July 13, 2014
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 55:10-11
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071314.cfm
Have you ever written a letter to famous person only to receive no response? Or perhaps you have shouted at your team’s baseball player to hit a home run only to watch him strike out. Frequently our words fail. We might wish and shout and sing and stamp our feet, but we don’t always get what we want with our words. They don’t always accomplish the purpose for which they were sent out in the first place. This Sunday’s first reading shows us that while our words might fail, God’s words do not.
Context
The reading, Isaiah 55:10-11, is only two verses extracted from the text of a famous chapter. Isaiah 55 begins with an invitation to “Come every one who thirsts, come to the waters” (Isa 55:1 RSV). The chapter also invites us to “Seek the Lord while he may be found,” (55:6) and reminds us that “my thoughts are not your thoughts” (55:8). Our reading comes in the context of forgiveness. The Lord is responding to his people’s sinfulness, pleading with “the wicked to forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts” in order that the Lord might have mercy on them (55:7). The intentions of human beings might falter and fail, but the Lord’s intention to have mercy will succeed.
Rain and Snow
This reading is one long sentence that gives us an extended metaphorical comparison. Essentially, God’s word is like rain. The first half of the metaphor dwells on the beauty and power of rain and snow. They fall mysteriously from heaven and have a powerful effect on the earth, bringing quenching, vivifying sustenance to all the plants. Our passage points us to the farmer, who is grateful for life-giving rain that causes his seeds to sprout and to the “eater” who gets his food thanks to the rain. We might not all be farmers, but we’re certainly all eaters, so we all have reason to be thankful for rain!
The Lord’s Wordy Fertilizer
While the rain and snow “water the earth” and cause it to be fertile, God’s word goes out and accomplishes his purposes. Now, the Hebrew word for “word” is dabar, which has a broad meaning including “word, matter, thing, sentence.” We could think of it as broadly conveying God’s intention. The text says the word won’t return to God “void, empty” as if his word were a bread basket. It will come back with the goods, not empty-handed. It will accomplish what he intends for it to accomplish.
Eatable Expressions
Isaiah’s connection of bread and word is not accidental. It comes up in the recounting of the manna in the desert: “that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD” (Deut 8:3 RSV). The word of God, the intentions of God are like food for our souls. This metaphor is especially apt for our Catholic sacramental encounter with God. We encounter the “food of the Word” both in the liturgical reading of Scripture and in the Eucharist. His Word feeds, nourishes and sustains us. It might feel a little weird to “eat words.” We use this expression to express regret about words we have spoken, but in this case, the words of God are like super-nutrients that destroy unhealthy elements like sin and provide our souls with the necessary impetus to grow.
Power vs. Prospering
Isaiah’s metaphor reveals something about God’s word that the translations tend to obscure. Most translations say in the last phrase that God’s word will “succeed” or “accomplish” that for which God sent it. That’s okay, but the Hebrew word, hitsliach, means to “make prosperous, make successful, cause to thrive.” The difference is that God’s word here acts not as an overpowering force that pushes things around, but as a fertilizer that encourages the growth, the prosperity, the life of that which it encounters. God’s word pours down like rain and helps things that already have an inner dynamism of growth to grow bigger and stronger and healthier. To me, this dimension of God’s word of forgiveness significantly impacts how we understand what he’s doing. His word, which we’ll see in the Parable of the Sower in this Sunday’s gospel, causes true goodness to thrive, to grow, to prosper in us. His word does not come to smack us around, but to bring to fruition all the Christ-likeness he has planted in us.
While not all of our words are effective—sometimes they fall on deaf ears—God’s words, his intentions are. His word is like bread, sustaining us, filling us and giving us the nutrients we need to make the journey of life. And his word is like healthy rain or fertilizer, which causes the seeds of the gospel to blossom in our lives. We might not always feel like the good seed in good soil, but God knows what he’s doing and sends out his word of forgiveness, which is bigger than our sinfulness. We are eaters of bread, but if we become true eaters of his Word, it might just cause us to thrive.
