Like a Mustard Seed - Mark 4:30-34

30 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

33 With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. 34 He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

The sayings of Jesus given in the Gospels include a number of parables and similes about, "the kingdom of God".  The entire fourth chapter of Mark centres on this theme.  While interpreting the meaning of the first parable, The Sower, Jesus tells his disciples that, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you".  The passage previous compares the kingdom to a man scattering seed.  And, we can assume that the saying in between about the lamp on a stand is also a metaphor for the kingdom.

In an earlier post I discussed what the phrase, "the kingdom of God", would have implied to a Jewish audience of that period.  For some of them, the phrase would be identified in eschatological terms relating to the expected "new age". Jewish eschatological doctrines found in writings of the time saw the world as in the "end times" on the cusp of God's "new age" where God would raise a messiah of the line of David to reestablish Israel as a nation and take the throne to lead Israel and the world into God's new age of justice and peace.  These doctrines about the end of the current world were particularly attractive during the Jewish revolts against the Roman occupiers.

The other understanding of the kingdom of God came from references in the Tanakh to God's present dominion and reign rather than a future physical realm.  This is the perspective that is given in many of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels.  God's sovereignty is manifest when people do or express God's will and nature in the present moment.  Jesus is given as telling the Pharisees that the tax collectors and prostitutes that followed John the Baptist's instructions in social equality "are entering" the kingdom before them (Matthew 21:31).

It is this understanding of the manifestation of the nature of God among humanity that Jesus illuminates further through these parables and similes.  In the Parable of the Sower, the nature of God is spread like seed and we are told that it only grows and produces more if it is not choked by distractions in life, adversity, or persecution.  In the saying about the lamp on the stand, we are told that this nature is something we need to let shine and not hide away. And, in the simile of the Growing Seed, it is shown to be something that does not always bear immediate results and is not something that we can control or force to grow, but requires trust that some part will in its own time bear fruit.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus, in word and deed, characterizes this nature, or active and creative word of God, as primarily loving, compassionate and inclusive.  A perspective and actions which holds this as what is legitimate and true acknowleges God's authority and "kingship". It reveals and demonstrates allegience to God's kingdom on earth.

In the passage about the mustard seed being examined in this post, the nature of God expressed in humanity is compared to something extremely small which grows to something large. We are told that when grown it provides shelter and protection to those who like birds, might be considered vulnerable and perhaps unimportant.


The theme of the nature of God growing large from small beginnings is seen in some of the other sayings of Jesus.  In the Gospel of Matthew this same parable is followed by one about yeast.

33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.” ( Matthew 13:33)

Yeast, even a small quanity, can multiply and spread through a large quanity of dough.  So too can the spirit and nature of God spread through a large number of people through compassionate and selfless word and action.


Jesus' instruction on this nature and its cultivation in people can be further understood through some of his other sayings on the topic.

Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:15)

In this saying, the nature of God is shown as something requiring a fresh perspective uncluttered by the ways of thinking and values we may have learned from our culture.  There is also an aspect of humility and vulnerability.

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:23)

This saying reinforces the statement in the Parable of the Sower that, "the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful". Wealth, and the values that can make the aquisition a priority and a virtue, can be a distraction and competing interest that hinders the development of this nature.

99 The disciples said to him, "Your brothers and your mother are standing outside."
He said to them, "Those here who do what my Father wants are my brothers and my mother. They are the ones who will enter my Father's kingdom." (Gospel of Thomas, saying 99)

The Gospel of Thomas holds a saying with a story and message almost identical to one found in the previous chapter of Mark. The difference is the last line about his Father's kingdom.  Jesus lays it out that it is those who do what God wants who will enter the kingdom.
A key to doing what God wants is layed out in the sixth saying of the Gospel of Thomas.

6 His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"
Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed." (Gospel of Thomas, saying 6)

The Growing Seed - Mark 4:26-29

26 He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

The passage begins by identifying the saying as a simile for the, "kingdom of God".  Many modern readers interpret the kingdom of God as being about, "Heaven", a literal realm beyond our perceived universe where the consciousness of those God favours reside after death. But, this would be a foreign concept from Greek and Egyptian mythology for Jews of this period and is not one found in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures.  For them, the phrase would be identified in either of two ways, either in eschatological terms relating to the expected "new age", or in a more immediate and general way to God's reign on earth in terms of humanity's allegience to God's authority by acting out God's will.

