“As the rain and snow come down from heaven …and water the earth … so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty.”
Our brief first reading today, from Isaiah Chapter 55, is familiar as part of a longer passage we have in the Easter Vigil. There these words are electric with the atmosphere of Easter. Isaiah is cited then as one more witness to Christ’s Resurrection from the dead happening in full accordance with prophecy. Already from Isaiah we see how God’s overall plan and providence are coherent, and sure, and that all God’s promises are be super-abundantly fulfilled. At Easter, and already in Isaiah, we see how the Old Covenant becomes the New; how God’s power is manifested when life overwhelms death; how victory springs out of defeat, and judgement turns into mercy, and condemnation becomes salvation. Actually the Easter Vigil gives us another reading from the same part of Isaiah: the previous Chapter 54. That makes clear Isaiah’s immediate context. Israel is in exile in Babylon, but preparing to return home. The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile had seemed an irreversible catastrophe, as if God’s Covenant with Abraham and Moses and David had been broken, even annulled. But no: as from a tiny and apparently dead seed there springs up corn which becomes bread, so from this calamity will come not just restoration, but something incomparably better; better indeed than anything ever seen or even imagined before.
Isaiah’s words in context do have an edge to them. Yes, of course, they proclaim God’s omnipotence, his infallible goodness, his absolutely faithful love; the certainty of his will being accomplished. That’s all very consoling, for the Jews of old and for us, as we rightly apply it all to ourselves. But on the other hand, as Isaiah insists, and as our Lord himself underlines in his parable of the sower: you have to accept God’s abundant gifts. You have to receive the salvation he offers: not just passively, but actively. By way of terrible warning, our Lord in today’s Gospel cites another passage from Isaiah: “This people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed” (cf. Is 6:9-10).
So: if you want to be fertile soil for his word, you must return fidelity for fidelity, and love for love. Your heart has to be truly converted to the Lord. That means: morally, you have to abandon wickedness. Religiously: you have to renounce completely the worship of idols, and with pure heart and single mind be devoted to God alone. Otherwise, his gifts will certainly be given; but maybe, through your own fault or carelessness or stupidity, they will be ineffectual for you.
If we must be ready receive, says Isaiah, we also have to trust. This too is a lesson for us now, no less than it was for the Jews of the 6th century B.C. For those Jews, the Exile seemed to have tested their natural habit of trust in God to destruction. Why did he allow that? And we might add, even more to the point: why did God allow Jesus to be crucified? And come to that: Why must I suffer in my life? Why must I lose people I love? Why does some seed geminate abundantly, while other seed is lost? And the Lord responds through Isaiah: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, declares the Lord.” St. Paul echoes this thought in his letter to the Romans. For him, the rejection of Jesus by most Jews is cause for anguish and bafflement. But after wrestling at length with the question, and without necessarily finding an answer that will fully satisfy, Paul turns simply to the praise of God.
“O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgements, and how inscrutable his ways! …From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever!” (Rm 11:37)
Isaiah compares God’s word to rain, or to snow. For Jeremiah it’s fire, or a hammer (23:29 etc.) or like inebriating wine (23:9). For our Lord, it’s like seed. The Letter to the Hebrews compares it to a sharp and two-edged sword (4:11). And I want to note how remarkable it is that God communicates with us at all. The god of the philosophers, the remote “unmoved first mover”, would never do such a thing. But our God, the real God, does communicate, does intervene: and he does so in power. It was by a word that he first created the Universe. It was by words, supernaturally received, that he gradually formed a people for himself, in preparation of the coming of Christ. Jesus is himself the Word of God, God’s supreme self-expression, and God’s personal intervention in history. Look then at the words of Jesus. Be healed. Receive your sight. Your sins are forgiven. Be gone, Satan! Follow me. Rise up. This is my Body. This is my Blood. Receive the Holy Spirit.
Our own principal access to God’s word is through Holy Scripture. Here is a chance for the preacher once again to exhort everyone, including himself, to be faithful to daily reading of Scripture. For these are not just old and lifeless words, but they’re alive with the Holy Spirit, and through them God speaks to us.
But God’s self-communication is not confined to Scripture. Actually he is pressing in on us all the time. God is available to us, and he will often intervene to console us, or rebuke us; to inspire us, guide us, call us, confirm us. If I listen, God speaks to me. Of course through Scripture, through the words and example of others, through circumstances, through my own conscience. But - without endorsing every delusion or work of over-heated imaginations - we should not under-estimate God’s freedom also to speak in other ways, even supernaturally, as he chooses. In recent generations he has done that a good deal through apparitions of the Blessed Virgin: but in plenty of other ways too. Sometimes mediated; sometimes direct, and completely personal. We can presume that much of what God wants to give us falls like seeds scattered by the way side. We’re not listening; our hearts are hard; we are not sufficiently open or available. But as Julian of Norwich says, God addresses himself to us with such courtesy - and only according to our capacity.
All of God’s words and promises will finally be accomplished at the end of time, when the whole of Creation is renewed. Then all who are to be saved will be gathered together into heaven, and sin, rebellion, violence, sadness, pain will be done away with forever. Then we shall see, and we shall marvel, and we shall rejoice in how God has done all things well: how out of all evil only good has been drawn; how goodness and love have prevailed; and how Christ’s Kingdom has finally been established.