4 November 2026 • Friday of Trinity 22 (observed) • Mark 4:24–29; Ephesians 4:17–20
“Take heed what you hear.” So our Gospel text. In the holy + Name of Jesus. AMEN.
Take heed what you hear. Of course, there was a time in your life when that was required of you. You finish catechism class. You can learn all the answers, stand before the congregation, confess the faith, and be confirmed. But you cannot finish hearing Jesus. There is no graduation from His forgiveness. You can’t outgrow the Word that makes you a Christian and keeps you in the faith.
Yet familiarity can make you think that you have outgrown it. Maybe you hear the beginning of the sermon, and you already anticipate how it’s going to end. You know what the pastor’s going to say about your sin. You know that he’s going to get around to speaking of Christ crucified for you. And so while the words are being spoken, maybe your mind wanders a bit, gone home to work already waiting for you there. You know the answer. You know what’s coming. And then the temptation is to stop listening to the One who gives it.
But Jesus said tonight, “Take heed what you hear.” He speaks these words to His disciples. “With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you.” He calls for a hearing that takes His Word seriously. He’s called these twelve. They belong to Him. They’ve heard Him explain already the parable of the sower. And then He tells these men to pay attention. That’s what it actually means to be a disciple. It means continuing to receive what He says, even if you think you’ve heard it all before.
Part of it, too, is that we think that Jesus wants us to grow up. In other words, so that you can manage without His help. You teach a child so that, in time, he can do the work himself, raise his own family, have his own home. You show him how, you watch him try, and then hopefully you step aside. That’s good when you’re teaching your child to tie his shoes. But that’s not what Jesus is doing, training you to manage without Him. Because your life depends upon Him continuing to give to you.
St. Paul described for us in the Epistle what happens apart from that life. The Gentiles, he says, are walking in the futility of their minds. Their understanding is darkened. Their hearts are hardened. And eventually they’re past even feeling. Specifically, their sin no longer troubles them. They give themselves over to it, and then more and more. But then Paul says, “But you have not so learned Christ.” Learned Christ by hearing.
See, a hard heart doesn’t always announce itself by making a public scandal. You could sit in church, defend the catechism, and at the same time refuse the Word that calls your own sin what it is. You know that Christians forgive while at the same time keeping a careful account of what someone owes you. You can know that God condemns greed while explaining away how greed is necessary in a capitalistic society. Knowing the right answer gives you no refuge from the God whose Word you may at the same time be refusing.
So Jesus warns, “Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.” You cannot keep faith alive simply by remembering what you once believed, past tense. You can’t despise Christ’s speaking and then expect Him to preserve His gifts among you. You know what we’re getting after here: the idea that once a Christian, you can always be a Christian even if you step away from Christ’s Word and His Sacrament. Because the Lord gives you His Word through these means so that you would hear it and hold fast to it. So we need to repent, many of us, of thinking the Word is something that we can do without, for a time or for a long period.
Of course, you may be listening and wondering whether you’ve listened enough, whether you’ve actually been hearing. Maybe now you feel the accusation. Because if you’re like me, your attention does wander. I find it easier to be a preacher of the Word than a hearer. Or maybe your memory fails. By the time you get home, you forget what pastor was talking about. Or you hear the promise and yet still feel fear in your heart. Does that mean that you have nothing? Or does it mean that the Word didn’t have its way with you and do its work? Is Jesus about to take everything away from you?
No. He gives you a parable to help with this idea. He tells a story about a man who scatters seed on the ground. That’s all he does. Then he goes to sleep and rises night and day. But the seed, on its own, sprouts and grows. And the man really can’t even explain exactly how. He can explain sun and rain and the like. We were talking beforehand about flowers that are blooming out of season. Can’t really explain why, can we? No. But the Lord gave it. All we do is put the seed in the ground. But we can’t put life into the thing that we plant. The growth often comes even without our understanding it, or why it even worked, or even necessarily watching it happen. Like the man, he’s just in his bed, and he’s going about his work.
