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| Vincent van Gogh Harvest in Provence (1888) |
- 1 Samuel 15:34 - 16:13 and Psalm 20 •
- Ezekiel 17:22-24 and Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15 •
- 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17 •
- Mark 4:26-34
Many of Jesus’ parables appear in all of the first three Gospels. In this
week’s Gospel reading, however, there is a parable unique to Mark. It comes at
the end of a chapter that begins with the well known parable of the sower, a parable that
Matthew and Luke also record. Mark then uses the same image of seed planted in
the ground to turn in a different direction. ‘The kingdom of God is like this’,
Jesus says, and invites us to dwell on something both utterly familiar and
deeply mysterious. We plant seeds, and after a time we harvest the crop that they
produce. Sprouting and growing is essential to our success, yet though we are wholly reliant on this process, it happens quite independently of our labor.
The sower in Mark's parable is anonymous. He represents everyone and anyone. What matters is the
seed, and its mysterious power to produce grain. The message seems clear.
Christians believe that in the age-old struggle with ignorance, evil and death,
truth and goodness will be victorious in the Kingdom of God. The life and death
and Resurrection of Jesus guarantee this. In the ‘present dispensation’, however, we have to await their final triumph, and while we do, our task is to
witness to that hope by simply‘sowing the seed’ in our own time and place.
In our spiritual
‘labors’, as in all our other endeavors, is hard not to look for tangible
evidence that our efforts are bearing fruit. Yet Mark’s parable aims to stop us
thinking in just this way. We should be content to be sowers who can ‘sleep and
rise night and day’ confident that the ways of God, which we cannot fathom, are
always at work in bringing our witness to fruition. As St Paul tells the
Corinthians in the Epistle -- ‘Walk by faith and not by sight’. ‘From
now on’, he says, ‘regard no one from a human point of view’ as regards success
and failure, because ‘if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation’.
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