Tuesday August 8, 2017
Here too, of course, everything echoes everything else. As God calms the sea (Ps 76:16), Jesus calms the storm and walks on the water. As God rescued his people by making “a path through the mighty waters” (Is 43:16), Jesus comes over the water to rescue a hesitant Peter and his terrified companions. In Isaiah, God said to a people of little faith, “It is I who say to you, ‘Do not fear, I will help you’” (41:10,13); here Jesus says, “It is I; do not be afraid.”
Today we have to chase down these references and echoes, but to the earliest Christians these were instantly self-evident. They had a whole symbolic world through which to interpret the actions of Jesus, and so they recognized him as “the one who was to come.” Most of us today do not inhabit that symbolic world, nor even the symbolic world of our own cultures, but only that of Hollywood, football, the scandals in the newspapers, and advertisements…. Through the print and electronic media, we have easier access to the world’s cultures (and to our own) than any previous generation had, but we seem to access it all only as information. It doesn’t penetrate or change us.
Against this, we have the assurance that the word of God cannot return empty. “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” (Is 55:10,11).