That’s how Jesus is with His Word. He told His disciples what the sower sows. It’s His Word. So we learn that the Word brings life that we cannot produce, even if we want it. Your concentration upon it doesn’t make His forgiveness more effective. Your understanding doesn’t supply something missing from the promise. Christ speaks. The Christ who speaks is the reason you have something to receive. His Word works apart from us, but for us.
And this is what He gives you to hear. The Son of God came into your flesh and blood. He bore your sin, including even contempt for His Word, or your distractions, or your thinking you know everything already. He bore all of that in His body on the cross. He suffered the judgment you deserved. He died for you, and He rose from the dead with your death defeated and your sins paid for. His forgiveness rests not on your making it work, but rather on His finished work.
And now He’s sent that forgiveness to you. His Word spoken, that He says, “Take heed what you hear,” is the Word of forgiveness. When you hear the absolution, you’re hearing what His death won for you. Your sins are forgiven. And that Word reaches you from outside into even an uncertain heart. Christ puts His promise into your ears so that you have His Word—His Word for it. He gives the faith that receives Him by that Word, and He strengthens that faith by giving you the promise again and again. It’s actually the repetition that’s the beautiful thing, so that there’s never a moment—not just a dull moment, but a moment when Christ’s forgiveness is not being proclaimed to you, His grace and mercy.
So you really can’t outgrow hearing it. The need is still yours, and the gift is still His to give. Yesterday’s sin was forgiven by the same blood that answers for today’s sin. The Lord who made you His own in Holy Baptism continues to care for you. He hasn’t left you with the task of keeping yourself alive or making yourself grow until He returns.
So Jesus says, “To you who hear, more will be given.” He gives what you cannot give yourself. He gives you forgiveness for the sins you confess. He gives you comfort when accusation won’t leave you alone. He gives you His body and blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. And you keep on receiving, even when you don’t necessarily think you need it, because He keeps on giving. And He knows what’s best for you.
So the Lord who tells you to take heed also promises to give you more. You can open the Scriptures expecting Him to address your sin and your need. You can come to the altar expecting the forgiveness He promises there. And your need can never exhaust His mercy. He commanded the preaching of His Gospel because He intends to give it to you.
And that giving, like the seed, bears fruit. “First the blade, then the head, and after that the full grain in the head.” The farmer doesn’t have to shout at the bare ground until it produces a harvest. It’s God who gives the growth. And the Word by which He brings you to faith nourishes your faith and even changes the way you live.
The forgiveness you receive gives you something to speak to the person who also sins against you. Christ’s care for you then frees your hands to care for your neighbor, as we pray in the post-Communion collect, or at least Luther’s, “in faith toward You and in fervent love toward one another.” His promise of daily bread answers the greed that insists you have to secure everything for yourself. These are the fruits of life that He gives, and they grow from His mercy toward you.
Yes, you will still find that there is much that needs forgiving. You may see your impatience more clearly than your patience, your fear more clearly than your trust. But Jesus doesn’t send you into yourself to search for enough growth to prove that His Word is actually working. He gives you His Word again and again. Your Savior remains the One who died and rose for you. And His promise remains true even when you cannot measure, or at least you think you cannot measure, what He is doing.
In other words, imagine God as the farmer who sleeps and then rises, and days pass, and all the while the grain grows. And then the harvest. Jesus says, “Immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” That’s when the waiting finally has its end. The Lord who has been giving life through His Word will finally bring that work to its completion on the Last Day. And He will raise your body from the grave. He will gather you to Himself, free from all sin and from death.
But until then, He wants you to imagine yourself like that seed that’s been planted, to live by receiving. So the child learning the catechism and the Christian who has heard these readings for decades both alike need the same living Lord. And He has forgiveness for both. He has life for both. And He’s here to give it over and over.
Take heed what you hear, and hear what He says to you. Your sin has been carried to the cross. Your death has been overcome by His grave, and your Savior rose from the dead and lives. The Word you hear comes from Him, and He will not fail you. You can’t, and you haven’t, outgrown His forgiveness. And thank God He continues to give it to you.
In the holy + Name of Jesus. AMEN.
Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School — Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin