Small Beginnings - Mark 4:21-34

Some years ago, at the church I used to work for, we invited a famous Sharks rugby player to the launch of an evangelistic course, which would run over some weeks. The idea was to attract lots of people from the community, through having this famous guy, and that they would carry on coming for the course and hear the gospel. Well, stacks of people arrived on the evening to see this guy. Yet the following week, when the course actually started, there were just the usual suspects from the church there. Not one of the hundreds of people who came to see their rugby hero stuck around!

Point of this story? Beware of using worldly fame and power to try and grow the church. This points to a sinful tendency among us that finds worldly power, glory and success very attractive. There is this pressure to build these fancy, glitzy, slick churches, the more people the better – and using whatever gimmicks to get people there is justified. Whether its rugby players, actors, famous artists or even politicians – do whatever it takes to make ourselves attractive to the culture. Look successful and glorious in the world’s eyes, and then they’ll join us!

The problem with all this is that when we look at Jesus’ life, we see precisely the opposite of this. As we’ve already seen in going through these first few chapters of Mark’s Gospel – he was by worldly standards, insignificant – peasant stock, while he attracted plenty of attention, he actually had a very small following. He was detested by many, ridiculed even by his own family, and as we’ll see in the weeks to come, he died a criminal’s death on the cross.

In these three parables which we are going to look at, we are going to see that though Jesus,  the gospel he preached and his church appears foolish and insignificant in worldly terms, there will come a day when his kingdom is revealed in glory for what it really is, and then every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Point? Don’t despise the day of small beginnings.

Preacher: Rev. Antonio Coppola.