Sowing and Growing 2020 02 02 Rev. Dr. Kara Markell Epiphany 4 Lake Washington CC Mark 4.1-20 Again He Began to Teach Beside Th
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
1 Sowing and Growing 2020_02_02 Rev. Dr. Kara Markell Epiphany 4 Lake Washington CC Mark 4.1-20 Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 "Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." 9 And he said, "Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" 10 When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; 12 in order that "they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.' " 13 And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. 17 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. 18 And others are those sown among the thorns: these are the ones who hear the word, 19 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. 20 And these are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." Let us pray: For the Word of God in Scripture, For the Word of God among us, For the Word of God within us, Thanks be to God. Amen. Today’s reading is a parable. A parable is a story Jesus tells that has deeper meaning. In the Wordship and wonder curriculum parables are described as very precious, like gold; they are like a present in a box with a lid. Sometimes parables, it says, seem to have lids on them. But when you lift the lid of a parable there is something very precious inside. ©Rev. Dr. Kara Markell, 02 February 2020 2 I love this description of parables, seemingly simple stories, that can be difficult to understand, but which contain something very precious, if we can sit with them and open ourselves to the truth they hold. This parable of the Sower is present in Mark as well as Matthew and Luke, so we know that it is an important one. And, in each gospel the parable is not only told, but explained. This is rare, because most parables are not explained by Jesus. Perhaps, this being one of the first parables he told, he felt it necessary to help his disciples, his students, understand it, and more broadly to understand how parables are to be understood. I very often like to remember that Jesus is a teacher. That’s what Rabbi means in Hebrew. A teacher, and his followers are students. And his band of Disciples, the esteemed 12, they are doing their student teaching internship with Jesus – he is training them to go out and teach, to ultimately carry on this work of spreading the food news of God’s kingdom to as many people as they can. So that is the backdrop behind how I’m looking at this parable today. The other thing I think is fun to keep in mind is that Jesus is shouting this story from a boat just a little bit off shore. That’s the setting that Mark lays out at the beginning. There are so many people gathered, that he has to get into a boat and push out a bit, so that he can be the focal point – great teacher control their teaching environment well. Jesus is a great teacher. But imagine this being shouted at you from a boat. It adds another layer to the lack of understanding, right? One of the important dynamics of parables is that they work by analogy – you talk about one thing; the meaning is transferred to something else. In most parables Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God, but not talking directly, often he’ll being a parable with the words “The kingdom of God is”, or “is like” and then tell the story. That is important. The method of teaching helps to explain the topic itself – the kingdom of God is not something that is simply an idea to be analyzed, but a reality in which one participates. So, you have participated actively in opening the present, lifting the lid of the parable to discern its meaning. You have to have the capacity to leap from the concrete story, to the deeper meaning. When it works, a divine reality is disclosed. So, the parable itself is pretty simple: a sower is out throwing seed on the ground. The seed lands in different kinds of soil, and those soils yield different kinds of fruit. Simple, understandable. Anyone who has done any kind of planting gets it. But, Jesus is not talking about gardening, he is talking about the realm of God. So, once he is done preaching, he goes off to a secluded location to talk with the disciples about it. And he says, he has been given immediate access to the realm of God, in Jesus himself. You have a unique opportunity that most people don’t have, to hear these stories and to understand the mysteries they hold. So, what’s the story about? And I imagine a scene I have seen many times as a teacher and pastor. No one raises their hands, all the students either look around the room at each other, or at the ground. Don’t call on me, don’t call on me, don’t call on me. And Jesus realizes, they don’t have the skills to unpack this kind of complex teaching. These are mostly poor fisherman and tradesmen with little education. So, he teaches them how to interpret this parable, hoping that this will help them with all other parables. ©Rev. Dr. Kara Markell, 02 February 2020 3 And I also think that the parable itself is helping the disciples understand their own inner landscape, their own ability to receive the word, while it simultaneously teaches them that they are going to encounter all of these scenarios when they are out doing the preaching and teaching. It’s quite brilliant, actually. And good teachers know, that it is more effective to encourage the students to figure it out on their own, the teaching is more effective that way. Here’s how the realm of God works, Jesus says: the Word, the seed, is spread abundantly and indiscriminately. The good news is everywhere abundant. It is a marvelously inefficient way to plant seeds. It is counterintuitive. That broadly sown seed lands in all kinds of places with varying results. Some lands on the path – you know what happens when a seed hits a hard surface…it kind bounces right off, it doesn’t even have a change to hit the soil. The text says Satan comes along and eats it up, Satan meaning an adversary. It could be an adversary of any kind. I kind of think of this as the places where it seems illogical that someone doesn’t understand it. For examples, Paul encouraged female leadership in the church, it is evidenced in the scripture. But there are still many church bodies for which this information seems to bounce right off. Jesus mentions the poor more than any other marginalized community, but there are lots of Christians who do not see anything wrong with further marginalizing the poor. The word is shared, but it just doesn’t seem to go anywhere. The path doesn’t have the capacity to even receive it. The extravagantly sown seed also falls on rocky places. The seeds get into those little crevices and takes root a bit, but then something happens, the heat gets turned up, and those poor little feeble roots, just dry up. This happens to all of us. Especially in very hard times, the loss of a loved one, loss of a job, a serious illness, fights within the church on large or small scales. Rocks can make us stumble. A rocky interior landscape makes cultivating a crop very difficult. Whether we put our own rocks in there, or they were placed there by others.