Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given

 

 Also He said to them, "Is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed?  Is it not to be set on a lampstand?  For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light.  If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear."  Then He said to them, "Take heed what you hear.  With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given.  For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him."  

And He said, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.  For the earth yields crops by itself:  first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head.  But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."

Then He said, "To what shall we liken the kingdom of God?  Or with what parable shall we picture it?  It is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth; but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs, and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade."  

And with many such parables He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it.  But without a parable He did not speak to them.  And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples.

 

- Mark 4:21–34 

 

Yesterday we read that again Jesus began to teach by the sea.  And a great multitude was gathered to Him, so that He got into a boat and sat in it on the sea; and the whole multitude was on the land facing the sea.  Then He taught them many things by parables, and said to them in His teaching:  "Listen!  Behold, a sower went out to sow.  And it happened, as he sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds of the air came and devoured it.  Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth.  But when the sun was up it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away.  And some seed fell among thorns; and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop.  But other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced:  some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred."  And He said to them, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"  But when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the parable.  And He said to them, "To you it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables, so that  'Seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand; Lest they should turn, and their sins be forgiven them.'"  And He said to them, "Do you not understand this parable?  How then will you understand all the parables?  The sower sows the word.  And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown.  When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts.  These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness; and they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time.  Afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises for the word's sake, immediately they stumble.  Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.  But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit:  some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred."   

 Also He said to them, "Is a lamp brought to be put under a basket or under a bed?  Is it not to be set on a lampstand?  For there is nothing hidden which will not be revealed, nor has anything been kept secret but that it should come to light.  If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear."  Then He said to them, "Take heed what you hear.  With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given.  For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him."   This saying about the lamp and lampstand is found elsewhere in the Gospels in different contexts:  in the Sermon on the Mount following the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:14-16), and in Luke again after the same parable (Luke 8:16-18) and also in speaking of faith as the eye which illumines the whole of the body, the mind (Luke 11:33-36).  Clearly it is a metaphor used often by Jesus.  Here it is a reference to how we perceive, how we hear.  My study bible calls Jesus' warnings about how we hear a call to attentive listening and discriminating response.  It says that we must not only hear, but hear properly.  More will be given to those who respond to Christ with open hearts, it says, and they will grow in understanding.   There is a quotation of St. Mark the Ascetic:  "Do the good you know, and what you do not know will be revealed to you."  As St. Mark the Ascetic understands, this is a call to a future of discerning "hearing" and Christ is the door by which we enter for more, or refuse and lose what we have (John 10:7-9).

And He said, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.  For the earth yields crops by itself:  first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head.  But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."  This parable occurs only in the Gospel of Mark.  In keeping with the forward projection in the promise of the earlier verse, the kingdom here refers to the entire span of God's dispensation or plan of salvation, my study bible explains.   The man is Christ, and the seed, as in the parable of the Sower in yesterday's reading (see above) is the gospel.  His sleep, my study bible says, indicates Christ's death, from which He will rise.  That the man does not know how the seed grows shows that Christ doesn't manipulate the response of human beings to the gospel.  Each person is free to receive it and to let it grow in one's own heart.  The harvest is the Second Coming, when all will be judged on their reception of the gospel.   If we look at the parable, it also indicates a growth of the seed, and the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit deep in us which accompanies our acceptance of the gospel.

Then He said, "To what shall we liken the kingdom of God?  Or with what parable shall we picture it?  It is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth; but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs, and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade."   Here is another parable describing the mysterious growth of the seed once it has been sown on the ground of our hearts.  The tremendous growth which is possible we understand to be the work of the Spirit.  This is true on many levels and in many circumstances/settings.  Theophylact comments that the disciples began as just a few men, but "soon encompassed the whole earth."  The mustard seed can also stand for the faith that enters a person's soul, and causes an inward growth of virtue.  The birds of the air may nest under the shade of those large branches, an allegory for the soul which becomes "godlike" and can receive even angels.

And with many such parables He spoke the word to them as they were able to hear it.  But without a parable He did not speak to them.  And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples.  My study bible comments that to unbelievers, the parables remain bewildering.  To those with a simple faith, these stories which use common images reveal truth in ways they can grasp, as they were able.

 What does it mean to grow?  These parables, so central to our understanding of Christ's teaching that is given to us, reflect the deepest aspects of promise, of hope, of expectation.  And, possibly ironically or even seemingly strange, they are the promise and hope and expectation of Christ Himself regarding the seeds He plants on earth, among us.  Of course, the promise and hope and expectation are also dear to us and meaningful for us.  But that all depends, really, on whether or not we recognize what great things the Lord has done for us (as did the demoniac who was named Legion; see Mark 5:19).  Growth, in Jesus' terms, indicates spiritual growth.  In the letters of St. Paul, we are given an explicit naming of the fruits of the Spirit, the very literal image of what it is to bear good fruits:  "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23).  It may seem odd to us, in our present state of so much emphasis on activism and even image in that context, that St. Paul and Jesus of the Gospels place such focus on the soul.  That is, on cultivating the virtues of the soul and personal character.  To be godlike (or should we say, "like God") is not to be all-powerful, almighty, dictating policies to others who should follow, to rule over others in a position of authority, or even to follow and implement rules for conduct that require an outward signal to be regulated and communicated in society.  No, the revolutionary nature of Christ and His revelation of grace takes us entirely to another place:  to our own reception of the seed that grows in us via grace and produces the fruits of the Spirit, expanding our soul and how we interact with others in the world.  Do we show compassion?  Can we get beyond appearances?  Are we capable of forbearance, long-suffering, patience -- or do we need to go out and fix what's wrong with everybody else today, or even better yet, tomorrow and yesterday?  Are we going to decide that fixing the plank in our own eye today is the only way we can even be capable of discerning with any authority just what the speck is in the eye of another? (Matthew 7:3-5).  Unfortunately in an increasingly appearance-related world, we seem to be traveling further and further away from this understanding of the benefit of humility as a virtue.  If our true virtue is simply a kind of activism or even an appearance of belief in what others approve of, then we are far away from a culture which can accept the virtues based on humility that St. Paul names, which very seldom result in public applause.  These are inward virtues, in the same way that Christ's compassion is expressed in the Gospels as a truly inward virtue.  The Greek word telling us that Jesus "had compassion" on someone or was "moved with compassion" literally is rooted in the word for "spleen," or we might say, in modern American parlance, His "guts."  It is truly an inward dynamic, a virtue of character and the soul.  We are socially long on do's and don'ts in our highly social media-saturated world, and far away from kindness and compassion.  Bullying is okay for what is perceived as unpopular or outside of a code of conduct.  Stereotyping has become good under some guises and circumstances.  Hatred of all "X" (whatever one wants to label "X" as a universally condemned element) is acceptable.  Without the truth of the emphasis on personal internal character, we may see a world that is increasingly resembling societies of the past in which a public ducking stool or stocks might be appropriate, and even good.  Let us consider our own need for our faith and its internal emphasis on personal character and our relationship to Christ that makes it possible for us to measure ourselves by something other than our own good feelings about who we are.  Without that true measuring stick, we enter into a recipe for hate.  Let us consider the internal practices of prayer, our openness to the places these seeds wish to root in us, and especially to the fruits they draw out of us, the path Christ sets from there.  It is all about our "yes" to something that makes us grow, takes us far beyond our comfort zone, and the ego that tells us that to please the world is to be "good."  Let us take heed what we hear, for with the same measure we use, it will be measured to us.  As Jesus says in yet another context in conjunction with this phrase, the same applies to how we judge (Luke 6:37-38).  Let us listen generously to what He says.