Fourth Sunday in Lent

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In the fourth week of our journey into the desert of self-reflection and the purging of all spiritual ill and shame, Holy Mother Church, in her history and traditions, has felt it necessary to permit her children a time of relaxation from the Lenten disciplines, instead, for a refreshing. As we journey deeper and deeper into the desert with its Lenten shadows growing longer, each passing day, we allow for the testing of our souls and their true allegiances. And at this point in our journey, we should be able to identify in ourselves that which would keep us from belief in the Empty Tomb – those evils (as the Collect for today says), that deserve punishment. We cannot deny that none of us is good, no not one (cf. Rom. 3.23). Yet, being made sons and daughters of GOD, not by human will, but by the will of GOD, we must not listen to the pernicious challenges of that strong man who seeks to bind us, by saying: ‘If you are a true son or daughter of GOD, you would find no evils, ills, nor shames that need purging from within. Do you really believe His Promise? Are you truly His child?’ — Instead, we must, as JESUS did in His own forty-day, desert trial, seek not to prove our godly allegiances through religious works, but rather, by returning to the hope of our shelter, wherein we find comfort and merciful relief from the persecutions and tribulations that accost us – an immoveable bastion – a superstructure, supported for all time, by a promise. 

What is this sanctuary of defense from judgment, condemnation, and anguish that we are encouraged to return to on this Lent IV Sunday? Where must we flee, if we, like Christ, are to receive the ministry of angels, assuaging the contrition of our consciences that our Lenten disciplines are meant to flesh out? — Well…? It is unto Holy Mother Church that we are to fly, and this is why Lent IV is historically referred to as Mothering Sunday. — Mothering Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Lent, also known as Laetare (Rejoicing) Sunday, is a break in the normal Lenten observances, which are interrupted by the liturgical color of rose on the Altar, an ancient Anglican tradition. As part of her refreshment and rejoicing, Anglicans at the beginning of the second millennium of the Church Age began the practice of making a pilgrimage to the cathedral church of their diocese for special services, assembling with friends and fellow Christians, and making special vows and offerings on the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Some would even travel to their hometowns to visit their mothers, finding Lenten refreshment in reunion with family, and rejoicing over the abundant blessings of their GOD-kissed lives. Today, at St. Mark’s Anglican Church, we are to find refreshment also, by assembling together in Holy Reunion over the Most Blessed Meal of Christ’s Body and Blood, and by hearing GOD’s Word spoken, sung, and prayed. 

This theme of returning home to experience spiritual comfort, relief, and refreshment is described in both our Epistle and Gospel readings. In Galatians 4, we find Saint Paul working with the Galatians’ hearts, theologically. The Christians there are new to the Faith, and thus their hearts are supple as clay, and Paul, a master theological craftsman and orator, has been molding the church in Galatia into the form of Christ, not by works, but by faith. Yet, when Saint Paul was away from these sheep, false potters and false teachers came among them, spinning their theology, and deforming the Holy Spirit’s artistry. These self-appointed apostles caused fissures to emerge by means of religious legalism. — Paul had gone to pains to show the Christians in Galatia that he was an “Apostle, not by men, but by JESUS Christ, and GOD the Father, who raised JESUS from the dead” (Galatians 1.1). Paul’s opponents who had come to Galatia in Paul’s absence, clung to another gospel – a gospel that Paul had not preached to the faithful in Galatia, and one in which they had not first believed. These false potters were preaching a gospel that was of man, religious in its aspect, and void of faith. It was a gospel based upon religious observances, historically Jewish in character and identity, yet masked as covenantally binding unto Christians. These men were attempting to knock down and rebuild again, what Christ had already finished in the hearts and minds of the Galatian Christians. And if successful, they would cause the Galatian church to transgress Christ and the Gospel of Justification by faith alone. (cf. Gal. 2.18). For even Saint Paul, an Orthodox Jew’s Jew, said: “We have believed in JESUS Christ that we might be justified by the faith of JESUS Christ, and not by the works of the Law. For by the works of the Law, shall no flesh be justified” (Galatians 2.16). 

