January 13, 2010

"'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'"

This sounds a little bit weird, doesn’t it? It sounds like Jesus spoke in parable so that no one would understand! But that’s not quite it.

The main point here is, the Kingdom comes only to those who have gone to great lengths to listen (verses 3, 9, 13, 23, 24). This strongly implies that the Gospel is not something you simply pick up and do. Rather you must wrestle with it, reflect on it, think it out until it “sinks in” (like seed). By using the agricultural metaphor with the repeated call to “listen”, Jesus shows us that it is
extremely possible to think you understand the Gospel when you really don’t. “The penny has to drop”. You may think you “get it” and yet it has not truly touched your heart or penetrated your understanding.
What else does it tell us about the kingdom of God?
• Earthly kingdoms come to the supremely confident, but God’s kingdom comes to the completely humble, receptive. The ground that “gets” the kingdom is not hard but soft and easily penetrated. We have to “open up”, let down our intellectual and volitional defense, and take in his message like the ground takes in seed. The kingdom comes not to the fierce but to the teachable — those who know they have much to learn.
• The power of the kingdom is truth not force. The kingdom of God moves forward not by political or military force, but through teaching and persuading and by hearing and learning. Jesus’ kingdom will conquer through love and service, not force, through sweet persuasion, not coercion, and it will produce loving obedience, not slavery, and therefore it will transform completely, not superficially. Jesus’ kingdom is more like a seed on the heart than a boulder on the head. The boulder smashes from the outside, the seed penetrates to the inside. The entry of a seed is the most gentle of procedures.
• Third, we learn here how small and unimpressively the kingdom of God can start! Afew seeds in the ground are essentially invisible. Nothing appears to have really happened. In the same way, the church of Jesus Christ for many decades consisted of a very small number of socially marginal people. No one would have ever thought that it was going to “take over” the Roman empire.
• Fourth, we learn how slowly and indirectly the kingdom of God can proceed. It may take a very long time and seem to be going nowhere. Some seeds and roots can lie fallow and hidden for an extremely long time and then spring up. So the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not something that will break in completely and immediately. The agricultural metaphor at least suggests that it will come in stages. It generally grows organically and gradually, not coercively and suddenly.