BE THE CHILD OF GOD OTHERS WILL SEE
Isaiah 55:10–11; Romans 8:18–23; Matthew 13:1–23
Living in Africa today, it is difficult not to be tempted by doubt—doubt in human beings and, at times, even doubt in God. Political leaders make promises during election campaigns, only to abandon them after assuming office. Couples exchange solemn vows on their wedding day, yet, under the pressure of economic hardship and social instability, some withdraw from the demands of marital fidelity. Many promise faithfulness until death, yet infidelity is sometimes normalized, excused, or even celebrated. Ministers of God and preachers pledge fidelity to God, yet some are the first to flee when sacrifice, martyrdom, or prophetic courage is required; worse still, for the love of money, some become accomplices in the exploitation of the poor. Children go to school, not always to pursue truth and excellence, but sometimes to become skilled in examination malpractice and cultism. In such a world, one may legitimately ask: is there anyone who is still faithful to God and to humanity?
In a world marked by infidelity and broken promises, there remains one unbroken promise and one faithful lover of humanity: God. God is the faithful adventurer who continues to seek out those wounded by lies, betrayals, shattered hopes, and broken dreams. To the victims of betrayal, God remains the ultimate answer. With God, promises are not empty words; dreams are not destroyed; hopes are not permanently defeated; and doubts are not beyond healing. Sacred Scripture bears witness to this divine fidelity. When the Philistines mocked Israel, God granted victory through David, a young shepherd armed only with a sling. When Joseph was imprisoned because he resisted the immoral advances of Potiphar’s wife, God raised him from the dungeon to the dignity of leadership in Egypt. When sin and the Devil appeared to have triumphed over humanity, the angel Gabriel announced the conception of the Saviour, and Mary conceived Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. When human beings were without their deepest identity and spiritual citizenship, Baptism restored them to the dignity of becoming sons and daughters of God and members of his Kingdom.
Through the prophet Isaiah, whose name means “God saves,” God gives us his irrevocable word in the first reading and guarantees its efficacy: the word that proceeds from his mouth shall not return to him empty but shall accomplish the purpose for which it was sent. What, then, is this word of God? Fundamentally, it is the divine promise of salvation. It is salvation from oppression, betrayal, falsehood, infidelity, sin, and every structure that diminishes human dignity. Salvation is the restoration of truth and the dethronement of lies. A story may help us to understand this more clearly.
There is a story about a woodcutter who went out to cut wood near a riverbank. While working, his axe fell into the river. Since he could not swim and, being a good Christian, he cried out, “Oh God, help me!” He heard the voice of God asking him what the matter was. The woodcutter replied that his axe had fallen into the river and that he needed God to retrieve it for him.
God went down into the river and came up with a golden axe. He asked the woodcutter, “Is this your axe?” The man replied, “No, Lord, it is not mine.” God went down a second time and returned with a silver axe, but the woodcutter again said that it was not his. A third time, God went to the bottom of the river and brought up an ordinary metal axe. The woodcutter immediately said, “Yes, Lord, that is my axe!” Surprised by the man’s honesty, God rewarded him by giving him all three axes: the gold, the silver, and the metal axe.
One summer evening, the same woodcutter was walking with his wife. While they were crossing a bridge, his wife accidentally fell into the river. The woodcutter cried out again, “Oh God, help me!” God asked him what the matter was, and the man replied that his wife had fallen into the river. So God went into the river and resurfaced with Angelina Jolie. God asked the woodcutter, “Is this your wife?” The woodcutter quickly responded, “Yes, Lord, she is my wife!”
But God said to him, “You have lied. She is not your wife.” The woodcutter replied, “Lord, you must understand! The last time my axe fell into the river, you went down three times, and I ended up with three axes. This time, if I had said that Angelina Jolie was not my wife, you would have gone back and brought up Céline Dion. If I had said she was not my wife either, you would have gone back a third time and brought up my real wife. Then I would have ended up with three women! No, Lord, one woman is enough for me!”