Paul saw the sheep of Christ in Galatia being led astray by these false prophets (Judaizers, they were called), who were contradicting the message of the Gospel, and convincing the Galatians that they still needed, along with the faith of Christ, the law of circumcision in the flesh in order to be justified before GOD. Paul responds to the Galatians naïveté and unfounded inclination to believe false potters, by saying: “O Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth. For before your eyes Christ was preached, crucified, that He might redeem all who are condemned under the Law. (cf. Gal. 3.1) — Paul makes the case by saying: “Having begun in the Holy Spirit, are ye now to be made perfect in the flesh (Law/works)? … [Have I], who ministered to you the Holy Spirit, and [by Him, have] done miracles among you, do I do them by the works of the Law, or by the hearing [of the Gospel of Christ] through faith? … Know ye therefore, that they which are of [the faith of Abraham (and not his works), are the children of Abraham … But that no man is justified from sin by the law in the sight of GOD, it is evident: for the just shall live by faith … for ye all are the children of GOD by faith in Christ JESUS … And if ye be Christ’s, then ye are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3.3,5,7,11,26,29). 

The Church Fathers understood that ‘Every mystery enacted by our LORD JESUS Christ asks only for faith. The mystery was enacted at that time for our sake and aimed at our liberation [from sin] … For the Patriarchs prefigured and foretold that man would be justified by faith [and not works]. Therefore, just as it was reckoned as righteousness to Abraham since he had faith, so we too, if we have faith in Christ and every mystery of His, will be sons of Abraham too … [thereby], assuming the dignity of Abraham’s race, to whom the promise was made, spiritually.¹ — Yet, the Galatians (like anyone who turns to the confidence of religious works in the flesh to prove their allegiances and identity, over and above the mystery of childlike faith), they risk the loss of what the Spirit of Christ has procured for them, and the work He has done in them. As Paul says to the Galatians, “How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years [to somehow justify yourselves.] I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain,” says Paul (Galatians 4.9b-11). — Afraid that the Galatian church would be justly punished by GOD for turning from faith to works, Paul calls Christ’s sheep back to the refreshment and comfort of Divine Grace, that must be received through our Mother – the Church – Heavenly Jerusalem – the pillar and ground of the truth. (cf. 1 Tim. 3.15) 

In this life, it is easy to forget that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of Heavenly Light, and that any effort to procure a meal of spiritual refreshment is not possible through our own efforts. Though there are good and righteous commands in the Holy Scriptures for religious and moral behavior, we are not compelled by them to attain spiritual standing before GOD. We are to walk in truth by the power of the Holy Spirit, receiving the heavenly blessings of the Father and the Son through the Spirit of Truth, promised to us as adopted co-heirs with Christ; not as servants bearing the burdens of any man’s religious rule or habit. Like a plate of lunch on a hillside by the sea, procured for us as children by our parents, we play no part in the gathering, preparing, blessing, and breaking of GOD’s Bread that we enjoy as the sun shines brightly overhead. He miraculously procures it for us, and we are to partake of it by faith, trusting in its complete ability to sate, and satisfy our deepest spiritual needs with refreshment.   

To underscore this point, St. Paul uses an allegory of the scene we read from Genesis 21. Sarah and Abraham, growing frustrated in time with GOD’s process of faith, and not desiring to wait upon the gift from the Father of Light, they substitute Hagar’s womb for Sarah’s, that they might procure GOD’s Promise by their own merit. From the natural process of human will, Ishmael was born of Hagar, an Egyptian woman, who was a slave to Abraham and Sarah. Ishmael’s birth was not sanctioned by the LORD, and it did not fulfill His Promise made earlier to Abraham of a Seed that would come by Sarah through him. Though well beyond childbearing age, Abraham and Sarah were called upon to trust in a miracle promised by the ALMIGHTY, through which their progeny would come and bless the nations. Isaac was that promise, and he would eventually come when Abraham and Sarah turned and were faithful to GOD.  

