Active listening

Mark 4:10-20

¹⁰ When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. ¹¹ He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables ¹² so that, ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”

¹³ Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? ¹⁴ The farmer sows the word. ¹⁵ Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. ¹⁶ Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. ¹⁷ But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. ¹⁸ Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; ¹⁹ but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. ²⁰ Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”

Like all Jesus’ parables, this is a metaphor. If you only passively hear the words that Jesus said, you get an odd story about a farmer. To hear what Jesus is saying, his hearers have to make the connection between the farmer, his seed and the soil that receives it and something much more significant that Jesus is saying. As with all metaphors, Jesus’ hearers have an active part to play. When Jesus’ disciples come to him and ask, they become like the good soil receiving the “secret of the kingdom”, eventually understanding it and producing a great harvest.

God seems to want an active relationship with us. That includes actively listening to what he says. Mark’s Gospel is full of references to scriptures where the most significant bit is just after the part he quotes, allusions to scriptures that reveal the significance of what I’m reading, and unanswered questions where the scriptures answer that only God does what Jesus is doing. If I look where Mark is pointing, if I come to Jesus and ask what it means, if I seek him with all my heart (Deuteronomy 4:29), I’ll see that God himself has come into his world as one of us, asking me to follow him through death to resurrection life.

Thank you, Father, that you love to reveal yourself. Jesus, I love that you came to look for people like me. Holy Spirit, I love that you live life in me and with me. I want to walk with you today, as we walk together through your word, and through my day.

Written by David Cornell