Tag: Parable

Jesus is getting into some heated discussions with the religious leaders – as he gets closer to the cross he begins saying less and less, but at this stage he is being very vocal.

He is, however, still using parables. This less him use simple things to talk about big issues. It lets him be subversive without actually riling his opposition up too early. It also enables selective revelation – those who do not want to engage with the message will not learn from it, but for those who do there are truths to be learned. Likewise, it sets that choice in front of people, whether to receive or reject the message based on the person of Christ more than the specifics of the message.

This parable was directly referencing the people he was telling the story to, but the leaders did not realize this until late, and then when they did realize it they were too afraid of how the people would react to do anything about it.

The cast of characters here is fairly straightforward. The landowner is God the Father, and his son is Jesus. The tenants are the leaders of Israel, those in power over the people. The servants sent are the many prophets, right up to John the Baptist. The vineyard itself is Israel, which is a metaphor used throughout the Old Testament in both positive and negative contexts. The imagery of a place where people have a responsibility to steward creation and mold it in productive ways goes all the way back to Eden.

Then Jesus brings in another metaphor, that of the temple building and the rejected stone that becomes the cornerstone. This comes in the context of Mark’s mentions of the temple building and Jesus promise that it would be destroyed and rebuilt within his person. Ultimately this body of Christ, Paul tells us, is we who are his members, his body parts as part of the church.

This means we are the vineyard, we are the workers who must steward what we have been given, and working to turn it back to the ultimate owner of the vineyard. And how do we do that? Elsewhere, Jesus tells us – the broken, the imprisoned, the needy, the oppressed.

That also means that when we put barriers in front of people and prevent them from coming to partake in the fruits of the vineyard, that is functionally the same as the leaders of ancient Israel who murdered the prophets to stop their testimony.

We see this concept in the Old Testament through concepts like leaning and jubilee.

Another thing to glean from this passage is the patience of God. How many servants did He send to be beaten and killed before His final retribution?

And for us, who are the prophets and voices at have ignored, beaten and even killed? As a nation, as a church, as individuals?

But we are placed right here in this particular place in our own vineyard. Let us welcome people into the vinyard to partake of the fruits that God has been growing, that we have been tending. We are the new temple building, we are the new vinyard – let us live and serve like we know it.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, March 3, 2024

This is the first set of parables in Mark, and the theme that comes through most clearly is “Listen!” This is something we are not, as a whole particularly good at. Between personal media, social media and all the other distractions of modern life, we have many barriers to listening and building connections with other people.

There is benefit and fruit to living a life that is open. It is a scary thought for many, bringing up fears of rejection, fear of intimacy and often a weariness and lack of time. But if we do open ourselves up, it makes us more rooted, in our relationships with God and others.

The same was true of the crowd gathered around Jesus. He tells them to listen because many of them are not there for that. Some of them are just there to be part of the crowd, others want healing, others just want to see what all the guys is about, but few really want to listen. And so Jesus gives them a story that requires them to listen and engage – “whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.” Active listening requires more than an “uh huh” at the right time.

This is one of the reasons Jesus uses parables and stories. It also gives the message a chance to get past our defenses as we identify with the characters in the story before we put up barriers against the truths we don’t want to hear.

Another reason to use parables is to veil the truth to some degree. Jesus describes it as a “secret” that is revealed to the disciples, who asked Jesus directly, opening up their hearts to the truths Jesus is sharing. Jesus offers us the truths of eternity, the power that created the universe, but asks us to make the effort. “Take up your mat and walk.”

In the parable itself, the seed is the word of God and the sower can be seen as either God Himself or us, His followers, spreading that word. And the soil is those listening – that may be us ourselves, or it may be those we interact with.

So we have to ask ourselves, what is the state of my soil? At different times, we may be the sower of the seeds or any of the various soils, and it is worth considering where we stand.

One notable aspect of this story is that the sower is indiscriminate in his sowing. He does not hoard the seed based on what he thinks the soil is like, and we should not do that either. At don’t control how people receive our messages and we don’t know how God has been preparing the soil.

Let us seek to have the word deeply rooted within us, and let us be open to that word and those around us to bear fruit that nourishes the world we have been sent to.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, November 5, 2023