So, preaching on
agricultural messages to a bunch of farmers is fun…
You’re all the experts. I’m the amateur. What could
possibly go wrong?
Plus, some of Jesus’ metaphors seem counter-productive to
the way those of you who farm do it. I mean, again I’m no expert, and I don’t
really know about scattering seed nowadays, but I don’t see many of you walking
the fields, throwing it willy-nilly all over the place in the spring. The seed
companies might like that approach, just cover inch of soil with the stuff, but
I’m thinking it’s probably not the most efficient way. Also, this stuff about
rocky ground and paths is probably something those of you in the Red River
valley have trouble understanding. There are actually these things called rocks
that sometimes live in the ground in the soil.
Mind
blown.
I’m also hesitant to preach on the agricultural parables
because Jesus kind of jumbles them all together, and it’s hard to know where to
begin or end. There’s the seed being sowed in different places, there’s the
seed sowed and forgotten, and then there’s the mustard seed. It’s like Jesus
just gets on a roll and starts rambling off all the agricultural metaphors he
can muster one after another. Trying to follow all of this is kind of
challenging. Then, to make matters worse, there’s all this mystery and wisdom
in-between, a little bit about hearing and comprehending, about secrets and an
explanation of why he speaks in parables to an unbelieving world.
And you want me to keep worship to under an hour?! Each
of these demands about an hour! I hope you all brought your sleeping bags.
So rather than interpreting the agricultural metaphors
for you (after all, you’re the experts, remember!), instead I’m going to focus
on Jesus’ stated purpose for all of this. He quotes from Isaiah, scripture we
actually read here on Sunday morning a couple months ago (I’m sure you all remember
it like it was yesterday), saying that the purpose of these parables is that we
“may look, but not perceive, and my indeed listen, but not understand, so that
[we] may not turn again and be forgiven.”
Oh joy. So, outsiders are kept out, unable to understand,
because—well—they’re outsiders. The Gospel of the Lord!!
But this approach to reading a single verse outside of
the story doesn’t work here. That verse sounds kind of rough, like Jesus revels
in peoples’ confusion. But, when read with verse 22, something else happens. In
verse 22 Jesus says, “For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor
is anything secret, except to come to light.” That’s still mysterious, but now
we’re starting to get somewhere, like there’s resolution coming. Jesus
continues, "Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be
the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to those who have,
more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will
be taken away" (vs. 24-25).
Shakespeare made an entire play, Measure for Measure, on the back of verse 24, so I’m not going to
be able to sum everything up here for you, but the general thrust of Jesus’
words has to do with the how near we are to God’s kingdom. And for that reason Jesus
is in a heckuva hurry. He’s rattling off parable after parable, wisdom after
wisdom, and all of it is like a poorly written suspense novel whose payoff is
doubtful.
That’s what it comes down to: What is the payoff? Is the
payoff worth the suspense and mystery?
***
I don’t know about all of you, but I was incredibly
nervous about J.J. Abrams directing the new Star Wars movies—yes, this a
dramatic segue away from scripture but given the density of this reading today
I’m guessing most of you would rather I talk about Star Wars anyway. I was
nervous about J.J. Abrams because the guy is incredibly talented at drawing us
into mysteries—he sucks you in with an intriguing premise and builds it up to a
point of rapture until there’s no way he can do anything but let you down—and
then he lets you down. This is LOST in
a nutshell. He didn’t care where the story ended. What mattered was that people
were drawn in by increasingly intriguing and suspenseful mystery boxes planted
along the way. In the end, the writers could only cobble together a weak
explanation for it all, and we all collectively sighed. Is that it?
This is opposite of the Harry Potter series by the way, and a great indication of why I
love those books. Not only are they filled to the brim with Christian themes of
death and resurrection and love over power, and the like, but Rowling also knew
exactly where she was going from the beginning, so on a week where we lost Alan
Rickman one can reflect on the story of Severus Snape as a kind of secret not
unlike the one Jesus is keeping in the Gospel of Mark.
Now,
for those of you who are completely lost I will return from the sci-fi/fantasy
realm. It comes down to this: The reason mysteries payoff is because of the
resolution. Everything Jesus is saying matters only because of his death on the cross. So that critical verse 22,
“For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret,
except to come to light” is about how things appear to be versus how they
actually are. The cross reveals what is true. When Jesus dies his entire
witness is put to the test and three days later we find out whether or not it
is true. If it is true, then everything that speaks to truth speaks to God, and
everything that doesn’t doesn’t.
If
the ending works the mystery is justified; if it doesn’t work it isn’t. So,
when Jesus dies on the cross it embodies all the mysterious, deep, strange,
even magical moments in Mark’s Gospel—all the times where Jesus turns the world
upside down for people—and it points to that moment and says, “Here. Here is
your good news. Here is the thing that is disclosed. Here is the secret embodied
in God-in-the-flesh.” Jesus came not to offer wisdom through parables but so
that the parables would speak to the mystery of his death.
Human
beings think they want it clearly. Just
tell me how it is. We’re simple people; we like simple things. But simple
things don’t feed us very long; they’re sugar: it makes us feel good but the
crash is coming soon. What lasts is deep and mysterious.
This
week I was talking with somebody who isn’t much a church-goer, who believes in
God but like a lot of people doesn’t feel comfortable in the normal routine of
what we consider “church.” This person recently had a life-or-death moment and
realized that there was something they needed—an assurance that things were going
to be alright—and yet they found that what they needed was not any promise that
they would live. Nobody could promise that, and it wasn’t what mattered most to
them anyway. What mattered was that things were going to be OK, whether they
lived or whether they died.
This
is the mystery of the parables. This is all the farming metaphors wrapped up
together. Life—seeds, plants, animals and us—follows the same kind of logic.
Things live, they die; the real question is what happens next. Might we, like
God’s word, actually persist? That’s the crazy promise: God’s word, which came
down in the person of Jesus, creates us, holds us, redeems us, died for us,
brings us home, and finally raises us from death. We are seeds, we are plants,
we are dust. We are temporary. And yet there is a promise here that things are
OK; it’s a promise for those of us facing our imminent mortality and for those
of us who aren’t there right now. “For there is nothing hidden, except to be
disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light.” It will. It will
come to light.
The mystery is worth it. The resolution is worth the wait.
It’s better than LOST, better even
than Harry Potter. Because the
mystery has a conclusion worthy of the wait. That’s what awaits us.
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