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Welcome back to our Bible study on the Gospel of Mark. We are going to begin in chapter four of the Gospel of Mark to one of the rare chapters in Mark where we have Jesus giving an extended teaching that only happens in two chapters in the entirety of the Gospel of Mark, chapter four and chapter 13. So chapter four, we're going to get the closest thing to a long discourse of Jesus. And yet Mark's got to interweave, even in here, some action and some activity. So we begin at the sea. So it says again, he began to teach beside the sea, and a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea. Now, the Greek is rather awkward because if you read the Greek, it says that Jesus got on there and that Jesus sat on the sea, which is really an awkward phrase. You rather say he sat on the boat in the midst of the sea, but he sat on the sea. So people look at that and they say, oh, my goodness, this is probably where Augustine was mortified. You know, that's just such, you know, terrible Greek. You know, it's just really embarrassing. But I think sometimes when Mark's Greek is bad, it's bad on purpose because he's quoting something in Hebrew. And I think Mark is actually making a point here. He. He is envisioning. He's picturing for you Jesus teaching on the sea. And in doing that, I think he's alluding to Psalm 29:10. In Psalm 29, you have this refrain over and over again. The voice of the Lord goes over the trees and shakes the cedars of Leaven. The voice of the Lord is this mighty voice. And then at a key point at the heart of the psalm, the voice of the lord in verse 10 is over the waters. And so what again Mark is showing you is Jesus. And by clumsily describing it as if he was sitting on the sea, he's alluding to Jesus. Voice going over the waters is fulfilling Psalm 29, where the voice of the Lord echoes over the waters. That Jesus is the mighty voice of Yahweh. He is the Lord of hosts. I think that is the image of the Lord sitting enthroned upon the waters in Psalm 29:10 is exactly the image that Mark is alluding to. Mark has such a deep sense of Jesus divinity. And again, if you don't know the Scriptures of Israel, like a lot of German biblical scholars who were in the 18th and 19th century, German biblical scholars would study Jesus, but they want to put him in a Hellenistic, that is a Greek context and they didn't study him in light of the Old Testament Testament. Now it's hard to believe that this idea of studying Jesus apart from the Old Testament, but that was the primary way in which modern biblical studies was done in the 18th, 19th and the first half and for a large part of the 20th century. And so biblical scholarship being taken out of Germany and into America and England and other places freed it up, I think. And especially post Holocaust we realized a lot of biblical scholars realized that a lot of modern biblical scholarship in the last 200 years had a certain anti Semitism that led it to ignore Jesus, Jewishness and the background to the Old Testament. And for those scholars who were who neglected their study of the scriptures of Israel, they didn't hear these echoes, they just saw bad Greek and they couldn't make the allusions and the echoes. So but you know, thanks be to God that we now and modern biblical scholarship has changed to recognize the connection between the old and the new. And that's one of the exciting things in biblical scholarship today. And that's one of the things that we make at the center, at the heart of our master's program here at the Augusta Institute is connecting the old and the new. And so now we have Jesus then imaged as sitting upon the sea and speaking. And then we're told in verse two that he taught them many things in parables. And in his teaching he said to them, listen, which again is the great. For those who have ears to hear, you need to listen because you could hear in this the great call of God to Israel. The great word of the old covenant is Shema, Hear, O Israel, right to listen, to hear. That is the great summons over and over again. And so Jesus begins and ends with this call, this summons to listen. So here we have at the end of verse three, he says, listen, a sower went out to sow. And at the end of the parable in verse nine, he says, he said, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. In other words, and this is one of Jesus favorite phrases, let him who has ears to hear, hear. Jesus just said, I'm giving you a coded message. There's a depth below the surface. There is a depth to what I'm saying. And it takes ears to hear. You have to know the story of Psalm 29, you need to know the story of Isaiah, you need to know the story of Israel's scriptures to hear the depth of what I'm saying and what I mean. And that's going to be true for this Parable of the Sower, one of Jesus most popular and famous parables. And we oftentimes think, well, Jesus spoke in parables using agrarian images, whether it's a vineyard or a sower sowing seed. Because people