(Holy Communion)
“Discovering Our Extravagant God”
John 6:1-14
When I
was a child, I would spend part of my summer with my grandparents. They never missed attending church—the
Pentecostal persuasion type of church—and I would go with them to all the
services and special events. I
especially liked to go to their church picnic where there were always lots and
lots of good food. Now, I noticed that
Pentecostals didn’t exactly talk the way we Presbyterians talked, and I
remember there was a favorite response they always made when someone filled
your coffee cup or ice tea glass to the rim, or loaded your plate with food or
served you a heaping dish of homemade ice cream. They would say, “Now that’s what I call
gospel measure!” And I remember wondering
as a small boy how people could use the Bible to measure or weigh such things,
and then I later learned how the phrase came from Jesus’ promise in Luke 6:38:
“. . . give, and it will be given to you.
A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put
into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” That’s gospel measure—pressed down, shaken
together and running over.
Gospel measure is about extravagance, generosity and
benevolence. Gospel measure is the
Psalmist singing: “Thou anointest my head with oil/my cup runneth over.” It’s the apostle Paul proclaiming, “O, the
depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God . . . For from him, and
through him and to him are all things.
To him be glory forever.
Amen.” Gospel measure is the
foothills of the
But we were
after the best berries, the strawberries that grow deep in the woods. Someone suddenly called out in front, “Look,
there they are, and there’s another patch.”
Joy of simplicity. The pattering
of the first ones in the bucket. And
then a clearing broke through the trees with a drunkenness of berries, sunlight
and flowers, it dazzled our eyes, it was our breathing. “Oh!”
The strawberries were like a waking dream, their smell intoxicating. We ran among them with rattling pails, and
tripping, lay there drugged, using our lips to pluck the luscious berries from
the stems.
Gospel measure! I
thought of that scene when Martha and I were in the Rhineland area of
The miracle of multiplication, as described in the sixth
chapter of John, when Jesus fed the five thousand is also about gospel
measure. And more than anything else,
this miracle speaks of God’s excessive expenditure of love; it reveals God’s
unstinted giving and the sufficiency of divine grace. A while back I preached a message at our
Saturday Chapel service about being surprised by God’s unexpected blessings,
those serendipity happenings in which we discover God’s closer presence in our
lives. I’ll preach that sermon sometime
on Sunday morning, but this morning, I want us to see beyond those kind of surprises
in discovering the extravagant love God offers us in Jesus Christ.
Whatever else this miracle meant to the early church—and the
event has obvious overtones of the church’s celebration of the Lord’s
Supper—those early Christians beheld in the miracle meal served to the
multitude gathered beside the Sea of Galilee, God’s promised grace for them in
their need. And while they might be
awestruck by the miracle sign itself, a greater miracle broke open for them
when they claimed Christ’s presence and experienced for themselves God’s
amazing grace in all its fullness.
That’s what happened to the apostle Paul through his long life and
ministry. It happened to
So let’s not dismiss the miracle in which Jesus took five
barley loaves and two small pickled fish and fed the multitude. Let’s not denounce the truth of it or
diminish its meaning with scientific skepticism or with some rational
explanation (such as, Jesus in sharing the few loaves and fish motivated others
to share their lunch with those who had none).
Instead, let’s approach the miracle as we best approach any miracle—with
a sense of awe and wonder. If we reflect
on it with our conceptual knowledge and scientific theories, we’ll conclude
that the miracle did not and could not have happened. But if we approach it with an understanding
that is deeper than our knowledge, with the reverence and awe that all life’s
mystery and miracle calls forth, then the full meaning of Jesus’ sign will
claim us and hold us. Then we, too, will
discover how lavish God’s love is, how our cup does overflow. We will discover how, when we have exhausted
our store of endurance, when our strength ebbs and hope grows thin, then it is
that God’s full giving begins. As the
old gospel hymn sings it:
God giveth more grace when the burdens
grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the labors
increase,
To added affliction He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials His multiplied peace.
His love has no limit, His grace has no
measure,
His power has no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
God giveth, and giveth and giveth again!
Our world cries out today for just such a miracle. We have tried to be our own invincible gods,
only to discover the lonely chaos such presumptuous idolatry brings. We cannot make it in life alone. As the poet cried out: “I am sick of
this! I need you and I need God.” How many persons yearn today for certainty
and destiny? How many broken lives need
healing? How many persons are tyrannized
by guilt and need to know they are forgiven?
How many persons wander restlessly, seeking a home and a welcome? How many persons walk in the shadows because
they either have lost the light or are afraid of it? How many persons need to know for sure that
they are loved and loveable, that someone cares for them and wants them? How many persons who have confused strength
with self-sufficiency and power with being in control spend their lives
exploiting and manipulating others to preserve their illusions? Yes, we’re in greater need than those who
were without food on that day long ago when suddenly Jesus fed them with such
gospel measure that there were baskets of leftovers, even after they had taken
second and third helpings.
We need the power and promise that Jesus revealed as he
broke bread and divided the two fish among the multitude. We need to receive God’s full giving of love
through Christ to realize our true stature and to find our place. We need to understand how God loves us
unconditionally and lavishly, not because we deserve it, nor because of our
undeserving, but because it’s simply God’s nature and purpose to love without
limit. To let God love us is to discover
how loveable we are and how we are created to share relationships of constancy
and intimacy. To experience God’s
forgiveness in the face of Christ is to forgive ourselves, to know a wonderful
freedom and unutterable joy—a freedom and joy that also becomes our forgiveness
of others. To experience God’s grace is
to live in eternity’s sunrise and to know that whatever happens to us when we
die, it will be all right, for love will be there and when we meet God face-to-face
God will be smiling. And that, dear
friends, is salvation with a capital “S.”
Some of you football fans from
The next day the defeated Bills returned to
That’s gospel measure because that’s the Gospel—the good
news of God who is so extravagant in love that we know we’re always loved and
accepted. It’s the good news of God whose
grace is so rich and full that it is more than sufficient for whatever failures
or losses we must endure, for whatever death and darkness we must face, for
whatever healing and reconciliation we need, and for whatever deprivation and
struggle we must engage. As the apostle
Paul declared, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the
saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the
love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the
fullness of God!” Amen.