[Salvation]

Forsaking Me, Seeking Him

Dr. Mark Giszczak

September 21, 2014
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
First Reading: Isaiah 55:6-9
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/092114.cfm

One of my favorite quotes says, “The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized in the lifetime of the opportunity” (Leonard Ravenhill). Since we are finite, limited beings, our opportunities are always constrained by time. In fact, it usually seems like there isn’t enough time to do all the things we want to: to exercise, to start a new hobby, to finish an old one, to clean the garage, to organize the drawers. The list goes on. Fortunately, most of the things we put off indefinitely are not that important. We can afford to procrastinate. But in this Sunday’s first reading, the prophet Isaiah warns us that we can’t afford to miss the time-limited opportunity to turn to God. While we have the chance, we should take advantage of it.

Context

This passage falls in the latter part of Isaiah, a favorite stomping ground for the Lectionary. The prophet is conveying the merciful compassion of the Lord who invites his sinful people back to him despite their sins. He calls out, “All you who are thirsty, come to the water!” (Isa 55:1 NAB). This chapter is an invitation to return to God, to repent, to draw near to the one who offers his mercy to those who desperately need it. The Lord’s offer of mercy forecasts a brighter future, but it also draws on themes from the past. The new era to which God invites his people is one that actually renews his “everlasting covenant” with David (55:3). The power of the invitation lies in restoration: God will not cast aside his unfaithful people, but restore them to a loving, covenantal relationship with him.

Forsaking and Seeking

Every turning toward involves a turning away. While Isaiah invites us to “seek” God, that seeking involves a “forsaking.” He announces, “Let the wicked forsake his way…” (55:7 RSV). Just as when Jesus calls his followers, he begins with repentance (“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Matt 3:2) and asks them to leave behind their old priorities and take up their crosses (Matt 10:37), so Isaiah bids the would-be follower to leave behind his old ways. In the same way that pursuing one opportunity of a lifetime involves giving up and forsaking many other possibilities, so turning toward God involves turning away from our old “ways” and “thoughts.” Only by letting go of self-oriented concerns, our sins, our habits of selfish thinking, are we able to open our hearts to the God who invites us away from our boxed-in world of self into a beautiful friendship with him.

Is God Near?

Isaiah makes a big deal about finding God “while he may be found” (55:6 RSV). That might seem odd, since elsewhere the Scripture affirms that God is omnipresent: “If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!” (Ps 139:8 RSV). If God is everywhere, what does it mean for him to be “near” only at certain times? In this case, Isaiah is pointing out that God’s nearness is something he initiates by invitation. God is near because he is giving his people an opportunity to return to him. The opportunity is only temporary. God’s nearness to us, the availability of his presence, the prospect of relationship with him lasts only for a time. In the New Testament, St. Paul affirms the urgency of the moment of opportunity: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2 RSV). The opportunity Isaiah forecasts, Jesus announces, and Paul emphasizes is the same: the opportunity to repent of sin and turn to God so that he might heal us and draw us into communion with himself. St. Jerome says that the limited time is “while you are in the body, when you have an opportunity for penance.” After death, repentance and conversion are no longer possible, so now is a good time, the only time, to turn to God since “he will abundantly pardon” (Isa 55:7 RSV).

High Thoughts

People love to quote this line from Isaiah: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord” (Isa 55:8 RSV). Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean what we usually think it means. The typical context in which the passage is quoted indicates that God is saying how superior his ways of doing things are over ours—that his acts and decisions are so far beyond our comprehension that they are rightly called inscrutable. Now I don’t mean to suggest that this idea is incorrect (see Rom 11:33 on God’s inscrutable ways), but that’s not what Isaiah means to say here. The “ways” and “thoughts” of God are being compared to the “way” and “thoughts” of the wicked mentioned in v. 7. And in the following verses, we get a description of the effectiveness of God’s word—how it is powerful, irrevocable and always accomplishes its purpose (vv. 10-11). Putting all of this together, we can see that Isaiah is decrying the ineffectiveness, purposelessness, futility of the ways and thoughts of the wicked. Then when he proclaims that God’s ways are “above” our ways, he is emphasizing the effectiveness of God’s intentions. His acts, his aims, his goals come to fruition. While our purposes can be vain and futile, his always succeed.

Conclusion: Responding to the Call

We can apply two principles from this reading. First, we should constantly remember that this life is an opportunity to turn to God—a time-limited, temporary chance to repent and come to love him in a covenantal relationship. While we have the chance, we might as well take advantage of it since God will not be “near” forever. Second, part of the beauty of turning away from our ways to God is that we give up on the futility of self-seeking and sin, the utter silliness of pursuing our own plans apart from God, of trying to be like God on our own. By turning toward him, we get caught up in his superior “ways” and “thoughts.” Our feeble, ineffective self-seeking is turned inside out, transformed into a selfless life of love, lived out in relationship with the One whose ways truly are higher than ours. As the Second Vatican Council taught, man “cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium et Spes, sec. 24).

[Salvation]

Scripture Speaks: All Things Are Possible

Gayle Somers

 

Jesus tells a parable that poses an interesting question: Would we ever grumble about God’s generosity?

Gospel (Read Mt 20:1-16a)

In the verses preceding today’s Gospel, Jesus told the disciples “it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 19:23). A “rich young man” had just gone away “sorrowful” from Jesus, because he could not detach from his possessions to follow Him. When the disciples hear that even the rich, thought to be especially blessed by God, would have a hard time entering heaven, they ask, “Who, then, can be saved?” (Mt 19:25) Jesus gives them an answer that He further elaborates in today’s reading: “With men, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible” (Mt 19:26).

