Mark 4:1-9 "Listen!"

         Listen!  Jesus spoke to the crowd that had been persistently following him for a while now, and the Gospel writer of Mark tells us that he met them once again the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee – just as he had done in the passage we read last week.  However, this time it was necessary for Jesus to actually get into a boat – so much were the men and women gathered there pressing close to him, hanging on his every word. 

         So – in your mind’s eye, imagine a large number of folks with front row seats at the water’s edge with the latecomers backed up onto the beach – standing room only.  And picture Jesus sitting in a small dinghy with the red paint chipped off one side of the bow, this small boat anchored a few dozen feet out into the lake and gently bobbing up and down with the rhythm of the swell.  

         And there he preached – well, not exactly an ordinary sermon.  You see, it was not laced with big “college” words and layer after layer of abstract theological reasoning and conceptualization. 

        His sermon – and just the way he taught - was more like a conversation around the evening campfire when people quietly shared bits and pieces of themselves as they poked the dying embers with sticks.  It was rather like a Moth Radio Hour – filled with the stories he told which, if they were not always literally true, were certainly true on a deeper, more significant level. 

         These stories Jesus used as his teaching model were called parables.  Theologian Frederick Buechner defines a parable as a little story with a big point and, if you have to have it explained, don’t bother.  You see, parables are simple, easily relatable stories set in places Jesus’ listeners were so very familiar with and peopled with characters that might just as well have been your next-door neighbor – or even yourself.

         The first parable Jesus ever told was about a farmer intent on planting and hoping for a grain harvest better than any he had garnered in past years.  Even the fishermen in the audience – though they had never sown a seed in their lives - listened intently because everyone – fisher folk or farmers - dream of a harvest big enough to feed a family for a year.

         In this story, the farmer tossed his seed everywhere – up against the stone-wall that bordered his field, in the field itself, and even on the other side of the wall that ran right along the roadway.  His fellow farmers were aghast and commented there at the cracker barrel in the general store that he was foolish because he was wasting much of his seed. After all, seed was an expensive investment and too valuable a resource to be strewn about with abandon.  And in some ways, I suppose they were right.

         After all, some of the seed fell on the hard-packed road itself. Many of those seeds were crushed underfoot or by wagon wheels.  Needless to say, the birds also came and gobbled up the remainder – a veritable feast day for those with wings. 

         Some of the seed also fell on what looked to be good soil.  However, just a couple of inches down a limestone ledge lurked, characteristic of the terrain.  Now – these seeds might sprout, but they hardly stood a chance.  The soil only went so deep before it hit bedrock – and resistance.  And besides, a gust of wind could easily stir up the couple inches of topsoil and send the seeds hither and yon, and they would never get enough water anyway.  

         And the seeds the farmer tossed that ended up in the thorns?  Maybe he did not see the culprits at first in the newly plowed field, but they were there.  So forget those seeds!  They were overrun in short order by the tenacious and rapacious weeds – choked off from water and essential soil nutrients. 

         However, some of the seeds fell on good soil – dark, moist loam – the kind that crumbles easily in your hands and you have to wipe them on your pants when you are ready to finish up and go inside for supper.  And those seeds flourished and produced grain in such quantity that even the farmer was surprised – and delighted. 

         Sometimes I think we get all tangled up trying to figure out what this parable means - for us, today.  Scratching our heads, we tie ourselves in theological knots wondering if the main thrust of the parable is the farmer – or the seeds.

         And, if it is the farmer throwing good seed into the nooks and crannies of the stone wall as readily as into the rich dark loam of the newly plowed field, then what choice does the seed have in where it lands?  And if the seeds are important, well, is that supposed to be us?  And should we feel guilty about the soil we have landed in? 

Or is the main character and protagonist neither the farmer nor the seeds at all, but the soil that should be front and center?

         So much to unravel that it makes us just want to close our Bibles and hope for an easier passage next Sunday.  However, I think this parable can have meaning for us – even this morning – if, before we dive into the parable itself, we reflect on Jesus’ words that begin and end it – rather like bookends.  “Listen!” Jesus starts off in no uncertain terms.  And again, in conclusion, “Listen, then, if you have ears!”

         This parable may be about agriculture – seeds and soil and sowing farmers.  However, first and foremost, it is about listening.  That is what Jesus is calling us to do first.

         A middle-aged man was distraught over his wife’s refusal to admit she had a hearing problem.  So he asked his family doctor how to convince his wife of this fact. The doctor told him that, when he got home, he could confirm the hearing problem by opening the front door, and from there asking his wife, “Honey, what’s for dinner?”

