Mark 4:1-20
Jesus began to
teach by the lakeside, but such a huge crowd gathered round him that he got
into a boat on the lake and sat there. The people were all along the shore, at
the water’s edge. He taught them many things in parables, and in the course of
his teaching he said to them, ‘Listen!, Imagine a sower going out to sow. Now
it happened that, as he sowed, some of the seed fell on the edge of the path,
and the birds came and ate it up. Some seed fell on rocky ground where it found
little soil and sprang up straightaway, because there was no depth of earth;
and when the sun came up it was scorched and, not having any roots, it withered
away. Some seed fell into thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it
produced no crop. And some seeds fell into rich soil and, growing tall and
strong, produced crop; and yielded thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold.’ And he
said, ‘Listen, anyone who has ears to hear!’
When he was
alone, the Twelve, together with the others who formed his company, asked what
the parables meant. He told them, ‘The secret of the kingdom of God is given to
you, but to those who are outside everything comes in parables, so that they
may see and see again, but not perceive; may hear and hear again, but not
understand; otherwise they might be converted and be forgiven.’
He said to them,
‘Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the
parables? What the sower is sowing is the word. Those on the edge of the path
where the word is sown are people who have no sooner heard it than Satan comes
and carries away the word that was sown in them. Similarly, those who receive
the seed on patches of rock are people who, when first they hear the word,
welcome it at once with joy. But they have no root in them, they do not last;
should some trial come, or some persecution on account of the word, they fall
away at once. Then there are others who receive the seed in thorns. These have
heard the word, but the worries of this world, the lure of riches and all the
other passions come in to choke the word, and so it produces nothing. And there
are those who have received the seed in rich soil: they hear the word and
accept it and yield a harvest, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’
Food for
thought!
In today’s
gospel reading we see Jesus making a new departure. He is no longer teaching in
the synagogue; he is now teaching by the lakeside. He had made the orthodox
approach to the people; now he has to take unusual methods. Jesus was
innovative; he knew to adopt his methods of teaching to the circumstances.
We do well to
note that Jesus was prepared to use new methods. He was willing to take
religious preaching and teaching out of its conventional setting in the
synagogue into the open air and among the crowds of ordinary men and women.
There must have been many amongst the orthodox Jews who criticized this
departure; but Jesus was wise enough to know when new methods were necessary
and adventurous enough to use them. It would be well if his church was equally
wise and equally adventurous to try new methods and ways of reaching out to the
people, especially reaching out to the non-church goers.
Look at what
Jesus did. The scene is the lakeside; Jesus is sitting in the boat just off the
shore. The shore shelves gently down to the water's edge, and makes a natural
amphitheatre for the crowd.
This new setting
needed a new method; and the new method Jesus chose was to speak to the people
in parables. A parable is literally a comparison. It is an earthly story with a
heavenly meaning. Something on earth is compared with something in heaven, that
the heavenly truth may be better grasped in light of the earthly illustration.
Jesus started from the here and now to get to the there and then. He started
from a thing that was happening at that moment on earth in order to lead men's
thoughts to heaven; he started from something which all men could see to get to
the things that are invisible; he started from something which all men knew to
get to something which they had never as yet realized.
By so doing
Jesus showed that there is a close relationship between earth and heaven. What
Jesus is teaching them and us is to see the hand of God in the regular and the
normal; in the rising of the sun and the falling of the rain and the growth of
the plant. Long ago Paul had the same idea when he said that the visible world
is designed to make known the invisible things of God (Rom.1:20). For Jesus,
this world’s events and happenings are not meaningless; they are all very
meaningful. The things that happen in your personal life, your family, your
place of work, your church, are all parables calling for your understanding.
He said to them,
‘Do you not understand this parable?
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