Jesus, the Teacher
Mark 4:1-20
For the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at the Gospel of Mark through two questions: “Who is Jesus?” and “What meaning does he have for our lives?” We’ve learned that Jesus came to preach that the kingdom of God is near, he came to heal, to call people to follow him and now we see that Jesus came to teach about the Kingdom of God. When Jesus taught, he did so in parables. Now this was not unique in Jesus’ day for most rabbis or teachers taught in parables. The Greek word for parable means “thrown along something else.” Parables are about comparisons. One thing which is confusing is set up alongside another which is not and Jesus compares the two so that you can understand the confusing thing through the thing which is easy to understand. And so Jesus uses commonplace things in his world that people would experience everyday of their life, like mustard seeds, planting a garden, having sheep and baking bread and all of these examples are used to show how the kingdom of God is like it. Now parables are meant to teach one point so when Jesus teaches in a parable, he is teaching about one aspect of the kingdom of God and not about its entirety.
The disciples asked Jesus why he taught in parables and Jesus gave them a very confusing answer: “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, (now he quotes from Isaiah) “‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’” Scholars have debated what this means because Jesus seems to say that he teaches in parables so that people will not understand and thus could not turn to God. But that contradicts Jesus basic message was a call for people to repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. So what do we make of this passage? Parables can seem to be confusing at first. They are like riddles: they are meant to be pondered. But the thing about parables is that even the simplest person, if they think about them long enough would say, can come to understand them. Parables were meant for everyone to hear but to understand they had to ponder it. Many people came to Jesus wanting to be told the truth and what to believe and Jesus said, it’s not that way. You have to think about what you believe and why you believe it.
And that’s how the Christian faith is. On the one hand, all you have to do is accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and then live according to his wisdom, guidance and power. On the other hand, your faith has to engage your mind, heart and soul. Jesus wants you to think through your faith and wrestle with what you believe and why you believe. And if you are unwilling to do that then it’s likely that you will be listening but never perceiving, hearing but never really understanding and you are going to find yourself lost. And so parables are really a challenge for you to engage not only the kingdom but the truths of God and what you believe.
Now our Scripture today is the Parable of the Sower but it would be better to call it the Parable of the Soils. Jesus teaches this Parable in a place on the Sea of Galilee called the Bay of Parables. Mark tells us that there were 1000’s of people on the shoreline pressing upon Jesus so he goes out in a boat so Jesus can teach them and be heard. On the slope of the bay it is thought to be the place where Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount. There in the background you can make out the Chapel of the Beatitudes. Now some sound engineers have actually tested this area to see how many people could hear if Jesus was teaching in this spot. What they found is that the water acts as an amplifier and they determined that 8-10,000 people could have heard Jesus speaking from that spot. So the 3000 who are gathered there for this parable could easily have heard Jesus teach that day. Once again, science proves the accuracy of the Bible. In this spot, there are crops growing on either side of the slope leading to the bay and at the top is rocky ground and so as Jesus teaches, he draws upon the surroundings for his message.
Now Jesus has been preaching for 6 months and everywhere he goes, he draws a crowd. His healings only increased the fame of Jesus and the size of the crowds. Many people were coming just to see the show, the healings of Jesus. But there were also people who were sick and in desperate needs of Jesus’ healing touch. As Jesus taught, he saw that many people came to hear him and never came back. They came and stood with their arms folded and weren’t really interested in what he had to say but came to see the healings. There were others that Jesus noticed came back several times but then they seemed to get bored after a little while. It was as if they wanted to know what in it for them. But when Jesus preached that it wasn’t about you but about God and serving other people, they weren’t interested anymore. He noticed that there were some who had gotten on the discipleship path and were really yearning for God but then he noticed that they were torn. They wanted to pursue the kingdom of God and yet they felt the call of the world to pursue riches, affirmation and position. They couldn’t decide which they wanted more and eventually the world won.
So when Jesus is teaching and looking out over the crowd, he is wondering, “How many of you are going to stay?” One would begin to wonder after seeing so many fall away from the call of discipleship, if Jesus was disheartened and doubted why he was doing this. So the Parable of the Soils is a self-assessment of Jesus’ own ministry. There even came a time when Jesus turned to the disciples asked, “Will you also leave or stay?” This parable tells us that there were many who came to listen and fell away. Many of those started on the path of faith and discipleship but then fell away.
In listening to the Parable of the Sower, you are meant to ask, “Which soil am I?” You see some are going to follow and some are not. What we know from the Parable of the Sower is that three out of four people are not going to end up following Jesus. It happened with Jesus and it going to happen to me and to you. You are the Sower and are called to cast the seeds of the Gospel with your words and your actions to your friends, family, co-workers and neighbors. It going to be like that for you just as it was for Jesus. But Jesus chose to focus on the 25% who get it and that’s why this is such a parable of hope. He doesn’t focus on the 3 who don’t get it but instead focuses on that one person who reaps a harvest of 30, 60 or 100 fold. And that is the vision Jesus lays out for us: focus on the one who responds. There are those who are going to hear the word and live and because of that, the world will be different. Many of you are those people and Jesus focuses on you.
