https://app.dropwave.io/episode/7640116f-8693-4bda-8c81-0d0eda45ea7a/laetare-fourth-sunday-in-lent-lent-4-ad-2026.mp3

++ JESU JUVA ++

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Some of you have expressed to me that Lent has been especially challenging for you this year. Physical and economic needs, relationship struggles, all kinds of loss, feeling inadequate, and the trouble of living in a world drunk on sin and enslaved to death. The weight of these things seems especially heavy this year.

As you’re in the midst of all this, the Church says to you, Let’s have a season focused on your need for repentance. Fast. Deprive yourself. Be disciplined. Maybe it seems like too much — like the fulfillment of God’s promises will never come. Like it will be always Lent and never Easter.

So take heart, beloved saints. Today is the oasis you need. Today is known as ‘Refreshment Sunday.’ The theme, from our Introit, is ‘rejoice.’ In today’s Gospel, Jesus is in the wilderness with a crowd of tens of thousands of people. With only five loaves and a few small fish, He feeds them ”as much as they wanted” (John 6:11). This feeding miracle in a desolate place is a picture of what Jesus does for us even now. Even as we are in the wilderness of this world, Jesus provides for us. He gives us everything we need.

[Waiting]

God makes promises. Faith holds on to what God says. According to God’s timing, faith receives what God promises. That means there’s often a time of waiting between when God makes a promise and when He fulfills it. It’s in that time of waiting that faith is supposed to hold on to what God says.

But we fallen humans aren’t very good at waiting. We’d like to have whatever God promised right now. When God makes us wait for what He promised, there’s three bad ways we respond: One, settling for something else. Two, trying to gain the promise ourselves. Or three — which is really the outcome of the first two — walking away from the promise. We see all three of these in today’s Gospel.

[Settling]

Jesus preaches that He Himself is the Bread of Life, and all spiritual hunger is satisfied in Him. But they see only a Jesus who will satisfy their immediate physical need for physical bread. They disregard what Jesus teaches. They look only to the sign. They want only what they can have now, not what Jesus has promised to give them. They want what they can see now, not what Jesus gives them by faith.

They call Jesus the “the Prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6:14; Deuteronomy 18). How is one to receive the Prophet? Moses in Deuteronomy says ‘listen to Him.’ But they don't want to listen. They want to be fed with physical bread. This happens when we don’t believe God’s promises. Because we’re afraid that He won’t keep His Word. We know that God has called us to live by faith. But we also know that living by faith means waiting for God to fulfill the promises by His timing. We think we know better than God. We are afraid to wait on His timing. We think that waiting for Him to give will be painful. We think that if our waiting is shorter, it will be better for us.

One way to shorten the waiting is to settle for less than what God promised. That’s why people are so eager to take the one-flesh union of marriage apart from the institution God has given. Or that husband and wife try to prevent the gifts that would result. It’s why people want peace without repentance and words of forgiveness without true reconciliation. It’s why people buy on credit with money they don’t have. Or we like to take what God gives without receiving the whole part. We like the idea of having authority over others, but we don’t want any of the responsibility.

Sometimes we settle for the exact opposite of what Jesus says or promises. We know that the truth will set us free. We know that we are to speak the truth in love. But sometimes we think we’ll find a better peace by not speaking the truth. We think speaking lies will make us more free. We’re afraid of losing friends, so we don’t speak the truth when they err. Parents fear telling their children what the Bible says because their children might not come around anymore. We fear alienating our family about the things of God, so we keep silent at Thanksgiving. Then we can save ourselves from feeling uncomfortable. Our love is governed by fear. Why would I speak the truth of God’s Word if it’s going to be awkward and make everyone uncomfortable? Isn’t it easier to just not say anything?

The world has their own way of doing this. They take the Bible’s language about love and hope and peace and apply it as though it is merely about their current situation. God promises His love, but the world turns it into “love is love” and a means of excusing sin. God’s love of justice gets turned into social justice. God’s promise of peace becomes a blanket prohibition of violence toward evil. The wicked go free, and the righteous suffer. We settle for less than what God promises and gives — and then we suffer the consequences.

It’s like if the people of Israel wandering around in the desert had decided to settle for staying there permanently. Hey Moses, we’ve decided that we’re going to stay here forever. We don’t need the Promised Land. We don’t really even need heaven. Life in the desert isn’t so bad. Let’s get busy with the here and now — and so we have.

[Self-fulfillment]

Immediately after being fed, the people are content. But even though Jesus has filled their bellies with as much as they wanted, they know their bellies won’t stay full. Hunger will return. So they look to Jesus as merely a provider of bread. And they think they can force Jesus to keep providing for them in this way. They will call Him “King.” They will chain Him to a throne, and He will feed them. They even claim to be doing what God said. They call Him ‘Savior’ and ‘Deliverer.’ They say that this pursuit is Godly. They say they believe in Jesus. They want what He gives. Is that so wrong? Yet they are acting explicitly against God’s Word. Refusing to wait for God to act to fulfill His promises, they take matters into their own hands.

The whole Old Testament is full of people like this: David, when he steals Bathsheba; Solomon, when he fails to wait for Samuel to make the sacrifice; Esau, when he sells his birthright for a bowl of soup. Today’s Epistle has another example. Abram was given a very great and precious promise from God: numerous descendants; blessing to all the nations of the world. But there was a problem with the promise of so many descendants. Abram doesn’t have an heir. He has no son. He knows the promise. And, in a way, he believes the promise. He concludes that Eliezer, his servant, will become his heir. But God says no: This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir (Genesis 15:4). Since Abram still continued childless, he sought to accomplish the promise by his own means: he listens to the voice of his wife (just like Adam in the garden). He has relations with his wife’s servant, Hagar, and she conceives. Abram seeks to fulfill a spiritual promise by following his own flesh.

The ultimate desire we all have is the desire for God, for heaven, for life everlasting, for peace. God is patient, but we are impatient. He is not slow in keeping His promises. So even if I want the right things — even if I want what God says is good, I want to have it now! And if I want it now, then I will have to be the one to provide it! Yes, the people of today’s Gospel want to take Jesus by force, but He will not permit it. He will not let them indulge their desire. Ultimately, as we will see in a moment, they will leave Him.