Bruce M. Metzger in his book, The New Testament: It's Background, Growth, and Content, discusses this twin aspect of the kingdom of God in the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels.  Jewish eschatological doctrines found in writings of the time saw the world as in the "end times" on the cusp of God's new age where God would raise a messiah of the line of David to reestablish Israel as a nation, rebuild the Temple, and take the throne to lead Israel and the world into God's new age of justice and peace.  These doctrines about the end of the current world were particularly attractive during the Jewish revolts against their Roman occupiers and after the Roman destruction of the Temple.

The other Jewish understanding of the kingdom of God came from references in the Tanakh to God's dominion and reign rather than a future physical realm.  This is the perspective that is given in many of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels.  God's sovereignty is manifest when people do or express God's will and nature in the present moment.  Jesus is given as telling the Pharisees that the tax collectors and sinners that followed John the Baptist's instructions in social equality "are entering" the kingdom before them (Matthew 21:31).  To the Teacher of the Law who answered him on which of the commandments is the most important, he states that the man "is not far" from the kingdom of God.(Mark12:34)

More information about concepts of the kingdom of God in the Abrahamic religions can be found at this link:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingship_and_kingdom_of_God

The parable we are looking at then is about the manifesting of God's will and nature in the world.  Jesus is given as starting this analogy by talking about a man scattering seed on the ground.  In the Parable of the Sower at the beginning of the chapter, Jesus interprets the seed in that story as, the "word" (λόγον logon: a word, speech, divine utterance, analogy). 

In the previous post looking at that parable, I talked about how I interpreted this partly to refer to Jesus' message to this point in this Gospel.  Jesus is given as starting his ministry preaching a continuation of the message of John the Baptist, telling the people to "repent", to change their thinking and direction in terms of social justice; fairness, sharing with others, and caring for the disadvantaged. As the Gospel progresses, the message includes radical inclusion based on a vision of a primarily loving and compassionate God where all are welcome and equal participants in the people of God and no one is excluded or sanctioned. 

In the last post I tried to better define the seed, "the word", as it seemed to be expressed in the Parable of the Sower and the metaphor of the lamp earlier in the chapter. It would seem to be more than a message in terms of a doctrine, or a set of beliefs, and may be viewed as more of a perspective as well as the quality and type of nature that this perspective produces. If the perspective (at least in part) is that God is primarily loving and compassionate in an extravagant and unrestricted manner, then it both calls for and produces imitation of the same quality in ourselves and for that quality and nature to spill out, like light from a lamp, in what we say and do to others.

To the Jewish audience, "the word", would also carry a sense of power and active force.  Words were seen to have a power of their own. Curses and blessings were viewed as having physical effects on the world around them.  This would be especially true for God's word.  Although the text does not explicitly identify this word as God's, I think that it is strongly implied.  As such, the word would be viewed as having creative and active force.  In the Genesis stories, God speaks and the universe comes into existance and order is created out of chaos.

So let's return to the simile made in the text:

This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground.

At first I thought the man was meant to represent God, but that's not what the text says.  The "kingdom of God" is like a man, a man who scatters seed on the ground.  So the comparison is being made to explain something about the, "kingdom of God", the manifestation or expression of God's nature and will by humanity in the world.

Given the study and reflections just done, here is my awkward interpretation of this first line.  God's sovereignty, which is manifest when people speak or act in accordance with the nature and will of God, spreads "pockets" of God's creative and dynamic nature with the potential for growth.

God's sovereignty, which is manifest when people speak or act in accordance with the nature and will of God, spreads "pockets" of God's creative and dynamic nature with the potential for growth.

And, just to keep on track, remember that the nature and will of God that the Gospel gives Jesus as presenting is primarily loving, generous, compassionate and inclusive.  When we speak or act in ways that reflect this nature, we are manifesting, or embodying the kingdom of God, bringing reality under God's authority and "kingship".  When we do this, we are not only revealing the kingdom, but are spreading, or scattering the, "word", the dynamic force of God's nature, that when interacting with people can become an influence on their hearts and minds that can later result in those individuals reflecting and acting out this nature themselves.

So, when God's nature, or character, reveals itself in people’s lives, either through the beauty and generosity of nature, or through the loving words or actions of others, it, "plants a seed", that may or may not grow into expression of that same nature and produce a "harvest", of similar word and action as that spirit takes root and grows.  This is what I see as an interpretation of the rest of the saying.  Once the nature of God, love, compassion, and inclusion, are planted through its scattering, it is up to the individual heart to accept it and let it take root and flourish.  Those who spread this seed can not expect or control a harvest from each grain, but must trust that some will land in soil that will let it grow.

