Luke 9: 12-17
Today, after the mid-Lent feast, the Lent
discipline is resumed. Before we leave it behind, though, let’s pause for a few
minutes with one of the traditional readings for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, and
see what it has to tell us about feasting and fasting.
Lent has never been kept as a non-stop endurance
test from Ash Wednesday until Easter morning. It has historically been broken
up by a number of feast days. In some corners of the Church, the six Sundays of
Lent are celebrated, like all the Sundays of the year, as mini-Easters (this is also one answer to the frequently
asked question as to why Lent is supposed to be a forty-day fast, and in fact
is forty-six days long). Most cultures that celebrate Lent also have some kind
of mid-Lent feast, which as we noted yesterday is known in English culture as
Mothering Sunday. In French speaking countries the Mi-Carême or mid-Lent day is
celebrated on the fourth Thursday of Lent, and mummers go from house to house
dressed in folk costumes.
In the Catholic Church the fourth Sunday of Lent called
Laetare Sunday, because the opening words of the Latin Mass are “Laetare,
Jerusalem” meaning “Rejoice, Jerusalem”. Another name for it is Rose Sunday, because
roses crafted from pure gold and then blessed by the Pope used to be sent to
important churches or chapels, or as a mark of esteem to kings or queens who
were loyal Catholics. Another story – probably apocryphal – is that one Laetare
Sunday the Pope saw a young nun who was looking very downcast and worn out from
her fasting. In order to lift her spirits, the story goes, the pope gave her a
pink rose, and from that day onward, instead of Lenten purple vestments, the
liturgical colour for the mid-Lent feast was pink. Whether the story is true or
not, it is the case that in many churches the priest will wear pink robes, both
on the middle Sunday of Lent, and also on Gaudete Sunday, the middle Sunday of
Advent.
There are some stoical types who regard breaking
the fast as cheating! But the practice of breaking the fast
at mid-Lent reinforces the theological undercurrents about why the fast is made in the
first place. Four weeks into the fast, we may forget that Lent is not a means
of saving or improving ourselves; conversely we may be doing so badly at our
fast that we begin to believe that we could lose God’s favour. Breaking the fast
reminds us that, despite the relative success or failure of our willpower, it is
in the end by grace that we are saved, and not through our own effort.
Before the Protestant Reformation the fourth
Sunday of Lent was celebrated as the anniversary of one of the most famous
feasts ever - the feeding of the five thousand. It’s a haunting image: huge
crowds followed Jesus far out into the wilderness, and as the day wore on, the disciples
became worried about the numbers of people and the fact that they had no way
to feed them. We can only wonder at their reasons. Perhaps they were genuinely
concerned that the people were hungry and tired, or perhaps they themselves
were hungry and tired, and wanted a break. Perhaps they had begun to worry that
they had a crowd control problem on their hands. In any case, Jesus’ reply is
intriguing – not “Don’t worry, I’ll feed
them,” but “You feed them. You give them something to eat.”
Sometimes in the telling of the story we forget this; the focus ends up on how
Jesus saved the day by blessing and multiplying the food, but his intent was
that the disciples should feed the people. Maybe when we are concerned with the
needs of the world we need to remember Jesus’ words: “You feed them.”
One December, when I was serving as Chaplain to
King’s College, Cambridge, I was rushed off my feet in the midst of all the
activity surrounding the TV and radio broadcasts of the Festival of Nine
Lessons and Carols. One afternoon there was a knock at my study door, and in
walked an elegant and studious young woman. She was not a Christian, but she
had come to seek my help on a problem that was vexing her deeply. Every
evening, she told me, there was a mass of surplus food thrown away from the
kitchens at King's--and every evening, not five hundred yards from the College,
there was a stall where a local charity sought to provide hot food for
the many homeless people who sleep on the streets of Cambridge. She could not
bear to see the mismatch between our surplus wealth and their need, and wanted
to know what could be done. What little she knew of Christianity was that
Christians care for the poor, and consequently, in her eyes, I was the obvious person to sort this issue out.
The obligations of Christmas services and the
demands of broadcasting deadlines were weighing heavily on me at the
time, but what weighed heavier was the preference of the gospel for the poor.
No-one who takes the gospel seriously could possibly ignore such a request, so
together we set about bringing her vision into reality.
We rapidly discovered that there were endless
health and safety regulations that meant we could not simply take our surplus
food up to the Market Square and feed the hungry. But where there’s a will
there’s a way, and, with the help of a few more students who caught the vision,
we found ways around the various obstacles. With a rota
of willing helpers we were soon making twice weekly trips to donate our surplus
food from our kitchens to the charity stall.
“You feed them.” Not just spiritually, not just
with marvellous liturgies and wonderful music, but feed real, hungry people
with real, warm food. It sometimes seems impossible to us, caught up in our
busy lives, to find a way to answer this call. Perhaps all it takes is a little
imagination, a little determination, and the willingness to spot the
opportunity when it arises.
from Giving it Up: Daily Bible Readings from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day 