Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent
“What are they among so many?”
Five barley-loaves and two small fishes. Not much to feed a crowd and hardly much in the way of festive delights. No mention of any simnel cake! Andrew’s question is very much to the point, yet, in what follows, so much more is made out of so little. But is that the point simply? What are we to make of this story?
The Fourth Sunday in Lent seems to mark a reprieve or at least a bit of a respite, a break, as it were, from the rigours of the Lenten discipline, especially after the challenging readings from last Sunday. Its various names highlight this apparent shift: Laetare Sunday meaning rejoice from the traditional Introit from Isaiah, Refreshment Sunday alluding to the Gospel story, Mothering Sunday in reference to the Epistle about Jerusalem as “the mother of us all,” giving rise, as some say, to the custom of visiting one’s mother or their mother church. All these terms belong to a kind of ‘folk wisdom’ that arises entirely from the readings.
Yet they belong very much to the journey and logic of Lent, to its deeper meaning and purpose. As we saw last Sunday, we are not to be left desolate and empty through the shattering of our illusions, so here we are reminded about what going up to Jerusalem really means: namely, the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus in whom and with whom is the joy of human redemption, regardless of vagaries of human experience.
Fr. Crouse observed that this Sunday allows us “to catch our breath” from the Collect, ut respiramus, “that we may be relieved.” Such is “the comfort of thy grace.” In other words, this Sunday strengthens us for the journey – the true meaning of comfort – reminding us of the blessings that belong to those “whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the pilgrim ways;/ Who going through the Vale of Misery use it for a well, “ as the Psalmist puts it. “They go from strength to strength,/ and unto the God of gods appeareth every one of them in Sion”(Ps. 84. 5,6). That conjunction of the “Vale of Misery” and “Sion” or Jerusalem is very striking in terms of the Epistle and the Gospel which concentrate for us the dynamic interplay between Paradise and Wilderness.
