NOTES for Mar 4:24-34
Why does the Lord speak in parables? After all, a parable is often difficult to understand. Yet perhaps that is precisely the value of a parable. It does not have one simple meaning; it has many meanings that are not grasped at once but must be lived through. Moreover, a parable always contains some vivid image from ordinary, familiar life. Because of these two qualities—its obscurity and its vividness—a parable becomes imprinted on the listener’s heart. It is well known in biblical studies that the most difficult passages of Scripture were preserved best from manuscript to manuscript. For when a translator or scribe did not understand something, he tried to transmit the text as closely as possible to the original—a natural psychological phenomenon. In the same way, parables, precisely because of their obscurity and at times even their strangeness, are preserved in the heart like a seed; then, as a person begins to penetrate their meaning, they swell and ripen until they bear fruit.