         Then the doctor said, “If she doesn’t answer, move closer to the kitchen.  Repeat the question again, and if she still doesn’t answer, move right up to her ear and whisper, ‘What’s for dinner, honey?’

In this way,” the doctor assured him, “she will have to admit she has a hearing problem.”

         So the man raced home and opened the front door.  “What’s for dinner, honey?” he asked. 

        His wife made no reply, so he moved closer to the kitchen and asked again, “What’s for dinner, honey?”  Again: no response. 

         Finally, he tiptoed into the kitchen and whispered in her ear, “What’s for dinner, honey?” 

         She turned and looked at him straight in the eye, “For the third time, I said we’re having meat loaf!” 

         Can you hear?  As a follower of Jesus, are you a good listener?  My 97 year old mother recently got hearing aids.  The staff at the nursing home where she and my father live have a hard time putting them in properly – even after several months. Consequently, when I visit, I usually end up putting the hearing aids in properly and then asking her – kind of as a joke – just like the Verizon commercial, “Can you hear me now?”

        Jesus might just as well have said the same thing:  “Can you hear me now?”  “Listen!”  The Gospel writer of Mark would surely say that Jesus puts a high premium on listening well – and so we should do likewise.  Perhaps, as one blogger I read this week speculated, we have been outfitted with two ears and one mouth for a reason. 

         And so, using the symbolism of our parable as a framework, we ask ourselves.  Do we listen - here in church for instance – do we listen to the readings and the prayers and the songs and the sermon, but with hearts as hard-packed and impenetrable as the roadway where some seeds in our story fell? Do we listen in order to solidify our own theological or political position, not really being open to Jesus’ message of compassion and justice and inclusion? Do we cherry-pick what we leave with each week?

         Or do we listen and even get excited about what we hear, but the message and the uplifted feeling we get never lasts much beyond the postlude?  No matter how much the preacher analyzes the seed, no matter how beautifully the choir sings about the seed and the liturgist reads about it, if all that does not penetrate Sunday after Sunday, then growth is not possible – a hard lesson for every worship leader!  Or do we listen and get excited, but bail out when times get tough?  When a prayer is unanswered? Or a trust broken?  Do we shrug our shoulders and lament, “What’s the use?”

         Or do we listen and actually take to heart what we hear?  Do we leave worship with good intentions, but then life gets in the way? After all, there is competition for our time and energy.  Our priorities shift.  We are pulled in many directions.  Just as real as church had seemed on Sunday morning, getting the bills paid, our job, our reputation, and those endless To Do Lists seem even more real.  Even though we do not mean to, do we choke out and strangle the message we have heard with our shifting priorities?

         Difficult questions to be sure, but - “Listen!”  Jesus says.   “Listen if you have ears!” How in heaven’s name are we to do that?

         According to Reformed pastor, Scott Hoezee, “the Hebrew understanding of listen (shama) is more than just more mental activity, more than just passive acceptance of sounds through our ears. Instead ‘shama’ carries the old servant’s motto ‘to hear is to obey.’”

         Listening and doing therefore are inextricably linked for Jesus.  Consequently, on the one hand, our ministry in this church cannot be unfocused doing – or doing that only makes us feel good inside.  Our ministry cannot be doing without a purpose or doing that is not in alignment with our goals.

         Because we are small and do not have endless resources and social capital (that is, volunteers), our doing must be intentional.  That is why we are going to be engaging in some visioning as a congregation this year, so that our doing has meaning and is grounded in our listening to the needs of the communities around us.

         On the other hand, our ministry in this church cannot be only listening either.  As Presbyterian pastor John Kapteyn noted, “So many of us Christians are listeners. We focus on hearing, reading and learning the word rather than doing the word. We give Sunday School awards to those who memorize the word rather than those who live according to it. We come to church to hear the word, but do we go home to live the word?“

        A clergy colleague observed recently the difference between doing and being.  She wrote, “ Any congregation can do church. Doing church includes the to-do lists of congregational life—things that every church does that too often become the ends rather than the means. Being church is harder. Being church means loving one another, even when we disagree. Being church means supporting one another through the hard times. Being church means working for justice, rejecting racism, fighting for the powerless. Being church is more important than merely doing church.”

         Listening and doing are inextricably linked for Jesus.  That is the bottom line. One without the other makes for shoddy discipleship. And I would suggest that listening lies at the root of our church vision.  First, we must listen to one another, listen to the cries and whispers of our community both here in Raymond and beyond, listen first and foremost to the One who told us to listen in the first place, the one whose stories – parables - are so wonderful and so true.  Only then we will be discerning disciples who act – who do – out of a deep understanding of Jesus’ mission of compassion, justice, and reconciliation.

         ”Listen, then, if you have ears!”