Around the year 600, a Spanish bishop, St Isidore of Seville, wrote a book about the liturgy of the Church. For historians, it’s a precious record of how things were done in Spain at that time. For us tonight, happily, he has a few words on the Elect, those who at the beginning of Lent are chosen as candidates for baptism at Easter. Who are these “chosen ones”, then? St Isidore says this: ‘after the teaching of the faith, after [reaching] chastity of life, they’re those who are rushing forward to receive the grace of Christ’. Yes, ‘rushing forward’, full of eagerness, full of desire. ‘Seeking the grace of Christ’, he also says. There it is again. Their whole focus is on the grace waiting for them at Easter: the forgiveness of sins, adoption as children of God, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, becoming a member of Christ’s body. They’re turned to this, eager for it, seeking it, rushing forward. They’re people of desire. I’m sure you are!
Some 70 years before St Isidore we have the famous Rule of St Benedict. He has a chapter on Lent. And among other things, he says this: ‘Let [the monk] stint himself of food, drink, sleep, talking and joking and look forward with the joy of spiritual longing to the holy feast of Easter’ (RB 49:7).
So there it is again: looking forward, longing, desiring.
In today’s readings, I think, there’s the same, in a different key. It’s in the key of fasting – both in the 1st reading and in the Gospel. Fasting makes us feel hungry, gives us an ache and a yearning, uncomfortably sometimes. The people the prophet is speaking to are obviously in pain. They feel a lack. They’re in want. They feel out of joint with God. They fast to give voice to that. ‘They seek me day after day’, says the Lord, ‘they long to know my ways…They ask me for laws that are just, they long for God to draw near.’ ‘Why should we fast, they cry out, if you never see it, why do penance if you never notice?’ But there’s something incomplete about this longing. They don’t carry it through into their lives. They haven’t got their relationships right. They’re party to injustice. They oppress their workmen, bully the poor. And so the Lord has to teach them: ‘Is not this the kind of fast that pleases me…: to break unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be naked and not turn from your own kin?’ Then your longing will be met. ‘Then will your light shine like the dawn and your wound be quickly healed over.’ Then, ‘Cry, and the Lord will answer; call, and he will say, “I am here.”’
It all comes together. We are creatures of desire, many desires, a chaos of desires. Often we know we want something, but we don’t know what. Or when we think we do know and we get what we want, we realise that isn’t quite it. We’re disappointed. It’s like Snakes and Ladders, and we’re back at the beginning. Then into this comes the grace of Lent and Easter. Lent is an education of desire. Education means ‘leading forth / leading out’. Lent leads our desires out, beyond their ordinary circle. It helps our desires sort themselves out and fall into some kind of order. It purifies them, simplifies them. It helps us find our compass. This is what’s going on in the Elect with their ‘rushing forward’ to the grace of Christ. It’s what’s happening through the prophet in the 1st reading: educating, leading out their desires. It’s what Christ’s doing in the Gospel in that exchange about fasting with the disciples of John the Baptist. When he’s present, there’s no need to fast. There’s nothing left to desire. The Bridegroom is there. When he’s taken away, by a violent death, by our own sins, we fast again. We fast till he comes again.
‘Cry, and the Lord will answer; call, and he will say, “I am here.’ When does he answer? When does he say, ‘I am here’? He says it in his Son, in Jesus. He says it at Christmas. He says it on the Cross. He says it when he rises from the dead. ‘See my hands and my feet. It is I.’ Here I am. Do not be afraid. He says it in the Eucharist. And he will say it finally, fully when he comes again. Then there’ll be no more call for crying and fasting.
So Lent isn’t an enemy. It’s a friend. It’s a teacher, a pedagogue. It wants us to grow. And here’s the most wonderful thing of all: we can grow to the point of sharing God’s desires. That’s what prayer does. It tunes us to God. It leads us to want what he wants. And not just for ourselves but for everyone. We share God’s longing for human salvation. We share his desire for wholeness and peace and everlasting life. ‘Is not this the kind of fast – the kind of longing, of desire – that pleases me…: to break unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be naked and not turn from your own kin?’ There are the desires of God. And when these things are done, shafts of God’s glory touch our world.
‘Cry, and the Lord will answer; call, and he will say, “I am here.”’ Yes, I am here, tuning your desires to mine, desiring in you. You can love with my love. There’s the grace of Christ! May we ‘rush towards’ it with the Elect.
St Mary’s Cathedral, Aberdeen
20 February
