Homily For The Fourth Sunday in Lent 2025

Beloved, this is the fourth Sunday in Lent.  We are at the half-way point in this season.  Next Sunday is called Passion Sunday where the remainder of Lent will be directed toward Jerusalem and the narratives surrounding Our Lord’s passion - his suffering,  betrayal and sacrifice.   So, at the midpoint in Lent, God’s people find comfort and relief within the Church, our Mother. We find this theme of mothering within the appointed readings for this Sunday - they speak of relief, refreshment and anticipating the true comforts of the Christian’s eternal home. Themes that most folks can relate to.  For as it has been said, “Our mothers give us birth, and nourish us, and guide our steps.  So does the heavenly Jerusalem, the Providence of God, give birth to our spirit’s life, and nourish it, and guide its upward way.  It is the office of the Church on earth to be an outpost of that true Jerusalem, the free city of the spirit.  

That is what the word Parish means—a colony, or outpost—and thus, the Church’s task is mothering, with word and sacrament, with discipline and teaching;”  

It is most fitting that in the English church, this Sunday entered the calendar as Mothering or Refreshment Sunday.  The English version of our Mother’s Day.  Traditionally, those in domestic service of estates were sent home on this Sunday to the parish where they grew up accompanied by gifts from their employers to celebrate a reprieve - family time with mama - spiritual and physical.  

The collect for today pleads with God to extend the comfort of grace so that God’s people may mercifully be relieved.  St. Paul in Galatians refers to the heavenly Jerusalem which is the mother of us all.  

We are children of grace relieved from the burden, the futility of attempting to satisfy God’s righteous laws to provide for our own justification.  St. Paul sets up a course of contrasts: Sarah and Hagar - freewoman and slave woman. The kingdom of God - the new Jerusalem and the burden of the law - Mount Sinai.  Isaac - the child of promise conceived through the work of God, a product of grace through faith and the other son, Ishmael, the child of the bondwoman, born of a natural course and one who oppressed Isaac and his descendants.  

In considering these contrasts, we are reminded this morning of the either/or of grace.  Either you abide in and look to God for your sufficiency, because of his work on your behalf, or you are resting in the futility of your works.  St. Paul is correcting the Galatians because they were being drawn again into works apart from grace.  

They were being told that they needed to be physically circumcised, active in keeping the Jewish ceremonial law in addition to faith in Christ.  Paul corrects this, reminding them that God provided rest for their souls through the gift of Christ, the life of faith in Him, inclusion in the true household of God, the Church, which is the mother of those who trust in Jesus.  Mother knows best.  She wants her children to abide in the truth, rely only on what will sustain them and lead them into eternal life.   St. Paul tells us in our Epistle that the Galatians should return to the simple faith in Christ, abiding in the Body of Christ, rather than exchanging their freedom in Christ to bondage to the Jewish laws that Christ fulfilled.   

On this Refreshment Sunday, we receive a reminder in our Gospel of Our Lord’s care for the soul and the body.  It is clear from our Epistle reading that we have been provided with the richest endowment of grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  An inheritance, a spiritual treasure to the comfort and relief of our souls.  

The Gospel features the combination of our Lord’s teaching and healing along with provision for the physical needs of those who came to him - even with mixed motives.  We read that the multitudes followed him because they saw the miracles that he did. They had felt needs - maybe they needed healing.  Maybe they were just curious - people, then and now, are drawn to the spectacular.   We read that Jesus climbed a mountain with his disciples and he saw the vast multitudes moving toward him.  St. John is then careful to note the time in which this event happened - it was very near to the Passover.   The picture of Jesus on the mountain with his disciples a bit lower and the great multitudes following them into the wilderness would call to mind the Exodus with Moses on the mount, with the seventy elders a bit lower on the mountain and the tribes of Israel at the base of Mount Sinai.  Israel were a people in the wilderness because of the deliverance of God through means of the plagues - most notably the death of the first born.  God instituted the Passover feast before the Law was given on Sinai.  

Indeed, the Passover Lamb for each of the firstborn was the meal anticipating and commemorating God’s deliverance of Israel out of bondage in Egypt.  For Israel, Passover meant “freedom, deliverance from bondage, and relief and hope to suffering people.”  We should note that it was during the third Passover of Our Lord’s public ministry that he, the perfect Lamb of God, was offered up for the deliverance, relief and hope for the entire world.  So an event on the eve of the Passover points to Christ’s provision.  By believing and receiving, God’s people are granted the petition in our collect, that by his grace we may be mercifully relieved.  The feeding of the 5000 prefigures the spiritual feeding of God’s people by both word and sacrament.  We believe the words of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and He feeds us with the bread of heaven - the Eucharist - the true participation in Christ’s body and blood. 

