If Anyone Has Ears - Mark 4:21-25

21 He said to them, “Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand?22 For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.23 If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.”

24 “Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more.25 Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

The first part of the Fourth Chapter of the Gospel of Mark is the teaching of four parables; the Parable of the Sower, the Parable (or more rightly the metaphor) of a Lamp on a Stand, the Parable of the Growing Seed, and the Parable of the Mustard Seed.

The passage being looked at is the metaphor of the lamp. Along with the Parable of the Sower before it, there are themes of listening and hearing and of accepting, taking to heart, and broadcasting, "the word".

It is probably wise at this point, to review,"the word", the message of Jesus, that the Gospel has introduced so far. We are told that there is more truth that Jesus has to share, "the secret of the kingdom of God", as stated in the eleventh verse in the preceding passage, but let's review the message of his teaching as given to this point.

As we have observed in our study of the Gospel to this point, Jesus is given as starting his ministry preaching a continuation of the message of John the Baptist, telling the people to "repent", 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 both this passage, and the one before, there is a continued stress on "listening" for the meaning of the message.  The Parable of the Sower begins with the exhortation, "Listen!", and ends with the phrase, "Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear".  The same phrase is used at the end of the metaphor of the lamp in this passage.

This phrase seemed familiar to me from my reading of the Gospel of Thomas.  The Gospel According to Thomas is an early Christian non-canonical sayings-gospel discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945 among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library. It is comprised of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, about half of which resemble ones found in the canonical Gospels.  It is believed to predate the Gospel of Mark and to give insight into the oral Jesus sayings that the canonical Gospels were written around.  The quotes I have included in this post from the Gospel of Thomas are taken from The Complete Gospels (3rd edition), edited by Robert J. Miller and published by Polebridge Press.

 The twenty-first saying in the collection includes the almost identical phrase,

21 "...Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!"

The Thomas Gospel includes many other exhortations to listen as well as a version of the Parable of the Sower and a section of text quite similar to the end of the passage from Mark that we are looking at.  It may be that the Markian community sourced this writing from the book of Thomas, or they both drew material from an earlier writing, or they both drew on authentic early Christian oral traditions of the sayings of Jesus.  Whichever it was, what it suggests to us is that these teachings are part of the earliest of the tradition of the sayings of Jesus.  The Gospel According to Thomas also includes a number of sayings not included in the canonical Gospels that follow the same themes as the passage we are looking at and the one before, and may help us shed light on them.

 However, back to the Mark passages and the themes introduced there.  The Parable of the Sower talks about the spreading of the seed, the word, or message of God.  We reviewed the message as given by Jesus as presented in the Gospel to this point.  I will clumsily condense it as being about the unrestricted love and goodness of God and the imitation of the same.  The Parable talks about how different people receive the message or what they do with that message, or truth, when it comes to them.  Or perhaps, more accurately, how that message will or will not thrive and grow in them.  For some, the message is snatched away.  Others do not have the security or strength of presence in life to allow it to grow and troubles make it fade.  Others allow distractions to overtake the priority of the message, while others are able to allow it to grow within to the point that it produces fruit.  I would imagine that part of the fruit produced is that the unrestricted love and goodness of God is acted upon in their interactions with others.  The passage about the lamp following the Parable of the Sower is a continuation of the subject.  It gives direction on allowing that seed to grow and produce.

At this point it is helpful to better define the seed, "the word".  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 over in what we say and do to others.  I'll explore how I come to that interpretation from the passage as well as amplify with sayings on the same theme from the Thomas Gospel.  I know that this is moving away from the purpose of this blog which is to explore what these stories meant to the community of Mark, but, hey, it's my blog.

The passage we are looking at on the lamp talks about how a lamp is put somewhere that it can spread the most light such as a stand rather than someplace where the light will be hidden or obscured.  The light metaphor as a continuation and amplification of the Parable about receiving and nurturing the word gives us more insight into the nature of the word.  This is why I interpret it as being a quality, a characteristic, that can, "shine forth", from within through word and action rather than a dogma to be repeated to others.  In the context of the preceding parable's discussion on how the word is nurtured or denied, it would seem that this saying is suggesting that letting the light of the word that has grown within to shine is part of the process to nurture its growth.

