ROME IMPROVEMENT 6/13/2021

MORE POWER!  MORE GLORY!!  MORE SPIRIT!!!

 SURVEYING THE SITE—Mark 4:21-34

Between where we were last week and where we are this week is the parable of the sower. You know how it goes. A sower went out to sow, and he threw seed everywhere. He had mixed results. If you want to know more, you can read all about it at the beginning of chapter four.

After explaining everything to his disciples, Jesus makes a few oblique statements. Then he begins to tell us something about the kingdom or reign of God. Let’s listen.

READING THE BLUEPRINT

And Jesus was saying to them, “The lamp is not brought in in order that it might be put under the basket or under the bed/couch instead of putting it on the lampstand. Nothing is hidden when it is made visible; nor is anything secret when brought to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let that one hear. [Hear, O Israel, the Lord is one.]

And [Jesus] was saying to them, “See what you hear. With what measure you measure, it will be measured to you. And more will be added to you. Whoever has, more will come. And the one who has not, even what that one has will be taken away.” [“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” (‘The End’ by John Lennon and Paul Mccartney on ‘Abbey Road’)]

And he was saying, “Thus is the reign of God, like a man were to throw spore upon the earth and then should sleep and rise night and day, and the spore explode and grow. How [this happens] the man does not know. Of itself, the earth brings forth fruit—first a plant, then an ear, and then the fulfillment of the grain in the ear. Then, when [the plant] offers the fruit, immediately, he sends the sickle for the harvest [time] has come.

And he was saying, “In what way could we compare the reign of God? Or, in what parable should we present it? As to a grain of mustard, when it has been sown upon the earth, it is the least valuable of all the seeds upon the earth, and when it has been sown, it grows up and becomes the largest of the garden plants, and makes great branches, so that the birds of the air can tent under the shadow of it.”

And, with many such parables, he kept speaking to them the Word as they were able to hear. Apart from parables he would not speak to them; but in private, however, to his own disciples, he would explain all things.

ROUGHING IN THE HOUSE

If I am right and these readings are about the resurrected Jesus, then the light of the lamp might be a simile for Jesus. If you know about the resurrected Jesus and he were standing there in front of you, you wouldn’t want to deny him, hide his presence in the world, or renounce him, would you? You wouldn’t want to pretend that the resurrection had not occurred, would you? You would want people to know that God, whose presence was known but not seen, has been made visible, wouldn’t you? These verses seem to be bursting with Good News.

We all know that, according to the Bureau of Weights and Measures, a measure is a measure and that, when you barter, you get equal value for equal value, right? We know that we live in a world of the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” right?

PUTTING UP THE WALLS

With these parables, Jesus challenges us to reconsider the world we live in. Are we lifting up the light of Christ onto the lampstand? We are called to literally see what we have only heard in the past. We are called to encounter God’s word made visible, to get out of our boxes and concrete thinking. The world is not about measuring things out; it is not about bean-counting. It is not about accumulating at the expense of others. It is not about feathering our nests.

These verses between the parable of the sower and the passages of sowing and growing turn the expectations of the world and success upside-down. This week we witness a sower who is unaware of the spores that he sows; and yet, when the harvest appears in front of him, he takes advantage of it. He programs his “robotic” sickle to go out into the field because it is harvest time. He does nothing for the harvest he receives.

The measure he has given is returned to him with abundance. God’s grace, God’s undeserved love, overflows in us like the waters from the buckets in the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's. Once it has started in us, it can’t be stopped. The more you share God’s love, the more it grows.

Indeed, if that is what the reign of God is like, then you might compare it to an invasive weed that grows into a protective environment for God’s creatures where the disenfranchised find a place to tent, to belong, to find refuge from the “Have Gots” among God’s justified people of the “Have Nots”.

It is always amazing to me that Jesus tells parables “as the people are able to hear them”. So far, it has taken me sixty-nine years to find resolution here, and I’m still not sure I fully understand. But I do think that hearing the resurrected Jesus tell these parables makes more sense. Maybe the Messianic Secret isn’t really so secret after all: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Alleluia!

HANGING THE TRIM

Maybe we need to spend less time trying to make things happen and more time sharing the abundance of God’s love for us: “What a wonderful world this would be.” (Sam Cooke, et al.)

We do not do what we do in order to be saved. We do what we do BECAUSE we are saved.