While pastordan and Mrs. Pastor are recovering from their
wedding debauchery yesterday and still on the road, I'm filling in again for this week's Scripture diary.
I would have thought it obvious from the title of the diary and the content, but apparently there were some readers last week who were surprised to find that we were discussing religious matters in a diary about the Bible readings for this Sunday. So let this be a warning to you: Don't read below the fold if you aren't up for that sort of thing.
Here are today's readings:
For just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down, and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to him who sows and bread to him who eats, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.
(Isaiah 55:10-11)
Distant peoples stand in awe of your marvels; east and west you make resound with joy.
You visit the earth and water it, make it abundantly fertile. God's stream is filled with water; with it you supply the world with grain. Thus do you prepare the earth:
you drench plowed furrows, and level their ridges. With showers you keep the ground soft, blessing its young sprouts.
You adorn the year with your bounty; your paths drip with fruitful rain.
The untilled meadows also drip; the hills are robed with joy.
(Psalm 65:10-14)
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
(Romans 8:18-23)
On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood along the shore.
And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying: "A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up.
Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots.
Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it.
But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. Whoever has ears ought to hear."
The disciples approached him and said, "Why do you speak to them in parables?"
He said to them in reply, "Because knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted. To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because 'they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.'
Isaiah's prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says: 'You shall indeed hear but not understand you shall indeed look but never see. Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them.'
"But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
"Hear then the parable of the sower. The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart.
The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away.
The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no fruit.
But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold."
(Matthew 13:1-23)
Three things immediately pop out from these readings: seeds, food, and rain. And all of those images are used as metaphors for the word of God, which falls upon the earth, according to Isaiah, like the rain and the snow, and provides seed for the sower and bread for the hungry (a recurring theme in Isaiah 55, which begins so beautifully with the invitation "Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come!").
I have to wonder whether these readings for the fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time might not have been chosen with an eye, not only to their place within the history of salvation, but also with a view toward the season. By this time of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere (where the lectionary cycle was hashed out), we're well into summer, and a bit of rain is a welcome relief from the heat--or, as is the case in my hometown right now, an anxiously awaited necessity.
We find ourselves in the peculiar position of hoping that Dennis does not take a turn to the east when he gets up near Kentucky and southern Illinois sometime Wednesday morning. We'd much rather he kept right on heading north--at least far enough to park a couple of good rain bands over our cornfields for a day or two, because if we don't get some rain pretty doggone quickly, there isn't likely to be much of a corn crop this year. I already saw one farmer mowing down at least part of his corn last week, which is something I don't ever recall seeing before, in all my years living up here in corn country. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to hear a prayer for rain in the general intercessions at Mass this morning.
Today's Gospel is a bit of a puzzler. On the one hand, there is the promise implicit in the snippet from Isaiah 6:9-10 that Jesus quotes to his disciples, that if we listen and are attentive to God, we will be healed. And then there's the direct discourse, in which Jesus appears to imply that God has already determined that there are people in the world who are beyond redemption.
I have to come down in favor of the universal salvific will of God. I don't think, against the Calvinists, that there's anybody who isn't capable of being saved, or that salvation is a matter of predestination. But what I do think this passage implies is that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right: there is no such thing as "cheap grace."
There are those who believe that once they speak a certain formula, they're magically zapped into salvation: no work on their part needed at all. I, along with Bonhoeffer, think this is a Really. Bad. Idea. and one that has done far more harm than good.
The Word of God rarely comes to us in a predigested, Reader's Digest Condensed Version. Instead, it comes exactly like the parable that Jesus tells the crowds there beside the Sea of Galilee: rich in symbol and evocative language, jam-packed with meaning, and requiring careful thought and unpacking if we are to understand it fully (to the extent that such an understanding is even possible to our human intellects). Boiling it down to a few proof-texts and campaign slogans borders on the blasphemous, at least in my book.
And what does it say that Jesus has to spell out its meaning to his disciples? The available evidence in the Gospels tends to suggest that they were not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer (especially the first pope, St. Peter, who seems to need the regular application of a board to the back of his head before he gets it). So while Jesus compliments them that the mysteries of the reign of God have been revealed to them, I think he does reveal it to them to be sure that they've gotten what they might not have figured out on their own.
But that's OK. Because we're all in that same boat at some point or another in our lives. There are some mysteries that we can unravel quickly and almost without effort. Jesus tends not to tell us those stories. The ones he does tell us, according to Jack Shea, are the ones where we're having some difficulty in understanding their meaning, or seeing the application in our lives. Because ultimately, as Isaiah tells us in the first reading (and Jesus underlines the point in the Gospel), God's word does not return empty-handed to the One who sent it forth into the world.