Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.”
“He himself knew what he would do,” John tells us about Jesus in a parenthetical remark. It signals a providential sense of purpose. Jesus is in a mountain wilderness with his disciples. But “lifting up his eyes,” he sees “a great company come unto him.” His first question to Philip is about how to provide for them, how to care for us, we might say. Yet, as John immediately states, “he himself knew what he would do.” It is a profound lesson about what God seeks for us.
In the ancient and biblical understanding, the wilderness is a place of contemplation, a place of prayer, the place of communion between God and man. There is a great good to be found for us in the wilderness where we are removed from all of the busyness and distractions, all of the confusions and fears of our lives. There are, to be sure, many different senses to the word wilderness but here the focus is on what is learned in the wilderness of our lives itself when we take time to think and pray.
In our current distresses about Covid-19, it may seem that we are all in a kind of wilderness. My hope and prayer is that something good may be learned that is the counter to our fears and worries, our fears about ourselves and our fears about one another, especially our fear of others. For in this powerful Gospel story, we learn about what God seeks for us. We learn not only about being fed and provided for; we learn about thanksgiving. That is especially important. Why? Because it gathers us into the very life of God.
The sixth chapter of John’s Gospel is traditionally known as ‘the bread of life discourse.’ It is intentionally sacramental. It shows that the essential life of Jesus is eucharistical; in short, it is thanksgiving. What is enacted visibly goes to the inner reality of the Son’s relation to the Father. He gives thanks. To whom? To the Father. How? Through the breaking of the bread. “Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down.” This all becomes part and parcel of the Church’s sacramental life which is nothing less and nothing more than our participation in the life of God in Christ. It is about “letting Jesus pray in us,” live in us, as Archbishop Rowan Williams observes. “The whole of our life says Our Father,” Origen says. We are gathered to God in prayer by word and sacrament. The mountain wilderness becomes a place of refreshment, a place of comfort and strength. We are fortified spiritually.
