The Parable of the Seed Growing, Part 3
The Meaning of the Mark 5:26-29 in Context
Continuing from the previous post, I will be sharing portions of my work submitted as an overview of Mark 4:26-29. The goal of this body at the time of publication was to demonstrate the ecological nature of what Jesus shared with his followers, as documented in Mark’s Gospel.
I hope you, as the reader, take away that your place in the Kingdom matters. You have a role to fill that is yours and yours alone. You also have roles that are not yours to own and fulfill, and that’s okay. Ultimately, trusting in the Lord’s movement is what we are called to do.
In this portion, I move from the literary context to the exegetical inquiry of the passage itself, breaking down verse by verse how the parable displays the complexity of God’s Kingdom.
Meaning
The main passage of Mark 4:26-29, as mentioned previously, focuses heavily on the nature of the Kingdom that grows both with and despite the Christian’s work in the world around them. Across four short, concise verses, Jesus relates a story of the relationship between a farmer and the seeds he sows that will eventually become his harvest. Each statement holds significant meaning for both the original audience and the modern reader and deserves careful attention to understand and apply the text appropriately, cleverly outlining how the Kingdom of God permeates the physical world by way of God’s power and the inclusion of His human creation to bring about His ultimate purpose.
The Seed Scattered
And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.
While there are two main components of this parable, the man’s presence and mention in the story are of no consequence to how the seed behaves and acts. As Brooks states, “The sower plays a minimal role.”1 Therefore, against the backdrop of the previous parable about a sower spreading seed and only a nominal mention of him, the original audience would have understood this concept of the seed being the more important character. These two parables also begin similarly, where both individuals were going about their work to spread seed among their chosen terrain, borrowing from the original audience’s agrarian background in Galilee.2
Beyond this initial parallelism, the two parables take different directions in both the plot and the purpose. William L. Lane highlights this idea quite directly when he writes, “In the parable of the sower significant attention was given also to the resistance and obstruction encountered by the seed. By contrast, the parable of the seed is oriented to the idea of the power released through the scattering of the seed.”3 Being held up side by side, it becomes clear that the latter parable holds greater importance for how God intends to move by way of His power compared to the interference humankind runs when others present the seed of the Kingdom through the Gospel.
With the main focus being the seed rather than the sower in Jesus’s discourse, the reader can see how vital the seed, representing the Kingdom of God, is to Jesus’s teachings in this portion of the Gospel account. It signals that the man, who represents the one who spreads the message of the Kingdom, is seemingly inconsequential to God bringing His Kingdom to Earth. Nevertheless, God still chooses to include the man in His grand plan.
The Seed Hidden
He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.
When the seed lands in its intended location, the man’s action and input end while the seed’s work begins. While it may be a brief verse, it starts the process of waiting and anticipation. However, readers cannot assume that the man in the parable is passively waiting. When interpreting this verse, Richard C. Blight solidifies this point:
This describes the life of a man who has nothing to do with the growth as he waits for the result of that first day of planting. The fact that a farmer cultivates the field and does other farm work is not in view because those activities have no effect on the growth of the seeds. In real life, this apparently laid-back approach to farming is not a true picture of agriculture. In the parable, however, the farmer’s inactivity points out that the kingdom of God does not depend on human effort to achieve it. The independence of the seed’s growth is emphasized. It teaches that the consummation of God’s kingdom is not dependent on human action.4
Jesus’s omission of the farmer’s other activities while the seed is hidden under the soil clearly and intentionally sets the spotlight on the seed.5 However, this choice to avoid the daily chores of the man throughout the rest of his farm is characteristic of how Mark explains Jesus’s teaching style, in that He often leaves out details so that His listeners may fill in the gaps using their own backgrounds6, which in this case allows the original listener and modern audience to understand that, while the farmer does not sit idly by, the work of the highest importance both in the story and in the lives of believers is what God does in bringing His Kingdom to pass.
While it may seem peculiar for Jesus to end this small statement with what feels like a matter-of-fact detail, Mark’s use of a pleonasm7 signals to his readers that they need to keep in view that the man does not need to know how the seed grows for it to be effective, especially identified by Blight as he shares, “This [the pleonasm] emphasizes the mysterious power of the seed.”8 Likewise, Christians do not need to know every facet of how God spreads and grows His Kingdom on Earth. Just as the man does his part to place the seed in its intended and optimal location, believers must do their part to spread the Gospel message to anyone and everyone they can.
