Mark 3 - 4 // Overcoming the Brambles
Jesus spends most of this passage challenging aspects of life that can get in the way of us accepting his message—the call to rethink how we view our relationship with God, our neighbors, and ourselves. To see these relationships as they should be, built on love, and live every moment of our lives as if it were true. Jesus challenges religious power, celebrity, status, tribalism, unhealthy family ties head-on. They are laid out one by one as the passage moves to one of Jesus' most famous parables. The parable of the sower. What is a parable? A parable is a story that sets an everyday event or occurrence side-by-side with a spiritual truth. "Parable" literally means "to set side-by-side." This is Jesus' main mode of teaching. He explains in this passage and others that he does this so that those who are ready to hear the truth will. In the parable of the sower, he tells the story of a farmer sowing seeds and the various things that happen to the seeds. After the crowd leaves, confused as to what Jesus meant by this story, he explains it to his disciples, who also were confused. This is the only time Jesus explains a parable. While he's explaining the story, he talks about some seeds that were choked out by brambles. He says the brambles are "the cares of life, and the glamour of wealth, and cravings for many other things [that] come in and completely choke the message." The very things Jesus has spent the start of ministry challenging— religious power, celebrity, status, tribalism, unhealthy family ties—are the very things that choke out the message. These are the brambles we need to actively overcome in order to make ourselves into good soil, bramble-free, so that we can live a life in loving relationship with God, our neighbors, and ourselves.