“He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.” Mark 4:26-34

Parables, on the other hand, are useful when the truth you want to share is difficult – whether difficult to hear, comprehend, or believe. I don’t know if Emily Dickinson had parables in mind when she wrote her poem on telling the truth “slant” but she just might have:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Jesus describes the coming Kingdom of God in parables because he knows the reality it introduces is unexpected and that his hearers can’t really take it in all at once. Parables, as Eugene Peterson has said, are in this sense like narrative time bombs. You hear them – tick – wonder about them – tick – think maybe you’ve got it – tick – and then as you walk away – tick – or over the course of the next day or so – tick – and all of a sudden the truth Jesus meant to convey strikes home – boom! – almost overwhelming you with its implications or, per Dickinson, blinding you with its vision.”  (David Lose, In the meantime web site, Preach The Truth Slant, June 8, 2015)

When you break a bone in your arm, why does it heal?  What is the process that the body goes through to heal a broken bone?  I wish I knew, but I don’t know what the process is – I just know that if I break my bone, the body will go through a mysterious process to heal itself.  And why does hair grow where I don’t want it, and not grow where I need it most?  I don’t need hair inside my ear – I really don’t.  But there it is, more and more every year.  But the top of my head, well, that it a veritable waste land.  Ok, let’s not talk about something as complicated as the body healing a bone, or hair growing on my body, what about the process of growing a seed?  Why does a seed produce a plant, tree, or bush?  A small, insignificant seed can produce something as small and invasive as a dandelion, or as magnificent as a sequoia tree.  How does it do that?  From something so small, something really magnificent can grow and flourish.

The Kingdom of God, if we listen to Mark’s account of the parables of Jesus this morning, the Kingdom of God is about growth, from something small and seemingly insignificant, to something great.  But the Kingdom is also about growth that is out of our control, it is beyond our “best efforts”.  God will see to the growth, and God will see to the harvest.  We simply need to trust God and recognize that a harvest is being prepared.  So what are we to do, then?  Well, it all comes back to the seed.  The mysterious “power of God” is the “seed” – the seed that has been implanted inside me, inside you, through the word of God, through our baptisms, through the bread and wine of Holy Communion, through the presence of the Holy Spirit.  All of those things, reading the bible, taking communion, having our children baptized, all might seem like small potatoes in comparison to the events and the accomplishments of the world.  But they are huge in laying the seed of Jesus’ love and grace upon another, inside another, that may lead them to accomplishing great things.

Pastor Dave

 A Study on the Book of Hebrews

“Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16

Though now ascended up on high, He bends on earth a brother’s eye; Partaker of the human name, He knows the frailty of our frame. Our fellow-suff’rer yet retains, A fellow-feeling of our pains; And still remembers in the skies, His tears, his agonies, and cries. In ev’ry pang that tends the heart, The Man of sorrows had a part;    He sympathizes with our grief, And to the suff’rer sends relief.

Those are the words from a Scottish Psalter.

To sympathize is to have a common feeling — to be able to feel what another feels; to be affected by feelings similar to those of another. We sympathize with our friends who are in distress; we feel some pain when we see them pained, or when we are informed of their distresses, even at a distance — even if we are disconnected by space and time. This is what Jesus is able to do for you and me — to experience pain jointly with us. The exalted High Priest suffers together with the weaknesses of the those who are being tested and brings active help — again I refer you to 1 Corinthians 10:13. There is power in the human ability to sympathize — for it suggests the ability, the power to enter into another’s emotional experiences. When we have this ability to feel what others are feeling, then we can respond to their need with a “knowing”.

People who have true “sympathy” generally do not say, “I know how you feel.” Because since they know how you feel, they also know how unhelpful it is to hear someone say, “I know how you feel.” True sympathy is a fairly quiet, time-intensive, presence-intensive way of being. True sympathy is the ministry of “presence” — the ability to be with someone, and not necessarily to say anything — just to be with them — reminding them that no one needs to go through any suffering alone — and reminding them that Jesus comes to us in each person who chooses to be present with us at just the right times.

Pastor Dave