This perspective leads to me thougts about charitable giving for the poor and disadvantaged.  The reseach shows that those with the least wealth give a higher percentage of their income to charity than those with greater wealth and that the wealthy tend to give to charities that do not directly benefit the poor while at the same time taking advantage of tax credits which donors with lower incomes do not.  

One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.

Last year, not one of the top 50 individual charitable gifts went to a social-service organization or to a charity that principally serves the poor and the dispossessed.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765578735/Studies-try-to-find-why-poorer-people-are-more-charitable-than-the-wealthy.html?pg=all

You may ask what this has to do with the passage at hand.  But, think about why those with less money give a higher percentage to the disadvantaged than those with greater wealth.  I suspect that it may in many cases be a case of, "paying it forward".  

Individuals of lower income may have been more likely to have received charity or "unearned", unexpected assistance themselves at different points in their life and have been inspired to do the same.  I would also hazard that those of lower income are more likely to come from backgrounds of less advantage and have lived closer to the edge economically and are more likely to see their present means as being subject to "fortune" and circumstances rather than strictly merit.  

Those of greater economic means are conversly more likely to have come from a background of advantage and privilege where they have not experienced the same type of generous unexpected acts to meet their basic needs.  There can be an attitude of entitlement and having earned what they have where the opportunities created by family wealth and connections that allowed them access to good schools, tutors, and job opportunities are not appreciated.  They may view their good fortune in picking a career or going into a line of business that is doing favourably in the current economy as due to their own ability and superiority.

Paul Piff, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, led a series of reseach experiments on altruistic giving by people of different socioeconomic classes. These are some of his observations from an artcle on his research:

People who have a lower income are always wary of possible threats to their precarious position, Kraus says. They are always on the lookout for negative emotions.

But such awareness makes people more generous. "Because you notice other people in need a lower class person may say, 'I know what it is like to be in need. We need to help those other people out. It is wrong to turn a blind eye,'" Kraus says.

And without the constant threat to financial, social and familial survival, middle and higher income people just don't notice things.

Piff and his colleagues argue that the poor may feel more compassion because they are more connected to those around them, psychologically and socially. 

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_poor_give_more

We can put some of these observations in context with the simile about the kingdom of God in our passage. When people experience generosity and compassion which they consider unmerited or unearned, the same qualities may grow within them and shine out in similar acts. They also may feel greater connection and ownership in a community, dare I say, a, "kingdom".

A Refocusing: Background on the Community of Mark

Before I address the next passage in the Gospel of Mark, I want to refocus and remind myself of the main perspective I had set for myself for this study of the Gospel; that is, to explore the mindset of the community that produced it. To refresh this, I am going to take this opportunity to review what I have learned (what little there is) that might give some background on this community as well as study some fresh information.  There are no historical records beyond the Gospel itself for this particular community, but much can be inferred and surmised by what we know about early Christian communities of this kind and what we know of the events, political, cultural, and religious forces of this period and general location.

More than the story of Jesus, this is the story of this communities' traditions and vision of who Jesus had become to them. The teachings and stories chosen and the way they were interpreted reflect what was important to this group, how they saw the world, who they saw themselves as, and their hopes for the future.  Our vision and descriptions of others often reveal as much about ourselves as the ones we are trying to explain.  We project ourselves, our experience and what we empathise with on our interpretation of others.  In this study, I'm aware of that for myself as well in my visioning of this community.

 ...the evangelists often wrote on two levels, one the "historical" presentation of the story of Jesus, the other dealing with the concerns of the author's own day
Lössl, Josef (2010). The Early Church: History and Memory. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-567-16561-9. p. 43

THEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY OF EARLY CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES 

There were numerous disperse and diverse Christian communities at the time this Gospel was written, each unique, and as such, each with a unique vision of what the figure and teachings of Jesus had become for them.  

Helmut Koester, John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School, writes the following on early Christian diversity:

Paul's conversion as an apostle to the gentiles may date as early as three years after Jesus' death. No later than the year 35, but probably already 32 or 33.... He was in Damascus when he was called, according to his own witness. So we have, already, within two years or three or five years, of Jesus' death probably Greek speaking communities outside of Palestine, very early in Antioch, but we have also the founding of communities in Samaria.... We have apparently more isolated Christian communities founded very early in Galilee. Paul's mission carried Christianity all the way over Asia Minor, present Turkey into Macedonia, into Greece, within 20 years. And at the end of that period, Paul already knows that there's a Christian community in Rome which he has not founded.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/diversity.html

L. Michael White, Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, writes:

This is where we start to see a kind of proliferation of gospels ... all over the empire, and by the third and early fourth century [more] than you can actually count, and certainly more than you can easily read within a bible.

