Sermon 06-14-09                                                                         

Psalm 92:1-4                                                               Mark 4: 1-9 & 13-20

Where Have the Seeds Fallen?

Prayer

“Let ‘s talk about radical change. Jesus began to teach by the lakeside. Jesus

was in a boat facing the people seated at the beach. “He was no longer

teaching in the synagogue, the Pharisees were conspiring against him. The

crowds followed him everywhere, and he was prepared to approach them in

a new way. He was teaching by the lakeside. He moved from the

conventional setting of the synagogue to speaking in the open air. Jesus

chose to speak to the people in parables. And from the boat, Jesus looks

around to find a point of contact with the crowd.

Look! Pointing to the fields, “A sower when out to sow.” And as he sowed…

Do you know what a parable is?

Parables are earthly stories with a heavenly meaning. Parables where meant

to be interpreted by the listeners.

Why did Jesus choose this method of teaching?

First, to make the people listen. Let us remember that Jesus talked to the

crowds in the open air where they were quite free to walk both around or

away at any time. In order to keep their interest Jesus used to tell them

stories, (and we never seem too old for stories). Jesus started from the here

and now to get to the there and then.

Jesus using the parabolic method used what was familiar and undertood by

his listeners.

Third, Jesus knew that it was useless to expect people to grasp abstract

ideas, so he put the abstract ideas into concrete stories; he showed them in

action, he made them personal, so that they were able to understand.

Fourthly, the great virtue of the parable is that it compels a person to think

for him or herself. A parable doesn’t think for the person but encourages

people to make their own interpretations and to discover the truth for

themselves, making the message really theirs.

After Jesus had been with the crowd, he meets privately with his disciples to

evaluate the people’s response and the disciples understanding of the

parable. How did you understand the parable?

What the sower is sowing is the word of God. The soil is the receiver of the

word. But when we are already Christians the question of the parable is,

How is the soil in your heart continuing to receive the word of god every

day? How ready are you to share the word of god with others?

The parable mentions four kinds of ground.

The hard ground at the side of the road. The rocky ground. The ground that

was full of thorns and the fertile ground.

The fields in Palestine were in the form of long, narrow strips; these strips

we divided by little paths, which were the rights of way; the result was that

they became beaten as hard as stone by the feet of those who used them…

the seeds had no chance to grow. Another way of sowing in Palestine, a sack

was put on the back of a donkey, a hole was cut in the corner of the sack;

and the beast was lead up and down as the seed flowed out… the birds come

and ate from them.

I wonder what makes the soil of our hearts hard like a road where the

seed is unable to penetrate?

What is falling out of our spiritual bag?

I wonder what the birds represent? 

What is eating away the seeds of our spiritual life?

Much of Galilee is a narrow skin of earth over a shelf of limestone rock. In

many fields the outcrop of the rock through the shallow soil could be seen.

Seed which fell in the rocky ground, germinated all right; but because the

soil was so shallow and held so little nourishment and moisture, the heat of

the sun withered the sprouting seed and it dies.      

I wonder how do you survive in a rocky world, without much capability of

spiritual germination?

How do you nourish and moisten your spiritual life?

What’s burning you out?

If a Palestinian farmer was lazy, and the ground was full of thorns, he could

cut off the top of the fibrous rooted weeds; he could have even burned the

tops off, and the field might look clean; but below the surface the roots were

still there; and in due time the weeds revived all their strength. Weeds grow

with such a speed that they choke the life out of the seed.

Are we packing our life with such a multiplicity of interests that there is no

time left for Christ? The more complicated life becomes, the more necessity

is to see that our priorities are in the right order.

I wonder what the thorns represent for us today?

Perhaps all those things that take priority over God, like our busy schedules,

work, sports, entertainment, shopping, talking online or on the phone,

watching television, playing video games, surfing the web, texting, you tell

me!

What is choking our spiritual life, that doesn’t allow us to breathe the breath

of God? Doesn’t trying to understand God’s mind, heart and purpose for us,

deserve at least equal time as any of those things? It’s not having time, like

weeds taking over our lives and choking reality?

And then, there is the good, clean, deep soil in which the seed flourished.

I wonder, what makes our ground fertile?

What gives us spiritual growth?

According to the text: We must hear the word, we cannot hear unless we

listen, (what God want to say to us, not just what we want to hear).

We need to receive the message in our hearts, so that we can bring it from

our hearts to our minds.  The mind is a dangerous machine, whenever the

mind hears something that it does not want to hear it automatically closes

its door. To shut the mind to truth we do not want to hear is the straight

road to disaster.

When the message of God is in our hearts and in our minds then we can put

the word into action by living it! Nothing speaks louder than our actions!

The message of this parable is to end despair. Sometimes it seems that our

efforts achieve no results, it seems that much of our labor is wasted. This is

how the disciples were feeling, when they saw Jesus banished from the

synagogue and was regarded with suspicion.

But this parable said to them and says to us, be patient! Do your work!

Sow the seed. Leave the rest to God. The harvest is sure.”

What, then, would be the one thing which flashed out to the crowd who

heard it for the first time beside the sea of Galilee?

How about… although part of the seed never grew, the fact remained that at

the end of the day there was a splendid harvest.”

                                              The Gospel of Mark, William Barclay, pg.84-97.