The first three chapters of Mark’s Gospel, as we’ve seen, are fast paced and full of exciting stories. In those three chapters you have miracles and healings and exorcisms; you have the calling of disciples by Jesus and the crush of crowds around Jesus as his fame spreads; you have Jesus’ enemies (the scribes, Pharisees and Herodians) beginning to form a loose coalition to conspire against Jesus; you even have Jesus’ own family starting to get nervous about what Jesus is doing and trying to convince him to stop. So Mark has pushed the story forward quite quickly (some might say too quickly.) Now, we get to Chapter 4, and it’s almost as if even Mark has to catch his breath a little bit. The bulk of Chapter 4 revolves around three parables (although some would identify four, because it depends on exactly how you define a parable, and not everyone agrees on the question of what is and what isn’t a parable) and then, as the Chapter ends, Mark pushes into yet another miracle story – one of the most famous miracle stories; the story of Jesus calming the storm. In some ways that story fits better with Chapter 5, but thanks to Stephen Langton (if you remember he was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 13th century who introduced chapters to the Bible) and his somewhat arbitrary chapter divisions the story was included in Chapter 4, so we’ll consider it tonight. First, though, I want to think about the parables, and about parables in general.
It's worth taking a few moments just to try to define what a
parable is, because there is no one universally accepted definition of a
parable, which is why you’ll find different biblical scholars identifying
different numbers of parables in the Bible; it’s why some biblical scholars
insist that there are no parables in John and others say that there are
parables in John. The actual word parable comes from the Greek word παραβολή –
which means basically to set alongside. In other words a parable is a
comparison of one thing to another. So a parable is like allegory – but not exactly
allegory. Allegories tend to be longer and focus on the story (a biblical
example of allegory is the Song of Solomon), whereas parables are shorter and
focus more on the comparison being made – Jesus usually states the comparison
explicitly (two of the parables in today’s chapter include the words “the
kingdom of heaven is like”.) Or a parable is like a metaphor – but not exactly
a metaphor. Metaphors tend to be succinct one to one comparisons, whereas
parables are usually offered in the context of a story. Or a parable is like a
simile – but not exactly a simile. A simile is usually more direct and to the
point whereas a parable’s meaning is more implicit and even mysterious. There’s
a tendency among many both inside and outside the Christian community to
restrict the use of the word “parable” to teachings of Jesus (probably because
they’re so identified with him historically) but there are some Islamic
parables found in the Qu’ran. Fadel Soliman offers this translation of Surah
2:261:
The parable of
those who spend their wealths in the way of Allah is that of a grain that has
germinated seven ears; in each ear are a hundred grains. For Allah multiplies
for whom He wills. And Allah is All-Embracing, All-Knowing.
There
are also secular parables. In 1850 the French economist Frédéric Bastiat wrote an essay called “That Which We See And That Which We
Do Not See” and included in the essay was a piece called “The Parable Of The
Broken Window” which is a criticism of certain types of economic thinking that
argued that destruction of property was a benefit to the economy because
everything destroyed had to be replaced, which meant the creation of jobs. So
in the parable (which is too long to read in full) a shopkeeper’s window gets
broken, the shopkeeper has to pay 6 francs to have it replaced and the argument
put forward by some is that the six francs therefore benefitted the economy by
creating a job for someone to do. I’ll just share the last three sentences of
this parable:
Is
it not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he
cannot spend them upon another. Is it not seen that if he had not had a window
to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another
book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some
way, which this accident has prevented.
The point of the parable is that there’s no net
gain to the economy by the shopkeeper having to spend six francs to replace his
window, because the six francs would have just gone into the economy in some
other way if the window hadn’t been broken.
So parables aren’t exclusively Christian, but
in general most people associate parables with the teachings of Jesus, usually about
the kingdom of heaven. That last point is why there’s some dispute (just
jumping back to Chapter 3 for a moment) about Jesus’ teaching about Beelzebul
and how “a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.” Some consider that a
parable – others say it isn’t because it’s about the kingdom of Satan and not
the kingdom of heaven. So it’s sometimes a bit arbitrary deciding what is and
is not a parable.
In Chapter 4 Mark offers us three parables,
known commonly as the Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Growing Seed and
the Parable of the Mustard Seed. I don’t want to go into any of them
individually in great detail. I do want to look at these three parables
collectively, because they’re all very similar and trying to make roughly the
same point – which begs the question, of course, of why Jesus felt the need to
offer three parables on largely the same subject. Were his disciples that dense
that they needed this to be said three times? On the other hand, I have heard a
didactic theory that a point has to be made three times before its hearers take
it in. Maybe Jesus was familiar with that research!
What’s common between each of these three
parables is that they’re what we call agricultural parables – they deal with
seeds and their growth. That’s relevant because it helps us to understand the
context in which Jesus was speaking and the people to whom he was speaking. We
have a natural tendency to associate Jesus with fishermen because so many of
the twelve (and especially of the better known ones) were fishermen. These
parables tell us, though, that Jesus is no longer in a fishing area, but rather
an agricultural area, and since the location of his ministry has shifted
presumably he’s also picked up disciples more associated with the agricultural industry.