A number of years ago I read Elaine Pagels', Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.  In this book she explores the richness and diversity of early Christian philosophy that has recently become available since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts and how these diverse views and writings from the many early Christian communities were later suppressed and actively eradicated by the later Roman Church in order to impose a standardized orthodoxy.  It would most likely profit my study to read her book again with eyes to how her studies relate to this community.

PLACE OF ORIGIN

So, what does the scholarly research suggest is the background of this particular Christian community, the community that assembled what we have come to know as the Gospel of Mark.  First off, the Gospel was originally anonymous and it wasn't until the second century that we have writers attributing the authorship to Mark, a figure offhandedly mentioned in Acts and First Peter as a companion of Peter in his travels and nephew of Barnabas. The mythology claims that Mark recorded these stories from Peter on his missions to spread Jesus' teachings.

Secondly, most scholars believe the community lived as part of the diaspora, one of the Jewish enclaves outside of the traditional borders of Palestine, most likely Rome, Antioch, or southern Syria.

Delbert Burkett in his, An introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, writes:

Mark was written in Greek, for a gentile audience (that they were gentiles is shown by the author's need to explain Jewish traditions and translate Aramaic terms) of Greek-speaking Christians: Rome (Mark uses a number of Latin terms), Galilee, Antioch (third-largest city in the Roman Empire, located in northern Syria), and southern Syria have all been offered as alternative places of authorship.

DATE OF COMPOSITION 

The Gospel of Mark is believed to be the earliest of the four canonized Gospels, written sometime between 50 and 70 either just before or during the Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple.  The NIV Study Bible gives the following on the date of composition:

Some, who hold that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a major source, have suggested that Mark may have been composed in the 50s or early 60s. Others have felt that the content of the Gospel and statements made about Mark by the early church fathers indicate that the book was written shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem.  http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/scholar-notes/niv-study-bible/intro-to-mark/

Marilyn Mellowes, who produced and wrote the popular four-hour series, "From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians", for PBS, writes:

While there is disagreement about where Mark wrote, there is a consensus about when he wrote: he probably composed his work in or about the year 70 CE, after the failure of the First Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple at the hands of the Romans. That destruction shapes how Mark tells his story.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/mmmark.html

JEWISH ESCHATOLOGICAL THOUGHT

The placement of the Gospel after the First Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple is an important factor in the world view of the Gospel community.  They would have needed to interpret for themselves what had gone wrong and why Jerusalem had been destroyed.  These events would have also increased the popularity of Jewish  eschatological thought, teaching, and literature. 

Delbert Burkett in his, An introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, writes:

From the outset, Christians depended heavily on Jewish literature, supporting their convictions through the Jewish scriptures.[19] Those convictions involved a nucleus of key concepts: the messiah, the son of God and the son of man, the Day of the Lord, the kingdom of God. Uniting these ideas was the common thread of apocalyptic expectation: Both Jews and Christians believed that the end of history was at hand, that God would very soon come to punish their enemies and establish his own rule, and that they were at the centre of his plans.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark

The Wikipedia entry for Jewish Eschatology includes the following:

In Judaism, end times are usually called the "end of days" (aḥarit ha-yamim, אחרית הימים), a phrase that appears several times in theTanakh. The idea of a messianic age has a prominent place in Jewish thought, and is incorporated as part of the end of days.
The main tenets of Jewish eschatology are the following, in no particular order, elaborated in the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiahand Ezekiel:[1]

• End of world (before everything as follows).

• God redeems Israel (i.e. the Jewish people) from the captivity that began during theBabylonian Exile, in a new Exodus

• God returns the Jewish people to the Land of Israel

• God restores the House of David and theTemple in Jerusalem

• God creates a regent from the House of David (i.e. the Jewish Messiah) to lead the Jewish people and the world and usher in anage of justice and peace

• All nations recognize that the God of Israel is the only true God

• God resurrects the dead

• God creates a new heaven and a new earth  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_eschatology

PAGAN AND HELLENISTIC INFLUENCES

The placement of the community of Mark outside of Palestine and the inclusion of Gentiles suggests that there would have been a strong influence from pagan religions and Hellenistic thought.  Helmut Koester, John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School, relates:

But the other aspect is the diversity of religious movements. And that in fact early Christianity, by moving into different realms of the different universes of thought and of religion in the Greco-Roman world, adopted a lot of concepts from other religions, lots of them pagan religions, which enriched the early Christian movement tremendously.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/diversity.html

Even if the community of Mark did live in Palestine, I would imagine that one thing this group would know in common would have been Greek or Hellenistic culhture. Alexander the Great had conquered all of the Mediterranean and the Middle East as far as present day Pakistan leaving Hellenistic culture in his wake. After his death, Palestine was part of the Selucid kingdom. The Herrads were all about a renaissance of Hellenistic culture and the Romans, taking their turn as world conquers, were also steeped in Greek culture. Everyone in the possible location of Mark's community would have been versed in Greek thought, philosophy, myth and aware of the various mystery religions.

