Sermon for February 21, 2021 – First Sunday in Lent

by the Rt. Rev. Donald Phillips

Let us bow our heads in prayer. Holy God, we thank you for the gift of your presence in this place and time and within each one of us in our many locations. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

Well today I want to talk to you about bread and water. Now that may seem a little strange in this season of Lent, while we’re talking about food and drink at the same time we’re encouraging people to fast. But bear with me – we need today’s Gospel reading first to get us to that point.

In today’s Gospel reading from Mark - it includes the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. But Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the three Synoptics – Matthew, Mark and Luke - and in particular in this passage, Mark doesn’t include a lot of detail. He just wants to let you know that Jesus endured trials and temptations in the wilderness, by Satan, (the Devil, the Evil one) but he did so successfully.  He did not succumb to it and he got on to his mission of proclaiming the gospel.

Well fortunately, Matthew and Luke go into a little more description of Jesus’ 40-day period in the wilderness. Both of them tell us that he fasted for 40 days. Now you need to realize in biblical nomenclature, when you see that phrase “40 days”, it’s not exact – it just means a long period of time. And both of them say that at the end of that time, “he was famished!” This is when Satan, the tempter, appears, and he says to Jesus, “Since you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Jesus resists, and replies with, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’.”, and in doing so he was quoting Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 3. Jesus goes on to successfully resist the two other temptations from Satan by recalling other appropriate passages of the Word of God, even though the tempter tries to trick him by quoting Scripture himself.

So what is the foundational truth? Real life is sustained by God’s Word – God’s truth. It’s not so much whether one can quote the chapter and verse from the Bible, though that can be handy to recall God’s truth. But rather, if we can be, and will allow ourselves to be, directed by God’s truth. Even Jesus had to discern that the Scripture that he was quoting was in fact God’s truth in that situation, and the Scripture that the tempter was quoting was not. So it’s not so much about quoting Scripture, as speaking and living God’s truth. 

So - the first lesson. How do we not starve ourselves by simply earning and eating material bread in this life? Two things – we need to receive the bread of life – God’s truth, God’s Word, and we need to allow ourselves to digest and follow it.  If we only receive that truth, it’s kind of like leaving the groceries in the cupboard while you’re faint with hunger. (As a little aside, we’re having a Lenten Study Group beginning this Tuesday evening where we’re going to learn how to “cook up” and eat some great dishes from God’s Word. The notice is in the bulletin. There’s still space; copies of the “cookbook” “Making Disciples” are still available for loan.)

Now what about the “water”? In John’s Gospel, the author recounts a lovely story in chapter 4 of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well.  A few chapters later at a celebration, Jesus shouts, “Let any one who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me, drink. For out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water – referring to the gift of the Holy Spirit. In addition to God’s Word and God’s truth being the real bread of life that sustains us, now Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit – the gift of living water - that truly quenches our thirst.

So the other foundational truth? God’s living water – the Holy Spirit flowing through us – is essential to our real life. Going back to our kitchen metaphor – you need this water to effectively “cook” our real food – the Word of God – so the Word plus the Spirit gives us life as we were created to live. 

Like the real bread, the living water has to be sought. We have to realize our thirst for it – our need – and that is not straightforward.  Even with thinking of physical water, most of us don’t drink enough regular H2O each day for what our bodies need. We don’t realize that need.  We’ve grown accustomed to living ‘water-deprived’.  So it is with the gift of living water.  It is no different living our lives in the spiritual depths we were created to be living. We can continue to live on a superficial level – munching on dry groceries in the cupboard, or we can take that food God provides and ‘cook’ it in the living water of the Spirit – and make our gourmet dish that truly nourishes us deeply, and sustains us through challenging times, and equips us to feed others with the food that God provides.

This bread of God and living water connects us to Christ, and empowers us to be Christ’s body in the world, for that is exactly what the Church is.  And just as we continually need regular food and drink for our physical bodies, so we continually need the bread of God’s Word and the living water of God’s Spirit to be nourished, and the nourishing people, God made us to be and the world needs us to be. 

Now I want you to take a look in your service booklet at the Gradual that we just heard. It was just sung before today’s Gospel reading.  This is the text: “Let all who are thirsty come, let all who wish receive the water of life freely, your Word fills our hunger; your Word, Lord, sustains us.” We’re going to use that little Gradual canticle throughout Lent. And I invite you to use it as your own prayer personally – the first part reminding us that this is a free gift; and the second part affirming the nutrition, if you will, of God’s Word.  You might want to print off the text and begin and end each day with it during Lent. And don’t say it only once. Use it several times as you open yourself to God’s presence - especially during this Lenten season, as you’re reading Scripture or other devotional material, and expect to be fed. Pray, and listen in prayer – expecting to have your life-thirst quenched.

One last piece. If you turn to the Closing Hymn, which is on p. 11 in your service booklet, it speaks of us as disciples – particularly the fifth verse. It’s actually number 5 but it looks more like the fourth verse on your page. It speaks of us as disciples “stumbling and struggling to follow Christ” only too aware of how tenuously we sometimes do that, and on some days, not at all.  But look at the final two lines: “We the river, you (Christ) the sea.” Water always knows how to find and flow toward the sea. It can be temporarily blocked by sand or silt.  It can be temporarily dammed up or diverted, but eventually it flows toward the sea. It naturally knows how to do that. The living water in you and me naturally knows how to flow toward Christ. We don’t need to direct it, or figure out the path for it to flow. What we need to do is remove the barriers of indifference and fear; dig out the silt of distraction and self-sufficiency, and let the living water flow through us to Christ, just as it knows how to do. We need just to let it happen in us. 

“Let all who are thirsty come; let all who wish receive the water of life freely; your Word fills our hunger, your Word, Lord, sustains us.”

Amen.