This Sunday we continue our cycle of readings in Mark’s Gospel and it’s interesting because most of the time in his Gospel, Mark presents Jesus as a man of action. As you may already know, Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of all the Gospels and it is a narrative that is very fast paced: Jesus is always on the move from one place to another, manifesting God’s kingdom in performing many miracles, healing and exorcisms.
And yet, I am saying that it’s interesting because this week we have come to a sort of a pause, or if you prefer, a kind of a parenthesis. Most of the fourth Chapter of Mark’s we have just read from is dedicated to Jesus’s teachings, and to the specific and sort of unique way Jesus taught: by using parables, or stories, images. We actually find three parables in this very chapter, and all of them are about planting and growing seeds as an illustration for what the Kingdom of God looks like.
And before we go any further, I would like to notice that it’s very nice, kind of touching, to hear those stories (at least two of them) on this joyful day when we gather to celebrate a baptism, because those stories are of course full of promise. They talk about the unexpected growth of a seed, that happens we don’t know how, in a way we cannot control and giving fruit beyond expectations. It connects with something very deep within ourselves, as it certainly did for the people who listened to Jesus: Simply put, it’s about the miracle of life, this amazement we may have when we farm or when we garden, and we get to observe the coming forth of fruit and flowers, or, to our even greater amazement, when a human being is born and we watch them beginning to grow into their own person to fulfill their own destiny. It’s a joy and a mystery that is beyond our comprehension – although it happens all around us and to us, constantly and consistently: Life is there and keeps bringing novelty, changes and transformation.
As Christians, it says even more to us. We know that in those parables, Jesus does not talk only about the miracle of life, but with that and beyond that, Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God. For Jesus – and it’s a beautiful thing to be reminded of on the day of a baptism – the Kingdom of God is given to us. We do nothing to earn it and we certainly cannot control it, but it’s pure grace – it only has to be received – and, again, this is what we do on the day of our baptism. Baptizing a young child (rather than an adult) makes us even more aware of the gift: You don’t need to have done great or even good things, you don’t need to know all the right things, you just have to come to God to be adopted as God’s child. On the day of baptism, we plant this little seed that is the grace of God and we trust God to do the work in the hearts of our children. If we are invited to be companions on the way, as parents, godparents, grandparents and also as a Christian community, there is certainly nothing we can do to control what God will do in the hearts of those we bring to God. It’s all about trust and letting go and waiting on God to do the work.
And I don’t know what you think but to me this is very interesting that in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus is a man of action, always on the move, always busy, yet Jesus teaches us to rest in God and to trust that God will do the work! We have seen last week that we are in this moment in the Gospel when Jesus is sending out his disciples to preach the kingdom of God and I can’t help thinking, well, what a strange thing to say when you’re hiring people that whatever they do, it will happen anyway! But it’s in this deep trust in the power of God that Jesus found his strength and energy to do all the things God called him to do – as so we are invited to the same trust to be Jesus’s true disciples.
Now there is more we need to notice about this passage of Mark’s Gospel. As I’ve said earlier, it’s kind of a pause, a parenthesis, a snapshot of Jesus’s teaching – and as we get ready to follow Jesus (in baptism) or as we re-examine (during this liturgical season) what it means to be a disciple, it’s important to think about about the heart of Jesus’s teaching – and I think this is what this passage does:
Mark uses this passage to tell us what Jesus taught – the kingdom of God – and how Jesus taught – by using parables, images, stories. And to me, this is what Mark wants to realize:
– The first thing Mark wants us to realize is that Jesus’s teaching wasn’t primarily moralistic. It’s interesting isn’t to listen to these parables because I think that one of the things we often assume about church is that church is here to teach us what to do, what is bad and what is good, but we see today that Jesus’s teaching was far from being moralistic. In Mark’s Gospel, we see that Jesus did not come on earth to tell people what to do, how they should behave, Jesus came to make us known the good news of the Kingdom of God – that God is at work in this world, within ourselves, even when we are still a very young child, or even when we are just a tree, a shrub or a seed. We see that Jesus’s teaching isn’t about right or wrong, bad or good, but Jesus’s teaching make manifest a new reality, a reality that is hidden to our eyes and yet is present in the midst of us.
– The second thing Mark wants us to understand is the way Jesus taught, using parables, images, and why Jesus taught this way. We often see in the Gospel that Jesus didn’t hesitate to tell things as they were to people when he thought they were wrong or when they were bothering him. And so what we need to understand is that when Jesus used images, it wasn’t because he didn’t dare to speak directly, the stories he told weren’t a way for him to sugarcoat something difficult. On the other way around, Jesus’s parables were there to manifest something beautiful. And we know that, right, that Jesus’s parables aren’t about us first, they are about the kingdom of God, that’s actually how they all start, with those words: “The kingdom of God is like…”
Jesus spoke in parables – and through the Gospels is still speaking to us – because that’s the way people could understand a reality beyond their understanding. Mark says that Jesus “spoke the word as [the people] were able to hear it”. We cannot apprehend, or fully apprehend, the kingdom of God with our senses or with our intelligence. So Jesus spoke first to people’s imagination and to their hearts. And so instead of trying to dig under the parable or the image to find the idea, or “what Jesus really meant”, we have to let Jesus’s words find their way inside of us. We cannot read his words to find a key to all our problems in life or to understand everything about God, but as we listen, we are drawn closer to the mystery of God’s revelation and God’s love to us. It takes time, it takes a life time.
– And so to me this is the third thing Mark would like us to realize, it is that it’s only in following Jesus that we can come slowly to an understanding: Mark says that Jesus “explained everything in private to his disciples”. To me, the sense of the parable of the seed is that it’s an image about what the word of God does inside of us. It grows little by little, until it is fully mature. We have to let it rest inside of us, and as the sower who does not know what happens when the seed falls in the ground, the word of God develops inside of us and gives birth to something new – and this something new is us born into God’s reality. As we discover more about the Kingdom of God, our shortcomings and sins are also revealed. The more we know about holiness, the more we realize our brokenness, but yet, again, it’s not so much about good and bad, as it it about transformation. Morality is about doing good things but it does not necessarily bring transformation. We can do good things on surface for different motives. But again, Jesus’s teaching isn’t about a moral life, it is about growing in a spiritual life. Jesus’s teaching is about the transformation of our being, or “conversion”. The revelation of the Kingdom of God always invites a response on our behalf and this response is conversion: Turning to Christ, which is exactly what we do on the day of our baptism and each time we renew our baptismal promises.
So let’s get started.