“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost”
The gathering up of the fragments, κλασματα, literally, the broken pieces, the left-overs of the picnic in the wilderness with Jesus, signals the nature of redemption itself. It is about the gathering up of the broken fragments of our lives. The gathering is about the coming together, literally, a συναγωγη, of our wounded and broken humanity in the wilderness of the world. But a gathering to what end? That nothing be lost. Such is the picture of redemption.
The gathering of the broken fragments of our lives is about our being gathered to God. Such are the Lenten mercies of Christ on this day which is known by various names. It is known as “Mothering Sunday” because of the Epistle reading from Galatians which identifies Jerusalem as “the mother of us all.” The nurturing, caring mother is the image of the Church that nurtures and cares for us with the things of heaven. It is known, too, as “Refreshment Sunday” because of the Gospel reading from John about the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness and the further provision for us in “the gathering up of the fragments that remain.” And, finally, it is known as “Laetare Sunday” because the Introit psalm for the day at Holy Communion, Psalm 122, which begins “Laetatus sum”, “I was glad when they said unto me, ‘We will go unto the house of the Lord.’” That psalm belongs to what are called The Psalms of Ascent, the songs of the going up to Jerusalem. They are the songs of the pilgrimage of our lives.
In the Christian understanding of things spiritual, Jerusalem has become less a physical entity, less a geographical city, and more the image of our spiritual homeland, the city of God, in which the gathering up of our humanity finds its freedom and its fulfillment in God as a gathering, a συναγωγη, a synagogue, if you will, the place of being with one another in our being with God.
All of these terms of reference for this day, “Mothering Sunday”, “Refreshment Sunday”, “Laetare Sunday”, help us to understand the nature of redemption and the nature of our Christian pilgrimage. It is to God and it is with God.
Prayer is about the gathering up of the broken fragments of our thoughts and fears to God, self-consciously and intentionally. Prayer is itself that intellectual and spiritual activity of returning everything to God. “Prayer”, after all, “signifies all the service that we ever do unto God”, as the 16th century English theologian Richard Hooker reminds us.
Our prayers are placed before the mercy of God as Trinity, God in the fullness of his revealed identity. In the liturgical pattern of the Church year, we pray the Creed, going through the significant and doctrinal moments in the life of Christ as being the work of our salvation in Christ. Prayer connects us to Christ in his identity with us through his Incarnation, whose life is the ordo salutis, the order of salvation. In Lent, especially, the focus is on the work of human redemption, concentrated ultimately for us on the way of the Cross.
What we have in our liturgical prayers is a complete gathering to God of everything that belongs to the broken fragments of our lives and our world. It is a kind of intellection, an orderly gathering of what we should and must pray for and in what way, namely, through the mercies of Christ in the work of the redemption of our humanity.
This, too, is our refreshment. This, too, is our joy. For this, too, is all part and parcel of Mother Church who would feed us and nurture us with the things of heaven, the food of Jerusalem above, sacramentally in the body broken and the blood out-poured, but also in the Word proclaimed and in the prayers of Christ’s broken and sin-wounded people who seek redemption. And it is all our comfort and joy, because through the gathering we are reminded of the fundamental nature of the Christian pilgrimage. It is the pilgrimage of love which seeks not the loss and destruction of our humanity but its restoration and perfection by the completeness of the gathering in which nothing is to be lost.
Twelve baskets of left-overs are taken up. One, we might say, for each of the twelve tribes of Israel; one, we might say for each of the twelve apostles who form the Apostolic Church. We are fed and nurtured by the fragments that are gathered up in the wilderness and in which we find our completeness, the redemption of our humanity. It is all our refreshment and our joy on this day.
“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost”
Fr. David Curry
Lent 4, 2010
8:00am