How often do you get the experience of friends or family members facing problems or even dangers, and you know how to help them, you know what they ought to do to handle the situation, but you just can’t get it through to them. They just can’t see what you and most other sane people know is the obvious answer for them. That’s life, isn’t it?

Parents see their children embarking on the most disastrous courses of action and they just wont listen. They trust people you shouldn’t trust. They have a bad attitude. Sometimes children have to stand by and watch as parents’ head for disaster. Wives watch husbands do it, and husbands watch wives.

Once people start heading in a particular direction or embarking on a course of action it’s difficult to get them to change their mind. Their motto is the same as what Mrs Thatcher used to say; ‘no U turns’. This makes the message of the gospel very difficult to get across.

The message of the gospel is ‘repent’, it means in effect turn around and go the other way; change direction; do a U turn. That is something which people by nature are not inclined to do. People are not inclined to stop and listen to what the almighty God, what the maker of heaven and earth is saying to them. They have already got their ideas from their tribe, or from the novels they have read, or from the TV or the Internet. They don’t need to listen to God, the eternal source of all wisdom and life and good- or so they assume.

But yet they do need to listen to him. We all do. And if we have found the answer, if we have life and hope and peace in Jesus Christ, then we will want to attempt that difficult task of getting the message across to those we know and care for. Jesus in his ministry had the same problem of getting the message across to people who seemed unable to hear.

The wind and the waves listened to Jesus and responded to him. But in the majority of cases people just didn’t get the message; they didn’t repent. ‘Woe to you Bethsaida’ Jesus had to say in the end. They just didn’t get the message. But there were many who did hear and respond. Chapter 4 of Mark shows us a number of ways in which people got the message.

First, there was the use of parables. Jesus normally used parables to teach his message. ‘He did not speak to them except in parables’ it says in verse 34. Jesus used parables ‘as they were able to hear’. The crowds flocked to Jesus for things they wanted: the sick wanted to be healed; the masses wanted to see miracles; the people wanted Jesus to give them miracle bread to eat.

Not so many wanted the gospel, not so many were concerned about their relationship with God. Of ten lepers who were healed, only one got any spiritual insight from his encounter with Jesus. So for most people, Jesus told parables; interesting stories, but with a meaning that related to God’s kingdom, ‘as they were able to hear’. Often people find it difficult to face spiritual truth, but parables can help. No one has seen God. Spiritual realities are in many ways beyond our experience.
But parables, stories about things that are familiar to us, things that we understand can help us to grasp the truth about the true God who is spirit. In the Old Testament, the prophets often used stories to get their message across. Parables are about helping people see the truth about God.

In the New Testament, God who is spirit became human; he became human so that we could understand him and he told parables about familiar things to teach ordinary people about God. Parables still work today. People are still interested in stories. Novels, films, drama are the things that influence people in our culture today. Some of the things that we see are perverse and they can lead people astray. But some are based on truth and goodness and the power of love; they are an influence for good.

So parables, earthly stories with a heavenly meaning can help people understand and come to know the love of God. Today they may be stories of contemporary 21st century things, they may stories from the Pilgrims Progress or the Lion, Witch and Wardrobe; or they may be the same parables Jesus told.

Many people need time to come to that point of making the U turn. The truth of the gospel needs to go down into the heart and soul and change the whole direction of life. Parables can help that to happen.

The second lesson we learn from our chapter is that whether people respond to the gospel or not, is dependant on the sort of people that they are. In the parable of the sower, whether or not the seed grew depended on the type of soil into which it fell. If the gospel bears fruit at the end of the day it is not dependant on the preacher or the message, provided it’s the one true gospel message.

Some times people have the idea that Sunday services are a spectator event where we come along and watch and listen to the preacher and decide how well he has done at the end. The parable of the sower reminds us that there is another spectator who is watching when we gather on Sunday. Yes, God is watching the preacher; it tells us that those who teach will be judged more strictly.

But God is also watching to see if the seed of his word is taking root and growing in the heart of every one who hears it. That’s the important question for all of us. Whether the seed grows and flourishes or not depends on the ground into which it falls. The important thing is to have a receptive heart.