were agrarian back then, and so that's something that they could relate to. And that's partially true, but I like to even shake up my students at times and say that's wrong, just to get them to think in a different way. Because Jesus is taking images and metaphors out of the Scriptures of Israel and redeploying them. It has more to do with how these images were used in Israel's past history and in her Scriptures than it does with the people who are gathered around him in Galilee and their agrarian habits. So we'll see it here with this parable. A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Others seed fell on rocky ground where it had not much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and 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 thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. And you're like, what? Like, what was I supposed to hear in that? You know, be careful where you sow. And it's kind of a silly sower who's just sowing his seed everywhere, right? Because seed is expensive, it's precious. And he's sowing along the path. He's sowing along the rocky ground. He's sowing along an area that's going to be choked with thorns and thistles, and then finally, good soil. First thing is, the sower is generous. He indiscriminately sows his seed. It doesn't depend upon the goodness and value of the ground. He's generous. And of course, this imagery of the sower as he gives it here, the sower went out to sow. Why does he say the sower went out to sow? The same verb is used by Jesus, if you recall, back in chapter one, and in verse 38, Peter finds Jesus because everyone's looking for him. And then Jesus said, let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also. For that is why I came out. That is why I came out. So the sower comes out to sow seed. Jesus comes out to sow, and he says, I have to go to the next villages and preach the word of God. So the sower is sowing the word of God, and the sower is Jesus. And there's another element that I think brings this out. In verse 21 of chapter 4 of Mark, we get another one of those really awkward, odd phrases in the Greek that scholars kind of roll their eyes over. And verse 21 says, and then he said, is a lamp and you have it cleaned up. In the English, the RSV is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel or under a bed and not on a stand. But literally what Mark has is a lamp coming out to be put under a bushel or under a bed and not on a stand. And they're like, oh, my goodness, this is terrible Greek. We got to clean that up, you know? But that's exactly what it says, is a lamp coming out so as to be put under a bushel or under a basket. And so the idea of a lamp coming out is exactly the verb he used for the sower. And it's exactly the verb he used with Peter saying he had to come out for this reason to proclaim the word of God. So Jesus is the lamp that's coming out. He is the sower sowing the seed. He is the one. As he says to Peter in chapter 138, this is why I had to come out and to go preach to all the villages, right? To everyone. So it would seem that the sower is Jesus. So then he goes on to describe this, then in chapter 4, verse 10. And when he was alone, those who were with him, who were about him with the 12, asked him concerning this parable. And he said to them, to you has been given. And the English, the RSV has secret. And I don't like that word. I don't think it's a good translation for the Greek. The Greek word is musterion. We actually have an English word that comes over from the Greek for that word. It's called mystery. So why we use a different English word than the word that is connected to the Greek, I don't know. It's a secret that I don't have an answer to. To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God. But for those outside, everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, that they may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn. And turning is the Hebrew metaphor and image for conversion. Teshuv to Turn is to repent, lest they should turn again and. And be forgiven. Because the last thing Jesus wants is for them to understand what he's saying and repent and be forgiven. Right? That ever bother you before, that saying? You're like, did he read that right? I'm not making that up. Jesus just said, everything is in parables for them so that they don't understand, so that they can see but not really perceive, that they can hear but not understand. Last, they turn, repent, and be forgiven. And you're like, huh? And then he said to them, do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the Word, and these are the ones along the path where the Word is sown. When they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the Word which was sown in them. Now, that's in verse 15. Now, I like the way Matthew describes it. Matthew gives us a little clearer interpretation of this. I believe in Matthew 13:19, Matthew says, the seed sown along the path are those who hear the Word of God in their hearts but do not