One of the most arresting Year D texts is the suggested Old Testament lection for this Fourth Sunday of Lent: Isaiah 37:14-38, in which King Hezekiah is evidently so exhausted at the siege of Jerusalem and so disgusted by the blasphemy of the Assyrians that all he can do is take the threatening letter he has received from Sennacherib's envoy into the temple and spread it before the Lord and say, in effect, "Read this for yourself and respond. But don't let this slander against you go unanswered."
The Lord does answer, with a prophecy mocking Sennacherib, one that is fulfilled at the end of the chapter with the most breathtaking result. Meanwhile, the Lord's promise to Hezekiah and Judah was that he himself would defend the city ...
"And this shall be the sign for you: This year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from that; then in the third year sow, reap, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. The surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downwards, and bear fruit upwards; for from Jerusalem a remnant shall go out, and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this." (Isa 37:30-32)
That sounds a lot like a seventh sabbatical year—i.e., the forty-ninth in a fifty-year Jubilee cycle—plus the year of Jubilee itself. What faith it must have taken the beleaguered remnant to take two years off and allow the Lord alone to produce the yield on which they would subsist and rest; but what health would have been restored by virtue of that rest and what sounds of "jubilation" would arisen in those two years. A very preachable text for such a time as this.
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