“He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed . As he was scattering the seed some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty and a hundred times.”
Then Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside, everything is said in parables so that, ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven."
Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the demons of other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others like the seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop - thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown." Mark 4, The BIBLE (NIV)
When I read this, I remember that a puzzle ceases being a puzzle once it is solved. Jesus taught the Kingdom of God, the message simply, that there is a higher power, a heavenly power, that is more powerful than any earthly power. I sometimes think of Heaven as “Haven”, a safe place. The world around seems so often frightening. I fear I’ve lived a life of anxiety. But I was taught, "Anxiety is a measure of one’s distance from God and equally a measure of one’s humanity."
The great Christian theologian Kierkegaard taught, "Life is suffering unto death." Christians believe that this finite world is of secondary purpose to the world to come, after death. Scott Fitzgerald, the Christian psychiatrist, who wrote the Road Less Traveled, saw this existence for each man, a kindergarten. Despite the moaning and groaning of students, the real work begins after school. St. Paul taught that we had to put off the things of children though paradoxically Jesus taught we had to be like children to come before the Lord. We had to be reborn. St. Paul taught that now, we ‘see through a glass darkly’. The Celtic monks saw life as a journey which continued after death.
The Message of Jesus, first seek the Kingdom of God. When we are fully awake we will see life and death as one. We will also understand all that has passed as what was necessary to bring us to that point of transformation. The catterpillar, no doubt like man, complains of all the horrible things that happen to this sluggish creature until one day the caterpillar becomes the butterfly and all that is past is forgotten. As children we complained about our cribs and were angry with parents who made us go to school. My dog doesn’t even like that I clean up his poop. Children don’t like discipline any more than old ladies like doing sit ups.
Yet the greatest leaders were first the greatest followers. For to learn one must let go of pre conceptions. The parable about the seeds speaks to the closed minded, those whose minds are like the paths, pavement parking lot minds, where nothing gets in. The Message of Love is entertained by all the glitzy crowds. As adolescents we sang , “all we need is love’. The romance novels proliferate. I say I love you but like half of North Americans I’ve divorced and ‘justified’ it, and ‘rationalized’ it. I’m like the debtors who want their ‘debt’ written off. We all want a second chance. In this life some are given countless chances while others die. In this life there are layers of buffers for those with wealth and priviledge and private armies but with such power comes it’s own set of fears and anxieties. Each of us has our own challenge each and every day but we prefer to deny our own part and point our fingers at others. We blame and judge freely and are like those who receive the Word but only superficially. As quickly as not we slip back like addicts who at the first or hundredth opportunity pick up a drink or drug or turn to porn, prostitutes or gambling. There are no roots with us or them, then.. We didn’t let the seed grow deep because we were shallow thinkers and shallow people who wanted quick fixes and easy rewards. Hollywood lies about the greatness of love of strangers. It has repackaged lust as love. It claims in a thousand stories that this new love is the like of the old love of friends who’ve been together 50 years in intimacy and work, creating lives of heroism and sacrifice and dynasties. Deceitful wealth taught us , “Sha, na, na, na,na, na Live for today”. It was always such with children with credit cards who didn’t work or had parents, slaves or other tax payers to pay for their folly. It was a different message from Carpe Diem or another Jesus parable about keeping lamps lit. .
Erich From wrote the great little book Art of Loving which differentiated clearly between falling in love and standing in love. Jesus teaches that we must stand in love, let the Word grow within us, hold onto the Message, let time and nurturing allow for roots to take hold. We must open ourselves.
Grace is the unwarranted gift of God. Grace is like the sunshine. We have it. We have always had it. We don’t know why it’s there yet it gives us life. Sun worship is one of the first spiritual experiences of humans collectively. Pagans have Sun Gods and Sun God worship. Constantine who institutionalized Christianity, taking the teachings of Jesus and making them into a State Religion of the Roman Empire, which later became the Roman Catholic Church, was a Sun God worshiper. This is why so much pagan Sun God symbolism and worship crept into the new Gentile/Israeli homogenized religion. Roman Catholicism to this day remains a State Religion, the Vatican, it’s own country with it’s own police, army , stamps and boundaries. The Church of England, Anglicanism, Episcopalianism, is also a state church, though slightly more distinct from the nation state that founded it.
