Today's Devotion

Thursday of Lent 1, February 26, 2026 - Mark 4:21-41

In the name of + Jesus. Amen.

Jesus is both a teacher and a doer. We see it in today’s reading from St. Mark’s Gospel. Jesus teaches by way of analogy to show us how the eternal kingdom is like our mortal, physical lives here in time, and how it is different. And understanding the kingdom calls for wisdom. Teaching about the kingdom is not merely lecturing about facts, nor is it spiritualizing about feelings. The kingdom is as real as our gritty physical life, and at the same time, it transcends our world of rotting and rusting material. Jesus breaks into our world of space and time, in our flesh, to transform our flesh, and to bring it into unity with our spirits in eternity. Jesus is not teaching us to have our “best life now” as the “prosperity gospel” preachers teach, nor is He telling us to be “spiritual not religious.”

In order to bring His hearers – including us – into this radical both/and way of thinking, Jesus “did not speak to [His hearers] without a parable, but privately to His own disciples He explained everything.” For Jesus is training His closest twelve disciples to become apostles: those sent out to teach about the kingdom through their proclamation. And so as our Lord trains His future ministers, He gives them the answer key to the parables. Some of these explanations are recorded for us. And once we learn how parables work, it is easier for us to have “ears to hear” what He is preaching.

In our day-to-day lives, we use artificial light. We do this today even more than people did in the first century, when oil lamps were the cutting edge technology. And Jesus uses a lamp as an analogy to the Christian life. As St. Matthew records our Lord’s explanation of this analogy, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:16). And once again, our Lord uses the analogy of the seed to describe how His kingdom grows. Seeds multiply by doing what God created them to do, and eventually bear fruit, which contain more seeds. This multiplies the kingdom. And in the case of the tiny mustard seed, we see how dramatic this process is. The Christian church began with Jesus, who called twelve, and in our own day and age, consists of billions of people all over the world.

But Jesus doesn’t only teach with words, He teaches by doing. His miracles and His exorcisms are examples of this kind of teaching. Our Lord’s deep slumber in the boat during a storm, and the disciples false conclusion that Jesus doesn’t care about them, is corrected by the Teacher when He commands the storm to be calm by means of His Word. And Jesus teaches them with two rhetorical questions after this tremendous demonstration: “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”

Jesus has taught us that He is God, that He rules the universe by means of His Word, and that He does indeed care that “we are perishing.” For “whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Faith stands opposed to fear. Jesus teaches us that our membership in the kingdom gives us bravery, for we put our trust in Jesus, even when it seems like He is dozing and not paying attention to us.

And Jesus leads His hearers by teaching them using the Socratic method – a technique used by philosophers and law professors that invites students to answer, and then ask, questions of their own. Jesus’ students ask each other just such a question: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?” In the words of the hymnist: “Ask ye, ‘Who is this?’ Jesus Christ it is, Of Sabaoth Lord, And there’s none other God; He holds the field forever” (LSB 656:2).

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.