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March 30, 2003; The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B
    The Rev. Harold "Skip" Comer, Rector

Jesus told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.”[1] I’ve read the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand I don’t know how many times, and yet the last phrase of this sentence, “so that nothing may be lost,” that appears only in John’s Gospel, has eluded my attention.  To be certain, Matthew, Mark, and Luke,[2] along with John, all make a point of recording that the disciples collected the food that was not eaten – the leftovers – which amounted to twelve baskets full of bread.   But why did John add, “so that nothing may be lost.”

I was fascinated by this statement so I did a quick survey of John’s Gospel, which revealed, I believe, that this statement was no accident.  Several verses later in chapter six in the famous “bread of life’ passage, Jesus says, “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”[3]   In his eleventh chapter, John takes us into the thinking and logic of Caiaphas, the high priest, about Jesus.  Caipahas addressing the council said, “You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.  He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God.”[4]    Several chapters later we find Jesus praying on the night before he was crucified with these words, “While I was with them, I protected them in your name, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.”[5]  And finally in the garden of Geth-sem-a-ne when the authorities came to arrest Jesus and he surrendered without a fight, John notes that “This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, ‘I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me.’”[6]

Woven like a thread throughout John’s Gospel is the theme of Jesus not losing anyone.  I believe that Jesus’ greatest disappointment was the loss of Judas.  I say that because I believe that Jesus came to save everyone.            

Just stop to think about the crowd that gathered on the hillside in today’s Gospel reading – five thousand.  That’s almost half of the population of Benzie county.  Just image the type of people from our county who would gather to hear Jesus.  There would be people who live in mansions on Crystal Lake and those who live in the trailer park on the outskirts of Beulah.  There would be people from the old Victorian houses in Frankfort and from the run down shacks that are scattered around the county.  There would be white people, Hispanics, native Americans, and African Americans.  There would be ‘good’ church people and some perhaps ‘not so good’ residents.  Why, there might even be some atheists in the crowd.  That is the type of crowd that gathered to hear Jesus.

He perceived that they were hungry, and with some help, he fed all of them, no matter who they were or where they came from.  He was not so much concerned about loosing a crumb of bread as he was about loosing any of God’s people – all of God’s people – Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, righteous and sinners.

One Sunday as church was starting a dirty smelly man walked into church.  The ushers tried to catch him as he entered the doors, but he managed to slip by them.  He proceeded to walk all the way down to the front of the church and sit in the first pew right in front of the pulpit.  He smelled terrible, and the people who were sitting behind him got up and moved.  Someone told the minister about the man just before the service was about to start and he went in to see if the man wanted a handout.  No, the man said, I saw the sign above your door that said welcome and thought that I would come on in.

How would we respond?

The Good News of the Gospel is captured by Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians, “he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, . . . by grace you have been saved.”[7]  Whether we are physically dirty or dirty from sin, God loves us.  No matter what our condition is, Jesus does not want any of us lost.

Our reading from 2 Chronicles for this morning relates a recurring story in the Old Testament, summed up in the opening phrase, “The priests and people were exceedingly unfaithful”[8]  It then goes on to talk about God’s wrath being kindled against them and sending the Chaldeans to kill their youth, destroy the temple and take the people into captivity in Babylon.  This is how the Jews of that time understood and explained why all of this happened.  Did God directly make this happen?  I don’t really believe so.  To me its like the saying, “God must have a reason for giving this to you.”  Or, “God doesn’t give you anymore that you can handle.”

Why is there such a difference between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament?  In the Old Testament a healthy relationship with God was based on being righteous, that is if you were good enough, God would like you and bestow all sorts of blessings on you.  It is the type of relationship and love that is called ‘conditional.’  So long as you do what I tell you, I will love you.

Along comes Jesus, who says wait a minute, God’s love precedes all of our actions.  John captures  this in his Gospel in that famous verse, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”[9] We didn’t deserve it.  We didn’t earn it.  God initiated the relationship by loving us first.  And he doesn’t want to lose us; he doesn’t want us to perish.

“By grace you have been saved.”[10]   I was thinking about God’s grace on Friday as I tried to dodge the raindrops.   God’s grace is like the rain – it comes down everywhere – it falls on everyone.  Now, just like the rain, you can avoid getting wet; so it is with God’s grace, you can avoid getting drenched by it.  I believe that that is what happened to Judas.  He put on his anti-grace suit so that God’s love and grace could not soak in.  It is a choice, a decision, that we make, to be immersed in that grace which saves us, or to run away from it.

“Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.”   It’s not about the bread, it’s about us, all of us, all the people of the world.  Jesus doesn’t want to lose anyone.                  

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