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GREAT EXPECTATIONS: EXPLORING A THEOLOGY OF PREACHING

A theology of preaching expresses expectations for preaching. In particular, two questions lie at the center of any expectations for preaching. First, What does God expect to happen in our preaching? Second, What do we, as listeners or as preachers, expect to happen in preaching? In beginning to answer these questions, I hope to arrive at what a theology of preaching addresses: expectations.

In Mark 4:3-9, Jesus tells the parable of the sower and reveals in it much of his theology of preaching. In hopes of gaining a deeper sense of Jesus’ expectations for preaching, I want to look at this passage and frame our discussion around this question: How might this parable inform a theology of preaching? In the end, I hope to establish expectations for preaching and preachers.

Preaching Expectation #1: The Harvest Is the Focus
The parable begins simply, and soon becomes predictable. Three times, seed falls on a type of soil and somehow is destroyed or lost. First, seed falls on the path and is consumed by birds; then seed falls on rocky soil and withers away after having been scorched by the sun. Thorns then choke off the life of the third batch of seed. In each of these cases, the word for “seed” is singular. Finally, in v 8, success arrives in the sowing. “Seeds” find fertile soil and produce a harvest.

Prior to v 8, the “seed” falling and being destroyed has been singular; however, when the fourth batch of seed—the seed that will fall on good soil and multiply—is sown, it now becomes plural! This subtle shift indicates that Jesus hopes that most seed will be fruitful and yield a harvest. The focus should be not on the time(s) that seed is sown unproductively, but rather on those multiple occasions when seeds produce a rich harvest. That is the goal of sowing.

So, too, it is with our preaching. Jesus invites us to focus on the harvest rather than on any failures that may be encountered. The harvest is long-term. Success is not always seen quickly. A harvest requires time for the seed to take root and to yield forth. However, the goal of sowing is always to yield a harvest; likewise, the goal of preaching is to yield God’s harvest. What does God’s harvest in preaching look like? Transformed hearts, changed lives, saved souls, following Jesus, and new minds. These are the goals of preaching. To focus otherwise is to be distracted from the heart of the task.

Best of all, the harvest can and will be extravagant. With the subtle change in 4:8 from “seed” to “seeds,” the monotonous rhythm of the parable is broken, and v 8 provides three examples of the bounty: 30, 60, and 100-fold. This multiplication is an extravagant harvest! This extravagance arouses our attention. God seeks to reap an extravagant harvest from the sowing of our preaching. That is the nature of Jesus’ work: sowing the seeds of the kingdom that will produce a bountiful harvest for the Master.

Immediately following this parable, Jesus reinforces the significance of the task of proclaiming the kingdom of God and sharing the grace of God with the world. Lest any preacher wonder about the impact of one voice, Jesus tells the parable of the mustard seed (4:30-32). Here the smallest of all seeds grows into the largest shrub of all. The implication is clear: from even the smallest voice or effort may come the most significant results or harvest. The preacher believes that preaching will reap a harvest, and takes heart from the extravagance that God can produce from even the smallest seed.

As we will see, that extravagant harvest is God’s work. For now, we simply remember that the expectation of God’s harvest is always the focus of preaching.

Preaching Expectation #2: Responses Will Vary
Just as diverse soils receive the seed in a variety of ways, so too will it be with preaching. Responses will vary. God expects that, and preachers should accept that truth from the beginning. When the disciples ask Jesus about the parable of the sower, he responds in 4:11-12 with the enigmatic words: “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!’”

These verses raise questions. Does the citation from Isa 6:9-10 mean that it is the intention of Jesus, in accordance with God’s plan, to harden the hearts of some hearers while others come to understand and participate in the kingdom? What is the basis or qualification that places a listener among those who understand as opposed to being among “those on the outside”?

Many commentators have struggled with the meaning of this quotation from Isaiah. Matthew (13:10-15) and Luke (8:9-10) both mitigate the harshness of the passage somewhat, but Isa 6:9-10 itself, from which the idea is drawn, is quite harsh. It seems nearly unjustifiable from every angle to read the passage in any way other than that Mark means it is indeed God’s intention to harden the hearts of some hearers.

