St Theodore's Sermon

	St Theodore's Wattle Park

Sermon of the Week

14/5/00

Success and Failure in Gospel Ministry Mark 4:1-12

   You'd have to say that Jesus' ministry was a success. Here in Mark 4 there are so many people flocking to hear him that he even finds himself being pressed into the water of the lake, so that he has to get the disciples to bring a boat for him to get into. People are flocking to hear him, willing to endure hunger and thirst because they're hungry for God's word - here is the evangelist's dream. What more could you ask for?

   And yet as Jesus proceeds to teach them, there's a sadness in the story he tells - reinforced by his brief commentary on the purpose of parables in vs 10-12. What on the surface might appear to be a charming story of rural life, has a barb to it. It contains a warning to us, the hearers, to be careful about how we listen to God's word and how we persevere in following that word so it bears much fruit in our lives.

   It's really a parable that points out how often, and how easily, the divine seed is destroyed - this is why there's a deep sense of grief and sorrow as we hear the story again.

   I guess we shouldn't be surprised that Jesus would be sad when he sees the fate of the word of God. Here he is preaching and teaching to these eager listeners, yet he knows that after he's finished and moved on to another town, and they've gone back to their homes and families, few of them will take his words and apply them to their lives. Not many of them will see, the way the disciples did, that Jesus has the words of eternal life.

   And how sad, that Jesus' coming for all people should be ignored by the majority of those people. That in the end the majority of his own people should reject him.

   Yet we find that as he tells them this story even the disciples don't understand. They come up to him when he's alone and ask him about these parables he's been telling.

   What does he say? He gives this enigmatic answer. "To you has been given the secret of the Kingdom of God, but to those on the outside everything is said in parables." Now you may have thought that parables were told to help people understand. That they were simple everyday examples that teach the deeper truths that Jesus wanted people to learn. Earthly stories with a heavenly meaning. But here, Jesus says 'no', he teaches in parables so that those on the outside would be ever seeing and never perceiving, ever hearing but never understanding. The parables by themselves won't lead to salvation. If they did then everyone who heard them would repent and be forgiven. There'd be no need for Jesus to die on the cross. No, parables are simply an invitation to faith. An invitation to seek further, to understand the meaning behind them. To ask so understanding and faith would be given, to seek so they might find, to knock so the door would be opened to them. That's why at this stage even the disciples don't understand, because they're still at the stage of seeking out the truth. But they are seeking it out and it will come as they spend more time with Jesus.

   But then Jesus turns to their understanding of this particular parable, because it actually touches on the reason behind the answer he's just given them. He says if you don't understand this parable how will you understand any of them? Why is that? What is there about this parable that sets it apart from the rest? It isn't that it's particularly easy to understand compared to the rest. No, I think it's because to understand the parables you first have to be good soil. That is, you have to listen carefully and then persevere in hearing and following.

   When we moved into our little terrace house in Nth Fitzroy, back in the early 70s, our back yard was covered in concrete, as many inner city backyards were in those days. But we decided it'd be nice to have a bit of garden out the back. So we dug up a strip around the yard and planted some plants. Well, among the things we planted were some strawberries. We planted them and then waited for summer to come and bring with it a nice crop of strawberries for our dessert. But they never came. So we waited for the next year, thinking that maybe the plants were too young. But again, no strawberries. The plants looked healthy enough, but they just didn't bear any fruit. Well, this was a bit puzzling until one day one of our friends lent me a soil test kit. And when I tested the soil I discovered that the acidity was all wrong, and trace elements were non-existent. Basically the soil was no good. It had been buried under concrete for so long, I guess, that all the goodness had been leached out of it. It didn't make any difference that the strawberry plants were top quality. What mattered was the quality of the soil they were planted in.

   That's what, Jesus explains, this parable is all about. When God's word is preached, what matters isn't just the quality of the word, but the soil onto which it falls.

