The parables

Four parables on one shore; one argument about who can hear, and what the kingdom looks like when you can.

Pre-session video

Mark 4 is Mark's parables chapter. Sitting in a boat, with the crowd on the shore, Jesus tells four parables — the sower, the lamp under the bushel, the seed growing secretly, the mustard — and gives one short, hard explanation between them about why he is teaching this way. The chapter is shorter than Matthew's and Luke's parable collections, but its argument is sharp.

What holds it together is a question about hearing. Listen! Mark begins the sower at 4v3, and let anyone with ears to hear, listen. The kingdom is for those who can hear. The teaching method is not designed to make hearing easy; it is designed to find out who is already listening. And once you have heard, the four parables together draw a picture of a kingdom that is small, scattered, mostly hidden, eventually unmissable.

Three things to watch for

The first is the field, in the sower. Most readings concentrate on the soils — am I rocky? am I shallow? am I thorny? — and miss that the sower is throwing seed everywhere. The point is the recklessness of the sowing. The kingdom is not parsimoniously distributed.

The second is the lamp. Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed? Of course not. Mark places this saying immediately after the sower's explanation, and the connection is the point. The kingdom is hidden, but the hiddenness is temporary; what is hidden will be revealed. The hearer has work to do in the meantime.

The third is the mustard. Not the cedar of Lebanon, not the great tree of Daniel — a scruffy bush. The kingdom is not a kingdom of impressive grandeur. It grows in the corners of fields where you would not have planted it. Birds nest in it; but they are the birds of the air, the unlikely beneficiaries. The smallest seed; the largest of garden plants; the political joke is in the comparison.

Exegetical key video

Practice for the week

Three to choose from, or write your own. Choose one parable from the four; live with it for the week; notice where it surfaces. Or: spend ten minutes each day this week sitting in silence with the question where is the kingdom growing in my life right now? Or: listen to one person this week who is usually talked over; notice what you hear when you stop talking.

Materials for this session

Facilitator brief, participant workbook, and slides are available to facilitators and pilot participants on request; final downloadable versions will appear here once permissions on the scripture text settle.