The chapter starts off with the famous Parable of the Sower:
He taught them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them, “Listen! Consider the sower who went out to sow. As he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it didn’t have much soil, and it grew up quickly, since the soil wasn’t deep. When the sun came up, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it didn’t produce fruit. Still other seed fell on good ground and it grew up, producing fruit that increased thirty, sixty, and a hundred times.” Then he said, “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen.”
Many scholars consider the Parable of the Sower as paradigmatic, the parable that unlocks how to think about all of Jesus' parables, in both content and strategy. As Jesus says in Verse 14: “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand all of the parables?" The implication seems to be that if you don't understand the Parable of the Sower you can't understand any of the parables. The Parable of the Sower is a sort of key that unlocks the rest.
So, what is that key? Well, the parable is all about perception. The word of God comes to us and is either rejected or accepted depending upon the status of the heart and mind. As Jesus will go on in describing the "good soil," there are those who "hear the word and welcome it."
This perceptual focus is also highlighted in Jesus' famous conclusion: "Let anyone who has ears to hear listen."
In short, the Parable of the Sower is less a moral exhortation than a story about the epistemological crisis created by the kingdom. The kingdom has arrived, and is right in front of you, can you see it? The word of God is in your ears, can you hear it?
Beyond the epistemological and perceptual content of the Parable of the Sower, there's also the issue of parables as a communication strategy. The text in Mark 4 continues:
When he was alone, those around him with the Twelve asked him about the parables. He answered them,“The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to those outside, everything comes in parables so that
they may indeed look,
and yet not perceive;
they may indeed listen,
and yet not understand;
otherwise, they might turn back
and be forgiven.”
These are enigmatic lines which scholars have debated. The Old Testament passage being cited here is Isaiah 6.9-10.
The debate here should be obvious. Jesus speaks of "the secret of the kingdom" in relation to his use of parables. The citation from Isaiah, though, raises some questions. Is Jesus using parables to intentionally conceal the kingdom from his audiences, preventing and thwarting their response? Or is Jesus just being descriptive, commenting on how his parables produce mystification because the hearts and minds of his audience are not receptive to his message?
I've spent a lot of time the last few days reading journal articles looking at how scholars have debated this text. But for our purposes, we don't have to resolve these issues. Because the epistemological point is clear: there is a "secret" to the kingdom. And this secret, being a secret, is the epistemological crisis of the kingdom.
The secret of the kingdom bifurcates the world, separating those on the "inside" from those on the "outside."