   So lets think about the different types of soil that Jesus describes. First there's the path "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." Now paths aren't bad things. It's quite a good thing to have a path to follow when Sue takes us on a bushwalk. If we didn't I'm sure we'd soon be lost altogether. Paths have an important function: for people to walk on. They're a means to get from one place to another. Well some people are like that. They hold key positions. They're influential. It's important that you know them if you're to get through to someone else. But occasionally those people can end up with hearts like a path. Hearts that are beaten down, even asphalted over. Oh, they play their part in human life. They hold important positions. They're there when you need someone to network with. No-one can blame them for being influential, just as no-one can blame a path for being hard, for not being a field. But that which is an advantage in one area can be a disadvantage in another. The fact is that a seed can't take root on a well-beaten path. A person who is only a path through which the daily traffic passes, or a busy street where people go rushing by, hour by hour, where there's never a moment of rest, will hardly provide the soil in which the word of God can grow.

   Anyone who can't give up even 15 minutes a day to be receptive soil, to allow themselves to be plowed, to wait for the seed that God will drop into their furrow, has actually lost the game from the outset. The same goes for those who find it hard to set aside Sunday mornings on a weekly basis to come aside and be still and listen to God speak. There's a great danger for us in our busy lives to think that because we're busy we're doing something that matters. Or to think that the things we have to do right now are the most important. But traffic, and hustle and bustle, aren't fruit. They're just lost motion. When the harvest comes and God gathers the wheat into his barns, their busy streets will be empty and deserted, with just a few weeds sprouting from cracks in the gutter.

   But let's not forget what Jesus says about the birds that flock around to pick up the loose grain. It's not just busy and important people whose hearts are hardened to the gospel, who fail to hear the word and take it in. This also happens when we're too busy to give it time to sink in. One of the things you discover when you read the biographies of the great Christian leaders of the past is the time and attention they gave to reading God's word and to praying. I don't know about you, but what I find is that so often I sit down to read the Bible or to pray and 10 seconds into the time some stray thought comes in, about something that's coming up in the parish, or something I saw on TV last night or I read in the newspaper that morning and whoosh, what I'm reading or praying about is gone, picked up by one of the birds that are hovering there ready to strike at the seeds fallen on the ground.

   You see reading and hearing God's word is demanding. It requires our full attention. We have to persevere with it. The same way we need to cut up and chew on a piece of steak if we're not to choke on it. We need to think it through the way we do in a bible study where we struggle with the text as we seek to understand and apply God's word to our lives. //

   But this isn't the only thing that happens when the word is preached. Sometimes when a person hears the word of God it touches something inside them and they get excited. He says they receive it with joy. But the trouble is, there's no depth there. What's been touched has perhaps been an emotional trigger, or that desire for the spiritual that exists in all of us. But it goes no further. As soon as they begin to live the Christian life they find that the emotional high, or the spiritual feelings aren't enough. Life's harder than that. Conversion involves dying to self. It involves being at odds with the world. It involves a sword that comes between those who respond and those who don't. And so when trouble or persecution come, these people find they can't cope. They don't want trouble, they want excitement and joy. Their experience is essentially self-centred. They don't seek after God, they seek after their favourite preacher or their favourite song leader or organist, or their favourite sacred site, whether it be some building, some cathedral, or home church, or some beautiful part of nature. But in the end they discover that these things can't sustain them through hard times and they shrivel up and drop away.

   Then there are those in whom the seed is truly sown, but it falls among thorns. That is, the seed of the word grows, but other seeds are allowed to grow along with it. So what are these other seeds, these thorns and thistles? Jesus describes them as "the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things." That is, they're all things that we hang on to that take the place of dependence and faith in God. The worries of this life are ordinary things like health and children and husbands and wives and mothers and fathers. Things that all of us worry about to one degree or another. But sometimes we become so worried about them that we forget that God is in control of the world. We fail to trust him to look after us and our loved ones. Maybe we get so worried that we even forget to pray about it! We expend all sorts of effort trying to solve our problems and never even think of taking them to God, or of sharing them with our Christian brothers and sisters. Secondly there's the deceitfulness of wealth. Again, those who are wealthy, or trying to become wealthy can so easily be led astray, to trust their wealth to give them security, when in fact the only real security they can have, comes from God. God is the only one who can make you secure. None of us knows whether we'll even be here tomorrow. So the promised security of wealth is an illusion. It's a mist that passes as the sun rises in the sky. Thirdly the desires for other things. What could be more appropriate to our day, when the desire for more and more and more worldly goods is provoked in us daily through the TV, radio, newspapers, movies, advertising on our roadsides and in our public transport, in our letter boxes and our supermarkets. It's very hard to resist the subtle and not so subtle temptations to want more and more. To be unsatisfied with our lot. Yet Paul tells us that "godliness with contentment is great gain."