understand it, which is very close to what he's saying here. But because they don't understand the Word of God, the devil can take it from their hearts. For those who don't understand their faith, they're susceptible of having the devil take it from their hearts if they don't understand why they believe what they believe. And then the second sowing, the Word of God is sown amongst them. And likewise they are the ones who are sown upon rocky ground, who, when they hear the Word of God, immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while. Then when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the Word, immediately they fall away. And Mark's community has seen some of that probably right, as they're being persecuted by Nero. And others are the ones sown upon among the thorns. They are those who hear the Word. But the cares of the world and the delight in riches and the desire for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown upon the good soil are the ones who hear the Word and accept it and bear fruit. So it's not enough to hear the Word of God, one has to accept it. There's the idea of faith, and they have to bear fruit. And then they have a, you know, 30 fold, 60 fold, 100 fold. And now I want to come back to this line that I haven't explained yet. And it's bothering you. And that is Jesus doesn't want them to really understand and really perceive, lest they repent and turn around and be forgiven. Right? Because you're like, wait a minute, isn't the whole mission of Jesus to preach, convert them so they may be forgiven? And he's speaking in parables so that they don't. What's going on here? Well, as Mark has clued us in, we have to understand and know the book of Isaiah to understand the book of Mark and the story of Jesus. And there's a key story that Mark is alluding to here and that Jesus is alluding to more importantly, and that's in chapter six of Isaiah. So turn with me to chapter six of Isaiah and we'll see this incredible story, which is the call of Isaiah. When God calls Isaiah to serve him. So it begins in the year that King Uzziah died. I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne. Notice the Lord's enthroned. How do we start chapter four? Jesus enthroned. The word sitting can also mean enthroned. So Jesus enthroned upon the waters. He saw the Lord sitting upon the temple, Enthroned upon the temple and lifted up. Now, the year that King Uzziah died, that must be significant for the call of Isaiah. Why is that significant? Uzziah was a king of Israel who had leprosy. So he was unclean. And that idea of uncleanliness is going to come out later in the narrative when he says, woe to me. I'm a man of unclean lips who dwells amongst the people of unclean lips. Well, you've got a king who embodies the people who's got leprosy, right? So it's the year of the king Uzziah died. But more importantly, why is this? This is called the call narrative of Isaiah. Isaiah's day job before God called him and probably ruined his life and has certainly ruined his career. Before God called Isaiah, he was a scribe. When you read the book of 2 Chronicles, 1st and 2nd Chronicles, you're going to find out about Isaiah. He was a scribe for the Kings. He was in charge of chronicling and writing about other things. It would be like Isaiah was the Shakespeare of the Hebrews. And so he was the official writer. So he was doing all the correspondence and writing down the king's documents and his correspondence. And so Isaiah had worked for several kings. Uzziah dies, and God says, okay, Isaiah, come here. You're going to start working for me. You're going to become my scribe for the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. No longer will you be a scribe for earthly kings. You're going to be my scribe. So in a sense, Isaiah kept the same kind of job. He just had a different boss, one who was a heck of a lot more demanding, actually, as we're going to find out. So he has a vision. He sees above God. In verse two stood the seraphim, which, out of all the nine choirs of angels and the Jews, had this sense that there was nine different kinds of angels. The seraphim were at the top. They were the top dogs. They were the top angels. And each had six wings. And two, he covered his face, and with two, he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And with. And one called to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, and the whole earth is full of his glory. Now, holy, holy, holy. Three times in Hebrew is absolute. So they're saying. That's why we use the pattern of three in the liturgy. It means absolute. We're repeating the heavenly liturgy. And then the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called. Notice the voice of God, like Psalm 29 speaks of, that shakes the cedars and the waters. The voice of God called out, and the house was filled with smoke. Holy smoke, you could say. And I said, woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell amongst the people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Now, of