The last post, dealing with what is to be gleaned from the Gospel of Mark, ended with:
Jesus proclaimed the nearness and the imminence of the kingdom of God. Jesus told his disciples that they would enlist others. Jesus drove out unclean spirits and healed the sick. Jesus taught that his disciples participate communally in the soliciting and the bestowal of eternal forgiveness. Jesus taught that experience is understandable.
4:1-34) This section is a series of parables. The parables, which are described as Jesus' way of communicating with the masses, are interspersed with statements describing how the disciples are given more thorough explanations than the people at large. Even here, however, there is a subtext to the effect that no thoroughness of explanation would ever be comprehensive. After Jesus' first telling of the Parable of the Sower, we have:
"And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables." This is capped off with an ominous passage from Isaiah.
However, it seems to be meant that the ability to "know the mystery" is not as definitive as it sounds. Jesus could scarcely be described as patient with the disciples when he embarks on the promised explanation: "Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?"
At this point the narrator seems to lose focus on the use of pronouns translated as "them." The first of these "them's," as recounted above, is the disciples receiving the explanation of the (somewhat vague) imagery of the Parable of the Sower. The next "them" denotes the hearers of the following:
"Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick? For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad." This "parable" would seem fitting indeed for the disciples, but the proper notion of the intended hearers might be borne upon the immediately following statement: "If any man have ears to hear, let him hear."
Jesus seems to be challenging any and all hearers to challenge themselves respectively to understand what he is teaching--indeed, it seems that this emphasis on exerting oneself in understanding is the main thing that Jesus is relating. The distinction between the great multitude and the lesser company of disciples is as fluid as the narrator's use of pronouns--seemingly used here of the crowds, and yet here of the disciples. "Take heed what ye hear," says Jesus, and "with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given. For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath."
As I said, the narrator has not specified the use of the "them" denoting Jesus' audience at any particular moment, and without explicit description the oration of Jesus has slipped from that directed to the disciples to that directed to the crowd, such that the narrator ends with:
"And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it. But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples."
The upshot is that this series of parables is not so much about the content of the parables, but rather about the message latent in the very methodology of Jesus' parable-telling. Jesus is really teaching about the search for understanding, and more specifically he is teaching about the need for persistence and fearlessness in understanding. "Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given. For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath."
The section we are dealing with here might be recapitulated precisely along the lines of it being not really a series of teachings, but rather a series of lessons about learning.
The Parable of the Sower is on its face a parable about what causes people to ignore or to forsake the word, but the greater thrust of this section is about how people can defy those obstacles, rather than merely fall prey to them.
The Parable of the Lamp is about how truth will out--and this being the ordinance of God. The Parable of the Sown Seed is about the essence of God's kingdom exerting itself intrinsically. The Parable of the Mustard Seed is about the essence of God's kingdom exerting itself irrepressibly.
In all of these parables, and in their implications for humanity, is expressed the fundamentally benign and accessible nature of God's Creation to human understanding--if people will address the matter so. If, on the other hand, any person shunts aside his or her (potentially expandable) capacity for understanding--if they become "he that hath not"--then from them "shall be taken . . . even that which he hath."
Jesus proclaimed the nearness and the imminence of the kingdom of God. Jesus told his disciples that they would enlist others. Jesus drove out unclean spirits and healed the sick. Jesus taught that his disciples participate communally in the soliciting and the bestowal of eternal forgiveness. Jesus taught that experience is understandable, though perhaps only incrementally so.
This gets us through Chapter 4, verse 34.
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