The Comfort of Thy Grace – The Fourth Sunday in Lent

I need thee every hour,

Most gracious Lord;

No tender voice like thine

Can peace afford.

There is perhaps no more outstanding example of grace than being a guest at a dinner. The table is set and prepared by another. The bounty and delightful dishes are bought and cooked at another’s expense, time, and labor. The invitation is extended, and all that is required of you is merely show up and feast. Grace is most seen, felt, and even tasted at a banquet one did not prepare, but has graciously been invited.

Today’s Gospel lesson is about a spontaneous feast in an unlikely place. Our Lord Jesus has crossed over the Sea of Galilee, which John’s Gospel reminds us the Roman conquerors have renamed the Sea of Tiberias – Tiberias being the emperor and Rome’s imposter “Son of God.” (Gospel Lesson, John 6:1). However, the true Son of God rides over Tiberias’ sea on a mission to reveal Himself as King, Priest, and Prophet to His people, the Jews. The Lord is followed by a “great multitude” who come “because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased.” (John 6:2, KJV). The multitudes watch and gather as Christ ascends a mountain with His disciples, a picture that would strike the Israelites as similar to Moses ascending Mount Sinai. (John 6:3). Again, like Moses, Jesus looks from the mount and sees “a great company come unto him” in need of provision, food, shepherding, and above all else, grace. (John 6:5, KJV). But unlike Moses, Jesus does what only God had done before – provide bread in the desert.

I need thee,

O I need thee!

Every hour I need thee;

O bless me now, my Savior!

I come to thee.

John, in his Gospel, reminds us that the Passover nears as the 5,000 gathers around Christ upon the mountain. (John 6:4). The great feast of feasts is on the horizon, but as for now, in this moment, the people are hungry and lost sheep looking up to the Good Shepherd for nourishment. What they do not realize is that they shall be nourished in both body and soul. Jesus wastes no time using it as an opportunity to teach and test His disciples. First, He inquires of Philip, “Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” (John 6:5, KJV). Philip scoffs and wonders aloud how anyone could feed them due to the expense. (John 6:6, KJV). Andrew attempts to be proactive and finds a boy with five loaves and two small fish, yet even Andrew’s faith gives out as he wonders aloud, “but what are they among so many?” (John 6:9, KJV).

Alas, who are we among so many lost? And yet Christ Jesus is calling you as He called His disciples to provide. Yet it is neither we nor the disciples who shall provide, for we, like the crowd looking upon Jesus on the mount, need to set our eyes upon Jesus and His grace. There upon the mount is seated the answer to our question, “but how, Lord?” How, you ask? Through Him, dear sons and daughters of God. Through Christ and Him alone, it can and will be done. By grace and through grace and in grace, Jesus commands us like He commanded the Twelve and the crowds, “Make the men sit down.” (John 6:10, KJV). This crowd of sinners who surround Jesus are invited to an unexpected feast.

It is grace. Pure, unsolicited grace.

Why, even faithless Philip and doubtful Andrew are invited to this feast and even enlisted to be our Lord’s servants at the banquet to take and distribute the loaves broken and fish “to them that were set down.” (John 6:11, KJV). The beauty of God’s grace is that He takes us where we are – in our doubts, in our fears, in our pitiful faith – and God feeds us and also drafts us into His service. Like the doubting Twelve, you and I are called to serve tables with the blessed bounty of God’s grace. This is no buffet! God is the one providing, the One serving, and the One feeding us Himself through the body and blood He shed upon the Cross that He delivers to us every time we worship Him in Word and Sacrament. For what Christ proclaims, He completes. When Christ “took the loaves; and when He had given thanks, He distributed to the disciples,” and now we have been enrolled, commissioned, and sent out as the Church – the body of Christ – to nourish our forgotten neighbors, fellows sinners, and lost sheep with the pure Grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (John 6:11 KJV).

Saints, give ear and hear. Celebrate this feast of the Fourth Sunday in Lent and take your fill. Digest the preached Word of God’s grace through His Son’s death on the Cross for you, and when you are filled, go and do like the Twelve and “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” (John 6:12, KJV). Christ shall not lose any of His sheep. His sheep know His voice, but are we crying out to those lost sheep?

I need thee every hour;

Stay thou nearby;

Temptations lose their power

When thou art nigh.

Cast your cares aside, little saints, and do not pressure your soul on how to speak or what to say to your neighbor, your friend, your family. Instead, simply speak the truth of Christ in love, and let His mighty, powerful, and Holy Spirit do the rest. Those whom He calls shall hear. Those whom He is feeding at His banquet shall be filled. None will be lost who are called.

The disciples and likely many of the Jews who followed Christ thought the twelve tribes of Israel would never be reconstituted. Yet they were blind in the moment at failing to see Jesus’ calling of the Twelve was reinstituting, reforming, and recreating a new Israel that is formed, nourished, and maintained through its attachment as the very body of Jesus Himself – the only true Israelite. Furthermore, every disciple of Christ is being gathered into this renewed Israel. Little did the Twelve or crowds realize that Jesus’ greater miracle is drawing forth a new Israel made of ethnic Jews and Gentiles alike, grafted together to the Vine of Life Himself, Jesus Christ. “Therefore, they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.” (John 6:13, KJV).

I need thee every hour,

In joy or pain;

Come quickly and abide,

Or life is vain.

Perhaps you are trying to eat from the rotten and stale bread of “doing better,” “living well,” or “being good for goodness’ sake.” The deception of self-righteousness or self-sufficiency stems from the same old root sin: pride. It’s a venomous serpent seeking your soul and must be crushed. Let Christ crush it for you. He shall crush you with it, but then you shall be replanted in the ground and emerge from the tomb of your own making. Pull up the weed, and reemerge as a flower of the field.

St. Paul reminds the Galatians and us today that we need to stop seeking slavery under the curse of the old law, and instead seek the freedom and renewal found in the new. Do not seek treasures bound by earth and consumed by worms, but instead look up to the heavenly Jerusalem. Shake off the shackles of sin and partake in the plenteous pantry of providential grace. Seek not the earthen walls of old Jerusalem that shall fall, but lay ahold your claim to the “Jerusalem which is above,” for it “is free, which is the mother of us all.” (Epistle lesson, Galatians 4:26, KJV). Verily, as Christians, we feast on grace at the heavenly banquet in the here and now every time we hear the Word of God preached into our ears and the Word of God fed to us spiritually and verily in the blessed sacrament. Furthermore, we should be living, teaching, preaching, loving, and sharing the grace-filled Gospel from God above to all whom we encounter, because the Day is coming when the heavenly Jerusalem shall descend and the Son of God with it. (Revelation 21:2).

I need thee every hour;

Teach me thy will;

And thy rich promises

In me fulfill.

“Therefore, O saints, shall we continue to live in chains and slavery to our sins? No! After all, “brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.” (Galatians 4:31, KJV). We were freed from abuse, disdain, captivity, and condemnation to the father of lies, so that the Father of all mercies may pour out His ever-abundant and ever-sufficient grace upon us so we may turn to our neighbors and begin pulling them out of the flames. “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” (Jude 1:21-23, KJV).

Friends, we are saved, and we are saving others, only because we are fed by God’s grace. Therefore, sit and receive grace from the table of our Lord, and may we not be gluttons, but servants who go out like the disciples and freely give what we have freely been given. “And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.” (John 6:11, KJV). Only by the comfort of thy grace are we invited to sit and dine at thy table. Let us arise and invite others so no seat shall be empty and that no one be lost.

“Grant, we beseech thee, almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.”

– Collect of the Day