"God will get you for that!"

That was one of my mom's favorite retorts when we teased her as children. I would counter, saying that she called on God only because she couldn't think of a better comeback. "Why make God do all your work?" (If we're lucky, God will get us caught up in the divine trajectory.) 

Our play had nothing to do with serious theological discussion, but it did reflect some worn-out concepts of karma or God's rule in the world. A simplified explanation of the Hindu idea of karma says that good actions will bring a person a good future, and bad will bring bad. We know that Jesus tried to free people from that type of thinking. He taught that illness was not the result of sin (John 9) and that those who followed him would suffer as he did. So much for religion as an insurance policy!

Once we move beyond the idea of God as the fixer or avenger of evil, where are we to go? Today's reading from the Book of Wisdom starts us off on a path toward a wonderful alternative.

"There is no god besides you, who have care for all." How different might the world be if we made that our credo? If that were the one thing we really believed? Wisdom's author goes on with more descriptions of what God is like: Divine power generates justice, God's strength engenders lenience and finally, "You gave your children good ground for hope."

In Jesus the Forgiving Victim: Listening for the Unheard Voice, Theologian James Alison suggests this summary of Jesus' message: "I know that you find it very difficult to believe that God loves you … you are inclined to be frightened … you are inclined to run from death [and] engage in all sorts of forms of self-delusion and self-destruction. You find it difficult to imagine that things really will be well and that you are being held in being by someone who is utterly trustworthy. All this I know."  

Keeping that in the back of our mind, we might approach today's readings as an invitation to a renewed sense of God and ourselves. After hearing Wisdom's description of God's immensity as the source of God's loving kindness, we turn to Paul's teaching about prayer.  

Paul says, "We do not know how to pray as we ought." Now there's a comedown for all of us celebrating the liturgy and singing our hearts out! What are we supposed to think? Might Paul be reminding us that we tend to look toward God on our own terms (the "God will get you" mentality, for example) — and that there's a better, truer way available to us?

Paul says, "The Spirit intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings." Wow! That's what prayer is supposed to be? Inexpressible groanings? That's the same word Paul used in what we heard last week (July 16) as he talked about the longing of all creation to come into fulfillment. If Ignatius of Loyola were asked about this, he'd tell us that we can only get in touch with our deepest desires with the help of God's Spirit and that our deepest desires ultimately lead us to union with God. No wonder we groan! It's no small feat to reach that depth, to be in touch with the longings at the heart of our very being.

At this point, Jesus' words in the Gospel come as a comforting assurance. Knowing that weeds grow in the midst of wheat, Jesus tells us not to worry about failures. God's reign is like the mustard seed — a dynamic that can't be stopped. It's like yeast, an energy that permeates everything with which it comes into contact. Although we want to do good (and sometimes not), the future is not of our making. Everything — past, present and future — comes from the God who cares. God is beckoning us. The Spirit's groaning within us promises that there is more coming than we could ever ask or imagine.

Today's Liturgy of the Word invites us to wonder and believe in God's care. Believing that the  weeds will come to nothing, we can marvel at growing wheat; a sprouting mustard seed; the intoxication of yeast. Let us abandon contentment with limiting images of God and assumptions that we know how to pray. It's time to let creation sweep us into awe at what is bigger, more beautiful, deeper, broader — more of everything than we can imagine. 

The Spirit is waiting to come to our aid. To the extent that we allow it, God will do the work of drawing us into an ever-expanding future and we will reflect more and more of the God who loves us into growth. God will do the work — not for us, but with and within us.

You gotta love it. Jesus, the son of a tekton (Greek for a woodworker, stone mason or builder/architect), invited fishermen to follow him, and then went around telling stories about farmers, baker women, shepherds and rich landowners — not a carpenter in the collection.

Jesus' forays into the realm of other professions reminds us of 19th-century Catholic sisters who did the work most needed at any given time and place. They turned schools into hospitals and their homes into orphanages. One even befriended Billy the Kid. They did it all, certain that with God's help, they were capable of serving their neighbor, no matter their preparation or preferences. These sisters exemplified the promise we hear from Isaiah: Like the rain, the word/work of God will never be in vain. If God calls you to do something, it will work out somehow — with or without your understanding.

Not only did Jesus talk about a wide variety of occupations, but he did it with parables — stories designed to leave people wondering. That was the key to his teaching technique. No pat answers, but examples that could be understood in a number of ways, all of them designed to knock people off their high horses. We know that if a parable doesn't upset or challenge us, we haven't heard it right.  

That's part of what we learn from today's selection from Isaiah. Isaiah assures us that no matter what we think is going on, as surely as rain waters earth, God is working deep inside evolution. Although it may be subtle and slow, as frustratingly invisible as irrigation from snow melt, God's word is never without effect: It gradually draws all things toward their fulfillment. That is Paul's proclamation in today's selection from Romans; he paints the image of all of creation groaning in giving birth to God's unimaginable future — the glorious freedom of the children of God.  

Paul's image of giving birth is very much like Jesus' parable of the seeds: we plant something, believing that what will come of it will be much greater, newer and full of life than what we began with. In the interpretation the evangelists have given Jesus' parable of the farmer sowing seed, the focus is on the soil – on how God's word is received. But what if we looked for a minute at the sower?  

Dom Hélder Camara, the late archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil, wrote one of his poem-prayers, "King's son," in The Desert is Fertile, about God and the seed. He began by asking God why creation is so wasteful, why fruits never equal the seedlings' abundance, why springs scatter water and why we can never take advantage of all the energy the sun sends out. Instead of waiting for an answer, he prays, "May your bounty teach me greatness of heart. … Seeing you a prodigal and open-handed giver, let me give unstintingly, like a king's son, like God's own."

We can think about our failures, the times we've been like seeds on the path and not paid reverent attention to someone. We can lament our lack of hope or courage to be faithful, the times when we've let stuff, popularity or status override our value systems. We can spend a lifetime bewailing what we have done and focusing on ourselves.

Suppose that instead we look to God's bounteousness? Suppose that we concentrate on that crazy sower who thinks he has enough seed to scatter it all over, figuring that what sprouts but doesn’t flourish will provide nourishment to the soil and that the birds will carry seed to far off places that he could never reach on foot? Suppose we thought of God as giving us chance after chance, not worrying much about what withers but rejoicing in the thirty, sixty and hundredfold — or maybe even just ten? 

What will make us more God-like, focusing on our failures or exulting in those moments when we know God has worked through us to bring about something wonderful? That could be the birth of a child, the moment when the right word came to us to console someone or more unusual things like a friendship with Billy the Kid. What if we took Isaiah seriously, believing that God's work keeps on keeping on, whether we notice it or not?

Jesus recognized and rejoiced in God's fruitful work in the world. He saw it in plants and animals, fishers, bakers, rich and poor. Today he sees it in parents, teachers, garbage collectors and all sorts of others — including, of course, carpenters. Blessed are our eyes when we can see others as he did; for that's how the power of his word gets into us, making us and our communities fertile and fruitful, fulfilling the will of the God who gives us life.