How do we know?

HOW DO WE KNOW HOW?
(Mark 4.24-29)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The First Sunday after Pentecost: June 7, 2009

I'm dividing the Gospel reading this morning into two parts, starting with the first paragraph in your bulletin.

Listen for a word from God.
Jesus said to the crowd, "Listen carefully to what you hear. The amount you measure out is the amount you will receive – and more besides. To those who have, more will be given; from those who have not, what little they have will be taken away" (The Inclusive New Testament © 1994 Priests for Equality).

May God help us hear and live this word.

In lots of churches, after the Bible passage is read, the reader says, "The Word of the Lord." And the congregation dutifully responds, "Thanks be to God." Sometimes I wonder if anyone is listening. If they were, why would they say "Thanks be to God" after hearing something there seems to be no reason to be thankful for?

This is one of those passages. After Nan read it, she prayed for us, "May God help us hear and live this word." And I'm left with the question, "How do we know how?" Or, to expand that just a bit, "How do we know how to hear this word? How do we know how to live this word?" When this word seems to reinforce injustice – the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer and that's just how things are?

The only way I know how to hear and live this word is to do serious Bible study. I want to take you along on that trip with me. So we can try to figure out how we know how to hear and live this word.

When it comes to people who've written about the Gospel of Mark and about the parables of Jesus, I have three "conversation partners": a former Roman Catholic turned United Church of Christ member, a Presbyterian, and a bishop in the Anglican Church, otherwise known as the Church of England. I also have "live" conversation partners. I talk with Peter a lot. And every other week, I spend a couple of hours with a good friend. He's the pastor of the English language congregation of the Seattle Taiwanese Christian Church. He's half Anglo and half Venezuelan. We didn't meet this past week, so my conversation partners with the people who can't talk back to me.

The Presbyterian and the Anglican have a lot to say about this passage. And what they say Jesus meant has almost nothing in common. When there's no consensus among scholars about what Jesus is saying, how do we know how to hear and live this word?

The Anglican bishop takes Jesus' words at face value. He doesn't think Jesus is talking economics when he says those who have will get more and those who don't will have even the little they have taken away. The Anglican says Jesus is talking about faith. Imagine each of us has a seed of faith within us. He says if we ignore that seed, then it's likely that little bit of faith will wither. If we have no real commitment to living as Jesus teaches, even the small commitment will fade. Our faith will have no power in our lives (Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone, SPCK, 2001, p. 46).

But, if we go deeper into the faith we've already been given, we will receive more faith. If we keep going deeper, if Jesus becomes a true friend and not just an intellectual companion, then we'll receive more faith. To those who have more, more will be given (p, 46).

Say you used to run cross country. You practiced with the team and practiced on your own. You ate well. You kept yourself in shape. And then you stopped running and stopped eating well. Other things became priorities. Years go by. If you haven't kept practicing, you can't expect to wake up 20 years after your last race and decide that morning you're going to run a 10k. You stopped nurturing and growing the gift you had. You might be able to get it back again in some way. But after 20 years, cross country isn't very important to you. It has no power to shape how you live. It's the same with faith.


The Anglican says we hear this word as a call from Jesus to 'practice' our faith. We live this word by committing ourselves to go deeper and deeper into what strengthens our faith: prayer, mission, active participation in a faith community, building an honest and open relationship with the living God. So our faith can become alive and so it shapes everything we say and do.

What does the Presbyterian say? The opposite of his Anglican colleague. He says there's no way we can take these words of Jesus at their face value. This is where serious Bible study gets fun. When bright, competent scholars totally disagree with each other. The Presbyterian bases his conclusion on the first word Jesus says in this passage: Blepete. It's a great word. It's a Greek word that means "beware" or, in our translation, "listen carefully". What this Presbyterian says is that when Jesus begins a teaching with blepete, what follows will be something he totally disagrees with (Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, Orbis, 1988/2000, p. 178). Jesus says blepete – Beware! Listen carefully! – seven times in Mark's Gospel. Each time he does, it's like he's saying, "I'm about to say something that the powerful defenders of the status quo want you to accept without question. I'm telling you to question it. Reject it. Defy it. It's got nothing to do with God's dreams for this world."

According to the Presbyterian, how do we know how to hear this word? Not at face value. We hear this word as Jesus' warning never to believe that life is just unfair, so we just have to accept that as God's will (p. 178). And how does this scholar say we can live this word?

For that, we need to hear what Jesus says next.

Jesus said further, "The reign of God is like this: a sower scatters seed on the ground, then goes to bed at night and gets up day after day. Through it all the seed sprouts and grows without the sower knowing how it happens. The soil produces a crop by itself – first the blade, then the ear, and finally the ripe wheat in the ear. When the crop is ready, the sower wields the sickle, for the time is ripe for the harvest."

That clears everything up nicely, doesn't it? This shows why when we try to read the Bible on our own, we often give up in despair or frustration or boredom. What in the world does this parable about a seed have to do with what we've just been looking at? It's very confusing.

So I need to go back to my conversation partners.