   By contrast there are some who hear the word, accept it and produce a crop. These are the people who take in what they hear and hang on to it. It's almost as if this group is the negative image of the other three. These are those whose life has time for meditation on God's word. These are those who take seriously God's promises. Who count on God's word in their lives. Who trust Jesus to break the chains that tie them to their present circumstances. These are those who resist the devil and all his works. Who are aware of the temptations, subtle and otherwise, of the world they live in, who are content with what God gives them. Who seek to use the gifts they have to further God's purposes not just their own. These are those who persevere when the chips are down. Who keep trusting even when trouble and persecution are their lot.

   And those who persevere, who receive and build on God's word in their lives, bear fruit out of all proportion to what they receive, 30, 60 even 100 fold.

   One last thing we need to notice about this and the parables that follow. This is addressed to those who preach and teach, who are the sharers of the gospel. Here and in the following sets of parables we see the lack of control that the farmer has over what is sown. We can't control either the gospel or its effects. There's an unpredictability in the response to the gospel that's out of our control. As much as we're responsible to plan, labour and look for growth, there are other forces at work that may be more determinative of the result than all our skill and effort. We play a part but it's only a part. To play that part is to risk oneself every time, with the possibility of frustration and failure or fulfillment and success. Yet, the gospel is God's word. And "as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, ¹¹so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it." So when the gospel is preached it will find fertile soil where it bears fruit - 30, 60 even a hundred times what was sown.

   For those who are preachers and teachers of the word that's a word of encouragement. But for all of us who are hearers of the word, its also a warning: to be sure that we listen to God's word in the first place, and that having heard it, we persevere in following it so that it bears much fruit in our lives.

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	Sermon of the Week
	14/5/00
	Success and Failure in Gospel Ministry	Mark 4:1-12

