The Wilderness and the Feast
“Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him. Let him go up.”
Georges de La Tour’s chiaroscuro painting “Job Mocked by His Wife” (c. 1630) dramatizes the tension between Job’s persistence in faith and his wife’s ambiguous pragmatism. Job sits stripped bare and covered in boils, utterly deprived, as his wife towers over him: a bringer of light but caster of shadows; her face tender and compassionate, but her posture belittling. The painting viscerally captures Job’s desolation and grief, and the unique sorrow provoked by the false comfort of his partner.
This is the strange position we find ourselves in before a God who drives us to the wilderness, yet sets a table to feed us there; who leads us into exile, but then re-establishes by means of an unlikely deliverance. Like Job, we are tempted to curse the God who brings us low. Like his wife, we vacillate between compassion and contempt for the person persisting in faith when the rational choice seems obvious.
Yet in the end, God vindicates those who hold fast to their integrity. The sun rises on Job once more, bringing double the abundance he had known. Perhaps we miss the point when we dwell on whether God rewards our good behavior. The deepest truth is that He persists in unveiling His sovereign love despite all we have done and left undone. God does not mock our true desires, but meets us in them to build faith.
On this Lenten journey we are reminded again that the path to life is through the valley of the shadow of death. Christ leads us through darkness into light. The way of the cross is the way of resurrection. Let us follow in hope, keeping faith with the God who revives the dead and calls into being things that are not. Though we pass through exile God is already preparing the unexpected provision that will lead us home.
God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
— The Apostle Paul (Eph 2:4)
Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday)
Texts for this Week
Prayer
Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
All Flesh is as Grass
This week's scripture readings guide us through the Lenten paradoxes of reconciliation and suffering, sticking faithfully to God even when His path seems unclear. As we hear of Christ's scandalous grace that revives us from death, we are reminded that this gift of salvation cannot be earned but only received in humility.
Johannes Brahms' German Requiem resonates deeply with these themes. Though a non-traditional requiem mass, this masterwork weaves together scripture and music to offer comfort to the living rather than prayers for the dead. The second movement Denn alles Fleisch reflects on the ephemerality of human life and inevitable suffering and loss. Brahms intersperses texts from Isaiah, James, and 1 Peter:
"For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower thereof falls away...Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waits for the precious fruit of the earth, and has long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. But the word of the Lord endures forever. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladdness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." (1 Pe 1:24, James 5:7, 1Pe 1:25, Isa 35:10).
This movement gives musical expression to the frailty of human life and the inevitability of loss. Yet amidst this sober meditation there are glimpses of hope – the coming of the Lord, the rest and peace of the righteous. The melodic motifs gradually build from a heavy dirge up to an energetic and transcendent climax, hinting at redemption even in the midst of lament. But then the funeral motif falls back again: we remember that we are not free from this tension.
As we make our Lenten journey, may we recognize that loss and suffering are woven into the mortal fabric of our fallen existence. Yet like Abraham, we persist in faith, trusting that the God who miraculously revived us from the dead continues to work all things for good, until that day when faith becomes sight and all our tears are wiped away.
