Okay, this morning I kind of gave you my fantasy makeup of why Jesus told the story of the sower in the sea, kind of fantasizing about the discouragement of the disciples. I don't know that that's not true. You can't prove it, obviously, but it's an attempt to try to understand what Jesus himself might have been thinking. Mark, whether he knew what Jesus was thinking or not, wasn't very impressed with my presentation. And if you read his presentation, which is his own interpretation, you discover that he contradicts almost everything I said. Doesn't mean the both of us are wrong or we have to pick, but he's got a different point.

[01:09]

As he's setting up this story, remember, The theory I'm using is he uses the parable of the sower as the paradigm to understand the first 11 chapters of the gospel. And he's doing this because he believes that there are reasons why the gospel has not caught on. And he's going to break that down eventually into two major factors. And this comes out quite often in all these miracles. If you wonder why Mark has all these miracles, he has one right after the other, remember, starting almost as soon as the ministry of Jesus begins. He does those miracles to bring out this two-fold dynamic. One aspect of the dynamic, of course, is Jesus can do no miracles without faith on the part of the people.

[02:14]

That becomes real clear. He has the power of God and He can bring that power to bear on people who need healed, or people who need demons cast out of them, or even a time or two He can put nature in a different position with a storm or whatnot. But by and large, what Mark tells us is, if the people, either directly or indirectly, do not manifest faith in who Jesus is, then he is rendered powerless, literally. No place is this more pronounced, of course, than when he goes home. You know, local boy makes good, he's gonna go home, do a little reading in the synagogue, as everybody did when they came home. And apparently he did okay. Luke has the same story, but he plays it up very differently.

[03:22]

But apparently Jesus read, a little passage, And whatever happened after that, we don't know from Mark. Luke says he read Isaiah 61, which is a Messianic passage. And then Luke says that where it got to the point where Jesus was supposed to speak with authority, which means not tell us what you think about this passage, but tell us what other people have thought, namely the great rabbis. And the more rabbis you could quote, the more authority you had. Last thing they wanted is to know what you personally thought. Who cares? I want to know how many rabbis you've read and if you know what they've said, even if they disagree. And the more you could quote, the more authority you had. And he doesn't do any of that. He just sits down and says, well, everything you heard, it's all been fulfilled right here in your midst. I can't believe he did that.

[04:22]

Whatever happened, of course, then the tide turns and they are very angry with him. They're really angry because he came down to Nazareth having done ministry up in Capernaum and they had heard that he was doing a lot of miracles up there. So they didn't care about his preaching or even whether he could read or not. What they wanted is, hey, he's coming home and he better do here what he did up there. I mean, he better know where his roots are. He better know he's coming home. We expect him to do a little something for the hometown folks. And we got our people lined up too. And he didn't. And he didn't. Not because he didn't want to, but basically because of their almost total absence of faith. So that's the one side of the dynamic that Mark is going to use. On the other side, is fear. If you would ask the questions, what happened to those disciples?

[05:27]

I mean, they were hand-picked, they jumped out of the boat, they were so enthused, at least for that one time, and then it all caved in on them. What happened? Well, Mark says what happened was fear. Fear is a real power and it got in there somehow and fear can creep in, pry in, barge in, however it wants to get in. Fear is a force to be dealt with in the Gospel of Mark. And Mark is convinced that fear has overtaken the world that he lives in. That's why he has all these demons and that's why he has all this stuff going on because Mark believes the Kingdom of God potentially is here But the forces of evil are so great that the kingdom cannot be manifested. And if you'd say, well, how great are those forces?

[06:29]

So great that even Jesus' own hand-picked disciples can't break through. And they succumb to fear. You'll see this in many places where they ought to be exuding faith Transfiguration scene. Peter totally misreads it. Well, let's build us two, three houses here. It's a neat kind of thing. Coming down the mountain, they were afraid. Passion predictions, three of them that are pretty intriguing. After Jesus talks to them and they misunderstand Him and they're afraid to talk to Him, afraid to talk, asking what was going on. The fear begins to take over. So it's a very powerful thing. It's the dichotomy between faith and fear. Which one is going to win out? And we can say, well, yeah, that's kind of interesting, you know, remark in his story at his time.