This theme is further explored in sayings in the Gospel of Thomas:

24 His disciples said, "Show us the place where you are, for we must seek it."
He said to them, "Anyone here with two ears had better listen! There is light within a person of light, and it shines on the whole world. If it does not shine, it is dark."

45 Jesus said, "Grapes are not harvested from thorn trees, nor are figs gathered from thistles, for they yield no fruit. Good persons produce good from what they've stored up; bad persons produce evil from the wickedness they've stored up in their hearts, and say evil things. For from the overflow of the heart they produce evil."

The next statement in our passage from the Gospel of Mark after the lamp metaphor is:

For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open

Again this is a statement found often among the sayings of Jesus given in the Thomas Gospel.

5. Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that won't be revealed."

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."

The last two verses in the Mark passages are as follows:

24 “Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more.25 Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

Again, there is a similar saying in the Thomas Gospel:

41 Jesus said, "Whoever has something in hand will be given more, and those who have nothing will be deprived of even the little they have."

In the passage from Mark, in context with the preceding sayings about the word/light, it would appear that what is being said is that it requires that a person already have a portion of the "truth" and the quality that it distills within before more of that truth and further insight can be gained.  It suggests that the more of this word/light/truth quality one possesses, the more capacity one has to gain more.

Since I'm delving into my personal interpretation of the text, I have to say that I find the twenty-fourth verse of the passage from Mark very meaningful.

24 “Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more

I interpret this as saying that part of nurturing the growth of the word/light inside oneself is in being careful in what messages you surround yourself with and focus on.  Is your television on Fox News 24/7? What does your Facebook feed consist of?  Do you seek out conversations of gossip and complaint?  Are the voices we centre on distractions and weeds that choke out the new plant?

Even more than the external messages we concentrate on, I think that our internal dialogue is important.  Where does our mind dwell?  What narratives and experiences are we constantly re-living, or rehearsing.  I'm reminded of the Native American parable about each of us having two wolves fighting within, one good and one bad, with the wolf that wins being the one we feed.

To the same end, I'm also reminded of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (another example of the glory of fiction).  "Emissary", the first two episodes of the science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, comprise the pilot for the show.  In this pilot, the series is introduced with the character of Commander Benjamin Sisko who has been assigned as station commander of a space station situated at one end of a wormhole that allows passage to a distant quadrant of the Galaxy.  A race of aliens live in the midst of the wormhole and Sisko's first task is to negotiate with them continued travel through this portal.  The aliens, since they live in a wormhole, have a non-linear experience of time and a non-corporal form.  These wormhole aliens had been communicating with the humanoid race on Bajor, the planet closest to the space station, for millennia through "orbs".  Special Prophets among the Bajorans experience a type of communication with the wormhole aliens in the form of visions of both past and future when touching one of the orbs.  Sisko experiences a vision when accidentally touching one of the sacred orbs and is announced by the Prophets of Bajor to be the foretold, "Emissary", a messiah figure that will help Bajor.

Sisko attempts to contact the wormhole aliens using one of the sacred orbs.  Each time he does so he finds himself within a vision where he is re-living the death of his wife a tragedy which had occurred a few years previous during an attack by an alien race named the Borg in which same attack his former star ship was destroyed.  Each time he attempts contact he finds himself back in the events of this period of time.  Finally, he is able to make some communication with the wormhole aliens and asks why during every attempt at contact he is placed back in a vision of this experience.   The aliens point out that the events around his wife's death are, "where he resides", the place where he lives in his mind, and so they had come to that place to make contact. Sisko comes to realize that in his continued grieving for the loss of his wife he had been literally, "living in the past". 

Where do our thoughts and heart dwell?  Which wolf are we feeding?  And, are we stoking the right flame, a light that will shine beyond us?