Michael Seiler

Tag: Grace

  • Filled to Fullness

    These past few weeks I’ve had to deal with insurance companies on getting my medication sent to me. It’s incredibly frustrating, irritating, and stressful. In the Gospel today, we see that people had heard that Jesus was out in the wilderness, curing people, and that they rushed after him to find him, so that they could be healed. Now, these people were poor, very likely could not afford their insurance premiums or the doctor’s visit copays. I can tell you, there were moments where I was so frustrated that if I had heard about someone running around in the desert healing people, I would have dropped everything and run off to find this stranger so that I could be cured. Just like these people in the Gospel who were following Jesus everywhere he went.

    The interesting thing about today’s passage is that we know that Jesus knows why these people are running after him and his disciples – they want healing. But what does Jesus do? He turns to his disciples and says, “How are we going to pay for all these people to eat?”

    Wait? What? Jesus knows they are coming to him for healing from their illnesses, and instead of preparing the disciples to act as medical assistants and get people ordered into a queue for healing, he turns to them and asks how they were going to feed these people. The people come for healing, and Jesus wants to feed them. A curious thing, and one we’ll come back to later. 

    But first, the Gospel tells us that Jesus already knows what he is going to do, and he asks his disciples how to pay to feed all these people in order to test the disciples.

    To test them.

    These responses by the disciples are really examples of how we all often react.

    The first response is by Philip, who looks at the size of the people in the crowd, does a mental calculation, and says, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” Now, it’s true, Jesus might have set him up with the question on how they were going to pay for it all, but Philip takes that question, and runs with the idea that he and the other disciples need to make it happen. That the onus to feed these people is all on them and their resources. And for Philip, it’s about money.

    Now, what’s interesting to note about this passage, is that it has often been used by those who preach the Prosperity Gospel. This message states that God wants all of us to be blessed financially, and that those who sacrifice to God like the young boy in the story that gave up his barley bread and fish lunch for others will receive that blessing. That is, God will multiply what you give, and you will reap the earthly reward of extreme financial blessing. 

    That’s a tempting teaching to follow, isn’t it? If I just give five bucks to the church, God will multiply it, and I will be financially blessed. 

    But notice the mindset. The recipient of the blessing is always me, the one who gives, and gives sacrificially. More to the point, if I am giving to the church in order to receive, then I have to admit that I am using God as a strategy, a means to manipulate God into blessing me with abundance.

    Now, I know we might look at ourselves and say, thankfully, we don’t believe that sort of thing. But how often do we tell ourselves that blessings will come upon us if we just read our bible more? Or go to church more? Or pray more? We may not be thinking of financial blessing, but only of spiritual blessing. But these are all part of the same coin, which is that we think that God’s abundance is somehow dependent upon what we do, rather than on God’s compassion and love for us. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that God makes his sun rise on evil and good, and sends rain to the just and the unjust alike. That is to say, God defines our path, and our state in life is not related to our level of righteousness. In fact, God’s grace and mercy always shine a light on what Jesus did on the cross more than on what we try to do for God.

    And also, here’s the thing: the one who makes the sacrifices in this story is the boy. He gave of his barley bread and his fish, and yet the people who benefit are all the assembled people. Not just this boy. Everyone benefited. God took what was sacrificed, and multiplied it – for the benefit of all the people.

    Now, the second response we get is from Andrew, Peter’s brother. His response to Jesus’ question has nothing to do with money, but has to do with available resources. He’s the one who makes Jesus aware that they do have resources available, but then he immediately admits defeat, and asks, “But what are they among so many?” 

    Andrew’s response is coming from a mindset of scarcity. It proclaims defeat before even beginning. It’s almost as if Andrew is saying, “Well, we do not have enough, so let’s not do anything at all.” 

    Another way that people have tried to rationalize or explain this miracle of feeding the five thousand is this: this boy was willing to make a sacrifice and share his food, and by Jesus drawing attention to that sacrificial giving, everyone in the crowd was driven to share their own food. Food that they apparently had stashed away and were trying to hide from others. In other words, what happened was less a miracle of multiplication, and more of an impromptu potluck.

    The trouble with this interpretation is that it reduces this miracle to nothing more than a moral platitude, a reminder that everything we ever needed to know we learned in kindergarten. It makes the assumption that people are inherently greedy and unwilling to share. It makes the assumption that none of these people were poor, or even going hungry, but rather that they just didn’t want to share any of their own resources. These people were not secretly hiding a stash of food, trying to avoid sharing with others. It was a miracle, and God multiplied what was given to him.

    Now, it’s true. We can all share, and sometimes we do all need to be reminded to share our own blessings with others. After all, that’s why the church takes donations. It is through our sacrificial giving that the church is able to help those who are struggling, both within our church and out in the community. 

    One commentator put it this way:

    “Jesus needs what we bring him. It may not be much but he needs it. It may well be that the world is denied miracle after miracle and triumph after triumph because we will not bring to Jesus what we have and what we are … little is always much in the hands of Christ.” (Barclay, John, V. 1, p. 205)

    But notice again the thread of the above comment. Jesus takes what we give him, and multiplies what little we bring into an abundance. Not to accomplish our goals, but to accomplish God’s goals. Not to bless us only, but to bless all the people of God through miracles and triumphs across the world. It’s just that The People of God includes us as well, so when God takes what we give to accomplish God’s purposes, we benefit as well, along with others; the entire community of believers benefits.

