Mark 4:21-34

11/16/11 Mark 4:21-34 GUMC Youth

Chapter four of Mark is something of a chapter of parables. It was in this chapter that we saw the first of Jesus' parables, the parable of the sower, and it contains almost all of the parables we find in the whole book. Tonight, we are going to look at three parables that Jesus tells, one right after another.

What is interesting to me is how many people I have met that are only interested in trying to understand the parables one at a time, in isolation from one another. That means, they would want to look at the first parable in our passage first, then the second, then the third, but never really all at the same time. The thing is, these parables aren't put side by side by accident. It is actually only when we look at the parables one at a time, but also look at them all together, that we really understand what Jesus is getting at. Parables are the kinds of things where, if you want to understand one of them, you really need to try to understand them all, preferably at the same time.

The first parable that Jesus says here is about a lamp. He says, "Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand?" The answer, of course, is that it would be stupid to do those things with lamps, not least because, since lamps at the time ran by burning fuel, it would be dangerous. The point is that you don't light a lamp for no purpose (especially if fuel was expensive, which it was). You light lamps so you can see. And because you light lamps so you can see, you put them in prominent places in the house, high up so the light doesn't get blocked by all your furniture.

He continues on and says, "For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light." The point that Jesus is getting at here is that, as Christians, we are not saved, we are not indwelled by the Holy Spirit, to have it be our little secret. To be a Christian and to have nobody be able to tell is like lighting a lamp and then carefully hiding it so nobody can see it. It is simply pointless. Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that you should go to school and sports practices and make a really big deal about how you are a Christian. After all, a lamp doesn't stand on its lampstand and say, "Hey everybody, I'm a lamp!" Everyone can just tell that it is a lamp. Words are important and a willingness to talk about Jesus is important, but if people can't tell that there is something different about you, all the words in the world won't make a difference.

The other thing that Jesus says on this topic is, "The measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." The big point is of reciprocity, that what we receive and what we give are to be related to one another. If you give a lot, you will receive a lot. You don't always receive back the same kind of thing you gave, like, just because you give a lot of money, doesn't mean you will get a lot of money back, but you will receive joy, peace and love. If you don't put much into your relationship with God, you won't receive much in return. If you want your faith to impact your life, if you want to be someone who doesn't just go through the motions, but is actually impacted by the reality of God, you have to participate. You can't be surprised if God doesn't move in your life if you don't participate and take advantage of what you have already received.

There is another side to this. Not only is what we receive from God proportional to what we give, we are also called to give to God in proportion to what we have received. You see, God made the first move, took the first step. The fact that we can give anything to God at all is based firmly in the fact that we received from him long before we ever dreamed of giving anything to him. I want to give a somewhat silly example of this kind of thing. When I was in high school, I was in American History and I had just about the best teacher I'd ever had. We had real, hands-on projects, where we got to engage in the stuff we were learning. Like when we talked about the roaring twenties and the stock market crash, we all started with the same amount of money, and tried to trade with each other to end up with the most money.

Well, one project we did was we were each given a nation that fought in World War I, and we had to make alliances and fight battles with each other. As you can imagine, the people who had America, England, Germany, France, and places like that were able to conquer all kinds of people, they had hugely superior firepower and could easily win in battle. My partner and I ended up with some tiny country in the middle of nowhere. We couldn't get much done, but we did our best. At the end of the game, our teacher told us to take our scores and modify them according to a table that he showed us. As it turned out, the superpowers didn't do so well at the end of the day because they had to take away so many points. You see, anyone would have expected them to do well. They actually had to do really well in order to show that their victories were not simply because they started off with all the advantages. My partner and I ended up coming in like second or third place, not because we won the war, but because we did what we could with what we had.

We are held accountable for what we receive. If we have received only a little bit, God knows it and has tremendous grace. We are not judged according to what we don't have but what we do have. On the flip side, if we have received a lot, we are expected to give and live accordingly. I know that, from time to time, it seems like we really haven't received all that much, but we really have, especially in Spencer. Did you know that Clay County has one of the lowest poverty rates in Iowa? That doesn't mean that there isn't poverty, but that it is remarkably low, compared to places like Des Moines, Waterloo, and lots of places down in the southern part of the state. Simply looking at that, you can tell that you have received much. On top of that, you have been taken care of by your parents, which lots of young people simply haven't. The fact of the matter is that you have already received much. When you succeed, you don't simply succeed on the basis of your own natural talent, but because other people have paved the way for your success. You have received much. Will you give much with your life?

