A Meditation for Friday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent

By The Rev. Rodney Hurst, ‘09

Each year during Lent we journey with Jesus into the wilderness for 40 days. I grew up with two different definitions of wilderness. The first is a wilderness called forest. The second is a wilderness called desert. For over 30 years I lived near the temperate rainforests of Western Washington, near the Pacific Ocean and the Puget Sound/Salish Sea, with dense wilderness forested with fir trees beyond counting. For the past 20 years I have lived in the desert Southwest of Arizona and New Mexico (AZ, NM, AZ). I also traveled between Washington and Arizona from childhood through young adulthood, so I am as long familiar with the desert as with the forest. 

Both environments, dense or desolate and potentially extreme and treacherous with either driving rain or blistering sun, fit the criteria the definition of wilderness requires, and that is why the same word is used to describe both. This morning, for the Friday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent, the two protagonists of our lessons—Moses and Jesus—have long experience in the wilderness environs of the Near East, where I have also visited. My most recent years of ministry have been spent in the desert wilderness, and the idea and reality of “desert” has become an integral symbol for my faith journey. 

As throughout the Church Year, part of my spiritual discipline during Lent is Lectio Divina. In that way, over the years I discovered this symbol and concept-of-life, spiritually, through reading the Carmelite Rule in the early years of my priesthood and later expanding into the vast and varied Sayings of Desert Fathers. Permit me to share some of their pithy wisdom to focus the path of your Lenten wilderness-wandering and to help you meditate on Christ who will sustain you always.

They told this story of John the Short. He went to live with a hermit from the Thebaid, who was living in the desert of Scetis. His abba once took a dead stick and planted it, and told him, “Pour a jug of water over its base every day until it bears fruit.” Water was so far from their cell that John had to go off every evening to fetch it and it was dawn before he returned. At the end of three years the stick turned green and bore fruit. The hermit picked some of the fruit and took it to the church and said to the brothers, “Take and eat the fruit of obedience.”

Hyperichius said, “It is better to eat meat and drink wine than to eat the flesh of the brothers by disparaging them.”

Evagrius said, “A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian.”

Once some brothers came to visit Antony, and Joseph was with them. Antony, wanting to test them, began to speak about holy Scripture. He asked the younger monks first the meaning of text after text, and each of them answered as well as he could. To each he said, “You have not yet found the right answer.” Then he said to Joseph, “What do you think is the meaning of this word?” He replied, “I don’t know.” Antony said, “Indeed Joseph alone has found the true way, for he said he did not know.”

Antony exhorted all to prefer nothing in the world to the love of Christ.

Amen!

The Rev. Fr. Rod Hurst is originally from the Pacific Northwest and was confirmed at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Olympia, Washington. In June of 2023, he was called as seventh rector of Christ Church of the Ascension Episcopal Parish and School in Paradise Valley, Arizona. Before his call to Christ Church, he served 14 years as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Carlsbad, New Mexico, an historic parish in the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande. He was ordained deacon and priest at the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin, Nashotah, Wisconsin, and served as transitional deacon at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in downtown Milwaukee. Fr. Rod is an alumnus of Northwest University and Nashotah House and a Benedictine oblate of Saint Meinrad Archabbey. Prior to parish ministry, he served as principal of a K-5th private school, Lutheran youth pastor, and in finance and management with the State of Washington and the State of Arizona. Fr. Rod and his wife Carol have two children. The readings for the preceding devotional may be located here from Forward Movement.