The same God who provided food for millions in the wilderness is now present in the scarcity and challenges of the disciples and multitudes in this account.  In some sense, the fact of abundance of broader creation speaks to the miracle of God’s consistent provision for all mankind.  God is not limited by the normal parameters of the created order for he is above and beyond the limits of the creation that he created.  In the circumstances in our Gospel, he could have created bread from nothing - food from the air.  This certainly would have added to the interest from the crowd who were already eager to follow him because of his miracles.  Yet, Jesus Christ tests his disciples - to trust his instructions, to trust his miraculous power extends not only to healing of human illness but to all of the created order.  It is at this point of challenge that Jesus asks Philip where they can get food to feed the people coming out to them.  Philip is quite the accountant - he can calculate what is lacking - for he says 200 days wages of an ordinary person would only purchase a bare morsel for each person. 

He lacks the boldness to calculate the full cost of feeding the multitudes to the full.  For Philip, the apparent impossibility of providing meaningful food prevents him from seeing what is at hand.  Andrew acknowledges that there is something to work with.  He co-opts the small lunch of a nearby boy.  Who, parenthetically, participates in the miracle as well. He was willing to give what he had, absurd as it seemed in light of the need.  Andrew offers them up acknowledging that it is paltry; what is this snack among so many?

Halting faith, paltry provisions are no deterrent to Christ’s blessing.  Indeed, in this circumstance, it provides the canvas for a great miracle.  Jesus commands the disciples to have everyone sit down.  We are then told that Jesus, “took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.”  He took the loaves and gave thanks - literally “eucharisted.”  

We have here in St. John’s Gospel the hints through this suggestive verb of his scandalous declaration in the latter part of this Chapter - where Jesus says “​​51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”   Here, in the blessing of the loaves, Jesus is prefiguring how he will feed all his people with the Holy Communion. 

The disciples must practice faith, for Jesus has them take the bread and fish from his hands and then give them to be broken among the multitudes.  The miracle occurs not at the beginning but repeatedly over and over again as it is broken.  Broken but never diminished. Broken but multiplied.  In some sense, the multitudes participated in the miracle as it was shared.  

At the end, Jesus commands that the fragments that remained be gathered.  We read that 12 baskets were needed to collect the leftovers from all eating to the full.  Why do you think Jesus did that?  The fragments that remained proved that God is greater than the pressure of our experience, the scarcity that we are anxious to avoid.   Gathering the fragments put them in contact with visceral, physical reminders that God will provide, not just a morsel, not just enough to make us wish we had enough, but abundant leftover fragments, which are signposts that God has provided an abundance.  Let that be an encouragement to us all to trust God in the apparent meagerness of our limitations.  As we think back on his provision for us through the whole course of our lives, we can see his good gifts.  The fragments remind us not to despise small beginnings.  If God calls us to a work, the size of the initial gift, the smallest faithfulness is exactly what he can use for his kingdom.  Take comfort, be refreshed because God provides abundantly regardless of the perceived limitation. 

On this Mothering Sunday, we are reminded that God provides rest, comfort and refreshment for the soul through the Gospel of Jesus Christ - a gospel full of grace and mercy.  A Gospel that does not command us to try harder to receive God’s gifts rather it commands us to open our mouths wide so that God may fill them.  The Good News of Jesus is that we have adoption by grace as his children.  We have the Church as our Mother because we have God as our Father through Christ’s redemption.  Let us remember the grace of God toward us and receive refreshment, renewal of our souls.   We are reminded also today in the feeding of the 5000 the manner in which God provides for his people.  He gives bread from heaven to feed his people in the wilderness of this world.  He feeds his people through the frailty of his clergy, who offer up to God the limitations of the physical world so that God might bless the Eucharist to be for us the bread and wine of heaven.  He takes the limitation of our finite resources and blesses and multiplies it so that his purposes in this world may be accomplished.  

God provides all we need for life and godliness.  God is calling us into greater rest.  Not necessarily greater leisure but refreshment amidst the challenges of life.  Rest from the primacy of our time tables, our own agendas, our misplaced priorities. Refreshment from the futility of life apart from God. Receiving feeding and renewal within the Church, Christ’s Bride, Our Mother.  So, beloved, let us hear the words of the Epistle rest in Christ by faith that leads to trusting obedience to the Lord.  Let us hear the words of the Gospel with fullest assurance of God’s perfect care for every need that we have.  Amen.