Words'nTone

Poor soil and the Deeds that following (Mark 5)
The reader leaves the sowing parables and encounters Jesus in a series of miracle events (5:1ff) with noticeably very little “proclamation.” A structural clue in Mark’s Gospel story-line indicates that Jesus’ actions themselves are “sowing” of the Gospel of the Kingdom.  Note the chiastic structure suggested by the apostle-commission texts that form the obvious bookends:

A. The twelve and their Kingdom task (3:13-19)

   B. Hometown skepticism and the Beelzebul story (3:20-35)

      C. Word parables (4:1-34)

           D. The authoritative, mysterious One (4:35-41)

      C. Action parables (5:1-43)

   B. Hometown rejection (6:1-6)

A. The twelve and their Kingdom task (6:7-13)

The bookends (A) indicate that the commissioning of the twelve includes proclaiming and doing, word and deeds.

(A) And He appointed twelve, so that they would be with
      Him and that He could send them out to preach,
      and to have authority to cast out the
      demons (3:14-15).

(A) They went out and preached that men should repent.
      And they were casting out many demons and
      were anointing with oil many sick people and
      healing them (6:12-13; cf. 7b).

Along with the noticeable chiastic structure, this suggests that the deeds that follow are parable-deeds, demonstrating that evangelism, that is the sowing of the Kingdom, includes both proclamation and action (deeds).

Furthermore, some have also noted that the miracles function in a similar way as does the spoken word (i.e., Jesus’ teaching).  The “the kind of amazement and awe that result from Jesus’ miracles (2:12; 7:37) also result from his teaching (9:32; 11:18).  The nature of the parables is noticeably parallel to the miracles in “their overall function” and “in many specific details of their contents.” The results are similar: both conceal and reveal, both are received and rejected, both reveal the in-breaking of God’s reign.  The miracles are “another mode of language (more dramatic certainly, but in its own way more ambivalent), communicating like parabolic teaching the mystery of God’s action in the world.”

The stories in Mark 5 also portray the Master-Sower sowing the Gospel in what appears to be unpromising soil.  Everything about the three miracle vignettes hints at wasted seed that ought not to yield a crop.  Immediately, Jesus is confronted by a man with an unclean spirit, in Gentile territory, and who dwells among the dead (i.e., among the tombs, v 3).  Afterward on the return trip, Jesus is touched by a woman who has a hemorrhage and touches a dead child.  The field where Jesus immediately sows the Kingdom is beyond the borders of the sacred.  The garden where the domesticated bush of God’s Kingdom extends its branches, immediately attracts the unwanted—the unholy, unclean, the sick, and the dead—to find the protection and sustenance of its shade.  The Master-Sower wastes his seed, yet, there is harvest.