	You'd have to say that Jesus' ministry was a success. Here in Mark 4 there are so many people flocking to hear him that he even finds himself being pressed into the water of the lake, so that he has to get the disciples to bring a boat for him to get into. People are flocking to hear him, willing to endure hunger and thirst because they're hungry for God's word - here is the evangelist's dream. What more could you ask for?
	And yet as Jesus proceeds to teach them, there's a sadness in the story he tells - reinforced by his brief commentary on the purpose of parables in vs 10-12. What on the surface might appear to be a charming story of rural life, has a barb to it. It contains a warning to us, the hearers, to be careful about how we listen to God's word and how we persevere in following that word so it bears much fruit in our lives.
	It's really a parable that points out how often, and how easily, the divine seed is destroyed - this is why there's a deep sense of grief and sorrow as we hear the story again.
	I guess we shouldn't be surprised that Jesus would be sad when he sees the fate of the word of God. Here he is preaching and teaching to these eager listeners, yet he knows that after he's finished and moved on to another town, and they've gone back to their homes and families, few of them will take his words and apply them to their lives. Not many of them will see, the way the disciples did, that Jesus has the words of eternal life.
	And how sad, that Jesus' coming for all people should be ignored by the majority of those people. That in the end the majority of his own people should reject him.
	Yet we find that as he tells them this story even the disciples don't understand. They come up to him when he's alone and ask him about these parables he's been telling.
	What does he say? He gives this enigmatic answer. "To you has been given the secret of the Kingdom of God, but to those on the outside everything is said in parables." Now you may have thought that parables were told to help people understand. That they were simple everyday examples that teach the deeper truths that Jesus wanted people to learn. Earthly stories with a heavenly meaning. But here, Jesus says 'no', he teaches in parables so that those on the outside would be ever seeing and never perceiving, ever hearing but never understanding. The parables by themselves won't lead to salvation. If they did then everyone who heard them would repent and be forgiven. There'd be no need for Jesus to die on the cross. No, parables are simply an invitation to faith. An invitation to seek further, to understand the meaning behind them. To ask so understanding and faith would be given, to seek so they might find, to knock so the door would be opened to them. That's why at this stage even the disciples don't understand, because they're still at the stage of seeking out the truth. But they are seeking it out and it will come as they spend more time with Jesus.
	But then Jesus turns to their understanding of this particular parable, because it actually touches on the reason behind the answer he's just given them. He says if you don't understand this parable how will you understand any of them? Why is that? What is there about this parable that sets it apart from the rest? It isn't that it's particularly easy to understand compared to the rest. No, I think it's because to understand the parables you first have to be good soil. That is, you have to listen carefully and then persevere in hearing and following.
	When we moved into our little terrace house in Nth Fitzroy, back in the early 70s, our back yard was covered in concrete, as many inner city backyards were in those days. But we decided it'd be nice to have a bit of garden out the back. So we dug up a strip around the yard and planted some plants. Well, among the things we planted were some strawberries. We planted them and then waited for summer to come and bring with it a nice crop of strawberries for our dessert. But they never came. So we waited for the next year, thinking that maybe the plants were too young. But again, no strawberries. The plants looked healthy enough, but they just didn't bear any fruit. Well, this was a bit puzzling until one day one of our friends lent me a soil test kit. And when I tested the soil I discovered that the acidity was all wrong, and trace elements were non-existent. Basically the soil was no good. It had been buried under concrete for so long, I guess, that all the goodness had been leached out of it. It didn't make any difference that the strawberry plants were top quality. What mattered was the quality of the soil they were planted in.
	That's what, Jesus explains, this parable is all about. When God's word is preached, what matters isn't just the quality of the word, but the soil onto which it falls.
	So lets think about the different types of soil that Jesus describes. First there's the path "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." Now paths aren't bad things. It's quite a good thing to have a path to follow when Sue takes us on a bushwalk. If we didn't I'm sure we'd soon be lost altogether. Paths have an important function: for people to walk on. They're a means to get from one place to another. Well some people are like that. They hold key positions. They're influential. It's important that you know them if you're to get through to someone else. But occasionally those people can end up with hearts like a path. Hearts that are beaten down, even asphalted over. Oh, they play their part in human life. They hold important positions. They're there when you need someone to network with. No-one can blame them for being influential, just as no-one can blame a path for being hard, for not being a field. But that which is an advantage in one area can be a disadvantage in another. The fact is that a seed can't take root on a well-beaten path. A person who is only a path through which the daily traffic passes, or a busy street where people go rushing by, hour by hour, where there's never a moment of rest, will hardly provide the soil in which the word of God can grow.
	Anyone who can't give up even 15 minutes a day to be receptive soil, to allow themselves to be plowed, to wait for the seed that God will drop into their furrow, has actually lost the game from the outset. The same goes for those who find it hard to set aside Sunday mornings on a weekly basis to come aside and be still and listen to God speak. There's a great danger for us in our busy lives to think that because we're busy we're doing something that matters. Or to think that the things we have to do right now are the most important. But traffic, and hustle and bustle, aren't fruit. They're just lost motion. When the harvest comes and God gathers the wheat into his barns, their busy streets will be empty and deserted, with just a few weeds sprouting from cracks in the gutter.
