Mark 4:3-9, 13-20

God and failure

Part of our experience of life is failure. Dreams are shattered. Sickness and frailty may hinder us from doing what we want to do. We study hard but we don't achieve the desired result. As a church we may work hard and pray hard but the results are meagre.

As we try to have our faith in God shaped by Jesus, we ask the question: how did Jesus deal with the experience of failure? How did he handle lack of success? Opposition. Betrayal.

God and failure - that does not gel in popular religiosity. Our wishful thinking has it that God

"is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, .... ... and is alone in and unto himself all sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he has made .... (The Protestant Westminster Confession of Faith [1646])¹

The Roman Catholic Dogmatic Constitution of the Catholic Faith, formulated at the First Vatican Council (1870) sounds similar:

The holy, Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church believes and confesses that there is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intelligence, in will, and in all perfec­tion, who, as being one, sole, absolutely simple and immutable spiritual substance, is to be de­clared as really and essentially distinct from the world, of supreme beatitude in and from himself, and ineffably exalted above all things which exist, or are conceivable, except himself.²

Are these formulations not fairly representative of the popular Christian understanding of God? God is seen, firstly, as an objective spiritual being who lives essentially in and for himself. As such, he has, secondly, all power and all knowledge. He is, thirdly, essentially different from and independent of his creation, and finally, he cannot suffer, because perfection and unchangeability exclude suffering. This God is so imprisoned in his holiness that he cannot look at sin. He lives in such splendid isola­tion that the suffering and agony of the world would never reach him.

With this in mind, let us listen to a contemporary poem by Vinicio Aguilar, aris­ing out of the struggle for human dignity in Central America:

Where was god, daddy; where, where, where,

when the commissioners

broke the fence,

burnt the farm,

destroyed the harvest,

killed the pigs,

raped Imelda,

drank our rum?

HE WAS UP THERE, boy.

Where was god, daddy; where, where, where,

when because we complained

the state judge came and fined us

the bailiff came to arrest us

and even the priest came to insult us?

HE WAS UP THERE, boy.

Well then daddy; we must now tell him plainly

that he must come down sometimes

to be with us.

You can see how we are, daddy,

with no fields sown, no farm, no pigs, nothing, and he

as if nothing had happened. It isn't right, you know, daddy.

If he's really up there

let him come down

Let him come down to taste this cruel hunger with us

let him come down and sweat

in the maize-fields, come down to be imprisoned,

let him come down and spew on the rich man

who throws the stone and hides his hand,

on the venal judge,

on the unworthy priest,

and on the bailiffs and commissioners

who rob and kill

the peasants;

because I certainly don't want to tell my son when he asks me one day:

HE WAS UP THERE, boy.³

And can we not all join in? Was God absent when Jesus struggled in the desert of temptation and in the Garden of Gethsemane? Was God absent when Jesus died on the cross? Was God absent in the persecution and execution of 5000 Anabaptists who wanted to be true to their voice of conscience? Was God absent in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Dachau? Was God absent in Hiroshima and Vietnam and in the recent tsunami? Is God absent in the Sahel Zone? Is God absent in our cancer wards and our torture cells? If he were, then we cannot expect a healing, consoling, liberating, or reconciling word from him when we walk through the valleys of shadow and death.

How did Jesus deal with failure? When we think of the Sermon on the Mount (Gospel of Matthew) or the Sermon on the Plain (Gospel of Luke) a Billy Graham crusade may come to mind. But that did not form the nitty gritty of Jesus' life. Right from the beginning of his ministry he experienced opposition. He had a small band of followers, both men and women (Luke 8:1-3) - but even they at times did not understand and indeed at the end when Jesus was condemned and crucified forsook him.

To face that problem we write thick books on the doctrine of providence, trying to understand and explain how God can be God when we with our selfishness constantly mess up God's plans and act against God's will. Jesus tells a story!

