Reflecting on Mark's Gospel - Mark 4:1-9

Jesus lived in an agricultural context. Farming, often small scale, was undertaken by many of those who were attracted to listen to him. It is therefore not surprising that when he starts telling stories, or parables, this story of the sower being the first such reported by Mark, that he often uses examples from the world of farming. What he describes was an everyday scene that connected with the experience of his audience.

As Kim Huat Tan (Mark), explaining Jesus’ method of telling parables, comments – “a familiar scene taken from the agrarian context of his listeners is used: a small land-holder casts seed in all types of soil in the hope of getting optimal yield,” adding, “the seeds face different conditions and give different results. These are arranged in the form of a gradation: no germination → quick germination but also quick termination → no fruit → abundant fruit.”

There are four types of ground that receive the seed though, on closer examination, that becomes six, as the good ground good can be sub-divided into three, the good ground, the very good ground, and the extremely good ground, these three being differentiated by the yield that they produce.

The first type of ground is identified as the path, though more likely should be described as the unploughed strip beside the path. No farmer is going to be stupid enough as to deliberately try and grow  a crop on the path, but seed is a cheaper commodity than labour, and the loss of a little is not worth the energy that would be required to recoup it or avoid any landing where it did. The birds are happy. This provides them with easy pickings but, from the farmer’s point of view, it is wasted seed. Some falls on rocky ground, and so does not properly take root. Some falls amongst thorns, or weeds, and is choked. Weeds always seem to do better than whatever it is that I am trying to grow! The parable only identifies one other type of ground, the good, but it describes three different levels of yield – which is why I suggest that we can actually identify six places of sowing, three that do well, and three that do not.

Parables are not normally explained, but this is the exception, so we will delay commenting on what it might mean, except to note the important comment about listening – let anyone with ears to hear listen! I wonder why this needs to be said here. We can certainly assume with Tan that – “All are summoned to hear but it is implied that not all will do so.”