Grace Upon Grace

Sermon - January 4th, 2015

John 1:1-18

Pr. Paul Cannon

Grace Upon Grace

Happy New Year Bethany Lutheran Church!

And Grace and Peace from God our Father, the Holy Spirit connecting us all, and our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

I ended 2014 with a very full Christmas!  That is, full of wonderful things - Some beautiful Christmas Services, the story of Jesus birth … full of presents and family and friends.  But what really and truly fills me up most during the holiday season - is food.  

My favorite is meatballs and mashed potatoes. Every time I go home for the holidays, my request is that my mom make them for the family because nobody can make meatballs and mashed potatoes quite like her.  

Every Christmas dinner, I pile up my plate with mashed potatoes upon mashed potatoes - meatballs upon meatballs.  I cover those bad boys in gravy upon gravy, and then I go back for seconds.  

It’s not just meatballs and mashed potatoes that get me.  I eat cookie upon cookie, pie upon pie, stuffing upon stuffing until I start to feel like Paul … upon Paul.  I mean, there were times, when I ate so much over Christmas, I felt couldn’t stand up!  The food just doesn’t run out!

Well, I got home from break full to the gills this year, and the first thing that I had to do when I returned, was take 10 high school youth to an organization called “Feed My Starving Children.”

Brothers and Sisters in Christ - THAT is how you know God has a sense of humor.  Christmas provided an abundance of riches - but afterwards, God reminded me it was time to give back.

In part, that’s what our gospel today was about.  The first chapter of John is telling us who Jesus really was, and what exactly it is that Jesus provides.  

John tells us that Jesus is the Word, and the Light, and the Truth.  And finally, it gets to answering that question, “Why Jesus?”  What’s new and different about this guy? Why exactly does this relationship matter?

John answers it this way.  He says, “From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” Grace upon Grace.  That’s a fantastic image, isn’t it? It’s like gravy upon gravy.  It’s the unending pool of grace that doesn’t run out.

John goes on to tell us that it’s from Moses that we get the law, but it’s from Jesus that we get grace.  And it’s not just a little tiny serving of grace.  It’s an abundance of grace heaped upon more grace.  

There is the law, which does a lot of good things.  It sets boundaries, it gives us structure and guidance, but in the end, the power of the law comes from the power to punish.  

But grace is something entirely different. The power of grace comes from freely giving of yourself to somebody else, knowing that there will always be more to give.  Ultimately, this kind of unending grace gets its power from love.

John tells us, THAT, is what makes Jesus different.  What Jesus gives you can’t be found anywhere else.  It’s grace bought with the unselfish love of the cross - Grace upon grace - more than we deserve and more than we could ever use.  

The question is, what do you do with it all? What do you do with more than you could ever use? The only answer, of course, is to pay it forward.

That was God’s reminder to me when I came home from the holidays. The organization that we took the high school youth to, Feed My Starving Children, gathers volunteers to pack dehydrated meals to send to hungry children all across the world.  Our group of high school youth joined up with 40 other youth from ELCA churches across the northern Illinois Synod to do this.  Together with some other groups, we packed a years worth of food for 97 children.

Truly though, there was a LOT of irony in how my entire Christmas played out.  I’m sure all the high schoolers were in the same boat as me - coming back from a Christmas Holiday that filled them up with Christmas meal upon Christmas meal - only to come home and pack meals for starving children.

I mentioned I ate so much for Christmas I could barely stand … Well the first thing we did when we arrived at Feed My Starving Children, was watch a video about a young child in Haiti whom they found sitting in a pig pen, because his legs were too weak to stand up from lack of nutrition.

They showed us videos of him a year or two later, and not only was he strong enough to stand, but he was thriving. He was going to school, and running around with the other kids.  Apparently he had even become somewhat of a chatterbox.

That’s what a little bit of extra time and resources were able to accomplish. We put in two hours and gave that same gift to 97 other children. It was merely the overflow of the grace upon grace that had already been given to us that we passed on to those who needed it.  

God’s gifts overflow.  They are abundant and unending.  And so our response is to give back joyfully, knowing that there will always be another serving.

Often, our response is the opposite.  Fear makes us want to hoard everything that is given to us.  That’s a natural response in a lot of ways. We are biologically trained to want to keep as many resources as we can.  It’s a normal human instinct, but a sinful one.

But this message from John - that God’s love is like grace upon grace - tells us that we can let go.  We don’t have to be afraid of running out.  With God there is always more than enough.  

Brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s a new year.  And if you have New Year’s resolutions, I ask that you add this  to your list: make 2015 a year where you can live without fear - a year where you can pass on the grace upon grace first given to you in Christ.

And For all He gives, Thanks be to God.

Amen