The insiders receive the secret of the kingdom while “those outside” receive everything in parables. Mark, however, does not represent those outsiders who hear Jesus’ teaching in parables as befuddled or puzzled. When the Pharisees and other religious authorities (e.g., 2:15-17), the people of Nazareth (6:1-6), the young ruler (10:17-22), and Jesus’ own family (3:20-21, 30-35) respond to Jesus, they do not appear puzzled; rather, they plainly rebuff Jesus and his teaching. Mark reminds us that we should not find it shocking that religious authorities, and even some of Jesus’ own family, rejected him. That is not shocking to Mark; in his mind, that rejection was encompassed by God’s own plan as envisioned by Isaiah.

Even so, I think that Mark is making a more subtle point. Jesus emphasizes that the gift of the secret of the kingdom of God—and despite all its realities now, the kingdom still is a mystery, defying full human comprehension on this side of the river—is linked to one’s relationship with Jesus. There are those who are “with him,” or “around him,” and there are those who are “outside.” Those near him understand, but for those “outside,” the parables come as riddles. In turn, they reject Jesus. In other words, how we receive Jesus directly impacts how we hear, or receive, his word.

The key to understanding the secret, or mystery—that is, the kingdom of God, is faithful hearing. Who hears? In every case in Mark, it is those who receive Jesus’ hospitably or those who seek him fervently. Who “gets it” when Jesus preaches? An unpredictable rag-tag band of oddballs: public sinners and tax collectors (2:15-17), lepers (1:40-45), foreign women (7:24-30), the ritually unclean (5:25-34), rowdy children (10:13-16), and blind Bartimaeus (10:46-52). In each of these instances, Jesus is received hospitably or sought fervently. Those who hear with the ears of faith are indicated by their relationship with Jesus. They have a relationship of faith.

Of course, to Protestant preachers and theologians, this may come as no surprise. After all, it is this very idea that forms the foundation of the theology of Paul in Romans, of the thought of Luther, and of the roots of orthodox Christian theologians for centuries. This faithful hearing is summed up in Mark in the words of the father of the epileptic demoniac who says to Jesus, “I believe; forgive my lack of faith” (9:25).

Outsiders hear Jesus, but they do not understand. Insiders hear the very same words of Jesus, but they draw nearer to Jesus rather than rejecting him. Faithful hearing offers entrance into God’s kingdom living. Faithful hearing receives the sown Word and yields God’s rich harvest.

Jesus repeatedly emphasizes “hearing.” He summons and implores the listener of the parable of the sower to “hear” both at the beginning of the parable and after the parable itself. The verb for “hearing” appears 13x in ch. 4 alone, and 45x in the Gospel as a whole. Hearing is at the heart of the gospel. Such an emphasis on hearing shifts the focus of the parable from the work of the sower to the response of the soil. The parables, then, were riddles to those who were outside because they did not truly hear. The teaching (sowing) is the same; only the response (soil) varies.

In Sowing the Gospel: Mark's World in Literary-Historical Perspective (Fortress, 1996), M.A. Tolbert has suggested that each of the responses illustrated in the parable of the sower foreshadows a response of a person(s) to Jesus himself later in the Mark’s Gospel. For example, when Jesus explains the parable of the sower to his disciples in 4:13-20, the response of the soil on the path, whose seed Satan quickly takes away, is very much like the response of the crowds who regularly surround Jesus but never take the next step of concretely following him as disciples. In addition, Peter’s response to Jesus is much like that of the seed that lands on the rocky soil where there is immediate joy and receptivity but an eventual turning away when trial or persecution comes. Thus, Jesus faces the cross alone. Furthermore, the rich young man, found later in Mark, is like that soil which is riddled with thorns and is “…strangled by the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things” (4:19).

Clearly, hearing the Word manifests different responses. Some receive the Word, some wrestle with it arduously, some resist, while others reject the Word out of hand. Nevertheless, as evidenced in Mark, each hearer has volition and the freedom to exercise it in response to God’s Word. Some (we hope many!) will receive the Word and become a part of God’s extravagant harvest alongside the children, the leper, and the marginalized. In the end, and regardless of the significant and varied responses, the preacher must continue to focus on the goal: God’s harvest.

Preaching Expectation #3: The Sowing Is Ours, the Growth Is God’s
The sower has the responsibility to sow. In the process of growth, the sower can control only the seed and its broad distribution, not the fertility of the soil or the fruitfulness of the harvest. Sowing is a vital function, but it is not the only function. However, if there is to be a bountiful harvest, the sowing must be executed faithfully and comprehensively.

