Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
“Now there was much grass in the place”
John’s account of the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness contains this wonderful little detail. “Now there was much grass in the place.” No. Not that kind of grass! But it is wonderful to think about the approach of spring and to think that somehow under the mountains and mountains of snow that surround us there just might be green grass! How wonderful, too, to think of a picnic in the wilderness!
It is a marvellous story within the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel which is known as the “Bread of Life” discourse. It is read in the midst of the journey of Lent and signals a moment of refreshment in the course of the disciplines of Lent. Discipline is about learning and so too this story is about teaching. The teaching is the feeding; food for our souls and minds. What is it about? Simply this. God provides for us in the wilderness journeys of our lives. The feeding in the wilderness looks back to the wilderness journeys of the Exodus when Israel learns how to live from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and is provided with “manna from heaven” and “water from a stricken rock,” all their kvetching and complaining notwithstanding. The story also looks ahead to the Passion of Christ, to the Passover meal with his disciples on the night in which he is betrayed. There he identifies himself with the bread and the wine of the Passover meal on the night when Israel departs from Egypt.
The story is profoundly symbolic and sacramental. In the Christian Mass, Communion or Eucharist, to use three common terms for the central event of Christian worship, bread and wine, themselves the results of human interaction with the things of nature – wheat and grapes – become by the Word of God the means of our union with God, the body and blood of Christ. In terms of the Christian understanding of Lent, we journey to God and with God. It is really about learning to live in communion with God and with one another.
