Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
“The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and life”
(John 6. 63)
“Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage”
These are the opening lines of a wonderful poem by George Herbert called Prayer (1), a poem which presents a collection of images, biblical and natural, domestic and exotic, historical and experiential and which ends with two words, “something understood.” Prayer is something understood in and through the images of our journey in faith to God and with God.
It speaks, I think, to the rich marvel of today’s readings from Galatians and the Gospel according to St. John. There is a banquet in the wilderness. “Prayer the churches banquet” happens in the wilderness of human experience.
The theme of the wilderness is a fundamental feature of the season of Lent. By extension, the wilderness is a profound and important metaphor for the journey of our souls in faith.
The wilderness in the biblical accounts is the place of revelation: God reveals himself to Moses in the burning bush in the wilderness as “I am who I am.” The whole exodus is about the going forth of the people of Israel into the wilderness. There the Law is given to them. The wilderness is the place of the giving of the Law and the context of the giving of the Law is liberation; the law itself is about a greater freedom, a freedom to God. “I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” the Ten Commandments begin.
This sense of liberation ultimately finds further expression in Paul’s evocative description of Jerusalem as the city which “is above”, which “is free” and which is “the mother of us all.” This passage takes us back to Quinquagesima Sunday where Jesus tells us that “we go up to Jerusalem.” What does that mean? It means learning to live from God’s Word and will. It is in the wilderness that the people of the Hebrews become the people of the Law, after all, learning what it means to be God’s people, defined by the intellectual and spiritual realities of God’s word and will. How much more so when we are in the wilderness with Christ, learning about the darkness of our sinful hearts and about the light of Christ’s love?