course, Isaiah is saying, his lips are unclean. He was the spokesman, being the scribe. It was like working for the president, you know, and being in charge of PR and communications, to be the spokesman. And so that's what Isaiah's job is. And so he says, look, how can I be the spokesman for God, the Holy One of Israel, when my lips have spoken lies? I have sinned with my mouth, and how can I speak the word of God? And then there's a solution. Then one flew one of these seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal, which. Which he had taken with tongs from an altar. So seraphim literally means burning ones. They're so on fire with the love of God. And yet the fire at the altar of incense in heaven is so hot that the seraphim, the burning ones, use tongs to grab the coals. And then the seraphim in verse seven, he touched my mouth with that and said, behold, this which has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away. And your sin forgiven. Now, it doesn't say that that hurt like heck, because it's assuming you're smart enough to figure that out, right? But Isaiah goes through a burning purgation. By the way, I see this text as the number one text for the truth of Purgatory. Purgatory, as Pope Benedict said, is not so much a place, but a process to enter before the presence of the Holy God. Like Isaiah, we go through a purgation so that we can stand before his holiness. Right here we have the example of purgatory. Someone taken up in heaven, they go through a burning purgation to be in God's presence. That is the Church's teaching of purgatory. We just saw it happen to Isaiah. I have no doubt it will be necessary for me if it was necessary for Isaiah. Behold, this which has touched your lips has taken away your guilt and your sin is forgiven. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send? Who will go for us? And then Isaiah composes a song, here am I Lord. No, he doesn't compose the song, but that's what the song is recounting. The famous song Here am I Lord, which we've all sung a thousand times in church, especially in the 80s. Here am I Lord, send me go and say to the people. So God says, okay, Isaiah, you're going to be my spokesman. You're going to my spirit. Here's the first message. So Isaiah's like, yes, I got to take this down. Got to get this right. Hear and hear, but do not understand. See and see, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people fat, their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed. Have you heard that before Jesus stole it from Isaiah. And in Mark 4, Jesus Explanation of why he speaks in parables was that hearing that they may not perceive and that seeing that they may not see and that they will not understand. And he's quoting that directly from the opening passage and the opening call of Isaiah the prophet. Why? Why is Jesus quoting that? Now again you're thinking, wait a minute, I thought Jesus whole mission is to help people understand and love and be forgiven. Well, notice what Isaiah says when he hears this message. He doesn't say, oh God, what are you doing, you knucklehead? You're supposed to help Israel turn and repent. Do you not love us? Are you abandoning us? Isaiah doesn't say that. Isaiah knows God, so he knows he gets what's going on. Unlike the disciples with Jesus, Isaiah gets it. And what does Isaiah say? Verse 11, his response to God Then I said, how long, O Lord? How long? How long are they not going to see, hear and understand? Because I know that this is temporary. I know this is just a phase. I know this cannot be your ultimate will for your people. And then God gives him a message of how long it's going to take and what will be the signs of it. He says, when cities lie in waste without inhabitants and houses without men, and there's utter desolation and the Lord removes men far away. In other words, Israel is not going to see, hear and understand until after the exile, until the land is desolate and they're in exile and they're in chains, and though a tenth remain in will be burned again. So the land is going to have to go and the people are going to have to go through a burning purgation, just as the prophet Isaiah did, with his lips being purged for his sins to be taken away. The people of God are going to go through the fiery furnace of Babylon. They're going to go through the ordeal and the purgation of exile until it's like a terebinth or an oak whose stump stands when it is felled, and the holy seed will be its stump. Now, you end with this idea of a burning purgation with a stump that's left remaining. And that stump then is called the holy seed. And of course, what parable did Jesus use to quote this whole passage? Parable of a sower. Sowing what seed? I wonder if that's accidental. Right? So what's going on here? Isaiah knew, because God just revealed it to him, that he would preach as a prophet, but Israel wouldn't come on board fully. They really wouldn't understand his message. That when he says, for example, that there will be a suffering