So when Jesus is teaching the Parable of the Sower, he is asking the people, Which kind of soil are you? Jesus talks about one soil which is hard and impenetrable by seed. In our area that soil is clay which is rock hard. It is hard to get anything to grow in this soil let alone produce any harvest. The problem is not only digging into it but if water ever gets to it, it drowns it because the water has nowhere to go. The only way to get something to grow in this is to break it up, add organic elements like manure and mix in a little sand. There are people we all know who are like this. They may come on Christmas Eve but they aren’t even open to listening to the Gospel. The sad thing is that when our hearts are hard, the only thing that helps is to have a broken heart and that’s when manure happens. It is the difficult and sometimes tragic things in our lives which cause us to ask questions and move toward God. God doesn’t cause those things to happen but those events in that person’s life can be the catalyst God uses to meet them when they call out to Him. We know this through AA which has taught us that someone has to hit bottom before they ever ask for help.
On the Northshore, there is a lot of rock and we know that if you put some soil on top of the rock, you can plant seeds in it and you can water it and it will begin to grow. The problem is that the root can’t go down very deep but only through the shallow and superficial topsoil. The problem becomes when the sun comes out, they wither and die in the heat or when the wind blows, they topple over because there is nothing to anchor them to. Jesus is saying that some people get very excited at the beginning of their spiritual journey and they begin to get involved in every new thing. The problem becomes that their faith is an inch deep and a mile wide. The problem is that you can’t grow that way because there’s not enough nutrients in the top soil. It’s too shallow to sustain you and the moment the storms of life come, you topple over. For many of us, we have that kind of faith and when life get challenging, we turn away from God. And so we turn from the thing we most need. What Jesus calls us to is to put our roots down deep in the faith by spending time in the spiritual disciplines, to ponder the Scriptures and spend time in prayer getting know God so that you can have a relationship with God which sustains you and a community of deep fellowship which will challenging you, strengthen you, support you and push you in your growth.
Jesus described another kind of soil which is filled with weeds and thistles and torpedo grass and other kinds of things. When Giovanna and I moved into our house, it had been vacant for a year. It’s built in an old flood plain of Lake Pontchartrain which means that swamp grass or torpedo grass was prevalent there. That torpedo grass had grown unimpeded for 12 months and so every afternoon after work, I would get out and do a couple of hours of weeding. Some six months later, I had pulled out 120 fifty gallon trash bags of torpedo grass and nearly broken back. In addition, the torpedo grass had choked the life out of 40% of the landscaping. I asked a landscaping store what I could spray on my beds to kill the grass and the only thing that works is Roundup. The problem is that Roundup kills everything it touches and would have killed the rest of the landscaping. But here’s the thing: 12 years later, I am still fighting torpedo grass in my landscaping. What that experience taught me through this parable is that, there are always weeds we have to fight from taking root in our lives. Second, the soil in which the good things like my bushes and trees and flowers flourish is the very same environment that weeds flourish in. Third, that flood plain which is now my neighborhood is the natural habitat of the torpedo grass and what I’m doing is trying to introduce something new to that environment. That’s what we do when we try to introduce the Gospel into our already existing lives. It can’t thrive there because it gets choked out by the cares and desires of the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k1uOqRb0HU See if you can edit out the explective. Jesus said, you don’t need to figure out that one thing. He told us: pursue the kingdom of God. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: “Seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness” and everything else will take care of itself. And so for many of us, the challenge is the clear away all of the other clutter: from watching TV to trying to always make more money. Jesus is saying, you’ve made a lot of things number one in your life to the exclsion of the most important thing.
But then there is another kind of soil which is rich and fertile and full of nutrients. That is the soil which is all around us in New Orleans from the deposits of the Mississippi River and its annual floods. When you add a little water, things begin to grow and when you tend to care for it, it begins to produce a harvest of 30, 60 or even 100 fold. Here’s the thing about every living plant. Each of them has seeds. It’s the way they grow and propagate. And you and I have have been given seeds to plant as well, that is, the seeds of faith in the Good News.
And so Jesus asks, which kind of soil are you? When Jesus speaks of the harvest, I believe he’s referring to two things: personal holiness and social holiness. Personal holiness comes from the practice of personal disciplines and developing your personal relationship with Jesus. It’s also about staying away from the evils of this world. It’s about our character becoming more and more like Jesus’ character. The other part of the harvest is about taking the kingdom of God out into the world. It’s about visiting the elderly retirement homes who have no family. It’s about becoming a Big Brother or Big Sister. It’s about ministering to the hungry and homeless on our streets. It’s about making a difference in the lives of others and helping them to see and experience the kingdom of God and the love of Jesus in your life. It’s about simply blessing the people in your life. Choose 5 people in your life this week and bless them and make sure one of them doesn’t deserve it. How do you do that? Simply ask them, “How can I ask God to bless you?” Reggie McNeal tells the story of one man who decided to bless the baristas at the Starbucks he frequents. When he asked them the question, “How can I ask God to bless you?” they were somewhat taken aback. Slowly but surely, they warmed up to him and the employees started to come over and talk to him and open up their lives to him. He had such a positive response that his small group realized they frequented every Starbucks within a 13 block radius and so they decided to bless the baristas together. Then one day when this gentleman was in a Starbucks he didn’t normally frequent, he asked the question to the baristas as he was handed his coffee, whereupon she pulled back the coffee and asked, “Are you one of those blessing people?” Yes! We are a blessing people who seek to bless others in both word and action, planting seeds of the kingdom that we might attain a harvest for the kingdom of God
