Feasting on God's Word in the Wilderness

Lent Like You're Dying #3

Have you never needed to hear something over and over again for it to stick? Probably something a parent or your spouse reminded you of countless times before you realized it was after all the best thing for you? When my dad was a teenager he was quite rebellious, as he told me, but it sounded as if he was just drinking alcohol like his dad and uncles and smoking weed like his friends. Not really rebellious in a cultural way, but he lived with an attitude that was rebellious to God. But my grandmother, my MawMaw, would tell him persistently, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” And while he always told me how he was converted hearing the gospel preached at church, I know that my MawMaw’s persistent proclamation of Scripture made a difference in his life.

In the season of Lent, we are reminded of our need for God’s Word to sustain us. We fast, emptying ourselves of things that distract us from God, and we are to fast from sin. But we are to feast on God’s Word. We ought to be reminded that Jesus in the wilderness, fasting for 40 days, said in his resistance to temptation, that his nourishment is in “every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt 4:4). Therefore, as we find ourselves in the wilderness, we must hold fast to the Scriptures to hear God’s voice and press on toward the rest that has been achieved for us already. Let’s take a look at the collect for this Third Sunday in Lent found in the 2019 Book of Common Prayer:

Heavenly Father, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you: Look with compassion upon the heartfelt desires of your servants, and purify our disordered affections, that we may behold your eternal glory in the face of Christ Jesus; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

This collect is new in the 2019 Book of Common Prayer, in that it has not appeared in any previous Anglican prayerbooks. The 2019 ACNA prayerbook committee took a petition from the 1662 collect for the Third Sunday in Lent—“Look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants”—and added something even more ancient. The opening, in fact, comes from the first chapter of my favorite book, written by one of our Lenten companions for this series: The Confessions by St. Augustine.

Augustine writes: “You made us for yourself,” and my favorite translation says instead, “you made us with yourself as our goal,” and because of that “our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”¹ When we do not have our hearts turned toward God, we are living in contradiction to our created purpose, our affections disordered, and we are restless.

In his Confessions, Augustine describes himself as “in love with loving,” and he cannot find satisfaction because the more broken his desires were the more God’s love and goodness repulsed him. You see, Augustine shows his desires so disordered and his pride so destructive that what he most needs saving from ... is himself. In the prayerbook tradition, the third Sunday in Lent would pray for God’s protection from our enemies. But in the 2019, it instead reminds us that the enemy can often be within, when we resist God’s Word. And as we will see today, recognizing our stubborn resistance to God’s Word is crucial to the Anglican way and why Scripture is so fundamental to our worship and devotion.

Augustine says it was his pride causing him to reject the Christian faith when reading the Bible: “My swollen pride recoiled from its style and my intelligence failed to penetrate to its inner meaning. Scripture is a reality that grows along with little children, but I disdained to be a little child and in my high and mighty arrogance regarded myself as grown up” (III.9, p. 57).² But we see in the moment he experienced God’s saving grace, and the “light of certainty flooded my heart,” was when he laid down his pride and read Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh or the gratification of your desires” (Romans 13:13-14).

It was the humility of Jesus and the victory he won for us that can “purify our disordered affections,” saving us from ourselves. In Lent we are called to persevere, to strive toward God by the power we receive in the Holy Spirit, so that we may reach eternal rest. And the key to that perseverance is hearing God’s voice, being attuned to the Scripture, so we can experience continual renewal toward the goal.

Going back to the origin of the Book of Common Prayer, we see this emphasis in the Daily Office on God’s Word for our perseverance. Thomas Cranmer placed Psalm 95 in the Morning Prayer service as the invitation to worship and hear God’s Word. It is called in our tradition the Venite, which is Latin for “O Come,” the opening words of this psalm. Yes, this is a wonderful invitation to worship God and recognize him as the true King. But the Psalm doesn’t end with the invitation—it contains a penitential conclusion, warning us not to harden our hearts against God’s Word.

VENITE (O Come)

O come, let us sing unto the Lord; *
let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving *
and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God *
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are all the depths of the earth, *
and the heights of the hills are his also.”
The sea is his, for he made it, *
and his hands prepared the dry land.
O come, let us worship and fall down, *
and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For he is our God, *
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.

The following verses may be omitted, except in Lent.

Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts *
as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness,
When your fathers tested me, *
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my works.
Forty years long was I grieved with this generation and said, *
“It is a people that err in their hearts,
for they have not known my ways,”
Of whom I swore in my wrath *
that they should not enter into my rest.

In the American prayerbook tradition dating back to 1789, the warning in the Venite was removed entirely and replaced with the concluding verses of Psalm 96. Thankfully, in the 2019 Book of Common Prayer, the ACNA task force restored the full version from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, allowing for it to be shortened except during Lent.

This update in the 2019 BCP is faithful to the vision of the Anglican Reformers, that the continual proclamation of Scripture is the “sure, steadfast, and everlasting instrument of salvation,” vital to our perseverance in Christ. The Book of Common Prayer is designed to form in us a holy desire to order our lives around Scripture and have that become the foundation for our faith and devotion.

And it’s true to the spirit of the Letter to the Hebrews, which calls back to Psalm 95 and the wilderness generation of Israel in chapters 3 and 4:

“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” (Hebrews 3:12-14 ESV)

Exhort, urge one another in our common sojourn, to hold fast to Christ. And so that our hearts not be hardened, encourage one another in reading God’s Word. See how the author of Hebrews continues this line of argument in chapter 4, immediately following his call for us “to strive to enter that rest” with a reminder of our need for God’s Word for renewal and repentance.

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:9-16 ESV)

There’s good news in the final verses of Hebrews 4. Jesus was tempted like us, but he did not sin. Jesus resisted temptation in the wilderness by remaining true to God’s Word and he has passed through to the heavens for us. We have the assurance through his victory that our rest is secure, but we must be continually renewed through the pure Word of God as we persevere to the eternal rest we will share with him.

We begin the season of Lent encouraged not to focus so much on what we give up but to observe Lent with self-examination and repentance “by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” And because we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand, as the Venite calls us, we must know and recognize our Master’s voice. When we are nourished with God’s Word, we can confidently hold fast to Christ even as he more securely has his hold on us.

1. Augustine, Confessions, translated by Sarah Ruden

2. Augustine, Confessions, translated by Sr. Maria Boulding