	But let's not forget what Jesus says about the birds that flock around to pick up the loose grain. It's not just busy and important people whose hearts are hardened to the gospel, who fail to hear the word and take it in. This also happens when we're too busy to give it time to sink in. One of the things you discover when you read the biographies of the great Christian leaders of the past is the time and attention they gave to reading God's word and to praying. I don't know about you, but what I find is that so often I sit down to read the Bible or to pray and 10 seconds into the time some stray thought comes in, about something that's coming up in the parish, or something I saw on TV last night or I read in the newspaper that morning and whoosh, what I'm reading or praying about is gone, picked up by one of the birds that are hovering there ready to strike at the seeds fallen on the ground.
	You see reading and hearing God's word is demanding. It requires our full attention. We have to persevere with it. The same way we need to cut up and chew on a piece of steak if we're not to choke on it. We need to think it through the way we do in a bible study where we struggle with the text as we seek to understand and apply God's word to our lives. //
	But this isn't the only thing that happens when the word is preached. Sometimes when a person hears the word of God it touches something inside them and they get excited. He says they receive it with joy. But the trouble is, there's no depth there. What's been touched has perhaps been an emotional trigger, or that desire for the spiritual that exists in all of us. But it goes no further. As soon as they begin to live the Christian life they find that the emotional high, or the spiritual feelings aren't enough. Life's harder than that. Conversion involves dying to self. It involves being at odds with the world. It involves a sword that comes between those who respond and those who don't. And so when trouble or persecution come, these people find they can't cope. They don't want trouble, they want excitement and joy. Their experience is essentially self-centred. They don't seek after God, they seek after their favourite preacher or their favourite song leader or organist, or their favourite sacred site, whether it be some building, some cathedral, or home church, or some beautiful part of nature. But in the end they discover that these things can't sustain them through hard times and they shrivel up and drop away.
	Then there are those in whom the seed is truly sown, but it falls among thorns. That is, the seed of the word grows, but other seeds are allowed to grow along with it. So what are these other seeds, these thorns and thistles? Jesus describes them as "the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things." That is, they're all things that we hang on to that take the place of dependence and faith in God. The worries of this life are ordinary things like health and children and husbands and wives and mothers and fathers. Things that all of us worry about to one degree or another. But sometimes we become so worried about them that we forget that God is in control of the world. We fail to trust him to look after us and our loved ones. Maybe we get so worried that we even forget to pray about it! We expend all sorts of effort trying to solve our problems and never even think of taking them to God, or of sharing them with our Christian brothers and sisters. Secondly there's the deceitfulness of wealth. Again, those who are wealthy, or trying to become wealthy can so easily be led astray, to trust their wealth to give them security, when in fact the only real security they can have, comes from God. God is the only one who can make you secure. None of us knows whether we'll even be here tomorrow. So the promised security of wealth is an illusion. It's a mist that passes as the sun rises in the sky. Thirdly the desires for other things. What could be more appropriate to our day, when the desire for more and more and more worldly goods is provoked in us daily through the TV, radio, newspapers, movies, advertising on our roadsides and in our public transport, in our letter boxes and our supermarkets. It's very hard to resist the subtle and not so subtle temptations to want more and more. To be unsatisfied with our lot. Yet Paul tells us that "godliness with contentment is great gain."
	By contrast there are some who hear the word, accept it and produce a crop. These are the people who take in what they hear and hang on to it. It's almost as if this group is the negative image of the other three. These are those whose life has time for meditation on God's word. These are those who take seriously God's promises. Who count on God's word in their lives. Who trust Jesus to break the chains that tie them to their present circumstances. These are those who resist the devil and all his works. Who are aware of the temptations, subtle and otherwise, of the world they live in, who are content with what God gives them. Who seek to use the gifts they have to further God's purposes not just their own. These are those who persevere when the chips are down. Who keep trusting even when trouble and persecution are their lot.
	And those who persevere, who receive and build on God's word in their lives, bear fruit out of all proportion to what they receive, 30, 60 even 100 fold.
	One last thing we need to notice about this and the parables that follow. This is addressed to those who preach and teach, who are the sharers of the gospel. Here and in the following sets of parables we see the lack of control that the farmer has over what is sown. We can't control either the gospel or its effects. There's an unpredictability in the response to the gospel that's out of our control. As much as we're responsible to plan, labour and look for growth, there are other forces at work that may be more determinative of the result than all our skill and effort. We play a part but it's only a part. To play that part is to risk oneself every time, with the possibility of frustration and failure or fulfillment and success. Yet, the gospel is God's word. And "as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, ¹¹so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it." So when the gospel is preached it will find fertile soil where it bears fruit - 30, 60 even a hundred times what was sown.
	For those who are preachers and teachers of the word that's a word of encouragement. But for all of us who are hearers of the word, its also a warning: to be sure that we listen to God's word in the first place, and that having heard it, we persevere in following it so that it bears much fruit in our lives.


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