15th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cycle A 22-23
15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 55:10-11 | Romans 8:18-23 | Matthew 13:1-23
Oh God, who show the light of your truth to those who go astray so that they may return to the right path, give all who, for the faith they profess, are accounted Christians the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ to strive after all that does it honor. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.
We’re listening to Jesus in this set of readings. It’s coming to the end of his ministry, and he wants so much for the disciples to understand who he is and why he is in their life. And he’s telling us some very, very important things. He’s saying something about their way of living that is going to be revealed, through their life, to other people so they can live as the apostles have learned to live, and they live with the presence of God. It’s hard to believe that Jesus was God, but that’s who he manifested so clearly. He was a human being so filled with divinity that he was divine. At the same time, he was human. That’s a mystery. We can’t understand it, but all you have to believe in is that he is the representative of who we are intended to be, not divine as he was fully but participating in divinity on a regular, daily basis. He is in us, with us, doing something for us. If I could do anything to change people’s minds about God, I would say, “Stop trying to earn anything from him or please him by doing things that you think he wants you to do. Rather allow him to be who he wants to be in your life, in my life. He wants to be a source, a way, a plan for how we are living our life.”
So let’s look at this set of readings by starting off with the idea of, in Isaiah, Jesus describing who he is, but he uses another word rather than ⎯ well, it’s not ⎯ it’s God revealing who he will be, and he’s saying that, “What I am is I am like rain, and rain comes down, and it does something to the soil.” Now, these were agrarian people who were listening to this. They knew exactly what he meant, and without water, there is no ability for a seed to become a plant, to become a wheat that becomes the bread. So what he’s really saying is, “I am something in your life that, without me, there will be no full life, and the way I want you to understand this,” he's saying, “Is that I am giving you an explanation, a way of living, a way of seeing that is key to your being in this world in the way in which you’re intended to be and which will bring you joy and life. Pay attention to what I am offering you, like rain, over and over again so that this thing called your humanity, the soil of the earth,” which is a perfect image of humanity, “will grow rich and produce something wonderful.” So Isaiah is prophesying something so clear, so powerful that sets the tone for the Old Testament, but the thing that’s interesting about the Old Testament is that it’s never able to achieve this goal of God being able to save his people. I’m not saying that God couldn’t do it, but the history basically is that the human beings that he worked with were not very docile or open or receptive. And over and over again, they turned against him, and then when you look at the whole story, the whole Old Testament, when you get down to the time that Jesus entered into the world, he came at a time when it seemed clear that everything that had come before him was not received or not able to produce what it promised. And there was the temple, which was the presence of God in their life, and it had become not a source of life for the people but a burden. And those who were there became thieves, taking away the life that they were destined to have. It’s an incredible indictment, not just on the religion at the time, but it’s a reminder that the Old Testament is not the full story.
The full story is Jesus, and so Jesus comes into the world to make a difference, to fulfill the saying, in a way, of Isaiah. Something is coming like rain, like moisture to dry, broken, hard earth, and that coming is God in the presence of a man called Jesus. We call it the Holy Spirit, the presence of God in someone, and when you look at the way in which Jesus is talking to his disciples or to the crowd, of course, but then also to the disciples, he speaks in parables, which are really interesting, because the parable is a way in which, it seems to me, that God is saying, “What I’m teaching you is not so literal. It’s filled with mystery. It’s filled with a deeper understanding of what’s going on. Don’t look at just the actions, but look at what they mean, what’s really being said by these actions of God in Jesus in the world.” And so he describes to his disciples that parables are key. It’s not necessarily that he’s only going to talk in riddles, but it’s everything that’s happening to you is filled with meaning. And your work, and it’s kind of an exciting work ⎯ I have great enthusiasm for paying attention to what I see and paying attention to what I hear, what I see other people doing, what I see myself doing and what I hear people saying when I say, “Pay attention to that and ponder it like you would any mystery.” It’s more than it seems. People are more transparent than they ever, ever realize, and there’s a way in which God gives you the wisdom and the understanding and the power to discern. That’s what he wants you to do. Discern through reflection of what is really happening.
We live in the final times. The earth before was never fertile enough for God to truly enter. In a way I’m saying, in a sense, that the Old Testament never was enough, but the New Testament is the essential ingredient to add to the desire that God had, that people will always be what he wants them to be, that they will follow his commandments. He wants that, but he doesn’t want it just out of a sense of obligation. He wants it out of a sense of knowing ⎯ knowing what they’re doing. “Don’t do it because I told you to. Do it, because you understand why it’s so important that you do this.” So what he’s saying to his disciples in this parable about a sower who sows seeds, he’s talking about God the Father and his work, and what he’s saying is, “We’re offering, God is offering, through me,” in particular he is doing it through Jesus. “I’m giving you something that will enable something incredible to happen, and that is what he calls a fruitful life, a full life, a life without excessive shame and fear and anger.” That’s our promise. That’s what’s been made fertile in us, the potential of that kind of life, and it was never there before Jesus. It was never there before redemption. We’re redeemed earth, redeemed soil. We’re redeemed in the sense that our hearts have a capacity to understand, not our minds, our hearts.
There’s something about seeing and hearing without judgment or condemnation, which is much of the theme of the Old Testament, but with mercy and understanding and compassion that radically changes your ability to see and to hear what’s really going on. It’s true when you listen to others. It’s true when you listen to yourself. It is true when you see yourself doing things or see someone else doing things. If you’re looking at it with judgment or condemnation, you will go nowhere, but pay attention. Listen, and you will find something beautiful in the fact that there’s a person, that is valuable to God, working out their salvation in ways in which you may be called upon to be an instrument of bringing them something that is like rain, like water, like nourishment so that the thing that they long for to grow and deepen inside of themselves will take root and grow. What an amazing gift God gives us, to be rain, to be truth, to be his presence, to be like him in the world. Just think of what it would be like if you treat everyone, self-included, not with judgment and condemnation, criticism, comparison, but simply with this thing that God is revealed in Jesus to be, compassion, understanding. It’s wonderful. It’s filled with wonder, and it’s your inheritance and mine, and it’s up to us to open our eyes and to listen and to be able to see it for what it is and then to live it. Amen.
Father, your gift of your presence is beyond our imagining. Help us to see as you see, to hear what you hear, to know the truth that we are engaged in is going to bring the fullness of life to ourselves as we offer it to one another. Bless us with this wisdom, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.