Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Mark 4:26-34

Glimpses of God’s Kingdom

In these parables, Jesus provides two glimpses of God’s Kingdom: the slow growth of a seed into a stalk of wheat and the growth of a humble mustard seed. Both of Jesus’ parables in Mark 4:26-34 mean to reinforce the same idea of the nature of the Kingdom: God’s work is often unassuming, slow, and quiet but yields unthinkably grand results. 

In their immediate context within Mark, one has to read these two parables as the response to the parable of the sower (4:1-9) and the explanation of the parable to the disciples thereafter (4:10-20). While the parable of the sower helps the crowds and the disciples consider our reception of God’s Kingdom, Jesus immediately begins orienting their expectations of the inauguration of that…

1. Why does Jesus liken the Kingdom of God to such small, even boring, things like mustard seeds or wheat? Why does he so frequently talk about plants and the Kingdom?

2. How do you think that the original hearers understood these parables? What did they expect about the Kingdom of God and how do these fit or challenge those expectations?

3. Jesus is constantly warning people to keep what he does a secret in Mark. How does the hiddenness of the Kingdom in these parables relate to his frequent warnings? (How about to the constant disobedience of those who he tells to keep what he does a secret?)

4. All of Jesus' parables in our reading are future-looking, but about something slow to develop. The seed will grow into a tree. The wheat…