The Poet and the Storyteller

Both Isaiah chapter 55 and Jesus in Matthew 13 invite listeners to…well, listen! To listen carefully; to incline our ears to the Word of God. Let anyone with ears, listen! The invitation is to ‘anyone.’ But they both know not everyone will listen. Really listen. Both are addressing people who are in some form of Exile: 700 years before Jesus, all of Jerusalem was carted off to Babylon where they lived in Exile for several generations; while Jesus and all of Israel is in Exile at home under the oppressive regime of the Caesar’s Roman Empire. Isaiah writes a poetic vision of hope, while Jesus tells a story with a surprising ending.

Both are addressing people who feel no longer at home. For those in Babylon they were literally not at home, which they understood as punishment for idolatry and not listening to the Word of God. Especially traumatic was being separated from the Temple, the center of cultic religious life. Jesus and his contemporaries were under a repressive military occupation. Rome is squeezing every ounce of produce, livestock, oil, wines and fish out of the land along with a system of tolls and taxes on the fabled Roman roadways. And for those who did not cooperate, the Casesars, Herods and Pilates promised only violence and certain death – spiritual death as well as literal death. Both Isaiah and Jesus address people who feel as if they have returned to the days of slavery in Egypt with no way out.

Think for a moment where in this world or even in this country there may be people in similar circumstances struggling to get free from systems of domination that appear to be holding them back or down. Or, ponder how we sometimes let ourselves become assimilated, tenured or even enslaved to spiritual, political, economic, religious or others kinds of idolatry, or slavery to systems of external or internal or emotional domination from which there feels as if there is no escape. There are any number of ways to find ourselves in similar circumstances to those who have been carried off to Babylon, or those held hostage in Israel. So, let us incline our ears to what the poet and the storyteller have to offer.

Isaiah 55 begins like this:

Ho, everyone who thirsts,

    come to the waters;

and you that have no money,

    come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

    without money and without price.

2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,

    and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,

    and delight yourselves in rich food.

3 Incline your ear, and come to me;

    listen, so that you may live.

If you are thirsty for justice and righteousness, or if you are just plain hungry and thirsty, guess what? There is an alternative food supply to that which is monopolized by the Empire! Why spend your time and your money, why do you labor, for that which does not and will never satisfy you? This is the question for us all. The solution is to listen to the word of God. Incline our ears so that we may live, because staying on the Babylonian treadmill is the way of death – death of the spirit, death of the community, and just plain death from living on the junk food of the Empire. Staying in the Empire of the Caesars, Herods and Pilates is also an endless nightmare of violence and death.

Then there is Jesus who paints a picture of a sower who goes out to sow seed, and sows. That is, this is someone who knows what she is doing. It is a skill and a ritual to sow seed. You scatter it far and wide and evenly so as to cover all the ground possible with an economy of seed. Inevitably, some falls in places that are not productive, but the seeds that land on good soil, watch out! Let anyone with ears, listen! Sowing: anyone who has followed Jesus this far will know is code for the work of God – to care for one another, especially widows, orphans and resident aliens, ie those without resources! And seed is the Word of the gospel, the Good News, the Kingdom of God. There is, once again, an alternative to the kingdom of the Empire that only exists to suck you dry.

Then Jesus teases with them. For those who hear the Word of the New Kingdom and do the work of God as laid out in our covenant with God so many generations ago, the yield is one hundred-fold! The farmers are laughing themselves silly! They know that is just impossible. So, Jesus says, alright, how about sixty-fold! Now everyone is laughing cause anyone in the region knows seven to ten-fold is about average. But Jesus has their attention now, so all right, thirty-fold! Now people are thinking, this is possible, but we’re no long talking about wheat are we?

They are hearing echoes of Isaiah:

 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 shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

For you shall go out in joy,

and be led back in peace;

the mountains and the hills before you

shall burst into song,

and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;

instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,

for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Isaiah and Jesus are both sowers who go out to sow the Word of God that “shall not return to me empty,” saith the Lord. “For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace.” Rogers and Hammerstein are right after all, “The hills are alive with the sound of music!” The music of escape and return, the music of love, the music of Miriam and the women getting their tambourines and singing their way out of Egypt, out of slavery out of Exile, out of being held hostage in your own land! There will be new growth, a new bread supply, and a new people for those who have ears and listen. For those who sustain hope in the wilderness, joyfulness in days of deep sadness, and for those who refuse to be tenured to systems of oppression that will always fail to satisfy, there is an alternative. Some seven hundred years apart, Isaiah and Jesus still offer words that will sustain us, and if we listen, if we really incline our ears toward their visions, we will find our way out of our many idolatries, our many exiles, and return us to the Household of God’s Eternal Love. Amen.