Sermon for October 18th, 2020
Mark 4:26-29
26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
Jesus and His Pair of Bowls - The Growing Seed
Halloween is quickly approaching. Would you like to hear a gruesome story? One day a farmer planted a pumpkin seed. He watered the seed and cared for it very well, and soon it grew some, and grew some...
Today's parable is also about a seed that grew some. At just four verses, it's one of the shortest parables of Jesus, and the only one in our series that comes from the gospel of Mark. That's significant, because each of the gospel writers has his own special emphasis. Matthew, for example, writes to a Jewish audience, and his stories emphasize how Jesus was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. Luke, on the other hand, writes to a gentile audience, and emphasizes the poor and marginalized.
Mark is the shortest of the four gospels, the first one to be written, and we're not really sure who his audience is. That's fitting, because Mark's gospel emphasizes above all else a sense of mystery--knowledge that is hidden and secret, things that are unexplainable and unknowable. And that theme shows up prominently in today's very short parable.
Another great thing about this parable is that it's pretty easy to answer our usual question--who am I (who are we) in this parable? That's because there's only one character. Verse 26: "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground." So let's see...are we the ones scattering the seed, or... the ones scattering the seed? Don't think too long about that.
A better question for us to ask is, "What does the seed represent?" The seed that we are supposed to be scattering on the ground. Actually that phrase "on the ground" is our first clue. In the original Greek language of the gospel, it's ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, which has a double meaning. It can be taken as "on the ground," but it also can mean "across the earth" or "over the world" -- and in fact that's usually how it's translated when it occurs in other places in the New Testament. It's the same phrase that appears in the Lord's prayer when Jesus says "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done ON EARTH as it is in heaven.
Chances are, this play on words would have been recognized by people in the 1st century. What is the seed that we are supposed to scatter
