Growth Parables

Mark chapter 4 is a central chapter in that gospel.

To begin with, you'll find more red letters here than in the rest of the gospel. Mark has long been recognized as a reporter of Jesus' actions more then his words. What little Mark tells us about what Jesus said is concentrated mostly here.

The chapter is made up almost entirely of parables. In fact, Mark insists: "He did not say anything to them without using a parable. (vs 34)"

In the modern church, we often think of parables as being concrete stories intended to make abstract principles easier to grasp. In fact, Jesus' parables are nothing of the sort. His disciples quickly tumble to the point. They have almost no idea what he's trying to say, or why he's using such strange and obfuscating language.

Jesus' explanation doesn't help much. He basically says, "If you get it, you get it. If you don't you don't." Then he proceeds to illustrate this point with a few more parables.

The key parable in the chapter is the parable of the sower. This one alone is interpreted (at least partly!) for the disciples. Jesus explains that the kingdom of God is like seed scattered over all sorts of soil with varying results. The difference in the results, Jesus tells us, has to do with the depth of our understanding and our willingness to lay other agendas aside. It's a parable about why some people don't understand parables!

In fact, parables should be read more as riddles than as illustrative tales. Jesus' parables don't so much explain the Kingdom of God as they deconstruct our current understandings and challenge us to think "sideways."

Mark's insistence that this was Jesus' primary teaching tool helps us understand some of the other quirky aspects of this gospel. For example, why does Mark focus so much attention on Jesus' actions rather then his words? And why, oh why does Jesus repeatedly forbid his disciples and others to speak the truth about who he is in a public forum?

Mark helps us along a little on the first question. In Chapter Six he tells of the feeding of the five thousand, followed by a story about Jesus walking on water. The tale ends with this statement:

51Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, 52for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.

Here Mark hints rather baldly that Jesus' miracles are not just flashy events, but are intended to be interpreted and understood. For Mark, Jesus' life is seen as a series of parables, his whole ministry a riddle demanding an answer.

Like all good riddles, "getting it" is half the fun. Just as Jesus lobs his homey little tales about seeds and yeast and buried treasure out into the crowd without explanation, he acts out his role as Messiah in a sort of game of Kingdom Charades. He insists that his disciples not give away the punch line. This is something, he insists, that people will either understand or not understand, depending on their frame of reference.

This very challenging aspect of Jesus' ministry is often overshadowed in the other gospels, where Jesus' spoken word takes a larger role. In these gospels, we are given enough meat that we never really get around to gnawing on the bone. Mark, on the other hand, focuses our attention on the enigmatic mystery surrounding this man named Jesus.