The humour of this story conceals a serious theological point: God saves, but salvation presupposes faith, truth, and trust. God saves those who place their confidence in him. Faith is not merely intellectual assent to doctrines; it is a living, personal, and existential trust in God’s capacity to act, to redeem, and to transform. Faith comes through hearing the Word of God, and this Word is mediated to us through Scripture, the Church, preaching, prayer, and the witness of faithful believers. Today, Isaiah reminds us that God’s Word is effective in every circumstance of life: sickness, poverty, oppression, sinfulness, discouragement, betrayal, and spiritual dryness. Indeed, even our humorous story presents a God who enters the waters of human need, saves a woman from drowning, and assists a man who cannot swim in recovering his axe.
Armed with faith, every door begins to open, and every obstacle begins to lose its finality. Faith gives us the courage to trust again: to believe in the possibility of conversion, even for the unfaithful spouse, the hardened criminal, the difficult husband or wife, and the person society has dismissed as useless. St. Paul reminds us: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” (Romans 10:13–14). Like Isaiah, you and I are sent to proclaim God’s fidelity to his Word.
You are reading this sermon because God desires to rekindle your faith in him. God is not satisfied with a merely theoretical knowledge of him lodged in the intellect. He desires a living relationship with you: a relationship of trust, surrender, prayer, and intimacy. God wants you to call upon his name in the concrete problems of your life. He desires to descend from your head into your heart, so that every heartbeat may be monitored, purified, and guided by him. He wants to be your first thought in the morning, your companion throughout the day, and your final thought at night.
The various soils in which the seed is sown in today’s Gospel represent the many conditions of the human heart. The heart is the true terrain of the Word of God, because spoken words are not sown in agricultural fields but in persons. The human heart grows thorns because it has been wounded by betrayal, infidelity, disappointment, and abuse. Sometimes our faith becomes weak because we are suffocated by the contradiction between what we have learned in theory and what we experience in reality. Our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts are often fatigued by error instead of truth, lies instead of honesty, and hatred instead of love.
Indeed, we have seen too much violence and war, and too little peace and love. We have often witnessed the worst of humanity, and this makes us doubt the human capacity for goodness. The noise of evil frequently drowns out the gentle voice of truth, unity, and reconciliation. We become discouraged and forget that we can change what we feed our minds and hearts through what we choose to see, hear, read, contemplate, and repeat.
The harvest of peace and love, and the uprooting of hatred and exploitation from our hearts and societies, will become possible only when we allow the Word of God to be sown deeply within us. The groaning of creation, of which St. Paul speaks in the second reading, is also my groaning and your groaning. We all long for peace, love, joy, and serenity for ourselves and those we love. Creation groans, but we also groan inwardly, longing to be liberated from corruption, violence, fear, and despair. Yet St. Paul tells us that creation awaits the revelation of the sons and daughters of God. In other words, I am part of the solution to the very problem I lament. There will be no peace without my commitment to peace. There will be no fidelity without my own faithfulness. There will be no end to war if I continue to manufacture weapons of division and unrest. Hatred will continue to flourish if I willingly make my heart available to it.
Peace and love come to me and to my loved ones when I feed my eyes, ears, imagination, and conscience with the Word of God. The time I spend contemplating division rather than unity strengthens division. The hours spent watching or discussing how bad certain people, parties, tribes, races, religions, or ideologies are, without asking how healing, conversion, and improvement may occur, are often wasted hours. Such habits divide; they do not unite. Unity and love become possible when we spend more time seeking how to improve one another than how to destroy one another. Love means concern for the other, not the desire for the other’s destruction. Indeed, when the more than one billion human beings who bear the name Christian begin to reveal that they are truly sons and daughters of God, then peace, love, and unity will become more visible in our world.
The answer to broken promises and infidelity of every kind is faith in the irrevocable and effective Word of God. This Word has the power to transform creation, society, and the human heart. The solution to the groaning and yearning of the human soul is the permanent disposition to listen to the Word of God and to act according to it. Christianity will cease to appear as a contradiction only when the lives of Christians begin to mirror the life of God. For now, each of us is called to reveal God to our families, friends, communities, and societies. Today, we are invited to trust again in the Word of God sown in our hearts since Baptism. A better tomorrow is possible when I make today better by living as a child of God.
Assignment of the Week
Sit quietly and identify one obstacle preventing the Word of God from flourishing in your life. Pray over it, seek a concrete solution to it, and make this commitment: let every word you speak this week be inspired, purified, and guided by the Word of God.