“Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost”
It is a powerful statement about the radical nature of human redemption. Coming as it does on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, it completes a pattern of reflection about our journey in the wilderness even as it marks a transition to the deeper wilderness of Passiontide.
We are lost in our temptations which set us in opposition to God. We are lost in our griefs and sorrows, our fears and worries about our children. We are lost in the utter emptiness of ourselves. These aspects of loss have been before us on the preceding Sundays in Lent. They have marked an aspect of the teaching about original sin which serves to catapult us more firmly into the redemptive grace of Christ.
Here, again, we are in the wilderness, but here we are fed in the wilderness. Loaves and a few small fishes. Even more, the fragments from the picnic are more than enough to sustain the redeemed community of our humanity. And in a way, that image of bread has been an underlying theme of the preceding Sundays reaching a kind of crescendo of meaning on this day which is sometimes known as Refreshment Sunday. The Fourth Sunday in Lent is Mid-Lent Sunday and it provides almost a kind of oasis of refreshment for our souls in the mid-point of the Lenten journey overall.
On the First Sunday in Lent, the classical gospel is the story of the Temptations of Christ which, of course, are our temptations set before us in a concentrated way. The first of those temptations was to “turn stones into bread,” to use a divine power to destroy the divine order of creation, to confuse the nature of things and to do so under the assumption that nature in whatever form simply exists for us. Here I am teasing out some of the more modern features of this telling temptation. In so many ways, it has been one of the dominant modern temptations. We forget that the world has a truth and an integrity to it in the distinctions of one thing from another. Our manipulations of the world, as we know only too well, are as often destructive as beneficent. But there it is. The temptation is to a kind of alchemy, turning one substance into another at the expense of the nature of each. Stones into bread.
On the Second Sunday in Lent, we have the equally compelling story of the Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus seeking a healing mercy for her daughter. In the absolutely riveting and disturbing encounter that ensues, her great words of faith are about “the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” “Even the little dogs” are able to feed, she is saying, meaning even those who are outside of Israel. “Great is your faith,” Jesus says. She has grasped and held onto an essential insight: the truth of God in Jesus Christ is not just for a chosen group; it is for all, at least for all who want it. But once again, we have the suggestion of the image of bread in “the crumbs which fall from the master[’s] table,” the table of God’s banquet of redemptive love.
The Third Sunday in Lent presents us with that dark and difficult picture of human despair and self-contradiction which is so graphic an image of our fallen nature. The images of desolation are about two things: destruction and consumption. We discover the emptiness of ourselves and of attempts to clean up things by ourselves which leaves us in a worse state than at first. What is missing is the only thing which can satisfy our wounded and broken humanity, namely, the desire for God. Everything else which we try to substitute for God leaves us empty and in despair. The bread of consumer culture, if I may put it this way, does not fill us with what we need. We are lost in our emptiness.
But on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, we are fed to fulfillment by Christ in the wilderness. But what are we doing in the wilderness? We are listening to Jesus. We have followed him into the wilderness to learn from him, just as the people of Israel followed Moses, albeit somewhat reluctantly, into the wilderness of Sinai where they were fed by the Law and the Manna from on high; again, they were not always willing to be fed and murmured against God and Moses. A cautionary tale for us all.
Here, we have gone out into the wilderness desiring to hear from Jesus. And Jesus signals his intent to provide for us spiritually and physically, we might say, indicating already a profound Christian teaching. Our humanity is soul and body. We are souls and bodies; the body is not to be dismissed as nothing worth. It is a miraculous feeding but one which, in contrast to the first temptation, does not violate the distinct character of the things of this world. The miracle lies in how much is made from so little. It is in the nature of God to create from nothing. It is in the nature of God’s love that the more something is given away the greater it is. The sharing motif in this story reminds us of the nature of God’s love. It grows the more it is shared.
So much so that the crumbs from the wilderness banquet fill twelve baskets. In John’s theological understanding, the twelve baskets signify at once the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles who form the apostolic church. The teaching is clear. We live from the fragments that are gathered up. The Church is that apostolic community which lives from “the crumbs which have fallen from the Master’s table,” the banquet of redemptive love set before us in the wilderness to which our desire for God has taken us. There God feeds us. The feeding is at once tangible and physical and spiritual and metaphorical. It is not by accident that this Gospel belongs to one of the great images of who Christ is for us. He is, as he says, “the bread of life.”
That bread is given to us to sustain us in the greater wilderness of Passiontide, the greater wilderness of human destruction and annihilation that is so powerfully presented to us in Holy Week. There we see what Christ wills to suffer for us. He would have us go with him to learn just what it means “that nothing be lost.” The fragments that are gathered up speak to the broken bits and pieces of our lives that, ultimately, are not nothing and nothing worth. We find our wholeness in the pageant of redemption. Mid-Lent prepares us to enter into deep Lent and provides us with the food of our wayfaring in that difficult journey. We confront our sins in their fullest extent but we do so sustained by the bread of life.
“Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost”
Fr. David Curry,
Lent IV, 8:00am, April 3rd, 2011