[07:34]

But, you know, Mark was written probably around the year 70. This is the year 2000. What's that got to do with us? Well, probably everything, because the same dynamic is going on, faith and fear. We talk about faith, we live out of fear. We're afraid of everything, you know. We say we're not, of course. And we like to make ourselves believe that we live out of a strong commitment of faith. And that's, of course, what we want to do. That if given our preference, and given the best of all possible worlds, that's how we would live. But deep down, you know, deep inside, we know how seldom that happens, isn't it? How much of our life is guided by fear? Fear of all kinds of things. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of you name it, we have it.

[08:35]

That's a force. That's a power. That's a reality. That's not just the figment of the psychologist's imagination. That's real. And it was real when Mark wrote his Gospel. And it is just as real today. Just as faith could produce miracles according to Mark, I believe today that same dynamic is true. Faith can produce miracles. So things haven't changed so much. If you read the morning newspaper, when Mark was writing his gospel, the headlines would have different names and addresses, but not much different to what goes on today. You page anywhere and it says the same thing. The world's gone to hell in a handbasket. Doesn't use those terms necessarily, but negotiations are stalled. Peace talks are not going on here. Bombing is going on over there. And then, you know,

[09:39]

Pick a country, it all says basically the same kind of thing. That's what was happening at Mark's time also. Looked like the whole world was caving in. And for Mark, the whole world did cave in for him and his community because the great magnificent temple was destroyed. The temple which symbolized for him and his people almost everything. something they thought would never happen. All of a sudden, there it is. All the symbolic things about the religion out of which they came and to which many of them still adhere, the strength, the power, the tradition, all of that now in rubble. And so now, Mark's going back and picking up the pieces. As he keeps telling this story, interestingly enough, you read the first couple chapters, you know everything works.

[10:46]

It's a success. Everybody likes him. Starting about chapter 3, the opponents start to move in. Pharisees, scribes complain a little bit. By chapter 3, you get some interesting things going on at home. Then he went home, and a crowd came to gather again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, he has gone out of his mind." This is family, it's not his enemies. It's not his disciple, it's his kin. They think he's crazy, he's nuts. A little bit later, he's giving a talk, his mother and brothers and all those people says, come, and they want to see him.

[11:49]

Crowd was sitting around him and they said to him, your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside asking for you. He replied, who are my mother and brothers? And looking at those who sat around him and said, here are my mother and my brothers, whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. Now we've heard that passage a lot, but that's a terrifically radical thing to say. Because what he's saying is, I am redefining family. Now family is not limited to the blood that flows in your veins carrying the DNA and the genetic code that links us up as kin. Now, the glue that holds us together as a family is the glue of faith. And Mark is going to say, let's test it.

[12:56]

How strong is this glue? So, you start to see this rejection. The rejection is going to be final in chapter 15 in terms of his family thinks he's crazy, he's redefined family, he's going to go home to Nazareth and they're going to reject him so his hometown rejects him and finally in chapter 15 verse 42, something like that, his disciples finally reject him right at the moment of his greatest need. So that's total rejection. When Jesus goes to the cross, he goes totally alone. Well, Mark is interested in trying to ask and answer both the question, why'd that happen? Why'd that happen? So he told this story, as probably Jesus told it, about the sower. And once again, pay attention, he began to teach the many things in parables.

[13:58]

Listen, a sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seed fell on the path. The birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns. The thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. And he said, Let anyone with ears to hear." Listen, that's probably the story that Jesus Himself actually told. Now Mark's going to allegorize on that for us. He's got an obscure little bridge passage stuck in here. When he was alone, those who were around him, along with the twelve, so there's more than just the twelve here, asked him about the parables.

[15:04]

And he said to them, to you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God. That's key for Mark. To you. Many commentators think Mark means us also. We're invited into this. To you has been given the secret. Because he's going to say in a little bit that nothing is to be hidden. We're to let our light shine, so on and so forth. And so we're slowly beginning to see this secret unfold. And to us, we've been given the secret. Why? Well, we got the secret in the first line. Then we got the secret at the baptism. Then we're going to get the secret again at the transfiguration. And all through this scene, you and I have been given the full story. So, to us, really, has been given the secret of the kingdom of God.

