Mark 4:10-13

Jesus’ Frustration at People’s Unbelief

Mark 4:10-12 – A Need to Challenge

10 Later when they were alone,
those in his circle along with the twelve asked him about the parables.
11 He told them, “The mystery of the kingdom of God is given to you;
but to those on the outside everything is in parables.
12 So they are the ones who, when they see, might see and not see deeply;
when they hear, might hear and not make connections –
lest they change and be forgiven.”

The basic issue was: why did people not see and respond to what Jesus saw to be evident? Jesus had a beautiful message to communicate, a wonderful vision to implement. To him its beauty and attractiveness were obvious. Yet people remained generally unresponsive. This was a source of deep hurt to Jesus: his inability to share with others what to him had been source of delight. He spoke of a God of infinite goodness, of unconditional forgiveness, of deep sensitivity, of abundant compassion and mercy. And most people remained unmoved.

His question: How could he help people to open their eyes to the obvious? What could lead to “the penny dropping”?

Through his parables he hoped to arouse their immediate interest, and then to challenge them suddenly to see things differently, to open themselves to the unanticipated. Basically he hoped for conversion, the new insight into the way things really are.

But for that change to happen, they needed to be seeking meaning, asking their own questions occasioned by the complexities and challenges of life. In the absence of their own questioning, his insights had nothing to engage with.

The problem was not simply that of Jesus. It was, no doubt, the problem also exercising the community of disciples for whom Mark was writing. Why did the vision that fascinated them seem so irrelevant to most of their contemporaries? 

It had been the problem of Isaiah, too, six centuries before. The comment from Isaiah quoted by Mark had been made in a context of the threat of drastic consequences: 

...“Go and say to this people:
‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.’
Make the mind of this people dull,
and stop their ears,
and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
and turn and be healed.” 
Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” 
And he said:
“Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
and the land is utterly desolate;
until the Lord sends everyone far away,
and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.” (Isaiah 6:9-12)

Something of the same urgent foreboding may have also exercised the mind of Jesus, and perhaps also of the Markan community. It is perhaps not surprising that in the Hebrew mind, the obstinacy of some (that otherwise seemed beyond explanation) was rationalised by recourse to the direct will of God.

Why were the disciples different? Why did they respond to the secret of the Kingdom when others did not?

Perhaps they had allowed mystery to stir within them. Perhaps they had felt the unexpressed longing for “more” that led them to hope, to decision, to commitment. Perhaps their inner stirring had been touched further by the conviction that they saw in Jesus: by his truth, integrity and vision of a world renewed.

As Mark portrayed them, they had left everything, drawn perhaps by a “scent” of the infinite. Later in the narrative Mark would show how that initial response would need to be emptied further of all traces of self-seeking. They would have to learn to die to themselves through their journey into the darkness. As well as being active missionaries of resurrection, they would need to be mystics as well. It would be a difficult learning process.

The parables touched on the mystery of the Kingdom. There was nothing secret about what Jesus wished so passionately to share. The purpose of the parables was not to convey some otherwise esoteric message reserved exclusively for initiates. It was to arouse interest, to stir further wonder, to challenge people to identify and then to begin to answer their own questions.

Mark 4:13 – Foundational Parable

13 He also said to them,
“You have not understood this parable,
then how will you make sense of all the parables? 

In Mark’s mind, the parable of the sower obviously provided the context and clue to the understanding of the other parables that would shortly follow. It spoke to the dispossessed of his world of the possibility of change and of justice, of blessing, of abundance.

In Jesus’ mind this new world would be the result of the energising power of God, an expression of the vision that God had consistently unfolded over the long course of Israel’s history, that had been ignored time and again, only to be equally insistently repeated by prophet after prophet. The outcome he envisaged would be the expression of the creative, driving energy that sustained the world.

But, since human persons were not robots in the mind of God but free persons with dignity and integrity, God’s vision for the world would not happen fully without the cooperation of all. It would involve process. As those who accepted the vision grew in numbers and opened themselves to the power of God, the reality of the Kingdom would take shape increasingly in the world.

Next >> Mark 4:14-20