It's all very interesting

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/072116.cfm

Jeremiah 2:1-3, 7-8, 12-13
Matthew 13:10-17

You shall indeed hear but not understand,
you shall indeed look but never see.

            Matthew 13:14

What must have happened for God to say such a thing? What heinous event took place that motivated God to pull back his revelation about the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, and only to speak in parables? What does he know about the folks who are trying to hear and look that would make him cut them off? Why would he do this?

I used to sell a computer solution to large corporations, and would travel all over the country in order to drum up business. I didn’t work alone. We had to be prepared with every sales resource we could get our hands on — financial folks who could weigh the costs of implementing our solution, the engineers that could adapt the product’s capabilities for unique environments, graphics talent that explained the high level bullet points with helpful graphs and charts that compared our product to the rest of the solutions out there, and finally, those of us who presented the solution to the buyers and managers of the corporation’s IT center. 

We  were all part of the sales effort. We worked as a team, ultimately looking for folks who would be in need of what we sold, financially able to purchase our solution, and finally, who liked the unique way we implemented it. We were there to match up interested and motivated people with our product. All they had to do was see how it works, and hear our great story. They’d be convinced. We believed our solution was better than everything else, and were driven to turn everyone into a customer.

A deeply technical person would be assigned to answer questions that required an astute knowledge of both our product and a customer’s computer environment. He or she would sometimes travel with me, but most of the time they would remain back at the home office. Their time involved constant access to our staff and other customers, so they only traveled when we knew their presence was necessary and could lead to a sale.

Independent resellers worked up the appointments. They had the relationships with the customers. Our company manufactured the computer solution, and that’s what we were good at. We relied upon the resellers to know their customer needs. “Just get us in front of the customer,” we would say.

A typical travel day included at least two appointments with customers, but sometimes up to four. Inevitably, we’d run into customers who were not a good match for us. I learned over time that even with all the preparation for an appointment, a customer would hide important information, critical details that eliminated them from being a buyer. But they would play like they were interested, and end up wasting our time and sidetrack an entire team of people from engaging a truly interested customer who needed our solution.

The costs and manpower put into just one meeting were not trivial. 

Some of our sales meetings would take several hours, and often we had to make multiple trips to meet with a customer’s various folks who would be important to using the product. A lot depended on that first meeting going well. Our product was a cutting edge solution, a new way to do things, and customers don’t like to take risks on a product who’s benefits sound good but seem too good to be true. 

Quite often, sadly, customers we would visit had no intention of buying a new solution. They just wanted to hear the pitch and get educated about our revolutionary way of doing what we did. They would act interested, but their excitement was only in the idea of our solution. They didn’t have the need to use our product because the old way worked fine for them. They also had no intention of shifting their budget from the traditional method to our new-fangled approach. 

All resellers didn’t fully grasp the customer’s intentions, and were more interested in the “opportunity” of getting a customer appointment. So no matter what we did in preparation for a customer meeting, we could just be wasting our time. We would sit there answering questions, educating customers, and leave with nothing. We could have done that for very little cost with marketing materials and over the phone chats. 

The most frustrating customer meetings were from those folks who wanted to build our product on their own. They met with us just to get the details to copy what we did and fashion a homegrown solution. Most nefarious were those customers who were manufacturers themselves. They had plans to get the secrets of what we did to eventually compete with us.

So, we constantly revised and refined our face-to-face method. We needed to know if they were committed to a making a change in their spending and had a clear need to change from the old way of doing things. I would ask them two questions. Were they happy with what they were doing now, and would their financial folks approve paying for something new? Then I’d throw in the kicker. “Can I depend on you to buy our product if what I tell you fits your needs and is less expensive and easier to use that what you do now?” We thought we were so clever.

We tried everything we could to get at the heart of the customer’s purchasing intentions. We could never be completely sure if we were wasting our time, but we tried every method we could think of to see into their hearts.  

Jesus had a unique capability when talking with people. He knew their hearts. He knew what their intentions were. He knew quickly and with certainty those who wanted to be loved and educated in order to make a revolutionary change in their life, from those with nefarious intents and other loyalties.

It’s no secret that Jesus hand-picked his apostles, and fully knew the desires of all the disciples who followed him. He had intimate knowledge of these men.

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see,
and your ears, because they hear.
Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
longed to see what you see but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

                 Mathew 13:16-17

The tragic news here is that God doesn’t waste his time with those who will not budge, and worse, those who intend to stop him. These are the two sets of folks that do not warrant his attention. To them, he speaks in parables that might tickle their fancy, but appear as just fables and tales. Practical lessons for improving their lives.

This is the message today. God is not a traveling salesman who’ll waste his time with us if we have no intention to listen to him. He leaves behind a few trinkets that we like to collect, but without hearing his voice they are just baubles. God is not the technical resource whom we can take advantage of and then build our own paradise. We can't unlock the parables without his help.

We cannot trick God into gathering all his resources together for a fool’s errand. “Tell us the secrets of the universe and open up your Kingdom to us. We find you fascinating.” 

Do we imagine that God will coddle us and love us even when our ultimate action will be to use him to our own advantage? God already knows what we will do. He has already catalogued the opportunities and invitations lavished upon us, and knows what we will do with those yet to come. God is not cold and cruel. God lives in the truth. God will eventually leave us to our own devices, if that is our hope and our aim.

“But, what about all those folks who don’t realize what they are doing? Won't you give them another chance?” we cry out.

It may be this very moment at reading God’s fully intrusive awareness into the darkness of their hearts that finally awakens them. Wouldn't each recognition of God's love by one of the believers be that other chance? Isn't each praise of God, and tidbit of the Gospel and who God is, an echo in the canyon?

It may be that the stark reality that God knows what we are doing and what we will do that stops us in our tracks. If God knows we have no desire to know him, then what good would clarity do? Perhaps the riddles of his words will spark our curiosity. Maybe this short reading, that God will leave us to our own devices, is our turning point.

Or, not. We may think God can be manipulated into showering us with his graces without any hope of turning us to him. We may believe God can be duped and deceived, as we skulk about behind his back, and plan for our own future in the alleyways. We may be even happy with just his scraps that fall off the table, because we don’t think his promises are worth the trouble of a relationship. We don’t think his blessings top the financial gains that we can provide on our own, anyway. His ways seem too exhausting. Too much work. We don’t really believe that our lives can be any different, and certainly no better, by following Jesus.

Jesus speaks in flowery words, and maybe there's something useful that will assist us in our own vision for our lives. We’ll just keep doing things the way we do now, thank you very much. Just leave some of your materials as you go. Your allegories and puzzles are curious. Maybe I’ll get to them later. It all sounds very interesting.