A number of years ago I read Bruce M.  Metzger's, The New Testament: It's Background, Growth, and Content.  Bruce Metzger is the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary and a past president of the Society of Biblical Literature and the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.  He devotes a large section of this book to the mystery religions and on the dying and resurrected god-man figures of Dionysis, Bacchus, and Osiris.

SOCIAL MAKE UP AND PRACTICE

What segments of society made up early Christian communities like that of the book of Mark and what did the practice of these communities look like?  L. Michael White,
Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, states:

What kinds of people belong to these early congregations? Who signs up? Paul's congregations are typically based in individual homes. We call those "house churches" these days. They didn't have church buildings. There probably weren't that many synagogue buildings that one could recognize. Even Jewish communities typically began in homes as well, and in these home congregations or house churches we should imagine a mix of people from across the social spectrum of any Greek city. There's the owner of the house, a kind of wealthy patron. It might be someone like Stephanus or Phoebe. Also the members of their household, family members as well as household slaves and even their clients if they were in a artisan guild. Say tent makers or merchants of some sort. We might typically expect that the household would include not only the immediate family and others around them but even the clients and business partners.... Paul seems to have recognized the opportunity that these house church congregations afforded for getting into the networks of individual relationships that afford to him access to many different people within the Greek city.    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/congregations.html

Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University, contends:

So you begin to get the impression that you have quite a variety of different social levels represented in these early Christian communities. Not people at the absolutely top level; you have, with the exception possibly of Erastus, no one from the aristocratic orders - no one who would be a member of the city council. You have no agricultural slaves, are at the bottom of the hierarchy. But, in the rest of the social pyramid, everything in between, you seem to have representatives in these early Christian groups. The people who are named, whom we can identify, have the further characteristic that they seem to cross various boundaries, they're betwixt and between. In some ways, they are marked by high social status.    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/congregations.html

A SECT IN THE DIASPORA 

Christianity began as a relatively small sect within Judaism.  As a sect they had to justify themselves to other Jews who were part of the more mainstream institutional Judaism.  This was even more the case in a period of foreign occupation where religious leaders were trying to unify and purify the faith in response to oppression in hopes that God would save them.  The Christian's lax interpretation towards the practice of the purity laws would have been seen as a threat.

If as we suspect, the community of Mark was part of the diaspora and living as a minority sect as part of a larger Jewish enclave in a foreign land, they would have had further pressures towards conformity.  Minority cultural groups living outside of the traditional homeland of their heritage often seek to preserve their culture against the influence of the dominant culture around them.  There is a strong emphasis on maintaining the most conservative and traditional elements of that identity without change and sometimes become almost cultural time capsules resistant to incorporating the changes going on in their homeland.  As such, the divergent Jewish fringe cult of Christianity with their inclusion of Gentiles would have been seen as a threat.

L. Michael White, Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, discusses part of the social dynamic of early Christianity as a Jewish sect:

The Jesus movement is a sect. How do sects behave? One of the things they have to do is, they have to distance themselves from their dominant cultural environment. A sect always arises within a community with whom it shares a basic set of beliefs and yet, it needs to find some mechanism for differentiating itself. So, sectarian groups are always in tension with their environment. That tension is manifested in a variety of ways - controversies over belief and practice; different ideas of purity and piety. But, another manifestation of that tension is the tendency to want to spread the message out, to hit the road and convince others that the truth is real.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/themovement.html

Shaye J.D. Cohen in his book From the Maccabees to the Mishnah locates early Christianity firmly within the world of Jewish sectarianism. However, he does not think it remained so beyond the first century.