[16:06]

But for those outside, meaning those who do not believe, Those outside, everything comes in parables, riddles, things you can't understand. In order that they may indeed look but not perceive, they may indeed listen but not understand, so that they may not turn again and be forgiven, because they have no faith. So Mark has already set that up. And you see, what he's doing to us, the reader, you and I, he's forcing us to try and figure out which side are we on. Where are we in this story? Because, interestingly enough, we'll discover this is our story. It's not just his. So now he's going to do his allegorical interpretation where he's going to change the focus. Now the focus is no longer on seed, but on ground. And for Mark, it's the ground that becomes significant for the rest of the Gospel.

[17:07]

And what he wants to ask everybody who reads this is, what kind of ground are you? What kind of ground are you? And the rest of the first 11 chapters is nothing more than a playing out of these four kinds of ground. That's all that is. We get to see the four kinds of ground emerge. And then we get to decide for ourselves, which kind are we? And he said to them, do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the Word. And make no mistake, for Mark, the sower is Jesus. The Word is the good news. And he told us that when he told us right after the opening verse, I am sending my messenger. Jesus is the messenger.

[18:10]

He is the sower. He sows the Word. These are the ones on the path where the Word is sown. When they hear Satan, immediately comes and takes away the Word that is sown in them. These are the ones sown on rocky ground. And the disciples are going to be the epitome of rocky ground. When they hear the Word, they immediately receive it with joy. Jumped right out of the boat. Ran right down the shore after Him. But they have no root. And endure only for a while. Fifteen chapters. When trouble or persecution arises on account of the Word, and they leave Jesus right at the moment of His arrest. Immediately, They fall away. And others are those sown among the thorns.

[19:15]

These are the ones who hear the Word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth and the desire for other things come in and choke the Word and it yields nothing. Mark will give you a picture of a young man who wants to follow Jesus, chapter 10. And Jesus says, well, that's okay. Come on. Well, you got to get rid of your stuff first. Well, I'm not so sure. He had a lot of stuff, you know, and just got in the way. So he had good intentions, good intentions, but he couldn't really carry it out. Herod is depicted as one of the thorny people. He liked John the Baptist. He was intrigued by Jesus. He was intrigued by all this stuff. He didn't know what it meant, but looks like he had potential, but he didn't pull it off. And even Pilate's almost portrayed as one of these thorny people. He doesn't see why everybody's so upset at Jesus.

[20:17]

He doesn't think it's all that great of a deal, but He succumbs to the pressure of the crowd. So, the thorny people are in a tough position. And these are the ones on the good soil. They hear the word and accept it and bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold. And those folks are all these little scudsy people. They're the ones who are getting cured. They're getting healed. Why? Because they have faith. Good example of one of these people is that Canaanite woman who just sets Jesus right on his head. I mean, she is so fast, he doesn't know what to do. He thinks he's got her, you know. Well, I'm not going to take the food, throw it to dogs. Well, even dogs get on the table, they need a little food, and whack, she has them. And she's there because she believes. And he recognizes that.

[21:20]

If you go through all the miracles. and look at who gets healed, the demons get expelled, all sort of thing. These, or Mark, are the people that constitute the good soil. Why? Because they manifest faith. Their faith allows the preaching of the Word to get in the ground that will allow the Kingdom, which is this potentially fertile ground, to bear fruit. Now for Mark, the kingdom of God was not brought by Jesus. It was already here. Jesus comes and has the power to actualize it. And it actually gets to be actualized through faith. And what we get to see in all these miracles is the transforming power of the kingdom of God.

[22:23]

And we get to see it right there in front of our eyes in a very dramatic form. A guy's got a withered arm and it gets straightened out. A woman has a hemorrhage and she quits bleeding. A woman dies and brought back to life. I mean, these are really significant things. And then that Gerizim Demoni Act, the longest miracle in the whole Gospel, or exorcism, Or that guy finally not only gets the demon expelled but becomes a follower. All of that for Mark becomes significant for the flowering of the kingdom. But that's on the side of faith. On the other side is the reality for Mark and his community. Don't kid yourself. Evil is a real force here. And that's why three out of four types of ground can't produce because of the force of evil in the world.

[23:27]

Now his overall theory is going to be that ultimately this power of evil is going to be definitively done in. And that's going to happen at the parousia. himself believes that that's not very far away. He's mistaken in that. But when he writes his story, he writes his story from the vision that the Parousia is going to happen real quick. And he's trying to encourage his community, you can hang on. As the master goes, so goes the disciple. It will hurt, it will be tough, it will involve suffering, but you can hang on. And when you do hang on, the final result is going to be beyond anything you can imagine. He spells this out in that real weird chapter 13, which in a sense kind of apocalyptically sets that out.