The Anglican focuses on the word our version translates as "sprouts": Through it all the seed sprouts. It is also the word for arise – like the sower arose or got up every morning. And it's one of the common Greek words used to talk about resurrection. So in this parable, the writer hears Jesus talking about resurrection. Most of the Jews at the time would hear any talk of resurrection as the promise that soon Israel would be freed from the tyranny of the Rome Empire (p. 49). Most Jews in Jesus' day thought that liberation from Rome would take place through violence. This was not how Jesus understood resurrection. He knew a new freedom for all people would come with his resurrection, but violence would play no part in that freedom. To connect this with the first part of our reading this morning, perhaps if Jesus' listeners worked at deepening their faith like Jesus called them to do, they'd realize this different way to understand resurrection. So according to the Anglican, how do we live this word? Just like the people Jesus was talking to didn't understand what he meant by resurrection, so too we can never be sure we have a monopoly on religious truth. We can never assume we understand it all. We must always open ourselves to the new and the different. Always open ourselves to what the Spirit want to have rise up and sprout within us.


This story of the farmer and the seed is where the Catholic turned UCC guy makes an appearance. If the Anglican focused on the word for "sprout" or "rise", the UCC guy spends a lot of energy on a different Greek word. It's the word in this passage that's defined as "by itself": The soil produces a crop by itself (4.28). The Greek word is automate, from which we get the English word . . . automatic (Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable, Fortress Press, 1989, p. 368). Automate is used to describe times when something just seems to happen, without any visible cause. In the book of Joshua, the walls of Jericho fall down by themselves when Joshua blows a horn (Joshua 6.5). In the Book of Acts, doors open by themselves when an angel leads Peter out of prison before Herod can kill him (Acts 12.10) (Scott: p. 368). By itself means God is at work and mystery abounds.

And the UCC guy goes further. It shows how doing this kind of Bible study is like being a private detective. His research shows him that automate goes back to Hebrew Bible laws about the Sabbath. Especially when they talk about the practice of giving a Sabbath to the land. The book of Leviticus says, "Six years you shall sow your field, . . . and six years . . . gather in their yield' but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest for the land. . . . [Y]ou shall not sow your
field. . . .What grows by itself (automata) in your harvest you shall not reap" (Lev. 25.4). As anyone who has a vegetable garden knows, even if you don't plant any seeds after you've been planting them for a while, something always will spring up out of the ground. Automate. By itself. But why can't they pick the food that grows by itself in their own field? The book of Exodus gives the answer: "[T]he seventh year you shall let [the land] rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard and your olive orchard" (Exodus 23.10-11).

So where does all this automate talk get us? The UCC guys says all this by itself language makes this a parable about grace. What happens by itself is God's grace at work. God's love, God's compassion, God's justice. God's dreams.

According to the UCC guy, how do we know how to live this word? He says Jesus is telling us God's grace rains down upon us all. We go to bed and we get up. We see signs of life all around us which we've done nothing to create or nurture. We see signs of love around us, and we have no clue where it all came from. It's like it just happened. In this seventh year Sabbath for the land, we scatter no see in the field. Yet food grows out of the ground anyway. Automate. By itself. To feed the poor and the wild animals. From the bounty of God's grace. Trust this grace. Be thankful for this grace. Become people of grace. That's how we live this word.

And what of the Presbyterian who talked about blepete being the sign Jesus was about to disagree with what came next? He says if Jesus' parables are about showing us a picture of the kingdom of God, then this parable of the seed that grows by itself is a picture of "the revolutionary patience and hope of" God's reign (Myers: p. 179). This farmer plants some seeds. Then kind of hangs out. And when the time is right, the seed bears fruit by itself. And then the farmer takes the sickle and harvest the crop. God and us are partners in creating the harvest. We each do our part. What happens by itself is a mystery. It is God's invisible work. God's work produces the harvest. We plant the seeds. Which is very important. Because what the Presbyterian is saying is that we don't dutifully accept the status quo's definition of how the world works. We don't buy for one minute the lie that it's God's will that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. No. Followers of Jesus plant seeds. We plant seeds that bring our faith alive by making God and Jesus and the Spirit real and alive for us. We plant seeds of justice. And mercy. We plant seeds that may bear the fruit of homes for street people. Dignity for the forgotten. Belonging for the excluded. We plant the seeds. But the harvest is God's work. As all people who work for justice know, to avoid burning out takes "revolutionary patience and hope". And that's what my Presbyterianterian conversation partner says this parable is about. It's what he says God's dream for us is. To do our part. And then, with revolutionary patience and hope, look for signs of God's grace-filled response. So we might plant more seeds . . . and be patient and hopeful again.

How do we know how? How do we know how to hear these words of Jesus? How do we know how to live them? It depends on who we listen to? The Anglican, the Presbyterianterian, or the Catholic-turned UCC? Or a combination of any of them?

As followers of Jesus, the way we plant the seeds is to keep the conversation going. With people we agree with and people we don't. To keep reading these stories of Jesus. To keep engaging with conversation partners, both on paper and alive. To keep trying to do what's faithful. We plant some seeds. And we listen and watch for new life to spring forth. We listen and watch. For signs of a harvest. That new life that springs forth by itself. By the amazing grace of God.

Amen.