Cohen defines a sect this way:

A sect is a small, organized group that separates itself from the larger religious body and asserts that it alone embodies the ideals of the larger group because it alone understands God’s will . . . In the final analysis, what makes a sect a sect is its separation and exclusivity. Guilds, clubs, synagogues, and schools resemble sects in that they are small voluntary associations, but as long as they neither separate themselves from the community nor claim exclusive possession of truth, they are not sects . . . Whether as a cause or an effect of its alienation, a sect rejects or, at least, harshly criticizes the institutions and practices venerated by the rest of the society. In ancient Judaism, the targets of sectarian polemics were primarily three: law, temple, and scripture (120, 122, 123).     http://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/2012/01/christianity-from-jewish-sect-to-separate-religion/

CONFLICT WITH EMPIRE 

The Gospel was written at a time when there is historic mention of some persecution of Christians.  Nero is said to blame them for the great fire in Rome.  Adhering to a religion other than the Roman state religion was tolerated as long as one also practiced the civic religion and took part in the socially expected religious ceremonies and practices.  This was something that even the mainstream sects of Judaism did.  However, the early Jesus communities were known for refusing to participate.  A few Jews doing this could be ignored by Gentiles as a quirk of their race.  But when communities with a large contingent of non-jews did this I would imagine that it would cause the greater community to be less sympathetic.  This negative attention levelled against a Jewish sect could only have increased conflict between Jewish Christians and their more mainstream Jewish neighbours.

Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University, states:

Christianity, in its earliest beginnings, is part of Judaism... it is a sect, among a number of varieties of Judaism in the Roman Empire. But it is also clear that at a certain point, they develop a consciousness which takes them outside of the social orb of Judaism. They're no longer part of the local Jewish community, they're a separate community, meeting in little household groups, all over the city. And, it's apparent, at least from the time of the Emperor Nero, that outsiders also view them as distinct. So that when Nero is looking for scapegoats upon whom to put blame for the fire in Rome in 64, he zeroes in on the Christians.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/wrestling.html

LITERARY INFLUENCES AND PURPOSE

The author may have been influenced by Greco-Roman biographies and rhetorical forms, popular novels and romances, and the Homeric epics; nevertheless, he mentions almost no public figures, makes no allusions to Greek or Roman literature, and takes all his references from the Jewish scriptures, mostly in their Greek versions.[11] His book is not history in the modern sense, or even in the sense of classical Greek and Roman historians, but "history in an eschatological or apocalypticsense," depicting Jesus caught up in events at the end of time.[12]

Christianity began within Judaism, with a Christian "church" (from a Greek word meaning "assembly") that arose either within Jesus' own lifetime or shortly after his death, when some of his followers claimed to have witnessed him risen from the dead.[18] From the outset, Christians depended heavily onJewish literature, supporting their convictions through the Jewish scriptures.[19] Those convictions involved a nucleus of key concepts: the messiah, the son of God and the son of man, the Day of the Lord, thekingdom of God. Uniting these ideas was the common thread of apocalyptic expectation: Both Jews and Christians believed that the end of history was at hand, that God would very soon come to punish their enemies and establish his own rule, and that they were at the centre of his plans. Christians read the Jewish scripture as a figure or type of Jesus Christ, so that the goal of Christian literature became an experience of the living Christ.[20]The new movement spread around the eastern Mediterranean and to Rome and further west, and assumed a distinct identity, although the groups within it remained extremely diverse.[18]Lössl, Josef (2010). The Early Church: History and Memory. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-567-16561-9. p. 43   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark

They were written for an audience already Christian – their purpose was to strengthen the faith of those who already believed, not to convert unbelievers.[21] Christian "churches" were small communities of believers, often based on households (an autocratic patriarch plus extended family, slaves, freedmen, and other clients), and the evangelists often wrote on two levels, one the "historical" presentation of the story of Jesus, the other dealing with the concerns of the author's own day.[22] 

Lössl, Josef (2010). The Early Church: History and Memory. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-567-16561-9. p. 43

EPILOGUE

Like Socrates, Jesus left us no written record of his own.  Socrates' teachings come to us only through the record and interpretation of his student Plato.  Likewise, Jesus' teaching and actions are only available to us through the writings put together by the early Jesus communities some generations after his death. 

The Gospel of Mark is the story of one of those communities' traditions and vision of who Jesus had become to them. The teachings and stories chosen and the way they were interpreted reflect who they were, their conflicts and concerns, who they saw themselves as, and their hopes for the future.

The fact that the Gospel is a creation of its community, colored and inspired by their unique situation and not a literal history of the words and events of Jesus does not make it less meaningful or "true".  The way the stories this group told transformed them and defined them from the dominant culture, and the vision it gave them for viewing their world and living in a different way has great meaning.  The truths they relate are both transcendent and eternal, extending beyond their unique situation.  There is meaning here that speaks to us today and that tackles themes and perceptions that we continue to wrestle with.  However, to fully appreciate that meaning and how it can speak more universally we need to better understand what these teachings and stories meant to them.