[24:34]

So, From this chapter on till 11, we get to watch the different kinds of ground. I actually wrote that out. I usually write out one or two things because people tell me they get a little nervous if you don't use notes. They think if you use notes, you know your stuff better. And sometimes I'll take a piece of paper that I picked up off the floor, you know, what I was doing, lay that right down. I was doing a retreat once, and a guy was criticizing, you know, we're all right, but just be a little more organized, maybe a note or two. So I brought in a note or two and laid it there, you know. Came up after, that's a lot better, you know. Didn't have anything on that I was talking about, a laundry list or something. But here's the four kinds of ground, just to review. Kind of helps make some sense. First, remember, seeds sown along the way, eaten by birds.

[25:40]

Mark says, those in whom the word is immediately removed by Satan, doesn't grow at all. This is going to be characterized by the scribes, the Pharisees, and the Jerusalem leaders. It never takes, never produces a thing, no potential at all. That's the worst kind of soil. It's an interesting one to think about though, especially if you ever get yourself in a leadership position. Leadership position, you know, he comes down hard on the leaders. Real hard. And they don't budge. And there's some real interesting things you can do with that sometime. Second kind of soil. Seeds sown on rocky ground. Comes up quickly, but no root, so it doesn't last. Withers in the sun. That's those who accept the Word immediately, endure for a time, but fall away during tribulation, persecution.

[26:42]

That's going to be the disciples. And Mark's going to spend most of his time on this area. And it's the most intriguing one for us, because the question you need to ask is, well, man, if they can't make it, who can? And it's going to be symbolized by three disciples, Peter, James, and John. They're the big three. They're with Jesus every place. He doesn't do a major event that they are not present. So they have seen everything. And yet, there's still this rocky ground. It still doesn't catch. Now, we don't like this and as most people read Mark, they want to tame that down because they want to reach over there to Matthew and reach over there to Luke and say, oh, it wasn't that bad and reach over there to John where it's all great. But that's not legitimate. That's not Mark's story.

[27:43]

We've already been through all those histories of making this one big long narrative. It doesn't work like that. Mark is relentless on these disciples. And he's relentless because he says they operate out of fear and not faith. And even if you have been hand-picked by the Lord and given your mission and you've been allowed to follow Him everywhere He went and goes, It's still not automatic. You still have to have faith or none of that's going to amount to anything. Now that's scary when you think about that. For us, maybe not for us, for me, I'm not hand-picked. I'm, you know, I'm way down below the hand-picked and I didn't really jump out of the boat. I kind of looked over the side a little bit. You know, well, sometime, that'd be all right, yeah.

[28:45]

Well, maybe a stroll, not a whole walk, you know. And all that sort of thing, and I've not been everywhere and seen everything and heard it all. If these guys who have, where does that put me? Well, the other side of the coin is Mark says, oh, quit fretting. Put you wherever you want to be, if you have faith. Because, see, Mark's got the big card he's going to play later on. There are people who have seen more than these disciples. There are people who know more than they know. And that's you and me. We know more. We've seen more. So, pressure might be a little more than that. But he's relentless. He's relentless. See, those sown among thorns, chokes it, produces no fruit. That's the others in whom the word is choked by the cares of the world, delights in riches, desire for other things.

[29:53]

I mentioned who that was. Herod, the rich man in chapter 10, maybe Pilate. And then fourth, there is the seed sown on good ground. Good earth brings forth grain in triple abundance. Those who hear the Word, accept it, and bear fruit in triple abundance. And in the Gospel, that's basically those who are the recipients of the healings, or the saved, and they do that by faith. Now, I'm not going to do it, but you could. at some point make an interesting case for the rule of Benedict being nothing more than a handbook on how to be the good soil. The tools of good soilness. Because that's basically what he does when you read the rule carefully to see how it carefully sort of gets us in place.

[30:59]

And notice the rule of Benedict just like the Gospel of Mark. has a terrific respect for the power of evil. Terrific respect for the power of self-deception. Says every time you turn your head, if you're not careful, you're going to hurt yourself. They always do it. They always have. They always will. Of course, we say, not me. I learned. But yes, us. And so, that notion of self-deception being the biggest obstacle we have to overcome in our monastic life, that goes hand-in-glove with what Mark in his Gospel says about evil and the forces of evil. Because remember what all that is. What is evil? And what is self-deception? When you put those things together, you can put them right back in my good old Adam and Eve story that I keep going back to simply because it's a nice little interesting simple story.

