Mark 4:1-9,13-20

10/19/11 Mark 4:1-9, 13-20 GUMC Youth

As we start our way through chapter four of Mark's gospel, we are confronted with something that actually shows up quite a few times in Mark and certainly more in Mark than any other book of the New Testament. He will take a story, split it in two, then stick something else in between the two parts. Sometimes, this is called Mark's "Sandwich" technique, because he sandwiches a point between two parts of a story. What we need to know about this is that, when Mark does this, it isn't just for good story-telling purposes, but he is making a very important point. Both the "bread" and the "meat" of the sandwich, to use those terms, are tied together and must be interpreted together.

The reason why I bring this up is because, if you noticed, we simply jumped over three verses out of the middle of our text for tonight. This is not because they are not important, nor is it because we are going to just pass by them, but because this is an example of this sandwich technique. We are going to deal with the story that Mark splits apart this week and with the stuff he stuck between the two parts the next time we get together in two weeks. Now, this might not sound fair, because we've got seventeen verses to look at this week and only three for next time, but it really isn't that odd. Those three verses are so interesting and raise so many problems for so many people, it might even take longer to unpack what they mean than it does for the rest of this passage.
We start out by seeing that Jesus is surrounded by a big crowd, there's that crowd again, so he has to get into a boat in order to teach them. Here we have the first of Jesus' famous parables in the Gospel of Mark, but what exactly are parables? You will hear most people talk about the parables as if they were told to make everything as clear as can be, that anyone can understand the parables if they just take a moment and think about them. The only problem is that it doesn't seem to line up with the facts. You see, the first part of our passage is spoken to the crowd of people who had come to listen, but the second part is spoken just to the disciples, just to those who were close to Jesus.

People will often talk about the parable of the sower as if it were as plain as day to understand, but we forget that, to my knowledge, nobody talks about the parable without talking about the interpretation that Jesus gives. We need to remember that the crowd of people who heard the parable didn't hear the interpretation. All they heard, after traveling a long way, was a story about a man who went out to plant, some of his work bore a lot of fruit, but some of it didn't. You know, if we are honest, we could say the most natural interpretation (if we ignore Jesus' interpretation) is that farming is not an exact science (especially at the time); you win some and you lose some. The important thing is that you keep trying. If you get so worried about wasting some seed, you'll never get the benefits of that seed that lands on good soil. That's an interesting interpretation, but that isn't what Jesus is getting at.

Let's take the different soils one at a time and see what is going on. The seeds fall on a path, "and the birds came and ate it up." When we look at this from the point of view of agriculture, the problem is that the seed is exposed before it has had a chance to grow. Once it grows, it can withstand great forces (as we can see here in Northwest Iowa. All kinds of crazy things can happen before the crops are wasted), but it is in the greatest danger at the beginning. But when Jesus interprets this in terms of human beings, he says, "When they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them." If you are a new Christian and you are exposed directly to all kinds of attacks, it is easy to cut and run, or to be so discouraged that you give up. Once you've grown in your faith, you can withstand a lot of those kinds of attacks, but it is dangerous at the beginning.

The next seeds fall onto rocky ground, "where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away." The problem here, looking at it from an agricultural point of view is that, at first glance, the plant is strong, just like a plant ought to be. However, the roots are weak, or nonexistent, which means that it does not take much to destroy the plant. Jesus makes it seem that the plant grew quickly because there was not much soil, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. When we understand his statement in light of his interpretation, it seems to be clear that his point is mainly the difference between the appearance, at first, of real growth, contrasted with the destruction of the plant, because it had no roots.

When Jesus talks about what this means for Christians, he says, "When they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away." There are many people who are intrigued by the gospel, who seem to respond really well, who make all kinds of great professions, but, when the going gets tough, it turns out they aren't really all that different than those around them. I can't tell you how many people I went to high school and college with who were like this. In fact, you could say that this was me at the beginning of high school, and even partly into college. As a bit of a side not, it is interesting that these are the only ones that Jesus says, "they immediately receive it with joy." Appearances can be very deceiving.

The third set of seeds fell onto ground that had a bunch of thorns in it, "and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain." With the plant, the thorns and other plants around suck up all the resources so that there is nothing left to nourish the plant. With only so much food and water to go around, some plants get it and the weak die out.

Interpreting this for his disciples, Jesus says, "These are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing." As far as Christians are concerned, we need to realize that we only have so much time and energy. We have to decide what to spend it on. If we spend all our time, energy, and money on things that do not help us grow in our faith, we won't have much left for that growth. Also, if we spend all our time trying to get more money, we won't grow. We have to prioritize our lives and take the limitations we have seriously, so we can make good choices. For example, we don't have cable and I don't miss it. I have so much to do, so many books I want to read, so much time I want to spend with my family, so much time at the Y trying to be more healthy that, if I sat down and got sucked into a few hours to TV a day, I wouldn't be able to do the things that really mattered.

The last seeds we hear about land in good soil, "and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." When the sower gets the seed where it can be received and nurtured, it grows and brings forth incredible abundance. The difference between the growth that comes from being in good soil and from being in the other kinds of soil is amazing. Biblical Scholar R. T. France makes this comparison. "The first never started, the second started but died, the third survived but could not produce grain. But in the end none is of any value to the farmer, since he is looking for grain, not mere survival."

