“In the preaching of Jesus, parables were not vivid decorations of a moralistic point but were disturbing stories that threatened the hearer's secure mythological world -- the world of assumptions by which we habitually live, the unnoticed framework of our thinking within which we interpret other data." - Eugene Boring

Lest you and I get carried away by the florid nature of Mark's fanciful tales of the sowing and tending and sprouting and harvesting in the eternal sunshine of the pastoral life, you and I are keen to remind ourselves of the drop dead serious nature of Jesus' life and of that firecracker of a book, which contains these tales. It's yarns like this that persuade us that the Bible is nothing more than a book of fairy tales and not, what we really believe it to be, the most important book ever written - a divine writ in which we actually believe the Lord is talking to us about life's most essential matters.

So as we approach the two short parables assigned for this Sunday (Mark 4: 26-34) we are wise to look a bit deeper, asking ourselves what in our world of assumptions might Jesus be threatening? How could these simple tales knock us out of our pews, and challenge us on some of our most basic convictions?

For this is what parables do (if they didn't they never would have made it this far) and in the first we hear of someone who sows, tends, then harvests, knowing that despite all of the human work involved, the Lord is the one with the tough job - making the seeds grow. It is a portrait of our lives as partners with the Lord, reminding us that we can't do anything without God and God seems to be unwilling to do anything without us. What work is Jesus just itching to do while waiting for his partners to get off our butts and do their parts?

Dandelions are the theme of the second parable, at least that's how I interpret a mustard plant. In Bible times it was just as popular, pesky and pervasive. No one wanted them, and no one seemed to be able to get rid of them. And instead of comparing God's kingdom to the cedars of Lebanon or the oaks of Mamre, Jesus chose dandelions. Think about it. They're determined, delightful (in some peoples' eyes), and everywhere. Think about it again.

That's why Jesus gave us parables.

Summer Reading:
The New Face of World Christianity - Mark Noll
The Culture of Narcissism - Christopher Lasch
Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God - Francis Chan