Lent 4, the 4th Sunday of Lent, is also known as Refreshment Sunday or Mothering Sunday and is also called Laetare Sunday.

For some, this comes as a bit of a surprise, however, in the earlier rites the introit or entrance sentence for the day came from Issaiah 66:10-11

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
all you who mourn over her—
that you may nurse and be satisfied
from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
from her glorious bosom.

The Latin word for rejoice here was Laetare, which is how this Sunday got that name.

It was also a day of minor reprieve from the austerity of Lent, clearly associated with the tradition of Simnel Cake, often handed out on this day.

It was often a day when folk would travel to their homes, and their home parishes, and so became called Mothering Sunday, in association with visiting Mothers, or Mother’s Graves, or the Mother Church from which people were baptised.

This year in some parts of the Parish people saw the clergy in Rose (pink) Vestments and some people observed that they had never seen that before.

Some parts of Anglicanism refrain from using liturgical colours, which in the main people have been used to four or five colours, (Purple, Green, Red, and White/Gold). Some of us have also seen the use of Black Vestments, as were used for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II last year.

The Orthodox Eastern Christians use a great deal of colour, though not in the seasonal way that Christians in the West do.

The early Sarum rites (Old English / Celtic) made a great deal of the use of colours in the liturgy. It is most probable that following the Augustinian MIssion to England the use of liturgical colour made its way back to Rome and Europe more generally. The Sarum Colour for Advent was the deep ashen blue of the night sky. The Third Sunday of Advent, Gaudate Sunday was called also for the Introit from Philippians 4:4-7

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The Latin word here for rejoice was Gaudete, which is how this Sunday got that name.

The colour of the day in the Sarum rite was Rose, and seen as the promise of the sunrise against the night sky, as we observe if we are up that late, or that early, just before the dawn arrives. The use of Rose on Laetere Sunday seems to be a transference of that same logic to the minor relaxation of the Lenten Fast.

So the use of Rose Vestments is not a new thing, nor is it un-Anglican, but rather firmly part of the historic tradition in which we stand that goes back well before Augustine set foot on English soil.

Rose vestments should remind us that the dawn is coming, the Resurrection is around the corner, and we are called to live as people of hope.

A now-forgotten sage old priest would declare, “There are three B’s to being Christian, Believe, Belong and Behave”. Interestingly he took the view that these things did not happen in a particular order, and that one was not more important than the other.

The notion of Tribe carries with it an implicit understanding of belonging. The sense of Tribe has a sense of belonging and identity that recognises a commonality without imposing sameness. This is an important aspect of Tribe because we do not lose our identity in being part of the tribe, but rather we gain a deeper understanding of our own identity. In fact, one of the dilemmas we face here is the question, is the tribe defined by its members, or is it the tribe that makes its members who they are?

In part, the story of Ruth in the Old Testament is about the understanding of the Tribe. Ruth begins her life as a Moabite woman, who marries one of Naomi’s sons. Following the death of Naomi’s husband and sons, Ruth makes a determined statement to stay with Naomi. Ultimately she becomes the Great Grandmother of David, Israel’s first King. One of the beautiful things about a lot of the early patriarch narratives in the Old Testament is that they carry a certain messiness. Those who talk of David’s line, with an absolute sense of Tribal purity are confronted with the brute reality that David’s Grandmother was a Moabite woman.

In this sense, the tribe is not absolutely fixed or final and is not an impregnable barrier, but rather a permeable membrane, always open to new members. As a Parish Church Community, we have a sense of Tribe. Our challenge is to form such a sense of community, that some of those who encounter us will find some welcome, some inclusion, and some sense of belonging, that they might find themselves saying, ‘these are my people, and this is my tribe’.

Now there were several steps in the process for Ruth in moving to become the Grandmother of David, and ultimately there was a sense of the process. So too, for all of us, there are steps along the way. We might be struggling with the sheer act of believing, We may be struggling with the content of what we may believe. We, all of us, wrestle with our own behaviour, in one way or another (for all have sinned and are falling short of the glory of God). We are not perfect, yet.

Moltmann made the suggestion that we are called to believe in God as Creator, not in God as the retired Creator. God is active in shaping and creating each of us, and indeed in shaping and forming all of us. The notion of tribe is not a static, institutional or corporate structure, but rather a living and breathing body. It is a process or a journey.

As we approach the greatness of Holy Week, We see Jesus as the ultimate expression by God of his solidarity with humankind.

In Jesus God is saying “these are my people and this is my tribe.” And indeed when asked what they are worth to him we discover it is everything. We are they who simply respond to God’s commitment to us, “these are my people and this is my tribe.”

Lent is the traditional season of preparation for the great celebration of Easter.

This is often marked as a season of fasting, where things are given up and taken up to help us on our spiritual journey. 

The name Lent comes from the Middle-English word Lente which means springtime, which in turn owes its origins to Early-English Lencten and the Saxon word the same which meant ‘longer’ and indeed referred to the season where the days were getting longer. 

Lent is typically described as forty days and is seen as referencing the forty days Jesus was fasting in the wild. Matthew 4:1-11. 

The first day of Lent is Ash Wednesday, and in 2023 that is the 22nd of February and Easter Day falls on the 9th of April. And a quick calculation will show you that it is 47 days. There are two explanations for that. Either from Palm Sunday you have entered Holy Week, or as Sunday is always a celebration of the Resurrection you don’t count the Sundays in Lent as part of Lent. 

Easter is a season of Fifty days, culminating at Pentecost, and of course there the Sundays are counted as part of the festival. 

Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, and the theme for that day comes from the first reading from Joel: 

Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.

In the liturgical cycle, we come to this year by year, and the challenge for us is to realise that this can always be new for us. As we grow the same crop on the same land, we realise that each year we have a new harvest, yet perhaps different from last year. 

There is the story of the wife who asks her husband “what are you going to do today?” and he replies “nothing!” she responds “that's what you did yesterday”, and he replies “I wasn’t finished!”

Our challenge is to encounter in the familiar ritual the freshness of the unfinished business, open to a new discovery in the old familiar ritual, the realisation that the Gospel is Good News, not stale history. 

So we encourage you to have a Happy Lent, and that in this time you may have the joy of finding some new spiritual depth on this journey to the Cross and Resurrection. 

The Windale Merrigum Centre

Part of the Anglican Parish of East Lake Macquarie

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The Church of the Transfiguration Hall
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