Interpreting this for his disciples, Jesus says, "They hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundred-fold." It is interesting that, when Jesus describes what it means for someone to receive the word as good soil, he does so in terms of "bearing fruit." This is a term that has a few shades of meaning in the New Testament. Sometimes it means that your Christian faith does not just sit in your heart but makes a difference in your life. However, it often means, and does in this case, the spreading of the gospel and the making of disciples. Jesus talks about a person receiving the good news in faith then going out and making disciples, thirty, sixty or a hundred. To be a Christian is to bear fruit like this. You need to understand that I am not concerned with numbers. I'm not so excited about myself that I feel we need to have a huge number of people here in order to feel good about myself. The reason that we are called to reach out is twofold. First, it is because we have something to share. We have a God who loves us, who is our hope, even in the midst of trials, tribulations, and even death, and there are all too many people who have no hope in the world. Secondly, it is because it is the natural response to hearing in faith. Faith drives us to grow; not out of obligation, not because you're going to disappoint me or anyone else if you don't, but simply because it is what faithful people do, like a plant grows, not because it has to, but because it is simply what it does. This takes many forms (for example, I talk about science with atheists, but that is not isolated from the gospel), but it happens.

So the question that we each need to ask ourselves, and ask ourselves seriously, is, "What kind of soil am I?" Are you someone who has never really received the seed of the Word, that is, are you someone who has never given yourself to Jesus at all? Are you, instead, someone who gave yourself to Jesus once upon a time, but you quickly, whether it was days, weeks, months, or even years down the road, let your faith die, or at least slip into inactivity? Perhaps you are doing your best to grow but are so surrounded by things that drain your time and energy, or are so influenced by destructive relationships that you can't seem to grow, in spite of your best efforts. It is also possible that you have received the seed and are growing, bearing fruit in the way God has called you. I'll tell you what; only you and God know the answer to that question. In fact, it might even be the case that you are not prepared to admit to yourself what kind of soil you have been, so you may not even realize where you fit into this parable. But its something that you should think through, both tonight and in the days to come. Do your best to think back through your life and recent history and see if it looks more like one of these patterns than the others.

A while back, we talked about the fact that the communities in which we find ourselves play a role in who we are and how we even think. I emphasized the fact that we are not imprisoned in the way things are, or the way things have always been, but that, in order to break out of old ways of thinking, sometimes we need to leave behind old ways of living. This is one way in which the parable is an incomplete picture of our situation. You see, the path cannot somehow magically move to become good soil, nor can the rocks and thorns just magically disappear, but you and I do not need to stay the same as we used to be.
Jesus tells this parable and he isn't, first and foremost, talking about us, inasmuch as we are living rather a long time after him, though it still applies to us as we have seen. The fact of the matter is that, God has entered our world of space and time and has met all kinds of people, but not everyone likes him. There were some, like the disciples who, at a word from Jesus' mouth, dropped everything and followed him. There are others, like the scribes from Jerusalem, who seemed to have no place in their hearts and lives for him, and there were people all the way in between. The people who loved Jesus could make no sense of why some people hated him and the people who hated Jesus couldn't understand why anyone would love him.

According to Jesus' parable, the difference between the people is like the difference between different kinds of soils that have seed thrown onto them. The same seed is given to every kind of soil, but only some soils are prepared to do anything with them. The same message of salvation and a transformed life is offered to all, but only some people are prepared to do anything with that. When we look at things through this lens, we see that to expect everyone to jump for joy at the mention of the name of Jesus would be as unrealistic as to have all soil be of the same kind.

So, there is a sense in which there is not much we can do about what kind of soil we are, but we need to be careful not to push this to the extreme. You see, even though there were exceptions to this, there were whole groups who either hated Jesus or loved him. Jesus was consistently loved by the poor, the marginalized, the outcast, the unpopular, the dirty, the smelly, those who had no hope. He was consistently hated by the people who saw themselves as self-sufficient, as those who understood themselves as people who already understood God, by the powerful and the popular. In general, the Pharisees hated Jesus with a fiery passion, but in the Gospel of John, we read about a Pharisee named Nicodemus who accepted Jesus for who he was and was made fun of by the other Pharisees because of it. There was something about being a Pharisee that seemed to keep people from accepting Jesus and if one of them did so, there was tremendous peer pressure to keep them from acting on it.

The fact of the matter is that changing from one type of soil to another is hard work, but it is not impossible. And the reason that it is not impossible is because Jesus has done the impossible, on our behalf and in our place, has responded to God in perfect obedience, long before we ever thought to do so. Remember this. Nobody, not even Jesus' closest disciples, really really got it until after Jesus was not only raised from the dead, but until he poured out the Holy Spirit onto the disciples at Pentecost. Until that happened, nobody really understood what Jesus was doing and teaching. Before all the dust settled, we read that some of Jesus' greatest enemies became great heroes of faith and some of his closest friends turned out to be his enemies. Never give up on your friends or your family. And never give up on yourself. Even if you have never really given yourself to Jesus, or even if you have done it once, or many times, but it never seems to stick, never give up. Jesus died for you. He deeply wants you to know him, which means he also wants you to become the kind of person who can know him, and what is amazing is that there isn't a set, narrow pattern for what that looks like. Keep striving after Jesus, because he has striven after you. The seeds keep getting planted and are just waiting for a chance to be received and grow. Let us pray.

AMEN