In Paul’s allegory, we see two children born to Abraham – one natural and one supernatural. The one born to a slave-woman and one to a free-woman. The one representing Mt. Sinai and the other heavenly Jerusalem, which is the Church. At Mt. Sinai, the Law was given to Abraham’s seed, but the Law cannot set its adherents free to experience the comfort and relief of GOD’s grace. The Law, though good, obligates its followers to perform religious works and rituals to free themselves from the guilt and shame of sin. Yet, the Law’s power is conviction of sin, not the imputation of GOD’s grace unto spiritual comfort. That comfort is only for the true heirs of Abraham and Sarah, who trust GOD by faith and receive His promise freely, excluded from any works of man, but as a promised gift born through JESUS Christ by way of His Cross and Resurrection.   

Again, in Paul’s allegory, the slave woman Hagar is the mother of all who seek righteousness under the law of Sinai. Paul is attempting to convince the Galatians that religious lawfulness only leads to the bondage of rejection because of our unholy shortcomings. Allegorically, we see this in Ishmael, though a son of Abraham, he ridicules his younger sibling at the festival of his weening, and though he is a religious member of the household of Abraham, being a slave and breaking trust with Sarah, he is cast out, having no promise of standing in his father’s household. Contrarily, the son born of the free woman, Sarah, by the nature of his birth does have standing, and is bestowed a position of gracious permanence at his father’s table. Isaac bears no responsibility to prove his worth because his position is a gift from GOD to be received by faith. — We, too, children through promise, are Isaac’s siblings, with nothing to prove before GOD, save to believe His gift to us of permanent standing in Christ. This is our refreshment – this is our joy! We are reborn in the Church unto freedom from sin, as well as the binding burdens of any religious laws that man would attempt to place upon us to prove allegiance and standing before our Father in Heaven.   

Laetare Sunday, Mothering Sunday is a special time in Lent when we assembled together to exhort one another to receive the gracious comforts of the relief of GOD, instead of the punishment that our evils do deserve. Our rejoicing is symbolized by the color rose, the color of the sky as night turns to New Day – from pitch black, to visible purple, to intoxicating rose, and then to the golden white of Easter Morning – the color of Christ’s Resurrection. “Grieved and wearied with the struggle against temptation, we are today bidden to enjoy a Dominica Refectionis – a rosy Sunday of sacred refreshment … We pass this Sunday, in fact, from the Lenten Sundays of temptation to a Lenten Sunday of grace. By an allegory taken from the two sons of Abraham, each of whom stood in a different relation to his father, Christians are taught their happy relation to God as His children by grace, along with their consequent duty. Ishmael owed his slavery to his mother Hagar, the slave-wife of Abraham. She, a type of the Jewish Church, ‘the Jerusalem under the Law, which now is’ … Conversely, Isaac owed his happy freedom to his mother, Sarah, the chosen and beloved wife of Abraham.  Sarah, the free mother, whose children are born free, is a figure of the Christian Church: ‘the Jerusalem, which is above, which is the mother of us all.’  In both cases, the position of the mother determined the relation of the child to the father. Thus, by the very fact that we belong to the Christian Church by our baptism, determines our relation to GOD and makes us His children … We are what GOD the Father has made us – His free children by promise and He, our Father.”² 

Let us then, dear Church – heavenly Jerusalem – though deserving the punishment of exile like Ishmael for the evil deeds we have done, let us, rather, sit on the soft cushion of the green grass of GOD’s Grace, and graciously, thankfully, and in rejoicing, receive the blessed comfort of relief promised to us in the New Covenant of Christ’s Body and Blood. Let us “Stand therefore, dear St. Mark’s, in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5.1). Let no one bewitch you! For we are the people of GOD’s pasture and the Sheep of His hand, loosed from the bindings of the religious law of Sinai. We are His spiritually free men and women – citizens of “the city of the Living GOD, that Heavenly Jerusalem … the general assembly and Church of the Firstborn, who are registered in Heaven” (Hebrews 12.22-23) as the sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Amen.  

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1 Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament VIII – Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians, ed. Edwards, Mark J., and Oden, Thomas C., (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2005), 37 & 50.  

2 LectionaryCentral.com. “Refreshment by Grace” by Melville Scott. Accessed 13 March 2026. https://www.lectionarycentral.com/lent4/MelvilleScott.html.