It is also an encouragement to all of us in our Christian witness. We can be confident in the gospel. We never need to be ashamed of the story of Jesus. When a person rejects or doesn’t respond to the gospel it’s not because there is anything wrong with the gospel. Rather it is a reflection on the sort of person they are and where they are. Whether they are too hardened to comprehend the message, too shallow to persevere in the faith, or too taken up and distracted with other things to follow Jesus. The response to the gospel is dependant on the individual who hears the message.

Thirdly, Jesus also talks about a lamp. The purpose of a lamp is to put it where it’s light can shine. Of course, light is one of the great themes of the gospel. Jesus is the light of the world. But there is always the temptation to keep the gospel under wraps. There is the temptation to keep it within an exclusive group.
On occasions we see this tendency with Jesus disciples. They want to stop a man who is ministering in the name of Jesus ‘because he does not follow with us’. We have a tendency to want to keep things under control. But if keeping things under control means that we hide the gospel light under a bushel, then of course people wont learn the truth.

This tendency to control and restrict was very prevalent in the religious people of Jesus’ day. The light of God’s love didn’t shine from the teachers of the law or the Pharisees. But Jesus was teaching his followers that they shouldn’t be like that. On one occasion he even told them that what they had heard whispered behind closed doors they were to shout from the housetops. A lamp is for giving light. If we don’t make Jesus known, then people cannot respond. But if we let the light shine then people will respond to the gospel.

Fourthly, Jesus talks again about a farmer who plants his seed. This time he reminds his hearers of the limitations of the man who sows the seed. He cannot make it grow. Whether he lays in bed all day, or whether he stays up all night anxiously watching, the seed sprouts and grows.

The man does not understand how or why the seed grows, it simply does it. There is a greater power at work, the secrets of germination and life and growth are at work. They are far greater forces than the efforts of the man who plants the seed. But because those forces are at work the man can plant his seed with confidence and expect to get a harvest.

The message is that when we sow the seed, when we share the gospel, there is a greater power at work. God’s Holy Spirit is at work in people’s hearts and lives. The Spirit convicts people of the truth. The Spirit awakens people to the reality of the gospel. That is an encouragement to all of us. We can go to sleep at night in the knowledge that God is at work by his Spirit, his power is at work in the world bring life and create faith and hope and love in the hearts of men and women.

Lastly, Jesus talks about the kingdom of God being like a grain of mustard seed. Mustard seed is very small. When we used to grow it on the farm we had to make sure there was not even the smallest of holes in the sacks that we put the mustard in or the seed would all leak out and be wasted.

Mustard seed was far smaller than wheat or barley, but when you planted it, it would grow an awful lot faster. In fact it would grow about twice the height of other crops. And Jesus said the kingdom of God is like mustard seed. What did he mean? For all the disappointment of those who didn’t get the message or repent; many, many did. Time and again, God takes what is humanly speaking insignificant and does things that are out of all proportion to their simple origin.

Jesus was born to humble parents and lived as a carpenter, but his message changed the world. The 12 disciples were uneducated and insignificant, but they took the message of the gospel across the Roman world.

The world operates on the assumption that you need millions of dollars, or a large, well-equipped army to change things.
On the Radio 4 Service this morning the story was told of a young man named Roger Schutz who cycled into a French village named Taize in 1940. He was able to buy a dilapidated old house and outbuildings. The old lady who showed him round said to him ‘we hope you’ll stay, we are so alone here.’ He welcomed refugees into his home including Jews who were fleeing the Nazi’s. That village today is world famous today because of the Taize Community that brother Roger founded.

Jesus reminds us that the most potent thing to bring change is the message of the gospel. The message of God’s love and grace as revealed in Jesus is the one real hope for individuals.

Insignificant as it seems, it is the one true hope for our world. May we have the faith to believe that, and may we keep the faith. When people know, love and follow Jesus wonderful things can happen from the most insignificant of beginnings.
 

Amen.

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