The object of Lent is as we pray in the two Lenten proper prefaces appointed for the Eucharist on page 346 of the Prayerbook:  that, fervent in prayer and in works of mercy and renewed by God’s Word and Sacraments, we might come to the fullness of grace which our heavenly Father has prepared for those who learn and perfect their love for Him, and by which grace, we might live not an earthly life but the divine life . . . which has not ourselves at its center but the Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ, Who, by His death and resurrection, is our Life.

    I was speaking, once, with someone who had been attending a Bible study in her Parish, . . . and who was somewhat distressed to hear her priest holding forth on the very Epistle you heard read today.  Her priest asserted that everyone is saved, a notion to which my friend is unwilling to subscribe, . . . believing, instead, that everyone is saved from everlasting death who accepts Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour!  . . . “Ah, but you see,” I told my friend, “your Rector is technically correct.”  He is correct in that the Apostle, writing to the Church at Ephesus, says exactly that:  that everyone is saved; . . . “by grace you have been saved through faith [the Apostle writes]; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.”  . . . Our sins have put us in a hole so deep . . . we can’t get out, . . . and so God has provided us the way out (God has saved us) by sending us His Son to be the ladder by which to climb out of death and into life; . . . He has saved us by faith, . . . and the Apostle makes no distinction; . . . the Lord God Almighty has saved all of us; . . . the ladder is available to everyone!  . . . Problem is, you see, . . . you have to accept what God has given you . . . and then use it.  . . . And not everyone wants to do this; . . . not everyone is willing to receive God’s Grace; . . . not everyone is willing to see and acknowledge God’s Grace, and some of us forget that it’s there.  . . . And the work of the Church is to help people find the ladder . . . and to encourage them to use it.  . . . And so, the object of Lent is for the Church to be refreshed in the discipline not to demand of God the things that we think are necessary to give joy . . . but to accept and use what God gives us,

For we are his workmanship [the Apostle writes to the Church]; we are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Even every good work that arises out of some human effort to do good is not the fruit of human will; . . . the Lord God Almighty has created all good works beforehand; . . . what is needed, however, is for us to surrender ourselves to be trained by Jesus do them.

    But sometimes people unwilling to see and acknowledge God’s Grace are those who must first have answers to the questions that frighten them.  . . . During Lent, some years back, I read a book entitled Living in the Question, written by a favorite author of mine, a Cistercian monk named Father Basil Pennington.  The thesis of Father Pennington’s book is that there are questions in our lives for which there may be no good answer; . . . that very, very often all we can do is prayerfully live with our questions.  All we can do is make friends with our unanswered questions and welcome them as guests into our lives.  . . . And perhaps, eventually, by Grace, a miracle will happen . . . and unexpected answers will become apparent.

    Father Pennington’s advice is well founded; for, this is the very thing that Jesus teaches us.  In each one of the Gospels, Jesus poses a great many more questions than answers.  . . . The Gospel appointed for today is a case in point.  Jesus has taken His disciples to an isolated hilltop so that He might instruct them without distractions.  But many of the people of that countryside have gotten wind of where Jesus is; and so, they follow after Him and find Him.  . . . And Jesus looks up from His instruction and sees all these people coming toward Him with their vast array of needs, . . . and He asks Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”  . . . And Philip casually turns and looks over his shoulder, down the hill, and holy ham hocks, he is astounded!  Why . . . why, there must be five thousand people coming toward them!  . . . And he looks at Jesus and says, “[Six months’ wages] wouldn’t buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.”  Andrew finds Philip’s answer to the Lord’s question completely off the mark, and so he provides Jesus with something a bit more substantial.  Andrew says, “There’s a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; [but then, realizing how ridiculous his own answer to the question is, . . . Andrew weakly adds], but what are they among so many?”  But Saint John tells us that,

Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them . . .; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.  And when they had eaten their fill,  . . . they gathered . . . up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten.

Jesus asks a question for which there is no good answer:  how will you provide for the vast array of needs all around you; . . . how are we to buy bread enough to feed them, . . . and then Jesus takes what you do have; . . . He gives our heavenly Father thanks for it; . . . and He distributes what you give Him.  . . . And a miracle happens!  . . . How does Philip buy enough bread so that all those people could eat?  He doesn’t.  The Twelve simply give Jesus what they have, and there is enough.  There is more than enough.  . . . It rather reminds me of Abraham and Isaac.  Remember?  Two Sundays ago we were told that Abraham on the way to taking Isaac to sacrifice him as the Lord God Almighty has instructed,

Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!  . . .  Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”  Abraham said, “God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”

Isaac asks a question for which Abraham has no good answer, at least not without scaring the living bejeebers out of the lad; . . . not without telling Isaac that God had already provided the lamb . . . who is the son God had given Abraham in his old age.  But when Isaac arrived with his father at the place of sacrifice, and

Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son . . . the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham,. . . [d]o not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”  And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

A modern person might ask why the Lord God Almighty would require such a senseless thing of Abraham (that he should sacrifice the son God had given him), . . . but Abraham will not even allow this question to stand between himself and God; … he simply believes in God’s Grace.  . . . And it happened as Abraham believed:  God does provide Himself a lamb for sacrifice . . . and it is a lamb other than Isaac; . . . a miracle had happened.

    The truth about the Faith you have been given by God’s Grace . . . is that there is a point at which it provides you no good answers that you can see.  . . . There is a point at which your Faith provides no visible strength by which you can endure.  There is a point when being good will not be enough to shield you from grief; . . . when being faithful shall have no apparent reward.  The truth about the Faith you have been given by God’s Grace is that there comes a point (and more likely there are many points) at which you must simply take hold of the ladder and climb; . . . there comes a point at which you must simply give everything you have to Jesus . . . and wait for a miracle.  . . . And so, the object of Lent is to be trained and disciplined by God’s Word and God’s Sacraments; by prayer and works of mercy so as to come to the fullness of Grace by which we do not demand answers … but simply give everything we have to Jesus.