FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Isaiah 55: 10-11; Romans 8: 18-23; Matthew 13: 1-23

(Rev. Dr. Francis Perry Azah)

The Word of God is a term for both God’s message through preaching and writings, and the consequences of the characters and events remembered in sacred scripture. The Word of God is also a metaphor for the person of Jesus the Christ, who is at once the Son of God, the Savior of the World, the Word Made Flesh, the Redeemer, and more. In today’ first reading, the prophet Isaiah tells us that as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so is the word that comes from the mouth of God, “It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which l purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).

Ultimately, according to today’s first scripture lesson, the Word of God is the power of God to touch, act upon, and renew all that happens in the created universe. It does God’s will and achieves the end for which God sent it. To enlarge on the Divine will and end, God’s Word is about being truthful, loving, just, free, thankful, generous, joyful, wise, self-disciplined, hope-filled, forgiving, healthy, contrite, reflective, insightful, helpful, edifying, and the like. These are qualities and activities at which the Word of God aims when it is proclaimed to us! When we hear the Word of God, do we really hear it in our heart? Do we see the work of God all around us, or is everything coincidental to us as it is to many who are not of our fold? Through Isaiah, God promised that His Word, Jesus, [Jn. 1:14] would not return to Him empty-handed. [Is. 55:11] Jesus would accomplish what the Heavenly Father planned, succeeding in the things for which He had been sent.

The text of the letter to the Romans is among the best-known parts of St. Paul's very famous letter. It describes the profound hope of Gospel believers who have most fully engaged with life's messiness. Paul asserts that even suffering and physical corruption, the messiest aspects of the created universe and human life, can be changed by God’s grace and the power of God’s hope-filled Spirit. And human words are inadequate, but God’s Spirit is so profound that it makes up for our language’s inadequacies. A believing Christian sees beyond human reality and lives within it, supported by confidence in God’s power to save and redeem.

The point of all this is that St Paul is not attempting to smother the reality of our suffering with a promise, however consoling. St Paul is giving voice to a universal experience of transcendent hope which looks forward to a liberation into ultimate wholeness and fulfillment. St Paul goes so far as to say that all creation shares this 'hope of being freed' with us. He is referring to the rest of the cosmos, the material world of inanimate objects, plants, and animals. This view is fully consistent with the Genesis account, which holds that all creation shares in the effects of Adam's sin. 'Cursed be the soil because of you', says the Creator God.

This is a deep reality that St Paul touches on: the truth of the intimate connection between humankind and the material universe. Not only are we actually made from the same 'dust' as the rest of creation, but our human bodies, the bodies which define us as individual persons, will eventually return to this dust. If our bodies are to be glorified, so must the rest of the material universe be glorified, so that, as St Paul says, it may 'enjoy the same freedom and glory as the children of God.'

The Parable of the Sower likens the teaching of God’s word to the sowing of seeds. The seeds fall on different types of soil: the pathway soil, the rocky soil, the thorny soil, and the good soil. Each of these soil types is said to represent a certain kind of heart with which hearers receive the word of God. The question each of us must ask ourselves today is, “What type of soil for the word of God do I represent? Am I like the pathway where the seed cannot even sprout, or like the rocky ground where the seed sprouts but has no roots, or like thorny ground where the word of God is choked to death by worldly cares, or like the good soil that bears much fruit?

Comparing our different dispositions to different types of soil has one crucial limitation. Soil cannot help being what it is. We can. And so the question that follows is: “How can I improve the disposition of my heart so that the word of God can bear fruit in my life or bear fruit more abundantly?" Now let's look at the soil. When I was thinking about this Gospel passage a few days ago, something came to me that I had never thought of before. The Gospel speaks of the different kinds of soil on which the seed fell - the footpath, rocky ground, thorny ground, fertile ground. We usually think of that as representing different kinds of people.

Well, it struck me that it also represents different parts of our lives - our private life, our family life, our business life, our social life, and so on. Part of our life may be rich soil where we receive the Word of God very openly, and it takes deep root. But it may not occur to us to let the Word of God affect other parts of our life. To use a stereotypical example, the movies sometimes portray a Mafia leader who goes to church, is dedicated to his family - and routinely kills people, or orders their killing. The Word of God never enters that "other part" of his life. You can never be a Christian only on Sunday and leave a different life on weekdays. Our way of life must be shown wherever we find ourselves.

Let us hope that we can all number ourselves among those Christians who have sown their faith in good soil and will produce the fruit of eternal life. If we are truly honest with ourselves, the vast majority of us can say there is a little streak of stony, thorny ground in our hearts or lives. Our courage must come from the fact that we have a merciful Father, who understands us and who is ever ready to pardon all past faults, if we humbly repent of them. God said through His prophet Isaiah that the Word that goes out from His mouth shall not return to Him empty. He will usher in an era of universal peace; the war will end. He is visualized as meekly riding on the foal of an ass. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus declares himself to be meek and humble of heart and asks his followers to learn from him. The Christian experiences a strange paradox: although weighed down by difficulties and work, he experiences his burden as light and easy.