The other two parables don't take as much time to explore. Jesus says this. "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how." Now, any farmer will tell you that they don't just sit around after they've planted their seeds. Farming is hard work and, though there are seasons where it is less intense, there is always something to do. The point that Jesus is making is that, in spite of all the work that a farmer might do, the farmer really isn't causing the seed to grow, or even helping it to grow. The farmer is doing whatever he can to remove every obstacle to growth. The growth happens slowly and gradually. If you are like me and you don't spend all your time on a farm, when you get out into the country every few weeks, it seems obvious how much the corn, for example, has grown. I imagine that if you were a corn farmer, the difference in growth from the last time you looked at your plants to the next time is pretty small. In fact, you probably can't even tell, from to day to day, that they are growing at all.

I am always amazed at how closely this applies to my Christian life. One of the things that there is no shortcut for is establishing a relationship with God. The longer you've been a committed Christian, the more you know how God works in you. I have these times where it feels like I've completely plateaued, when I don't feel like I'm growing, but just kind of floating through the days and weeks. I'm still doing the things I should be doing. I'm still reading my Bible, I'm still praying, I'm still trying to put my faith in practice, but I don't feel like I'm going through any breakthroughs, like I have at certain points in my life.

At times like this, what I've tried to do is to force myself to remember where I've been. When I do this, I start to see that lots more was happening in those dry times than I ever imagined. To give an example of this, I talked last week about beginning to read my Bible and I said that, if you approach the Bible expecting to have your mind blown every single day, you will just get frustrated and quit. I spent a lot of those first years studying the Bible thinking that, in spite of my discipline, in spite of my desire to understand what was in the Bible, I just wasn't really learning it. Then, one day, I woke up and I found myself knowing the passages that the people around me were referencing. I started to be able to predict which passages people would use to make which points, I found myself being able to identify verses just from their references, which I could never do before. After all, like I told you, I was the worst Bible navigator ever. When you feel like God hasn't been moving in your life, take some time to remember where you used to be. Sometimes we just need to take a step back to see that God really has been at work.

The last parable is the parable of the mustard seed. It starts from a tiny seed, a seed so small that it takes 700 of them to even weigh a gram, which is not much. The mustard seed was so small that it was a common thing to use to emphasize how tiny something was. And yet, it grows up into a large bush that sometimes can even reach three meters high, which is like nine feet. We have had a phrase in English that gets at the same point. "Tall oaks grow from small acorns." At times, especially early on, our faith might seem amazingly small, so small that it couldn't turn into anything significant. Jesus' parable reminds us that the size of the seed doesn't tell us anything about the size of the plant. Our faith starts out small, but through a dynamic relationship with God, it grows and grows until it can even become a support for others.

Before we finish up tonight, I want to make a point drawing on all three of these parables. Faith cannot be hidden (like a lamp on a stand, like a growing plant, like a seed that is planted). It must be shown. It doesn't need to be shown because we will let someone down if we don't, it doesn't need to be shown because we have to force ourselves to do it, but it needs to be shown because that is what faith does. So, even though I'm not asking you to try to make a big deal about your faith (because that is counter-productive as well), I want you to think about whether anyone else can tell that you are a Christian.

I want to tell a story from my life to try to show what I mean. Now, you all have only known me as a pastor. It is probably pretty hard to imagine me as someone who is not a pastor, harder still to imagine me as someone who is not a Christian. And yet, as I have pointed out several times, I have not always been a Christian, and even after I became a Christian, I really didn't take it really seriously until I was in college. A few years ago, after I'd been a pastor for a while, a friend of mine from high school got married and I went to his wedding. While we were at the reception, we sat with some other folks we knew from high school There was one girl, a pastor's kid, who asked me what I'd been up to. When I told her that I was a pastor, she was astonished. She said, "Wow...um...wow. That really surprises me. I just never imagined that you would become a pastor."

Now, in my defense, I wasn't exactly that hard partying, heavy drinking, drug using wild man in high school. In fact, my first thoughts about her reaction were, "Wow. What did I do in high school that would make it so amazing that I could become a pastor." I really wasn't all that bad of a kid. And yet, that actually makes the point even stronger. Whatever my faith looked like in high school, it certainly didn't show itself to other people. I might have been a fairly good kid, and people might have noticed that, but there was nothing about who I was or how I lived that would have given anyone a clue that I had the Spirit of God dwelling inside of me and was following in the footsteps of Jesus.

Guys, that isn't what faith is supposed to be. Our faith is supposed to be like a lamp on a lampstand, it is supposed to be like a crop that, even though it starts small, grows up into a healthy, mature plant that everyone can see. It is supposed to be like the seed that might seem small at first, but grows into a mighty bush. The difference between someone who loves the Lord and one who does not is described in the New Testament as the difference between life and death. It can't be reduced to what we say or what we do, but it involves those things. Jesus Christ has given his life for us. The only thing that makes sense is that we would give our lives for him. Let us pray.

AMEN