Parables - how they work (ii)

Mark 4.1-20

Where Jesus Taught

Where Jesus taught has a strong connection to how he taught. Jesus often taught in synagogues (a kind of local church building) – but he mainly taught out in the mainstream of life where people were living. In this case, he taught on the shoreline of the lake where people came to work as fishermen and where people came to buy fish and other produce. Jesus mixed in with the mainstream of life. On this day, there was such a big crowd he sat in a boat and had it pushed slightly off shore so his voice would carry to the crowd. Jesus was sending a message that his gospel was about the whole of life – not just a religious component. And because parables are true to life illustrations and stories, it made them all the richer when he used them ‘out in the field’ so to speak.

Christians are called to live and explain their new lives out in the mainstream of life. People should be able to encounter a Christ-driven life as they go about their daily lives and they should receive a clear answer when they ask Christians for the reason for the hope they possess.

Jesus taught many things in parables.

He didn’t just use parables, but he certainly taught a lot of material through them. It follows then that we must learn to understand his parables because they contain a rich mine of good teaching for us. We need to give time and thinking and prayer to understanding what Christ taught.

Mark gives an example of Jesus teaching by using a parable: the story of the sower and the different grounds his seed landed on. Jesus regarded this as a critical parable to understand. In fact, he said that if you don’t understand this parable, you won’t understand any of them (v13). This parable -because it teaches about how people respond to Christ’s teaching - is a kind of benchmark for understanding all parables.

Jesus told the parable and the elements of the story are these:

- a farmer sowing grain seeds on his land

- four different sorts of ground on which the seed falls

- birds, rocks and weeds which interfere with the seeds

- the sun

This was a very familiar scene for the people. All these elements were part of their everyday lives. Actually, even city-dwellers like us have no trouble grasping the context for this illustration. Parables don’t require specialist knowledge or learning to understand the bits that make up the story. They are deceptively simple.

The story simply describes what happens when the farmer scatters the seed freely and widely over some ground when he wants to grow a crop of wheat or barley. There is plenty of seed, so it isn’t planted one seed at a time – it is cast widely and freely. Of course he intends it to land where it will grow well, but some of the seed reaches other places. Some drops onto the path at the edge of the field and because the ground is packed down hard from the trampling of feet, it sits up for the birds who are following the farmer to peck up immediately. Other seed falls on very shallow soil that is just covering a layer of rock or limestone. The seed there grows pretty quickly and most of it comes up as leaf because there is no depth for roots to go downwards. The sun soon dries out the soil, parches the plant and it shrivels and dies. Some seed lands on uncleared soil where there are thorns. The thorns compete with the grain and choke the young plants so they produce no grain. And of course much seed landed on good soil and it produced 30, 60 or 100 times over.

Jesus then added a troubling statement.

Jesus put out the story and left it ‘hanging in the air’ for people to process in their thinking. He then added: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” That sounds like: “If you are not deaf – then pay attention.” Presumably he did not think that there were a lot of physically deaf people in the crowd, so what could he mean? He could be referring to those willing to listen or those able to hear what he was teaching. And from the discussion he had with his disciples shortly afterwards, it seems that he meant both. Not everyone is willing and able to process parables.

Not everyone who hears the parable are willing to hear what it means and furthermore, some who hear it and might think they have ‘got it’ are not even able to understand it. This is troubling because it suggests that people are not as free as they might think to take or leave what Jesus taught. It should trouble us, too. What if you are not able to ‘get’ what Jesus is teaching?

The inner circle had lots of questions to ask

Later on, when Jesus was back at the house with his disciples they were full of questions about the parables. Notice the difference: those who were receiving the parables urgently wanted to get the meaning clear! These disciples urged Jesus to show them what the parables meant in case any of his advice dropped to the ground. Other people just wandered away bemused, or took a moral lesson out of a parable, or, if they were Pharisees, ridiculed, criticized and complained about the parables. The sure sign someone is ‘getting’ Christ’s parable is that they want to know more - the story has created an itch that they can’t stop scratching. This parable about the sower and other parables that he told that day had stirred the disciples’ thinking and inflamed their interest. They were burning with questions about the meaning of the parables and the issues raised by them. That is a sure sign that Jesus is disclosing his message to you: You are hungry to find out more – you are full of questions – you can’t keep away from the Bible and from books and on-line stuff that explains it.

Jesus told the disciples that they were privileged. Something had been given to them that was not available to those who Jesus calls ‘outsiders’. To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those on the outside everything is in parables.

Jesus is saying that his sayings remain just ‘stories’ to those on the outside – the meaning remains frozen inside the parable - but to his disciples the ‘secret of the kingdom of God’ has been drawn out and presented to their understanding. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the teacher who extracts the meaning from all Scripture, including parables, and makes Christ known to you. The secret of the kingdom of God is given not taken.

Jesus says that his parables contain the ‘secret of the kingdom of God’ but not everyone gets it. Most everyone can understand what the story is saying and even extract a moral or an ethical lesson from the parable. However, Jesus is saying that there is much more in his parables – something he calls the ‘secret of the kingdom of God’ – and that this insight is given, not extracted.

This helps to explain Jesus’ comment at the end of his parable of the sower (“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”). Obviously, he means that some people have not got ears that can hear the proper inner meaning of the parables. These people Jesus calls ‘outsiders.’

This is troubling. It ought to at the very least cause us to stop and ask the question, “Do I have ears to hear? Am I hearing and perceiving what Christ intends me to from his parables? Am I missing something here? Is this why some people seem genuinely switched on by the Bible and to me it just seems dry and meaningless?”

While the parables are revealing helpful things to insiders, they are deliberately hiding them from outsiders. The latter group may see what the parables are talking about and hear what they are saying but they neither perceive nor understand the true meaning of the parable. The parables are part of Christ’s sifting and separating process and have the unavoidable effect of placing hearers in two great categories – those on the inside and those on the outside of all the benefits that being a willing member of God’s Kingdom provides.

Jesus quotes from Isaiah to show what effect his parables are having on those who have rebelled against God:

for those outside everything is in parables so that

they may indeed see and not perceive,

and may indeed hear and not understand,

lest they should turn and be forgiven.

God gave this message to Isaiah for Israel because they had repeatedly refused to pay attention to his word and his warnings and his calls to repent. From that point on they would hear God’s message but instead of enlightening them, it would make them deafer and blinder to the truth that could save them. Is there a more troubling judgment than this - that we should be people who have heard God’s message so much and failed to act on it so often, that now God is using his message to put us to sleep so that we will never repent and find forgiveness? Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. Heb 3,4.