The Parable of the Sower - Mark 4:1-20

4 1 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. 2 He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: 3 “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”

9 Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

10 When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. 11 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 12 so that,  

“‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’[a]”

13 Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? 14 The farmer sows the word. 15 Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. 16 Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. 17 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 18 Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. 20 Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”

Footnotes:
a. Mark 4:12 Isaiah 6:9,10 


"Again Jesus began to teach by the lake", and yet again we have another story about the huge crowds that gathered around Jesus. This is the second time in which we are told that Jesus had to speak from a boat off the shore to keep from being mobbed by the massive press of people attracted by his fame. I can't help but wonder if the writer, "doth protest too much".

The community of Mark represented a minor sect at a time when there was an increased pressure in the Jewish community to conform to the mainstream institutional interpretation of the religion.  Religious authority stressed increased diligence in the practice of orthodoxy as a way of appealing to God to fulfil His part of the Covenant and deliver the nation from the Romans.  If, as we suspect, this community was living in the Jewish diaspora as part of a larger Jewish enclave in southern Syria or Antioch, then there would be an even greater pressure to conform to "traditional" religious norms and an increased need to defend and explain both to others and themselves why they were different and why they were legitimate.

I can imagine that the larger Jewish community challenged them with the fact that their teacher, Jesus, was so little known and left so little a mark on the Jewish people during his lifetime.  Jesus was just one of many self proclaimed prophets that arose during the Roman occupation many of whom created enough of a stir that they were recorded in the historic records of the time.  Jesus, besides the testament of the Gospels written generations after his death, was not one of them.

Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University, explains:

Christianity begins really as a sect among Judaism. One of several sects that we know of from about the same time. Josephus tells us about a number of prophets who appeared and gathered followers and were wiped out by the Roman Governors and their followers were disbursed, and if you read the series of revolts that Josephus talks about, and about the prophets that come and promise to part the waters of the Jordan or whatever, make the walls of Jerusalem fall down, and they gather followers and then their leader is captured and he dies and that's the end of it, of the story that we have about Jesus and the gospel fits rather nicely in that succession.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/themovement.html

One of the most popular and best known prophets of the time, as recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus, was John the Baptist.  His popularity was seen as enough of a threat to the legitimacy of this fledgling Jesus sect that the very first scene of their Gospel is a story that has John testify that Jesus is greater than himself and the true Messiah for which he himself was only preparing the way.

The Gospel community tries to enhance Jesus' legitimacy  (and their own) by telling a story that includes Jesus having a large populist impact.  However, given the facts of his relative popularity during his ministry, they have a contradiction to explain.  People would be wondering why if he drew such crowds they had never heard of him, or why he left so little mark.  The Gospel writers addressed this through their "hardened heart" and "secret identity" narratives.  

The "hardened heart" narrative was looked at in the post on the previous passage.  This narrative in the Gospel contends that the Jewish people, the Religious/Political elite in particular, had hearts hardened to God and this is why they did not recognize Jesus as speaking God’s words and respond accordingly.  I would think that it was also implied that the popularity of Jesus and the crowds that he attracted had been downplayed and erased by these same elites.

The narrative was also a way to legitimize Jesus' teaching in spiritual terms.  It stated that those with a pure heart and are in tune with the spiritual plane will recognize that his teaching has the authority of God and is true.  This was important in order to establish some form of legitimacy for a teacher who was not "certified" by semicha, rabbinic ordination, and did not have, s'mikhahto, "authority" to interpret the Law or have his own teaching under the traditional Jewish religious institution.

This narrative is stated somewhat more explicitly in the Gospel of John.

16 Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own." (John 7:16-17)

This story line is also part of the purpose behind the inclusion in the Gospel at several points of exorcised spirits testifying to Jesus' identity as the Son of God.  The implication is that those who are in tune with the spiritual plane will also recognize this truth.  

This device takes the legitimacy of Jesus outside of the realm of traditional systems of authority, logic, and reason, and allows the author to suggest that those who do not accept it have a personal deficit and are not in right heart or relationship with God.  I have experienced this sort of justification for dogma in "Evangelical" groups.  There is often an, "Emperor's new clothes", aspect.  If everyone in the group ascribes to a certain view of reality and those who don't are labelled as less spiritual or out of tune with the Spirit of God, then people come to believe that questioning and doubt are signs of something wrong with them and stop seeking after truth.

I may seem to be critical of this narrative in the Gospel.  This is partly because I find it out of step with the narrative we have explored earlier in the Gospel that God is primarily inclusive and that the kingdom of God is extended to all, period.  I also struggle with the honesty and legitimacy of this mode of thought since I use it myself.  I affirm many of the teachings and themes we have explored in the Gospel because they resonate with the Spirit of love, generosity, and fairness they touch within myself (not that this is all that fills my heart).  However, the fact that these themes are recognized by the best of my heart does not mean that I give blanket endorsement to all the teachings of Jesus as presented by this Gospel community.  I don't then assume that all of the writings are then God's inerrant and dictated word, beyond question, criticism, or debate.