The Seed Matured
The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
To the original listeners and readers of this parable, who existed within a religious system that required work either by the adherent or the temple representative9 to bring about the end goal of the work itself, this interjection of a seemingly uninvolved worker would strike them at first as peculiar that Jesus would highlight the autonomy of the seed within the earth; in using “by itself” (autŏmatŏs) to illustrate this concept, Jesus reinforces the farmer’s understanding that he has no bearing on how the seed grows, just as believers cannot force God’s work to spread. Lane writes, “This does not mean that the sower abandons his work, nor that he is uninterested in what takes place, for this is not the point in the reference to his sleeping and rising. It means that the seed must be allowed its appointed course, as the process of growth and ripening advances toward a harvest that is approaching.”10 So, through this specific mention, Jesus intends to say that there is an order for all things, including the crop and the Kingdom.
What the progression Jesus outlines in this verse means for the Kingdom is that growth, just like the seed’s maturation, is not all at once but progressive, spreading through the hearts of believers and permeating the hearts of non-believers through the spread of the Gospel. It moves and works in ways unknown to humanity, just as the seed grows in a manner that eludes the farmer. Daniel Akin, author of Exalting Jesus in Mark as part of the “Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary” series, writes, “The process that brings about the fullness of the kingdom of God is not spectacular, but it is certain… God did not design His kingdom to come like a tidal wave or a bolt of lightning, to come quickly and disappear quickly. No, God planted it in the coming of a Galilean peasant, a homeless man from Nazareth, who gathered about Him a bunch of nobodies. The ways of God are mysterious indeed, but He will be successful.”11 In this unexpected yet necessary way, believers can trust as they wait for the Kingdom to be fully realized and, therefore, find comfort in the processes God has in place for their good and His glory.
The Seed Harvested
But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.
To conclude the parable, Jesus offers closure and consummation by completing the farmer’s involvement and includes reaping the seed he sowed initially. There is no delay in timing, no hesitation in action, and no doubt in the decision; the farmer knows what he must do because of the visible indications he receives from the grain’s completed growth. In his commentary on Matthew & Mark as part of “Layman’s Bible Commentary,” Mark Strauss writes, “The sower’s ultimate interest is in phase three, the harvesting of the seed. When the grain is ripe, the sower immediately puts the sickle to it.”12 Such a concept indicates the importance of the harvest to the entire process and thus carries over from the literal understanding to the metaphorical meaning.
The end to which Jesus points by citing the harvest is a direct allusion to the first parable in this discourse, specifically the good soil upon which the sower’s seed lands.13 The end goal of spreading the Gospel of the Kingdom is a response that all hearers must make: accept and follow or deny and ignore. In The Bible Exposition Commentary, Warren Wiersbe writes, “In the Parable of the Sower and the Soils, the Lord suggested that much of the seed scattered would fall on unproductive soil. This fact could discourage His workers; so, in this parable, He reassured them ‘in due season we shall reap if we faint not’ (Gal. 6:9).”14 What Jesus sought to communicate to the disciples is that there is a coming harvest of the seeds of the Gospel of the Kingdom in the hearts of receptive hearers that will be mature and ready for the reaping, not brought about by human effort, but by God’s moving and initially softening of hearts.
1 Brooks, Mark, 85.
2 “The parable of the sower is faithful to the life situation of Palestinian agriculture...” William L. Lane, The Gospel of Mark, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1974), 153.
3 Ibid., 169.
4 Richard C. Blight, An Exegetical Summary of Mark 1–8 (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2012), 215–216.
5 “The original audience, which is comprised of those who regularly engaged in the activities described in the parable, would no doubt register shock at the ignorance of the farmer in the parable. As an agricultural expert, one would expect the planter and harvester of the seed to know something about how it grows.” In Stephen D. Lowe and Mary E. Lowe, Ecologies of Faith in a Digital Age: Spiritual Growth through Online Education (Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018), 43.
6 “Not only Jesus’ teaching style, however, but the very substance of his message was different. Here again, the value of understanding the historical background becomes clear. Definition often proceeds by negation; that is, we are better able to identify objects if we can distinguish them from other objects with which we are familiar.” In Moisés Silva, “‘But These Are Written That You May Believe’: The Meaning of the Gospels,” in Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics: The Search for Meaning, ed. Walter C. Kaiser Jr. and Moisés Silva (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 167.
7 Ibid., 146.
8 Blight, An Exegetical Summary of Mark 1–8), 215.
9 Heb 10:11.
10 Lane, The Gospel of Mark, 169.
11 Daniel L. Akin, Exalting Jesus in Mark, ed. Daniel L. Akin, David Platt, and Tony Merida, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2014), 94.
12 Mark Strauss, ed., Matthew & Mark, vol. 8, Layman’s Bible Commentary (Barbour Publishing, 2008), 156.
13 Mk. 4:8.
14 Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 123.