Mark 4

Jesus was an amazing teacher. How many other teachers do you know who attract crowds whenever they speak? And it wasn’t because he had breathtaking media effects or dramatic entrance music or stunning visual aids.

It was simply because he taught with authority, power, clarity, and purpose.

In this chapter, Mark gives us four of Jesus’ parables (a certain kind of story or teaching illustration — see more about that in Extra Info below). All four feature unspectacular images and undramatic storylines. What could be more simple and straightforward than farmers, fields, weeds, mustard seeds, lamps, baskets, and beds? There’s not a single Big Thing in these stories — no breathtaking acts of prowess, no dragons, no cosmic superheroes, no super-human powers. Just small and simple things.

But they illustrate and explain supernatural and miraculous things, which is interesting because after telling these four small and simple stories, Jesus goes and does something utterly miraculous and superhuman and cosmic: he tells the wind and waves what to do, and they obey.

Jesus is Lord of both the small and simple and of the cosmic and colossal.