Scripture Daily

Context No. 473 of 4322 · Mark

Context · Reflection

Mark 4:1-9: in context

1Again he began to teach by the seaside. A great multitude was gathered to him, so that he entered into a boat in the sea and sat down. All the multitude were on the land by the sea. 2He taught them many things in parables, and told them in his teaching, 3“Listen! Behold, the farmer went out to sow. 4As he sowed, some seed fell by the road, and the birds came and devoured it. 5Others fell on the rocky ground, where it had little soil, and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of soil. 6When the sun had risen, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. 7Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. 8Others fell into the good ground and yielded fruit, growing up and increasing. Some produced thirty times, some sixty times, and some one hundred times as much.” 9He said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Jesus sits in a boat and teaches the crowd on the shore with the most famous of his parables: a farmer goes out to sow, scattering seed across his field, and the seed lands on four different kinds of ground. Some falls on the packed path and the birds snatch it away. Some falls on rocky ground with little soil, springs up fast, and then, having no root, is scorched and withers when the sun comes up. Some falls among thorns, which grow up and choke it, so it yields nothing. And some falls on good soil and bears fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold. Then Jesus says, whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.

The thing to notice is what stays the same and what changes. The seed is the same in every case; it is the word, and it is good. The sower is the same, and he is generous, flinging seed everywhere. The only variable is the soil. The identical word produces four completely different outcomes depending entirely on the condition of the ground it falls on. And that is sobering, because three of the four soils fail. Only one bears fruit. The word can be snatched away before it takes hold, or spring up in shallow enthusiasm that has no root and dies the moment trouble or heat arrives, or take root and then be slowly strangled by the thorns of competing concerns, until it produces nothing at all. The problem, in every failed case, is never the seed. It is the soil.

That turns the parable into a diagnostic question I cannot dodge: what kind of soil is my heart? Is it hard-packed, so the word never really penetrates? Shallow, all quick excitement with no root, so my faith withers whenever things get hard? Or, and this is the one that catches the comfortable, is my soil full of thorns, the word genuinely rooted but being quietly choked by the cares and distractions and hungers competing for the same ground, so that it bears no fruit? The same word is falling on all of us. Which soil am I, and if the good seed in me is bearing little or nothing, what thorns have I let grow up around it that are slowly choking it out?

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