Keep Digging

A sermon on Jesus's parables and why sometimes clarity is overrated.

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This script doesn’t include one of my favorite parables of all time, which I tell at the end of the sermon. You can watch the whole sermon here or watch the final segment of the sermon below.

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“Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge. He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said:

“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain.

Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”

Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”” (Mark 4:1–9, NIV)

How do you evaluate the effectiveness of a communicator?

One way is to do an exit interview with listeners and ask two questions:

1) What was the message about? (What was the main point or big idea of the message?)

2) How is what you just heard going to change the way you think, feel, or act? (What difference is the message going to make in your life?)

I used to regularly ask these questions after my sermons, but the responses were so depressing I chose to talk about other things with my boys over Sunday lunch.

Wouldn't it have been fascinating to conduct exit interviews with the crowds who heard Jesus teach?

We often describe Jesus as a great teacher or a master communicator.

Yet Jesus was frequently misunderstood and sometimes he was not understood at all.

Very few people immediately got the point of his teachings.

Those who did understand were often so offended they wanted to kill him.

Even his disciples, his inner circle, didn’t usually understand what he was talking about.

Take a closer look at Jesus teaching method and you'll see clarity wasn't always his goal, at least not initially.

“He did not say anything to them without using a parable…” (Mark 4:34, NIV)

Jesus’s primary teaching technique was to imbed his message about the Kingdom of God in parables like the about the sower.

The message within these parables was not always clear to his listeners.

This appears to be Jesus's intent as he explains to his disciples when they ask about his use of parables.

“He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, “ ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”” (Mark 4:11–12, NIV)

Why does Jesus speak in parables?

Because he does't want everyone to understand what he's saying.

Sometimes clarity is overrated (and dangerous).

Jesus intends for his parables to obscure the meaning of his message from some (outsiders with hard hearts) and to reveal it to others (insiders with open hearts).

Rabbis in Jesus's time would often tell a story with a hidden meaning that could only be grasped by having a follow-up conversation with the teacher.

This seems to be in line with how Jesus used his parables to sort out who was really listening, who was really seeking, who was really interested in learning the secrets of the Kingdom

Some hear a parable and say, “Wasn’t than an interesting story? What's for lunch?”

Some hear the same parable and say, “I don't get it and it’s driving me crazy. Lets go talk to the teacher and find out more.”

We see this happening in Mark 4 when Jesus’s disciples come to him in private and ask for an explanation.

Every parable is an invitation to have a conversation with Jesus.

If you're too arrogant to admit you don't understand, too insecure to ask a question, too proud to ask for help, too busy for a conversation with the teacher, then you do not have the ears to hear or the heart to embrace the message of the Kingdom of God.

It's the humble, the curious, the tenacious, the seekers, who have the ears to hear and the open hearts to finally grasp the message of Jesus's parables.

Jesus was a master teacher, not because he always taught for clarity, but because he taught in a way that involved his listeners in the learning process.

There were far more efficient ways of sharing content with his disciples.

Lesson One: Ten principles of the kingdom of God.

Lesson Two: The four spiritual laws.

Lesson Three: The five steps to salvation.

Jesus could then give his disciples a test and when they successfully regurgitated the information back to him, he could give them a certificate of completion and send them on their way.

But Jesus didn't teach to transfer information to his disciples.

He taught to invite them into a transforming relationship with himself.

He did this by leaving a bit of mystery in his teachings, because those who are obsessed with solving the mystery will go deeper and grow faster than those who think they already understand everything worth knowing.

The secrets of the kingdom don't belong to those who think they already know it all, but they are revealed to those who seek out the teacher and knock on his door in the middle of the night and keep asking questions until they finally begin to understand.

These are the ones who show themselves to be good soil.

When Jesus explains the parable of the sower to his disciples it turns out to be about the different responses to the gospel.

The different soil types represent the way different people are responding to Jesus in the Gospel of Mark and beyond.

This insight prompts an even more important question in the listener: What kind of soil am I? How am I responding to the gospel? What kind of fruit is the gospel producing in my life?

These kind of questions are not always easy to answer.

They're not supposed to be.

The goal is not to be able to answer them before lunch.

The goal is to allow these questions to draw us into the deepest possible level of Jesus's teachings.

The goal is to keep digging, to keep searching, to keep wrestling for answers, and to keep following the one with the answers until the seed of the Kingdom bears its fruit in us.

(Here’s the final segment of the sermon, which is better watched than read.)