This part of Mark is portraying Jesus as having a connection with God. In Mark 1:22 it says “They were astounded at his teachings for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes did”.   Right after that in Mark it briefly describes Jesus casting out an unclean spirit.  But even the unclean spirit is given a chance to connect Jesus with God; in verse 24 the unclean spirit says “What have you to do with us Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”  When Jesus forgives the sins of the Paralytic, the people question to themselves how this person had authority to forgive sins, because only God could forgive sins.  Giving another connection to the divine being, and Jesus responds to their questioning in their hearts by performing the more difficult task of telling the man to get up and walk.

Jesus often didn’t conform to the traditional customs of the land, like feasting when John the Baptist and his disciples as well as the Pharisees were fasting, he also ate with people who were sinners, and he and his disciples broke the Sabbath day by eating forbidden grain and healing people.  For not feasting Jesus responded to the people by saying “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?… .”  In this statement Jesus is referring to himself as the bridegroom, which probably did not make sense to a lot of people who heard him say it. But later in Mark Jesus says that his parables were intended so that the outsiders would not understand what he was saying.   In response to eating with the sinners Jesus says “I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners.”  A pretty logical response that if you want more people to be righteous you should go to the ones who aren’t.  And in response to breaking the Sabbath he says in Mark 2:27 “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” And in response to healing on the Sabbath he says “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?”  and then it says they were silent, meaning that essentially Jesus won that argument.  

The parable of the sower tells of someone sowing seeds, and his seeds fall on different places determining which seeds will sprout, and grow and produce lots of grain, the ones that fall on good soil, grow and produce 30, 60 or even 100 fold.  And then Jesus finishes the parable by saying in Mark 4:9 “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”  Then Jesus goes on to say in Mark 4:21-23 Jesus follows up the parable of the sower with an analogy of a lamp saying “I s a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lamp stand?  For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret except to come to light.  Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” The symbolism of the light, is a connection to Jesus as the light of the world.  And this analogy is saying that if you know the word then you need to go sow it somewhere instead of hiding it, but a lot of people who hear it are not going to get well rooted in it. The comparison of the mustard seed to the kingdom of heaven means that from something small the kingdom of heaven will grow into the greatest kingdom.  Similar to how the seeds which fell on the good soil end up producing up to a hundredfold.