In our parable, Jesus likens the kingdom of heaven to a scene in which a landowner hires helpers to work in his vineyard. The landowner goes out early to the marketplace, where workers congregated, to look for laborers. He was not obligated to do this, of course. The vineyard belonged to him; he could have kept it a family affair, using only family members to do the work. Instead, he reaches outside his family to those who would otherwise be “idle”—waiting for something meaningful to happen. He enters an “agreement” (or “covenant”) with some laborers for the pay they will receive for their work, and off they go. The landowner keeps returning to the marketplace, however, during all the “hours” of the day (Jews divided the time between 6:00 am and 6:00 pm into several “hours”), finding those who were “idle” and promising to give them “whatever is right” for their labor. We have to wonder why he did this. Was it for himself, or for the laborers? Was he concerned that he needed more workers to get the work done, or was he concerned that men would be “idle” all day if he didn’t keep hiring them?

Finally, at the eleventh hour, he goes out again. Realistically, these laborers would only be able to put in an hour’s work, at most, because Jewish law required that a laborer be paid at sundown (see Deut. 24:14-15). By the time we get to this point in the parable, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the landowner simply wants to empty the marketplace of anyone still standing around, still waiting for something to happen.

When it comes time to pay the workers, payment begins with the last ones hired. This is so contrary to what any of us would expect that it helps us identify the thrust of the parable right away. Had the landowner paid the longest, hardest-working men first, they would not have witnessed what they considered to be an injustice. Jesus uses this inverted order to call our attention to the point He is making. The first laborers grumble when they discover that they are paid exactly the same as the latecomers, who hardly worked at all. Can we blame them? Would our reaction have been different? The landowner reminds the grumblers that they have not been cheated. They had agreed on the “usual daily wage.” No injustice has been committed. The landowner also reminds them that he is “free to do as I wish with my own money.” The fact is, any wage coming to any of the laborers depended entirely on the grace and generosity of the landowner. Apart from him repeatedly seeking laborers in the marketplace, none of them would have had anything meaningful to do. They would all still have been waiting for something to happen. We might be able to phrase it this way: “With men, no wages are possible, but with a landowner looking for workers, all things are possible.” That being the case, are the grumblers really justified in being envious of the landowner’s generosity? It was this very generosity that gave them work in the first place. Had they understood this at the start of the day, they would not have been surprised at how the day ended.

Jesus concludes the story with a familiar saying: “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” The Church has traditionally understood this as a parable foreshadowing the generosity of God to include the Gentiles in His covenant, at the “eleventh hour” in salvation history, blessing them with the same blessing first promised long ago to His Chosen People, the Jews. In this, Jesus is warning His disciples (then and now) not to think of God’s blessings as a matter of record-keeping. God’s generosity cannot be measured. All of us, the “worthy” and the “unworthy,” are utterly dependent on it. When we see others with greater spiritual gifts than we have ourselves, do we rejoice in God’s generosity, or are we envious? And, at the end of time, if we see God’s mercy extended to those whom we are sure don’t deserve it (we might even be picking those folks out now), will we look as small and stunted as the grumbling laborers in the parable? These are questions worth asking.

Possible response: Heavenly Father, help me to rejoice over Your generosity wherever it appears.

First Reading (Read Isa 55:6-9)

These verses from Isaiah are a perfect preparation for our Gospel reading, because they speak about God’s generosity (“generous in forgiving”) and about how different God’s way is from ours. Recall the shock we felt in reading the parable and hearing that “the last will be first and the first will be last.” Here, God tells us, through Isaiah, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are My ways above your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts.” This difference between God’s way and ours is what keeps life interesting. If we take it seriously, we might often by surprised by how He works, but we surely won’t become grumblers.

Possible response: Heavenly Father, forgive me for the times I have not wanted to be surprised by the difference between Your way and mine.

Psalm (Read Ps 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18)

The psalmist tells us that God’s “greatness is unsearchable.” That is exactly what both Isaiah and Jesus seek to tell us in our other readings. Our imaginations are not vivid enough to be able to predict how God’s goodness and mercy will break out in His creation: “The LORD is good to all and compassionate toward all His works.” Perhaps the most treasured characteristic of His immeasurable and unimaginable kindness is the one we will repeat in the responsorial: “The LORD is near to all who call upon Him.”

In the end, isn’t this what matters most to us on our journey home to heaven?

Possible response: The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings. Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read Phil 1:20c-24, 27a)

In this reading, St. Paul is an example of one who is completely at peace with whatever God does with him. We would have liked the first group of laborers in the Gospel parable to be able to say that about the landowner. How does a person get to that place of peace with God and confidence in whatever He does, no matter how different His ways are from ours? “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.” St. Paul understood that in becoming a servant of Christ, he had gained everything.   Even death, which we naturally fear and dread, posed no worry for him. Death (which St. Paul faced on a nearly daily basis) would simply be the door through which he would walk into the loving arms of Jesus. When we have this kind of relationship with the Lord, when He is everything to us, then we are truly free. Knowing the power of His love and kindness, nothing can disturb us, nothing can turn us into grumblers. All that should matter to us is to conduct ourselves “in a way worthy of the Gospel of Christ.” Then, truly, “Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.”

Possible response: Lord Jesus, please teach me to trust You and to be at peace in all the events of my life.