Mark 4.26-34:
The Parable of the Growing Seed
26 He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone
would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep and rise
night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28The
earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain
in the head. 29But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in
with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’
The Parable of the Mustard Seed
30 He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom
of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31It is like a
mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the
seeds on earth; 32yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes
the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of
the air can make nests in its shade.’
The Use of Parables
33 With many such parables
he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34he
did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in
private to his disciples.
2
Corinthians 5:6-17 (NRSV)
6 So we are always confident;
even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the
Lord— 7for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8Yes, we do
have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the
Lord. 9So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to
please him. 10For all of us must appear before the judgement seat of
Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body,
whether good or evil
11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to
persuade others; but we ourselves are well known to God, and I hope that we are
also well known to your consciences. 12We are not commending
ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to boast about us, so
that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not in
the heart. 13For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we
are in our right mind, it is for you.
14For the love of Christ urges us
on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have
died. 15And he died for all, so that those who live might live no
longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. 16 From
now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view;
even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view,
we know him no longer in that way. 17So if anyone is in Christ,
there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has
become new!
My text is written in 2 Corinthians 5.17
17So if anyone is in
Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see,
everything has become new!
The Parable of the growing seed is unique to Mark and it has
proven difficult to interpret. This is always good news, because from the
earliest times, we know that such passages have been seen as a special gift by
the Church, because it suggests deep and special meaning for those who are
willing to struggle with it. Most agree that it has nothing to do with the
gradualness of the coming of the Kingdom, but rather that it turns on its head
some of the ideas expressed in the earlier recorded Parable of the Sower. In
the Sower, a response was sought; here the farmer is inactive. Once the seed is
planted, he carries on life, letting the process of growing happen by itself,
without understanding how.
In this Parable of the Growing Seed, the disciples are
challenged to follow the example of the farmer; once they have done what they
have needed to do – once th3ey have planted their seed – they must leave the
rest up to God ; they must have faith that God will bring about the growth and
the harvest in his good time.
This is a wonderful encouragement for people of every time
and generation. It is easy for us to become impatient and encouraged, when what
we need to do is just be faithful to what God has called us to do.
Think of the experience and example of Jesus. His ministry
had produced no spectacular results, in fact in human terms it was somewhat of
a failure; but in the hands of God, it has transformed the world. God lets
things run their course and rewards patience.
Jesus then goes on to tell the Parable of the Mustard Seed.
Mark emphasises the smallness of the seed and the size of what arises from it.
The earthly ministry of Jesus seemed small and insignificant at the time, but
the result has been a transformed world. Denis Nineham suggests that we should
never judge the significance of results by the size of the beginnings. A number
of examples spring to mind: Rosa Parks refusing to obey a racist bus driver and
give up her seat to a white bigot; Wesley’s Holy Club at Oxford, Trevor Huddleston
raising his had out of respect when greeting Desmond Tuts mother in the dusty
streets of Sophiatown. The first Methodist preachers, a handful accompanying
the 5000 British Settlers in South Africa in 1820, transformed the area and
eventually educated Nelson Mandela and many in the Cabinet of the first
democratically elected South African government. I am sure many other examples
will spring to mind.
Professor Charlie Moule suggests a slightly different
emphasis; namely the mystery of the life force in the seed. The ground seems to
produce the crop by itself, if it is properly prepared. Moule writes:
The most the farmer can do is
prepare good ground. He then leaves the seed and the good earth does the rest.
Truth is wonderful, but attaining it requires effort and
even struggle. Truth is also timeless, because it is not rigid and literal.
Part of the genius of Jesus was his use of parable, because by being designed
to be obscure, in searching for understanding from them within each time and
context, truth will be found.
Moule explains:
You cannot teach people by
spoon-feeding; you must set them a puzzle so that they can work things out for
themselves; there is no short-cut to understanding.
This is certainly true when it comes to human existence and
the meaning of life. We too can become impatient when it comes to our own lives
and the slow progress we make in being transformed into the image of Christ.
What about the body and the soul? The Greeks of the day separated them in a crude
dualism, elevating the soul as being important and the body something that they
did not need to respect. Paul never despised the body and insisted that it
needed to be treated with the utmost respect, because what we do with our
bodies is going to determine our judgement as Paul explains in 2 Corinthians
5.10. But here too, progress can be painfully slow; and we need to be faithful
and patient.
We are helped by knowing the ‘… fear of the Lord …’ In the modern
mind, this seems strange and even plain wrong; for no one would ever agree that
holiness, morality and being good should ever be because one is afraid of
punishment. Today, the word ‘fear’ is associated with terror, but scholars
suggests that the connotation here is more like awe and respect – the sort of
fear that keeps a person from doing something that will break the heart of
someone they love.
For me, love – agape
– is at the heart of everything, the nature and being of God, the way to holiness
and the yardstick by which Christians should measure their lives. The
transformation, the change, the holiness that we all aspire to is to be
perfected in love – and this takes time – there are no short-cuts.
We live in fear of God, not terror, but the fear that keeps us
from doing something that will break the heart of someone we love and in the
process we are re-created. Barnett explains:
“Meanwhile, since sin and its outworking
has not yet been abolished, everyone will continue to undergo, in varying
degrees difficulty and hardship – including those in whom the new creation has
begun.”
“’Tis mystery all, immense and free …’ but it requires time
and effort, and God’s grace. I am also reminded of the American President,
James A Garfield, who before rising to this high office, had been a College
President. He was approached by a wealthy parent asking if there was not a way
to shorten his son’s education in exchange for a generous donation. Garfield replied: “Of
course there is a way; it all depends on what you want your boy to do. When God
wants to grow an oak tree, he takes a hundred years, when he wants to make a
pumpkin, it only takes two months!”
Indeed this was Paul’s experience. Love replaced hate;
service replaced selfishness, true understanding replaced ignorance. Paul
Barnett, the Australian Biblical scholar explains that Paul uses the same
creation vocabulary here that is used in Genesis. Before coming to Christ we
are in darkness – like the primal darkness – God now speaks the Gospel word,
and then there is light – inward light as Paul has explained earlier in 4:6:
“For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’
who has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the Glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ …” (NRSV)
We begin as babes in Christ and need to go through growth
toward maturity. Elsewhere Paul also speaks of us as being a building, needing
firm foundations first and then further growth. In 1 Corinthians Paul speaks of
us as builders, using either precious materials or wood hay and straw –
building by the lives we live.
But we rejoice because before God our status is that of one
in whom the work is completed – because we have been given the status of Christ
–even though the work is far from complete as we have the privilege of working
out our own salvation as well. This is all a wonderful mystery, great blessing
and joy.
The last few verses of our Epistle put things in a nutshell:
14For the love of
Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all;
therefore all have died. 15And he died for all, so that those who
live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised
for them. 16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a
human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a
human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.
Ending with the words …
17So if anyone is in
Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see,
everything has become new!
Amen.
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