What did that have to do with anything religious?" And, "What if my kid asks what Pastor Steve's story meant, and I don't know how to answer?"
So I have been making them more overtly religious, so you have no questions. But I think I am going to stop that. By telling parables like this, Jesus was giving his listeners responsibility to figure them out. Jesus gave them ownership of his parables so they would have to use their heads and figure it out themselves. Jesus makes his listeners, partners with the parable, without telling them what it was all about. Or, I suppose, they could let the parable go in one ear and out the other and choose not think. We could all choose that.
So what does this parable about scattered seed on different soils mean? Fortunately, Jesus told the 12 disciples what it meant. And why did Jesus do that? (Because they didn't get it!) This is one of the only parables that Jesus told the 12, or anyone, what he intended his listeners to figure out on their own.
I think Jesus told the disciples, this time, what the parable meant, because he wanted them to know how he thought. Jesus thinks in pictures. Jesus' mind works by way of simile and metaphor. Jesus makes connections between the images he draws with his words and God's truth. So if you are going to get Jesus, you are going to have to understand simile: This is like that. But you are going to have to use your brain to figure that out.
Once the disciples understand that, then when they hear Jesus speak in parables, they can start trying to make the connections in their own mind. If you are a very literal, black and white person, like some of the disciples were, you are going to have a hard time understanding Jesus and his teaching.
Jesus starts in on the explanation of the parable at verse 14: "The sower sows the word." OK, what does Jesus mean by "the word"? In Greek, it is the logos.
It is the same word John used at the start of his gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In the way John is using logos, he is referring to Jesus.
But Jesus is using logos differently, I think. In the parable I think Jesus means words or thoughts. The sower is sowing words and thoughts. But whose words and thoughts? I would assume God's. The sower is sowing God's words and thoughts. The sower may be Jesus himself.
Where is the sower sowing God's words and thoughts: into the soil. Into different kinds of soil. Soil has to do with the world. Into all the actual situations where people live in the world. Into all the conditions of humankind. Into the very people who must live life in those conditions. As God's words and thoughts are sown into each of those conditions, there are very different ways those God words and God thoughts are received.
And if you were listening well, you realized one of the main points of the parable is the seed--God's words, God's thoughts, God's message--will fail to take in more people than it succeeds in. There are more ways to resist God than there are to embrace God. It's kind of like the narrow road and the wide road that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. Just a few get it. And a whole lot of others don't. I'd like to say you can't resist God. ("Resistance is futile.") But you can. It's the one power you have over God. You can say "no" to God. You can say "no" to the words and the message God is trying to plant in you. And this parable is telling the disciples (and us) there are lots of ways we use to do that. That is a sad and sobering thought.
Let's look at the ways we resist God.
The first human condition into which God's thoughts are sown is the life where Satan's evil is active. Peter warned the believers in his first letter about the tactics of the devil: "Keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8). The word "devour" in Greek literally means "to eat in one bite."
Combining Jesus' and Peter's picture here, Satan isn't just trying to eat up the words and thoughts of God so they can't implant themselves into a person's life. Satan is also trying to devour you. By eating up God's words and thoughts, Satan has got you, and you will be eaten. It is an either/or picture here. You are either letting God's words and thoughts take root in your life; or, you are letting Satan devour those words and thoughts, and you as well.
The second type of life into which the sower sows God's words and thoughts is the rocky soil, or the life of turmoil. There are those whose lives are hard. It feels like they are constantly walking on sharp gravel with bare feet. Some people are. They are dealing with hard situations, and no one really knows or understands.
There are also some who interpret their life circumstances as gravel-ly and difficult, but they aren't interpreting the events in their lives clearly and correctly. As long as they can keep interpreting life as being hard, unfair, and the deck is stacked against them, "woe is me," then they can arouse people's sympathy, and play the victim.
Into both of these kinds of human conditions, God words and God thoughts are sown. The problem those God words and God thoughts encounter is shallowness. No depth. Both the realities of a hard life, and the victim mentality, makes everything feel like it is on on the surface. There is very little for God's words and thoughts to grab hold of because of over sensitivity. Then, when one more bad thing happens, or one more assumed bad thing, that's it. They are done with whatever God is really trying to do by getting some of his words into their thin soiled lives.
Thirdly, are the thorns. Growing up in Seattle, blackberries grow wild everywhere. I miss them this time of year, because now is when they are ripening.
But, now no more! A couple of years ago I bought two small blackberry bushes and planted them in the backyard. They started out as two little vines sticking out of the ground. Now, they are all over the place. I'm going to have a bumper crop of berries!! I won't have to pay three bucks at Dillons for a little container of 10 or 15 berries!
The berry vines are all over my clothes line. New vines are literally popping out of the ground everywhere. They are quickly getting out of control. That's what Jesus is describing by calling the thorn bushes worries and desires. You plant one little desire, one little worry in your life and soon it's taken over everything about your life. Even God's Message doesn't stand a chance against that kind of blackberry bush, over grown worries or desires.
Lastly, there are "good soil" people, where God's message thrives. The thing to notice here, and with the other types of soil, is that the seed that is sown in good soil not only grows, but it produces more. That's the purpose of the seed. You know God's word is having it's effect, because, once planted, it is making more. It is fruitful. It is productive. It's all about what you do with what God has planted in you. And how you allow it to be productive in you.
The other types of soil don't work because nothing is ever produced from the seed. It doesn't grow and make more seed. It doesn't yield anything in the lives into which it is planted. Is there too much evil in your life that devours God's message? Are you too shallow and obstructed to allow God's message to really, effectively take root? Are you letting too much other stuff grow up in your life, and God's message just isn't given room? Or are you making sure you are giving God the best place for his message to take root and be productive? Is the seed (God's words and thoughts) making more seeds?
"Do you understand this parable?"
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