3.09 The Seed Growing of Itself
IX. THE SEED GROWING OF ITSELF.
If the Evangelist has inserted this parable in its proper setting, it would have been spoken from the boat close to the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret on the same occasion as theparable of the Sower. It is peculiar to St. Mark, but it has some points in common with the parable of the Cockle found in the same context in St. Matthew. The lesson, however, of our parable is different. Jesus takes a familiar figure from agricultural life, and, while giving it a spiritual signification, He THE PARABLES OF JESUS 137 leaves His hearers to draw for themselves the precise lesson which He wished it to convey.
He compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a man who cast seed upon the earth, and gave himself no further trouble for its growth and increase. Alike while he slept as in his waking hours the seed sprouted and grew by some mysterious process unknown to him. He simply sowed the grain; the earth did the rest of itself. It brought forth first the blade, then the ear, and last of all the perfect corn in the ear. When the fruit was ripe, he put in the sickle, for now the harvest was come.
Short and apparently simple as this parable is, commentators have differed widely as to its meaning. Some have regarded it as an allegory; others, as a parable pure and simple; others, again, as partaking of the nature of both. Further, authorities do not agree as to whether the whole process described is to be understood, as in the case of the parable of the Sower, of the individual soul or of the Kingdom of God at large. The first three verses (26-28) form a pure parable: the spiritual truth which is here brought into relief is one, the automatic 138 THE PARABLES OF JESUS development of the seed. In verse 29 a new idea appears, the reaping of the ripened corn at harvest. Still it remains doubtful whether we ought to regard this latter verse as containing an allegorical element. Throughout the parable the figurative process as drawn from Nature is in a certain sense one and continuous, and there seems no sufficient reason for denying that the spiritual process which it represents also possesses a unity of its own. The question, then, as to whether the parable, taken as a whole, ought to be viewed as a pure parable or not is unimportant.
Even though it was granted that, in the verse in question, there appears a new point quite distinct from the point in what precedes, its character as a genuine utterance of Jesus remains unaffected. Those critics who, in their justifiable opposition to the excessive allegorization of Our Lord’s parables, go to the other extreme, and insist that any alle gorical element which they contain cannot have proceeded from Him, must, before they can prove their contention, reckon with the rabbinical parables which exhibit the same characteristic. THE PARABLES OF JESUS 139 The parable is not to be understood of the sowing of the word in the individual soul and of its growth there until, when it has attained full maturity, the sickle of death is put in, and the ripened grain is garnered in the heavenly storehouse. On the contrary, in the parable, which is virtually a prophecy, there is question of the development of the Kingdom of God in this world. Jesus preached it; and then apparently, through no action of His, but by its own inherent power, it would develop and produce fruit. The process would seem a mysterious incomprehensible one, but its existence could not be questioned; its matured result would be evident to all. The parable seems in a special manner intended to strengthen the minds of the disciples of Jesus against the time when they would no longer have Him visibly present in their midst. Despite His absence, the Kingdom which He was inaugurating would go on, not only growing in point of extension, but also developing as an organism, until it reached that perfection which its Author had designed.
We, too, may draw motives of hope and encouragement from the parable. The end 140 THE PARABLES OF JESUS is not yet, and the process begun by Jesus still proceeds, and in the way foreshadowed by Him. All created things are in a state of unceasing flux and change sometimes, according to our notions, progressing, some times declining; and though, being in the world, the Kingdom does not remainunaffected by the intellectual, political, and social revolutions of successive ages, its growth and development are not essentially conditioned by these, but rather by that native power implanted in it by its Author Himself.
This, then, even in times of calamity, should be the ground of our unshaken confidence in the permanence and indestructibility of His work.
TAGS: [Parables]