Jesus also says that a particular disposition is required if we are to understand his doctrine: the trusting simplicity of one willing to go beyond his own vision to see greater realities at work. In Psalm 145, the psalmist sees in all things the greatness of God, as well as God’s graciousness and mercy. He is especially attentive to those burdened and afflicted. St. Paul uses a contrast, common in his writings, to show the distinctiveness of the Christian life. He contrasts the “life of the flesh” (v9): a purely mundane, disordered worry about earthly life, with the “life of the spirit”: the desires, interests and concerns of those in whom God’s Spirit dwells.

Jesus praises the Father for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. We can readily understand that God reveals his mysteries to the simple, but why does he hide them from the learned and the wise? Jesus says, in answer to our question "why," that it is what pleased the Father to do. One might wonder whether there is anything wrong with being learned and clever. Are these not all gifts from God? Evidently, that is what pleased Jesus too, not only because he and the Father are one, but also because he praises the Father for acting that way. And since we know that whatever God does is perfect, there is no point in further inquiring why.

Another question is: what is hidden from the learned and the wise and revealed to mere children? That is answered within the gospel episode. No one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Basically, it is the knowledge of God that is hidden from some and revealed to others. Like the Father, the Son also chooses to reveal his Father to some and not to others. It is not important to know why. What is important is to know to which category we belong: whether to those to whom the Father is revealed or not.

More important really is to strive to belong to those to whom the Father is revealed. The good news today is that we are all invited to this knowledge. We have heard this invitation: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” Now, we all labor under some burden or other. Some labor under the burden of worry or doubt, sickness or pain, fear and anxiety, difficulties of every kind. Without specifying, the Lord invites us all to come to him.

Jesus also presents himself in today’s Gospel as the ultimate fulfillment of our longings. And he sharpens our hunger for it through the paradoxical image of the “easy yoke.” How can a yoke ever be easy? The dual purpose of yokes gives us a clue. On the one hand, yokes link a draught animal to a heavy burden, such as a plow. In this sense, a yoke seems wholly negative; it only adds to our heaviness and toil. But yokes do not link animals only to their load; yokes also link animals to one another. That’s how a pair of oxen came to be called a “yoke of oxen,” because a yoke fixes the two oxen side by side. Yokes don’t just impose burdens; they also distribute them. This dual purpose, in turn, suggests two ways of understanding Jesus’ command to take his yoke.

We can imagine Jesus strapping the heavy cargo of moral and spiritual perfection to our necks and walking away. And it’s true that being a Christian requires effort: Jesus doesn’t hide this fact. But we know that Jesus cannot mean this alone, since he reproaches the Pharisees elsewhere for “tying heavy burdens on men’s backs” without “lifting a finger to help them” (Mt 23:4). No, there is a second way to imagine taking on Christ’s yoke: namely, becoming Christ’s yokefellow, stepping into the yoke that he already shoulders. Here we imagine Jesus in the yoke alongside us, distributing the weight onto his own shoulders. Both images capture a part of what it means to cooperate with grace in the Christian life. But this second aspect is the one we most easily forget, in my experience.

Our conscience rarely allows us to forget the first, that Christianity sets a high moral bar. We all know that Jesus didn’t stop at commanding his followers not to commit adultery and not to kill. He went deeper. He insisted that they stop entertaining lustful thoughts and let go of grudges. This is all true. But sometimes, when we tackle our sins of weakness, we forget that we do not face them alone. When temptations of lust, or anger, or laziness beset us, we may grind our teeth and violently mobilize our will against them. But this rarely works on its own. And Jesus knows this. That’s why he commands us in no uncertain terms: “Come to me all you who labor …”

Therefore, we need to talk to God about our concerns, cares, anxieties, worries, plans, and prospects. The scripture says: “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” (I Pet. 5:7). Upon his shoulders lie the great and entire responsibilities of the world. And the government shall be upon his shoulders, that is, the government of our life and affairs. If the Lord God can so much bear the responsibilities of the entire universe upon himself, how much more our individual ones. The Lord has not promised to take our responsibilities away from us, but to lighten them so that they are easy to bear and we may have peace of mind. In this, therefore, one should not expect to be freed from all obligations. But, on the contrary, one should hope that the means and resources to better meet them will be provided.

Furthermore, the one who expects divine help must also be prepared to make personal sacrifices. If a person, for example, wishes the Lord to help him or her take care of his or her family responsibilities or tuition, the person must also be prepared to work. We cannot consciously ask God for divine assistance and, at the same time, shrink from our work. We must perform our duties no matter how insignificant the task may be. God will not do for us what we can do for ourselves. He will give us all the help we need, but he will not do our work for us. Many people pray for divine intervention, but they do not realize that such prayers must be accompanied by conscientious work on their part.

The Divine Hand of God will bring the materials to us and create the conditions for the things we must do to lighten our burdens, and we, on our part, must make use of the materials, opportunities, and help he has provided us with due diligence and wisdom. God will provide the food, but he will not cook the dinner. The Lord Jesus has also assured us that when we come to him, he will give us “rest,” that is, peace of mind. This is the peace of mind that comes from knowing the Lord will provide, that is, after having played our part.