So, let's move to the aspect of this narrative introduced in this passage that I find even more problematic. The explanation the writer has Jesus give for teaching using parables appears to be that God deliberately hides him/herself and the secrets of the kingdom of God and that these are only available to a select minority.  

The passage cited as part of the explanation is from Isaiah 6:9-10:

“Go and tell this people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
    be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
Make the heart of this people calloused;
    make their ears dull
    and close their eyes.[a]
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

This passage is part of Isaiah's vision of God in the Temple and begins with the phrase, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord,...".  Uzziah had mainly been a "righteous" king, but towards the end of his reign had become proud and usurped the role of priest in the Temple which was seen by the Prophet to be a desecration and the cause of his being, "struck down by God".  The son who succeeded him was also considered to be wicked.  This gave the writers of the Tanakh, looking back, the opportunity to explain the wars that followed and the destruction of the Temple in 587 BCE in terms of Covenant.  The logic of the histories of the Tanakh is that when bad things happen to Israel it is because they had previously been wicked and not upheld their side of the Covenant with God.  

As is the case with the Prophets, God is shown to be merciful and sends a Prophet to inform the nation of its infraction and give it opportunity to repent and forestall punishment, and to squarely convince the reader that the punishment meted out after the inevitable refusal to listen is just.  However, in this passage, God is portrayed as being at war with His own nature.  His own principles of mercy require that He warn the people and give the opportunity to repent, but the sin is apparently grievous enough that He would prefer not to and so makes the hearts of the people calloused so that they will not receive the Prophet's message, repent and evoke the merciful side of His nature.  So God, who is portrayed as primarily merciful and compassionate, is also portrayed as having a shadow side prone to vengefulness and spite.

In the Gospel passage, Jesus is being likened to the figure of Isaiah and the people of Israel are cast in a similar scenario as this story from Isaiah.  Looking back on their own recent history as the writers of Isaiah's story did, they interpret the Roman destruction of the Temple as God's punishment for the people straying from God with Jesus cast as the Prophet sent with the message of warning and repentance beforehand. Moreover, like in Isaiah's case, God has calloused the people's hearts, so, like Isaiah, Jesus is rejected and ignored.

This narrative fits well with the popular Jewish doctrines of the times on the Messiah.  The Messiah was expected to punish the unrighteous of the people so that past breaches of the Covenant could be made right and then drive out the foreign oppressors and re-Institute the nation of Israel.  The destruction of the Temple  (which later in the Gospel Jesus is given as foretelling) could be viewed as part of that earthly purge.  Jesus is more explicitly placed in that role in the Gospel of Luke where John the Baptist's testimony on the coming Messiah  includes,

17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Luke 3:17 NIV

This explains why the Gospel writers used the motif of a God that deliberately hardens people’s hearts, but it doesn't make me any more comfortable with their use of it.  However, if I step back, maybe it is only a problem if one literalizes the anthropomorphic images of God.  What does this say if God is seen as the characterization of what we hold up to be legitimate and true?  In that case we can ask if truth in the manner of condemnation of wrong action and a call to change does in fact in some cases harden people’s hearts.  I think that this is indeed the case and that many times when people are directly confronted with behaviour and attitudes they have displayed that are unjust or cruel they react defensively and reject this characterization of themselves.

This is where the wonder of parable and fiction lies in "hiding" the truth in a manner in which it can be gradually accepted and integrated as the heart becomes ready through exposure to a different perspective.  In a story about a remote situation removed from your personal bias and need for self defence, you can have your perception shifted and problems or injustices presented in the story are more easily accepted allowing one to then gradually see the parallels with the the ones you may be in the middle of.  This has aways been the glory of good story and literature from Aesop's fables using talking animals to Fantasy and Science Fiction.  

I've read that Martin Luther King Jr. once gave a speech on racism in the United States to a less than receptive audience.  He began by not talking about he situation in America at all, but the caste system in India and the injustice and indignity done to those born into the lower castes.  It was only after the crowd had empathised with a similar injustice removed from their context and not threatening to themselves could they begin to see the parallels with their own situation and admit to themselves that things were not right.

Parable, fiction, and good literature can be like the seed in Jesus' parable, the word of God.  They can sprout change in people, but often only over time as the soil of the heart is made ready.