Jesus’ message was radical. One of the challenges for the individual is to separate the true message of Jesus from the thorns of state and ‘deceitful wealth’ because the Church, especially the Catholic and the Anglican are intimately woven into the status quo of their associated State religion. . The STATE killed Jesus. The Political figures of Israel in it’s day and the political figures of the Empire killed Jesus. They were satanic like the birds in the parables. Great black crows and vultures that swooped down on the son of God and killed him in a time space extravaganza action movie of all time.
Then one day, the STATE, made an unholy alliance with the religion of man and the religion of God. Much of Sun God worship still exists in this New Christianity of post Nicea. The Nicene Creed is the agreement between STATE and Christians which saw the end of the persecution of Christians and allowed the politics to get on with making strange bedfellows. All religions are the feet of spirituality. It is where God touches earth. It’s the muck our faith grows from. It is the outside. St. Theresa of Avila taught this well in her book, Inner Castle.
The Mystery is the darkness that is in all religions because man makes religions as he/she makes nations. So the religion state of atheism is communism and the religion/state of the Roman Empire was paganism, then Catholicism, as the religion/state of Russia was once Orthodox Christianity. The religion/state of the Islam was the Ottoman Empire which today is Saudi Arabia and Iran. There is no separation of state and religion in the religion of aetheism in communism just as there is no separation of state and religion of the Church of England. There’s a list of political martyrs who were Christians who disagreed with the powers of this earth and were sacrificed to deceitful wealth as were Jesus and St. Peter. Thomas Crammer comes to mind and St. Oliver Plunkett. Christians are the most persecuted people of the earth today. Yet if a woman questions the State Religion Book, the Koran and wants to be a leader, well, Isis will behead her too.
The atheists killed hundreds of millions in this last century , as did the Pagans under Hitler, with the Moslems are still having a bloody good time today with their Internet hollywood beheadings. The Christians live on in the United State American Empire, a bit like they do in the Post Christian , Post Britain English Empire. In Ankor Watt times the Buddhists and Hindus were whacking each other in the name of religion since state and religion separation is only a very modern idea, at most a century or three old. Today’s secularism is a novelty which might well be considered a merger of Satan and God much like the birth of the Roman Catholic Empire. It’s hard to say. Up close politics is never easy to read despite the sound bite silliness of propaganda media.
Decietful Wealth, promissory materialism is countered with ‘you can’t take it with you’ and the lie of Satan is that this world ends with death. But if that were true Shakespeare’s Hamlet would not have been given the greatest parable of modern English, “To sleep, to dream, that is the rub.” So the materialist would believe they don’t dream. Even animals dream but atheists insist death isn’t a dream state for the individual even now when we have dream post brain death scientific evidence. The near death experiences of those who have returned miraculously to life were best recorded by Dr. Moody. Yet Dr. Eben Alexander, the Neurosurgeon who died and resurrected like Lazarus published a book, Proof of Heaven and it falls like seeds on the parking lot minds of atheists. Quantum Physics and String Theory teach us scientifically today that the world may well be a great Matrix, a Shrodinger Cat box of energy and matter, inner and outer, As the Bible taught we are created in the Image of God so the universe is much more than the imagination of God and we are co creators of this dream of life and death. Information transferring under laws of conservation and spirituality. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Pray.
One can hear the terror in their voices of the promissory materialist atheists as they switch their fear from their own imminent death and claim the planet is going to die, a grandiose delusion if ever there was one.
I may die. God does not die. And if I die I will dream of God as God dreams of me. But these are parables. It’s hard to understand these things on the outside. And the mystery is that I really don’t know individually if I am on the inside or the outside but there’s a sense that all is one.
The great painting on the Cistine Chapel is Adam reaching out to God and God touching his finger. Personally I am blessed to have seen this greatest work of the age by Michelangelo. The sensual love Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa for her enigmatic smile may or may not offer a man sex or a child love. It’s that uncertain. But Adam and God reach towards each other and where Grace and Faith meet so sparks fly. It's that certain.
And in the parable of the farmer, the seeds grow and multiply, 30 times, 60 times, a hundred times. The Big Bang is within.
Turn and be forgiven!
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