Words on the Word
Hearing Truly
The disciples approached Jesus and said, “Why do you speak to the crowd 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.
Matthew 13:10-17
At first sight this Gospel disconcerts. It would appear that God purposely speaks in riddles, complicating utterances in order that we should not understand them. Does God then not desire to be known? Does he, perish the thought, have a cruel streak? Does he take pleasure in tripping us up? There are a few things, here, to untangle.
First, please note this: Jesus speaks, like a good Rabbi, on the basis of a Biblical text. He cites Isaiah, a passage that occurs at a crucial juncture in the book, just as the prophet, in chapter 6, has his vision of God’s transcendent glory, beholding the Lord of Hosts enthroned on the six-winged seraphim who cry, ‘Holy, holy, holy’, a call we make ours in each Mass as we prepare for the Lord’s descent upon his altar.
Aware of his insufficiency before this overwhelming sight, Isaiah at first thinks he will die. Had God not told Moses, ‘No man shall see me and live’ (Ex 33.20)? A seraph, though, approaches. It touches Isaiah’s mouth with burning coal from God’s altar, then proclaims: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, your sin is forgiven.’ Suddenly the Lord’s voice is heard: ‘Whom shall I send, who will go for us?’ Isaiah, to his amazement, responds: ‘Here am I! Send me.’ At this point the Lord entrusts him with the oracle Jesus cites: ‘Go, and say to this people: Hear, hear, but do not understand; see, see, but do not perceive’, and so forth.
What the prophecy teaches is this: to hear God’s word and receive it in truth, our perception must first be cleansed. If we take in God’s word as if it were any other word, on a par with the words we hear on the news, in the street, in self-interested gossip, we may pick up the sound of it, but we will still have no idea of what it says. It would be as if someone were to serve us a glass of exquisite Chablis after we had spent the day quaffing sugary pop. The wine would have no taste. Our palate would need to be purified first.
Jesus asks us not to take divine revelation lightly; not to assume that we have, just like that, what it takes to plumb its depth and interpret its message. If we do, assuming our often sin-twisted minds to be straight, we are liable to huge misconceptions with potentially disastrous results for ourselves and others.
Jesus’s warning occurs in the context of the parable of the sower. It is wedged between the telling of it and its explanation. We are asked to become fruitful ground, to till the soil of our heart in such a way that it may receive the blessed seed Christ sows, to let it gestate in secret all the while it takes to bear forth, at the opportune time, a harvest of plenty for others. We are to devote ourselves fully to this work of responsible husbandry, that the word of Christ may dwell in us richly, renewing our minds, ordering our discernment.
In an ancient rubric set for Mass, the priest is instructed to pray silently before he reads the Gospel: ‘Almighty God, cleanse my heart, cleanse my lips even as you cleansed Isaiah’s lips with burning coal.’ The touch of that coal is searing; but its wound heals. Distorting impurities must go. Only thus shall we speak the word entrusted to us into the world for what it is: a new, other word, a divine word of life renewed. Our humble awareness of the word’s gratuity and glorious strangeness may alert others, previously deaf, to it, too, calling them out of the valley of the shadow of death into God’s gladsome light, truly to live.