The story

"Listen!" That would mean the presence of the divine for Jesus' listeners: "Listen, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God ..." (Deut. 6:4f.). That is the call to worship in many a Jewish worship service. Somehow with Jesus' parable the divine is seeking its way into the lives of people: "Listen!"

"A sower went out to sow." Jesus links the call to listen with the everyday story about a Palestinian sower who went out to sow.

Failure and despair. And then the story leads us into failure - one after the other. Am avalanche of failure. Such can be the experience of life.

In Palestine during Jesus' days the farmers did not work their fields in the interval between the harvest (about June) and sowing time (about November). Consequently, the soil becomes dry and overgrown with thorns. Ways are trodden through the fields. When sowing time arrives the seed is thrown into the fields - which includes paths and thorns - and then, wherever possible, the seed is ploughed under.

Consider the fate of the seeds, Jesus asks.

Some seeds, those which are thrown on the trodden paths, easily fall prey to the birds. The birds come and pick them. They are gone.

Other seeds fall on a thin layer of soil that covers Palestine's rock formations. The rain is stored close to the surface and when the sun heats the soil the seed can spring up quickly. But since the roots are weak and the soil is shallow, the sun which gave rise to life also causes a scorching death.

And when the soil is ploughed, it often happens that the seeds of the thorns grow up more quickly than the seeds of the wheat, and, consequently, the thorns claim all the nourishment of the soil for themselves. The grain, therefore, does not come to fruition.

Disheartening failure , like an avalanche- one after the other.

But then the miracle. Many, perhaps most of the seeds fall on good ground and bear fruit. Every Palestinian farmer knows the sight of a promising grain field. The average number of kernels per head of wheat is 35, but exceptional cases of 60 and 100 are also known.

And so Jesus goes on. Day by day. Not the immediate success. Not the figures. Not the statistics. But the call. The mission. The ministry. Faithfulness and trust in God - that keeps him going. Ultimately God will be God - that is what keeps Jesus going.

How does Jesus deal with failure? He remains faithful to his calling whatever the immediate consequences may be. And we admire people - people like the Anabaptists, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi - who remain true to their calling when adversity strikes. Jesus did so in the awareness that ultimately - even though opposition, betrayal and a cross was in the way - God would bring about a harvest "thirty and sixty and a hundredfold."

The story's story (Mark 4:13-20)

Now this story like the other Jesus stories has its own history. What was implicit in the Jesus story becomes explicit when the church after Easter uses this story to interpret its own life of failure and promise.

For the church - after Easter! - this story is now used to interpret its own mission.

We need to observe two points.

The first point is that the church now identifies the "seed" with the "word" and then explains why the word has so much trouble finding a home in the human heart.

The risen Christ through the ministry of Christians "sows the word" (v. 14). And now the fate of the word in a new situation is described by using Jesus' parable.

• Some, "when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them."

• Others, "when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away.

• And others again, "who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing.

• But then the mystery and the miracle of grace: there "are the ones sown on the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold."

The second point we need to comment on is the strange saying between the parable and its interpretation:

When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that 'they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.'" (Mark 4:10-12)

That seems to say that the disciples understand while the outsiders don't. But then we also hear Jesus saying to the disciples: "Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?" (Mark 4:13).

What is meant here is not that the parables hide truth. They are clear and they want to reveal truth. But the fact is both for "outsiders" and for "insiders" that people, that we "look, but not perceive, ... listen, but not understand."

Invitation

So the question that this parable leaves us with is, what kind of reception will the word of promise find in our life?

There will be a harvest!

Where we may see defeat, failure, discouragement, there faith sees more! Faith knows that out of the silence of the cross there came the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen! True faith goes patiently on loving, praying, working, serving in the underlying certainty that, in spite of what we see, God is fulfilling his purpose, and will bring about the harvest in God's time and in God's fashion.

We can't produce the seed. God does that and God sows and God comes. It is our privilege and our responsibility to receive and then bear the fruits of the kingdom.

TL: Feb 6, 2005.