[32:03]

Remember what the evil is? Half-truth, isn't it? That's what happened to Adam and Eve, isn't it? When she got in a conversation with that snake, that snake was smart. the most cunning of all the animals. And that snake led her through a magnificent rigmarole of half-truth. Half of everything the snake said was true. But it was the other half that caught her. It's never a matter, is it, of do I know right from wrong? Sure we know right from wrong. It's never a matter of will I do evil or will I do good. Well, if it's laid out there in black and white, we know what we will do. We'll be heroic. We'll do good. We don't have to wrestle with that. All we have to wrestle with is what if it's evil but it says it's good.

[33:06]

What if it's the choice of should I do good or should I do better? And all those half-truths, who do we listen to? Who informs us? What do we do with our ear bones? How do we hear? And invariably we find out we get sold a bill of goods, just like Eve did. Because it seemed to make so much sense at the time. And that's been the history of the human person ever since. And so the rule of Benedict has a great respect. for that same dynamic and almost all the tools that are set up for you and I to live by are not simply how do we do a minimum security jail without calling it that and make sure everybody's regulated and nothing, you know, and all that and that they don't have any fun and that they work hard and shut their mouth and they'll be, you know.

[34:09]

He is very opposed to that. Now, if you want to work for the rule of the master, you'll probably be like that, but he's not into that at all. He is into growth, how to become good ground so the kingdom can flourish, and he knows that at the heart of that, you have to tackle that enemy, which is self-deception. That's tough. That is real, real tough. We can't do it by ourself, no doubt about it. Left to our own devices, we'll self-destruct. We do that all the time. We know that. We know that. And you would say, well then, if you know that, why don't you behave accordingly? Well, that's just like asking these disciples. God, if you've been everywhere with Him and seen Him do everything and so forth, why don't you have faith in who He is? Well, I don't know.

[35:11]

I don't know. Right after Mark gives us this little allegorical rendition of the sower, he goes immediately into this interesting little phrase. He said to them, quotes some phrases from Jesus, "'Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel basket or under a bed and not on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden except to be disclosed, nor is anything secret except to come to light." He's talking about himself and the kingdom. And we have seen, mind you, and then he's got this phrase that keeps coming back, let anyone with ears to hear listen. Well, in the morning we're going to look at another one of these little seed stories because I find it really intriguing.

[36:20]

And Mark went to all this trouble to put them all together for us so we don't want to ignore them. But if you're reading this on your own, you just set out those four kinds of ground and read from Chapter 4, well you can read from Chapter 2 right up until Chapter 11. And you'll see how ingeniously Mark has set this paradigm up so that he can sort of get his point across and tell us about the kingdom of God and its flowering by showing us these four different kinds of ground and answering the question, what happened to the disciples? And then as you read in those chapters, of course, we have to ask ourselves, really, which one of these is us? Which one of these pieces of ground is us? Because we have power, you see.

[37:24]

Mark is convinced we have the power to hinder the flowering of the kingdom. And the way we have power is if we don't believe, nothing happens. Without faith, nothing happens. Jesus is rendered power. The kingdom will not flourish if there is not faith. Now remember, I'm not saying this is actual, factual, historical truth. I'm saying this is Mark's story. But all the others are other people's stories too. But this one is the one that kind of gets right in there and gets us. So as you're reading those chapters and you've got that ground laid out, you've got to ask yourself, where do we fit in? And as you do that, you know, you begin to get a real intriguing sense of what this power of faith is and our role.

[38:28]

in making that kingdom present. Because the kingdom is not just some ethereal sort of cyber out there kind of stuff. For Mark, the kingdom is when the faith of the disciples come into contact with the Word of God incarnate, and when those two mix it up, The harvest from that is far greater than anything you can imagine. And the metaphor used for that dynamic and the transforming growth, which in the gospel is called miracle, which today we call it miracle too, that transforming growth is something that is real, powerful, and very much possible in our midst today. That, at least in my estimation, is why this is good news.

[39:35]

It's good news to me. I don't hear this very often. This is good news. There is something we can do. There is power available that we can bring from potential and make it actual by our faith. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

[40:00]

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