If context impacts how the parables are told, then it’s interesting to
speculate how Jesus might have worded the parables if he had been telling them
in a 21st century urban environment rather than a 1st
century rural environment. If the goal of outreach is to meet people where they
are (and while the last two parables were directed specifically to Jesus’
disciples, the first was directed to the crowds) then if Jesus were teaching in
Ajax-Pickering he probably wouldn’t have used agricultural parables. I did a
Google search for “things that grow quickly in urban areas” and came up with
spiders, mice, rats, bed bugs, dandelions and homelessness. I’m not sure Jesus
would have chosen any of those, but the point is that to be effective the
parable has to use imagery that it’s hearers would be intimately familiar with.
The last two of the parables were describing
the growth of the kingdom of God. So the kingdom of God starts as something
small (perhaps just a dream or a vision) but it inevitably grows into something
big. Remember that in these parables at least the focus is not God but God’s
Kingdom. Jesus doesn’t limit God or suggest that God starts as something small
and then grows – only that the “kingdom” (the numbers who actually respond to
the message) inevitably grows. Verse 27 makes the point that we don’t even know
how the kingdom of God grows – it just does. The small seeds we scatter have an
impact beyond what we could imagine. Those last two parables have to be
understood in the light of the first parable however. The growing seed and the
mustard seed both make the process sound fairly simple. You plant the seed and
it grows inevitably into something huge. But it isn’t simple – as anyone who’s
ever tried to do evangelism or outreach can testify. It isn’t easy to get
people to respond to the message. The first parable makes that point. It makes
clear that growth is still inevitable, but that it’s going to be tough going,
and it even seems to suggest that far more people are going to reject the
“seed” (or the teaching) than will accept it. There are four kinds of soil
mentioned – and in only one is there lasting growth. The kingdom of God will
increase but as those who are given the task of scattering the seed we have to
realize that the task of making the seed grow won’t be easy.
Setting aside the parables themselves, there
are some issues around the purpose of the parables. Jesus said to his disciples
“To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside,
everything comes in parables.” So Jesus assumes that the disciples have some
kind of knowledge that others don’t possess, and the “outsiders” are those who
lack this knowledge. It seems strange to hear Jesus speak of “those outside.” This
is probably the origin of gnostic thought – the belief that only a select few
received secret knowledge about God. But what, then, is the purpose of the
parables? Is it to intrigue those who aren’t as knowledgeable as the twelve? To
get them to want to go deeper and to learn more? The strangest part of this is that Jesus
actually seems to suggest that the purpose of parables isn’t to give knowledge
to “those outside” but is rather to keep things hidden from them! The parables
are so 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.” This is a rough paraphrase from
Isaiah 6, although in Isaiah rather than “forgiven” the word used is “healed.” That
passage begins with Isaiah saying to God “Here I am – send me!” In opening that
part of the prophecy, the prophet seems to be saying that God is so grand, so
beyond our ability to understand, that the more people hear of God the less
they will understand. I’ll honestly say that I’m not sure exactly what Jesus
means in saying this, although it may be Jesus’ attempt to identify himself as
the fulfilment of Isaiah and the prophets. Or perhaps it’s a suggestion that
too much knowledge is not a good thing? That those who become sure that they
truly know God actually don’t know God, and their belief that they do actually
becomes an impediment to their forgiveness, healing and/or salvation?
It’s also difficult to reconcile that with the
story of the lamp on the stand in verses 21-23. If that which is hidden is
meant to be revealed, why should it be so difficult to understand it? If the
goal is to shine light on something, shouldn’t it become clear? But at the very
least, if we’re bothered by the concept of “outsiders” then verse 23 does
suggest that anyone can gain the knowledge, but that not all will. That argues
against the gnostic position that I mentioned a few moments ago, in which there
is certain knowledge that is simply not accessible to some people.
The chapter ends with the story of the disciples
on the boat in the storm. It seems a bit of an awkward add-on to the Chapter
(again blame Stephen Langton for that.) It’s a very familiar story that I don’t
think I need to go into great detail on. I have always found it interesting and
somewhat amusing that while the disciples panicked, Jesus slept. The disciples
seem to have taken that as evidence that Jesus didn’t care about them:
“Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” But Jesus was literally in the same boat
with them. He seems to have assumed that the disciples should have been calm
since he himself wasn’t panicking, and seems to offer them a mild rebuke: “Why
are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” But he responds to their fear
and he calms the storm. The disciples’ response to having seen Jesus calm the
storm is open to interpretation. Traditionally, the translation has been that
the disciples were “terrified,” or that, in the words of the King James Version
of the Bible, they “feared exceedingly.” That seems a strange response to their
salvation from the storm. More modern translations have adopted the idea that
the disciples were “filled with awe” at what Jesus had done. That’s more in
keeping with the way words are used in Hebrew rather than Greek – in the Old
Testament to fear God is really to be in awe of God. I think that’s probably
the more accurate way of understanding the way this story ends.
And of course the very end of the chapter raises
a question: “Who … is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Who is
this, indeed. He heals the sick, he exorcises demons, he outdebates the scribes
and Pharisees, he forgives sin, he declares himself Lord of the Sabbath and he
even controls the natural elements. Who is this? It’s a good question!
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