GOSPEL REFLECTION, WEDNESDAY, 3RD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, 28 JANUARY 2026

Mark 4:1-20.  In the earliest part of his public ministry Jesus taught in synagogues by homilies and by acts of healing.  Soon he began to teach in the open air, likely for several reasons.  His reception in synagogues had become difficult, and by now crowds were following him to hear what he had to say.  Within the synagogues he followed the standard liturgical forms of readings and homilies, now in the open air his teaching took the form of parables, just as the rabbis of the Old Testament had done.  Parables took familiar, often earthly and mundane things, and invested them with rich spiritual teaching.  Today’s gospel reading is a striking early example of this in Jesus’ ministry, and another is in chapter 13.  The first tells of a farmer casting seed upon the ground, a familiar farming activity.  He casts the seed four times.  The first three times the seed fails to grow – it is eaten by birds, or falls on arid ground, or it falls on a hardened path.  The fourth, however, produces a rich harvest.  This is the ‘Parable of the Sower’ as he taught it to the crowds.  It was a parable which challenged them to find its meaning – or meanings, because parables are rich in spiritual thought. 

In a sense, the first three castings are parables of judgement.  The fourth is a parable of the Kingdom.  After speaking to the crowds, Jesus spoke much more intimately to the twelve apostles and to those others close by, telling them, “to you has been given the secret of the Kingdom of God.”  The sower is God, and the seed are his Word.  The seed that fell on the hard path were defeated by Satan.  The seed that fall on rocky ground fail to take root, and those that fell among thorns are choked by the cares of the world.  The fourth, however, fell on fertile soil – those who heard the Word and accepted it bear much fruit – ‘thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.’  That is the Kingdom, filled with life, growth, expansion, and leading to a rich harvest.  In other places in the gospels, the ’harvest’ is a rich image of the Kingdom in its fullness.  Expansion and growth in what? – in spiritual understanding of God’s Word, insight, compassion, love!