Mark 4:21-25

Mystery of the Kingdom (3) – The Kingdom Contrasted

Mark added more sayings and parables to the parable of the sower, all of them serving in his mind to illustrate aspects of the mystery of God’s Kingdom.

Mark 4:21-25 – Importance of Proclaiming the Kingdom

²¹ "... Is a candle put under a big measuring utensil or under a table?

Is it not rather put on a candle-stick?

²²Nothing is hidden except to be revealed;

nothing is secret except to be made clear.

²³Let those who have ears for hearing listen.”

These few verses were more “remembered sayings” of Jesus than parables, serving to state the obvious rather than to offer insight into mystery. Jesus’ parables on the Kingdom were not designed as some sort of secret code understandable only by the initiated. They were intended to stimulate reflection on experience and to lead to insight. The word translated as secret here means precisely what it says, and is a different word from that used previously in the phrase secret (mystery) of the Kingdom. Jesus’ message of the Kingdom, rather than being something reserved for an inner core of disciples, was to be proclaimed as widely and as effectively as possible.

²⁴ He also told them, “Look carefully at what you hear said,

’You will be measured by the measure with which you measure,

and you will get more.

²⁵Those who have will be given more;

and those who have not, even what they have will be taken away.”

The meaning of these verses is not so clear.

It could have been a reference to the hundredfold. People who were prepared to empty their hearts of preconceived ideas, who were prepared to leave all in pursuit of the Kingdom, would find themselves experiencing life to the full. Those who had hesitantly begun, provided they persevered, would find their thirty fold increasing to the sixty and even the hundred. On the other hand, those with no openness, no sense of wonder, no tentative longing for the more, would inevitably find life more and more restricting.

However, there may well have been a different meaning. When the word translated as look carefully would be used later in the narrative (13:1-37), it would carry a decidedly cautionary overtone, more the sense of “be on your guard against”. If that was the meaning intended here by Jesus, then it would seem he was warning people against the accepted wisdom of the day, not unlike the conventional wisdom expressed in sayings such as “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” or its counterpart “money makes money”.

Jesus’ whole approach was precisely that things could change, that there was hope even when there did not seem to be: the ways of the powerful and of the establishment could be reversed. There could be - there would be - a better world. His whole thrust was to encourage his hearers to trust in God and to work for a better world in cooperation with that God of enough and of abundance.

It would be to this dimension of the issue that the following parables would be addressed.

Next >> Mark 4:26-29