Year B

Mark 4:26-34

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Truth of Parables

Why is it that Jesus liked to use parables to teach? Why is it that, so often, when he wanted to open up people’s minds to some part of God’s truth, he would do so by telling them a story? Well, probably because most people love to hear or read a good story. Stories can spark our imaginations. Give us new information and open windows into a new understanding of a text, ourselves, others and God. In using short, provocative stories, it does seem that Jesus recognized the importance of the imagination and using stories to shift the way we see ourselves, God and others. For instance, many of us grew up with Aesop’s fables. Whether in a children’s book or a school book, we encountered samples of the fables in which animals talked and acted like humans while remaining animals.  Usually these short stories had a sharp, wry, ironic, or funny point.

Then, at the end of the fable, there was a single line that encapsulated the moral of the story just in case we didn’t get it. The thing is we usually got it without the moral of the story. The stories speak for themselves. The parables of Jesus are not technically fables, but they are stories about everyday things that delight us and make a point. Mark tells us “With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it (4:33-34).” Jesus did not explain the meaning of the parables to his hearers, but honestly, don’t you suppose that most of them “got it” when they heard them?  It makes me wonder why the disciples needed Jesus to explain them.

To his audiences, the parables covered common ground; the people knew about sheep and shepherds, lost coins, vineyards, unjust judges, wayward children, gardens and harvest. They were easy to relate to, because they dealt with practical, down-to-earth matters. The parables are easy for us too, at least on the surface. We’ve heard them for years. The most familiar parts of scripture for most of us are the parables that Jesus used in his teachings. But we still need to hear these meaning-filled and provocative stories again because even though they are familiar, each time we hear them we understand them and take them into our hearts in a new way.

For the parables don’t simply recount a clever tale. They may start out that way, but then we find they can challenge some of our basic assumptions about ourselves, our neighbors, our world, and even God. They enlighten us and encourage us to change our way of being human, of being Christian. They do this because they are all about justice and mercy; they all about revealing the truth about the kingdom of God challenging us to live into that kingdom. For, they are indeed, the “arrows of God.” They pierce us and make us aware of our need to change. They make us aware of how we must live in God’s kingdom. Most of Jesus’ stories begin with “The kingdom of God is like” or “The reign of God is like.”

What is the kingdom of God? We might answer it is a perfect state of being, where there is no injustice, no hunger, no want, no war. It’s peace of mind and our reward with Christ, after living here. St. Catherine of Siena, an early mystic of the church, says that “for those who believe in Jesus, all the way home to heaven is heaven. Heaven is here on earth she says, and if we stumble on this treasure here on earth, if we stumble into this relationship with Jesus, then we have stumbled into the kingdom of God.”

What would it be like to stumble into a place of peace and justice? It would be a place where people were actively loving God and loving people. In this way, by loving God and people, we participate and enter the kingdom here on earth and we achieve God’s kingdom within us through a process of inner growth or our spiritual journey with God and others. In our journey, we discover God has prepared the kingdom for one each one of us which already exists within us.  Therefore, there is a sense in which the kingdom of heaven is both within us and outside us, and among us and other people. This image of growth, the inner growth and outer growth of the kingdom is one of the images Jesus liked to use to describe the kingdom of God. Though this image of growth occurs in many places in the scriptures, two of the best known examples are in the parables in today’s gospel text.

While each of these parables carries its own special message, there are similarities between them. Both present a description of the kingdom of God; both involve a growing seed and the size of the plant the seed produces.  In the first parable, Jesus portrays the kingdom as coming without any effort or even knowledge, on the part of the farmer. The farmer can plow and plant and fertilize, but the actual growth is out of any person’s hands. The focus of the parable is not on the relation of the sower to the seed, but on the seed itself and its growth as the likeness to the kingdom. The kingdom, Jesus seems to be emphasizing, will grow through God’s grace and the farmer simply waits for the moment of harvest, when he gathers the results. The future rests in God. The harvest comes about through the growth of God’s word and kingdom, and through God’s people though not totally dependent upon us but upon God’s plans.

In the parable of the seeds and the harvest there is a dynamic, vital power at work, God’s love, that is mysteriously beyond our comprehension and our grasp and this is also true for the second parable where Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed. This parable builds upon the parable of the sower and the harvest. Small beginnings can yield great outcomes. We, like the farmer, do not understand how the sprouting and the growing of such a reality take’s place. Yet, it becomes a harvest of life, and the tree from the seed spreads out branches to be a place of rest and song and abundance. So shall the reign or kingdom of God be. The tiny mustard seed, when fully sown, will transform and produce amazing results in our lives, in the lives of others and in communities. We have a part in this kingdom.

God can use our most meager seeds of ministry to accomplish God’s saving purpose. God can do great things through us when we are open to God’s presence in our lives and allow God to use us. The growth takes place out there, but it also needs to happen inside our hearts to guide and control our living. We then become that new creation in Christ that Paul talks about today in the Epistle; “the new thing” God is doing in order to produce boughs and bear fruit and become a noble cedar. The message of the kingdom of God may seem to have weak and insignificant beginnings, but as these two parables tell us, the kingdom will come and it will be great and powerful.

We are amazed with spectacular growth and the bountiful harvest it produces with the help of God’s people.  Therefore we must continually hear the stories of Jesus’ words, deeds, death, and resurrection. Stories that challenge us to exam our lives because the moral of the story is that when we see the drama of Jesus’ life and ministry we are challenged to carry the salvation message out and to join in the mystery of God’s love. This is how we are to live in God’s kingdom.