Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Lent
Meg Moran
The Collect
O Lord our God, you sustained your ancient people in the wilderness with bread from heaven: Feed now your pilgrim flock with the food that endures to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Readings: Isaiah 49:8–15, John 5:19–29 & Psalm 145:8–19
Today’s Collect, Old Testament reading, and Psalm are full of images of a God who feeds, sustains, shows compassion, is faithful, keeps a covenant, upholds those who fall, and loves. And in the Gospel we encounter Jesus extending an invitation and giving earnest counsel, telling us that we must hear what he is saying, and believe, and do good, in order to live - in order to have eternal life. When Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preaches about The Jesus Movement, he describes how John tells us of a “Jesus who is a real person who somehow brought together heaven and earth – who somehow brought together the divine and human in one person in his teachings about love, not just as an abstract idea but as a sacrificial way of life that is the source of real life.” Today’s Gospel gets at that, with Jesus explaining what he’s up to, and what right he has to do what he’s doing. And what a great example of speaking truth to power. He is in earnest, three times emphasizing in his response to those who are interrogating him, “Very truly, I tell you, . . .” And, ultimately, being real clear about how astonished & how alive we’ll be once we’ve done good, which I take to mean shown love to one another as our presiding bishop describes, in a sacrificial way and not just in an abstract, detached way.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Having grown up in a large, Irish Catholic family in the Tipperary Hill neighborhood of Syracuse, NY, where everyone was a communicant of St. Patrick’s Church, and where St. Patrick’s Day has always been a major day of celebration, it’s been especially interesting for me to be thinking about St. Patrick this year while in the midst of the St. John’s course, Guides in the Wilderness, Journeying with the Saints through Lent, which has been fascinating. Anyway, I like how St. Patrick has become such a huge figure given that his story is kind-of elusive and messy, and that he described himself as someone who was unlearned, in exile, a refugee, and a sinner. Gives one a sense of the possible! Slàinte!