servant that like a lamb led to the slaughter, who will atone for the sins of Israel, when he talks about a suffering servant, Israel doesn't get it that the Messiah will be a suffering Messiah. They don't. They hear the prophecy of Isaiah, but they don't hear it. They see what he's saying, but they don't understand and perceive. But Isaiah knows that that's only for a time. And what will be the time when they will come to see after the exile, after Israel as a nation goes through a burning purgation, and then through their suffering, they will come out the other side of suffering with a wisdom and a humility and A receptivity that will help them to hear, see and understand. And so likewise, Jesus is saying, I'm speaking in parables, lest they see, hear and understand, and turn. But then you have to know, okay, the question then, if Peter had known his Isaiah, he would have said, how long, O Lord? Right? And then Jesus would have talked about the Passion, his passion. Nobody else in the story, none of the human characters see the truth about Jesus as the Son of God until Jesus passion on the cross. And someone standing at the foot of the cross will say, behold, this was a righteous man. And he will believe Jesus will take on the suffering that will lead to, to the opening of eyes and the opening of ears and hearts and minds. He will go through that suffering. But that's for later in our story. But here we have that, and we're going to see this idea of seeing, hearing and understanding is something Jesus is going to play on throughout the rest of the narrative. And we're going to see how it's related to Jesus Passion especially. But this is a key. Chapter four is a key foundation for rooting the story of Jesus in the story of Isaiah. Now let's come back to this idea of the mystery to you. Jesus is explaining in verse 11, as he's explaining this parable to you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God. There's a mystery here. There's something deeper than what's at the surface. And we have to understand the mystery, the Mysterion in the Greek, and we have to be willing to perceive that mystery. Now, Jesus gives this parable the sower. And we could say, and I think oftentimes when people reflect on the soil, what does the different kinds of soil stand for, right? And there's four sowings, right? Three end up not being that great, right? So three out of four don't go well. So if you think you have a bad time evangelizing or catechizing, notice Jesus has a one out of four in terms of making the basket, right? And so three of the sowings don't go well. What does that mean? Well, I think first off, it's not that the 12 apostles are the good soil, because we're going to see in the story they're going to be like the path, the seed on the path. They're not going to understand. In fact, Jesus turns here and says, do you not understand? And that's going to happen again and again. We're going to see in chapter nine, Jesus gives a Bible study on the road, and they get to the house. And Jesus says, what did you discuss along the way? And they discuss along the way, who is the greatest? And you remember the thorns and thistles that choke out the cares of the world, choke out the word of God. They choked the word of God on that way. They didn't listen to Jesus and his teaching on that road. And they didn't understand because they were worried about the cares of this world, who was going to be greater, who was going to get a better cabinet position in the new regime. As they were on their way to the capital, Jerusalem, they wanted a jockey. And they were concerned about these kinds of temporal goods, these worldly goods and cares. So what we see with the disciples is they're like the path hardened. They're oftentimes. And we're also going to see all the 12 be just like the seed that's sown in the rocky ground that doesn't have deep root. Because when persecution and tribulation arises, they fall away. Peter himself will be shown in this gospel to deny Jesus when there's persecution problems. So here is the good news. The good news is the disciples are like the hardened path. They're like the rocky ground. They're like the seed amongst the thorns. We're all like that, but we just have to dig deeper. We have to cultivate the soil. We have to break the hard ground of the path to let the word of God, the seed sink in. We have to dig out the rocks and we have to keep cutting down and pruning and weeding out the thorns and the thistles to make space for God in our hearts and in our lives. It's a constant work. We are that bad soil. And God's word is the good seed. We just have to make space for it. And that is a work with many stumbles and difficulties along the way. But the disciples and their failures that are chronicled honestly in this gospel are not to simply show us how bad the disciples are, but to give us hope that as bad as we are, we too can become disciples and faithful. And we too can eventually bear fruit for Jesus Christ make room for his word in our hearts.