We all say it. We seek to know God’s will about our jobs, our future spouses, what college to attend, which church to join, what car to buy. “Are we there yet, Lord?” We pray for a lost loved one and expect God to do something yesterday. “Are we there yet?” We grow discouraged if our prayers aren’t answered on our time and our terms.
We may be working for justice and mercy among the poor and yet we see no difference. One Christian worker I talked to, who works among the poor of our city, said, “It’s the same thing ever day. I give out money to meet immediate need, I try to help people learn how to earn a living, how to take care of personal hygiene, but every day more masses of people come to me for help. Often the same people are the first in line.” She was saying it. We are all saying it. “Are we there yet?”
It can be discouraging. This is what Jesus wanted to address. If the Kingdom of God is so mysterious and comes in such clandestine ways, how will it ever grow? The disciples might have asked, “How will the Kingdom of Christ become the Kingdom promised to Abraham, which will embrace the entire world, Lord, if your own mother and bro-thers won’t follow you, much less the learned leaders of our day?”
Following a parable about a Sower where two out of three don’t get it, and following a teaching on parables where outsiders are told parables are to harden them and insiders are to get the explanation -- but they still don’t understand -- Jesus teaches again in Mark 4:21-25.
So today let’s be honest and put ourselves in their places, for we all really are in their places. The announcement of the Kingdom coming into our lives hasn’t produced all of the answers we were hoping for. “Lord are we there yet?”
In Mark 4:21-25 there are two parables (or at least allusions), two teachings to speak to our cries.
The first teaching of Jesus is intended to deal with the disciple’s discouragement: Jesus is saying that the Kingdom will come -- it will shine! (vv. 21-23)
The Christian life has more questions than you ever imagined. Our God is greater, His ways are higher that ours. He is God and we are not and that is “a good thing.” The disciples would have felt like that. Their expectations of the kingdom of God were not clarified in Jesus’ teaching. He was telling them in the parable of the Sower that there will be much discouragement before there is final victory. This is not what they wanted to hear. So Jesus tells another story -- less a parable and more a comparison story to deal with that discouragement.