The sower certainly selects land that appears to have the best prospects for fertility, for no sower desires to spend time fruitlessly. At the same time, the parable offers helpful reminders not to disqualify unlikely hearers, or soils, completely. The modern preacher should be willing and available to stretch outside of the comfort zone to scatter the seed on a variety of soils. Throughout time, evangelists have demonstrated that some means are the most effective for yielding a harvest (e.g., church planters usually are the most fruitful in areas where they fit culturally). However, what preacher has not experienced the serendipitous blessing of seeing an unlikely person hear the Word, respond with faith, and yield a great harvest? The lesson is simple: every preacher should desire to grow as a preacher so as to become the most effective sower possible.

The sower spends no time in “front-end discrimination” to determine whether the soil is worthy of the seed. After all, how will one know unless the soil is given a chance? Or, as Paul says, “How are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” (Rom 10:14c). It is not for the sower to decide the worthiness of the soil; the sower simply sows. This is the task and mission of the church and its preachers: to scatter the seed as effectively and pervasively as possible.

Jesus provides no instructions for sowing. He offers no direct advice on technique. Clearly, there are various ways to sow seed: e.g., left-handed, right-handed, two-fisted, over-handed, slinging. However, we do find a model in Jesus who uses parables and stories to engage his audiences with language and imagery that are familiar and accessible. Jesus works to be heard by his hearers and often uses word pictures and narrative imagery to sketch out the nature of the kingdom of God. The point of the parable of the sower, however, is not to offer techniques for sowing so much as to emphasize the sacred (and utmost!) importance and significance of performing faithfully the task of sowing.

Nevertheless, it is God, not the sower, who provides the gift of the kingdom of God, and it is God alone who provides the growth of the harvest. Regardless of any work done to sow, to cultivate, or to fertilize the seed, the mystery of growth is still just that: a mystery. In the parable of the growing seed (4.26-29), Jesus reminds us that even though the sower sows the seed, he does not understand how it grows. That is God’s mystery. Thus, preaching, first and foremost, is about a God whose work in the kingdom is often a mystery. Preaching proceeds from the God of the harvest and finds its source in him alone.

God not only births preaching. He is active in it in a mysterious way. Who can fully explain how the words of a mere mortal preacher can have the power to alter lives and influence destinies? God is at work through the Holy Spirit in a way that is inexplicable and incomprehensible just as his work in agriculture is a mystery. How does a seed become a stalk of corn? How does a sermon effect change in the hearer? In the end, it is in part a mystery.

Even more remarkably, the harvest will be beyond the finite understanding of the human mind. In some soils, the harvest is extravagant. Witness the remarkable harvest of late in China and Korea. Imagine still more the coming harvest and what it will look like on that day. God is at work in bringing about a mysterious growth that will result in a magnificent eschatological harvest. Praise be to God!

A Final Word on Expectations
In sum, we have noted how Jesus demonstrates that preachers are to focus on the harvest. They are preaching for a reason: to effect change, or to yield a harvest, in the listeners. Some of that change may occur now, but it will only be fully completed eschatologically. Nevertheless, preachers are called to remember that they preach for the harvest of God. No other focus, reason, or motivation will do.

In addition, Jesus reminds preachers that they are not ultimately responsible for the responses generated by faithful preaching. The preacher works to be heard and to find fertile soil for God’s seed. Yet, ultimately, the preacher is held accountable for the faithful execution of this task just as the hearers are responsible for what they do with the seed.

Finally, Jesus teaches us to understand that, in the end, the preaching is ours, but the harvest is God’s. No one can fully explain how the preached Word can bring forth change in the heart and life of a listener. That is God’s work; we merely distribute the seed to prepare the way.

God expects a lot. Jesus makes that clear. Much is at stake: the kingdom of God. Lives and hearts lie in the balance. Ours is an awesome task and a sacred responsibility. But we are not alone. God is with us. He provides the growth and the harvest. Ours is merely to sow the seed as effectively as possible.

By Allen R. Hunt, Ph.D., John Wesley Fellow, and senior pastor of Mount Pisgah in Alpharetta, GA.