Parables are a central aspect of Jesus’ teaching. Though Mark’s gospel is relatively sparse on parables compared with the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the ones Mark does articulate do not carry any less weight. This Sunday we will look at Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the soil in Mark 4:10-20 and begin to unpack one perspective on how this parable applies to us.
Eugene Boring describes the parables of Jesus in this way:
“In the preaching of Jesus, parables were not vivid decorations of a moralistic point but were disturbing stories that threatened the hearer's secure mythological world -- the world of assumptions by which we habitually live, the unnoticed framework of our thinking within which we interpret other data [Boring, New Interpreter's Bible: Matthew, 299].”
In a close reading of Mark, the parable of the sower works on multiple levels. It speaks to a very real situation for Jesus’ time and place, and to Mark’s own audience. It also alludes to the challenges of following Jesus that Mark will return to in later parts of the story.
An interpretation that is common ground for most studies of this parable is the call to “be the good soil,” and is often rendered as the conclusion. But Mark does not leave the story there. The narrative of the Gospel will lead the audience into situations that represent each soil type and will narrate the disciple’s encounter. To Mark the locations of scattered seed and the various soil types are not just a metaphor, they are very real.
At the foundation of Jesus’ explanation of this parable in the metaphor of “the way,” the discipleship metaphor that has been operative since the beginning of the story. The word hodos, often translated as path, is written in both verse 4 and verse 15. This is the first location of the scatter seed and the first level of opposition to the “word” Jesus is sowing.
Jumping to Mark chapter 8, we find Jesus and his disciples are “on the way [8:27].” We hear Jesus’s question about identity and Peter’s confession. Jesus has just sown the word through teaching the disciples when, immediately, the adversary (the satan) makes a move, and appears in the form of Peter’s “blindness,” his inability to understand the teaching of Jesus - “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things (8:33)."
“We are now witnessing the enactment of the parable, for throughout the discipleship catechism, Mark will make allusions to each of the three obstacles. Jesus here has explained ‘the word’ plainly to those one the way (8:32a), and Satan is challenging him (Myers, Binding the Strongman: A Political Readings of Mark’s Story of Jesus, 245).”
This also happens to us. Perhaps far more often than we’d be willing to admit, once we understand what’s happening, eyes and ears in tune with the rhythms of God’s unfolding kingdom.
This is not meant to dredge up guilt, only to point out that this parable, and its application, are alive and well in out midst. Anything that opposes the teachings of Jesus and our call to follow, can be understood as that same adversary coming and snatching the word from us. Anything that would “blind us” from what God desires for the world - ultimately healing and wholeness - is adversarial to the Gospel and should be treated as “the satan.”
I will unpack the rocky soil this Sunday. We will encounter the thorns on October 13th when we hear the story of Jesus’ encounter with a rich individual.
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