    Now, the third response to Jesus’ question is his own. We were already told that he knew what he was going to do when he tested his disciples with this question about money. But the interesting thing is the turn that Jesus takes in his response. We know that these people had been running through the countryside to find Jesus so that he could heal their physical ailments, to be cured of their sicknesses, to be relieved of the stress and irritation their illnesses might be causing them.

    And what does Jesus do? Rather than line them up for healing, instead, he feeds them. He has them all sit down, and he feeds them food. They came for a miracle of healing, and what they got was a belly full of food. What is going on here? What exactly is Jesus doing with these people?

    One clue is found in the statement at the very beginning of the passage: “Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.” This entire story is set in the context of the Feast of the Passover. And if we remember, the Passover celebrates the Israelites freedom from slavery in Egypt. On the road to the Promised Land, God provided for them with manna from heaven. All of this would have been in the mind of John’s readers and listeners, and a connection would be made between God’s miraculous provision, and the promises of God for God’s people, the people of Israel.

    In the ancient world, one of the easiest ways for kings to manipulate their followers was to control the flow of bread. Or, in other words, to feed the people. It is how they showed mercy, and how they showed power. And so, we have this multitude of people coming for healing, and Jesus feeds them instead. They eat so much that they are exceedingly full, and there is food left over. Jesus took what little was offered, and he multiplied it into an abundance – without trying to control them. Being fed, being provided for, would have made these people compare Jesus to a king, and not just any king, one who was compassionate as well. And it is for this reason that the crowd of people came to try and make him king by force. The listeners of John’s gospel would have recognized this, and would have expected the crowd to behave in this very way. They would have seen that Jesus was being compared to God, the same God who provided for the people through miraculous food as God led them out of slavery in Egypt into freedom.  

    And so they understand when people come by force to make Jesus their king, because that is what they would expect people to do.

    But what does Jesus do?

    He flees into the mountains to get away from the people, because he does not wish to be their king. At least not in the earthly sense. 

    These people had seen the miracle, and had only thought about what Jesus could do for them. They were focused on what they could get from God. They wanted Jesus for what he did for them. They too were hoping to manipulate Jesus into future provision by making him their earthly ruler.

    This is why Jesus ran away.

    Because Jesus had other plans.

    The stark contrast between behaving like an earthly king and providing for people, coupled with Jesus running away when they tried to make him their king would have made the listener’s of John’s Gospel question what was coming next.

    You see, they would have made the connection between Passover, and Jesus miraculously providing for the people as being a precursor to a new type of freedom. That freedom could have meant any number of things to those who were there, or any number of things to those listening to John’s Gospel. 

    And they would have been wondering what that freedom could possibly be.

    The last few weeks, the lectionary has been providing us readings from the Gospel of Mark, but today we switched over to John. This passage from John is the first in a series of readings from John’s Gospel in the lectionary, and it comes just before something called the Bread of Life discourse. This Bread of Life discourse culminates in Jesus’ declaration that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (John 6:54). 

    Those listening to John’s Gospel were in for a real treat. They were about to see the shift in God’s purpose for humanity from earthly provision of their needs to one of eternal significance. This feeding of the five thousand anxious souls who wanted only to be healed, and instead were miraculously filled beyond fullness with earthly food, helps to foreshadow the Spiritual Food that is Christ Jesus. They were about to see Jesus laying out the path to a new type of freedom, and a path to abundant life for all people. 

    Those listening would soon understand what Paul meant in his letter to the Ephesians, when he wrote:

    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.

    Ephesians 3:18-19

    That fullness is for all people.

    Because even spiritually, God takes what we give and multiplies it abundantly so that all might live in the Abundant Grace of God.

    [This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on July 28, 2024.]

  • Children of God

    Several years ago, there were protests in our country that were evidence of the racial tensions that are still prominent in our country. During that time, there was a video shared on Facebook, which you might have seen. The video shows two little boys who see each other from a distance, and start running toward each other, huge smiles on their faces, and their arms spread out in order to give each other a hug. They can’t be more than two years old. And when they finally get to each other, they fall down in a puddle of joy, laughing and giggling.

    It’s a heartwarming little video. It makes us smile, because their happiness at seeing each other is so infectious, so palpable that you can feel it pouring out of the screen while you’re watching it. 

    What I haven’t told you about the video yet, is that one of the boys is white, and the other is black. But, of course, when you’re watching the video, the only thing you think of is how happy they are. We see that they are the best of friends, they are closer than family. There’s just pure joy at seeing each other, and we begin to feel that same joy because it just pours out of them, through the screen, right into our very core. It’s a feeling we all love to feel, and long to feel, and intrinsically, we understand the purity of their joy and love for each other. It really is a beautiful little video.

    Some of you may have already learned this life-lesson, which is to NEVER READ THE COMMENT SECTION on Facebook posts if the post is from someone you don’t know. I, unfortunately, keep returning to the comment section like a vulture to a road-kill party.

    The most heartbreaking comment that I found under this little video was this:

    “Yeah, they’re happy now. But give them 10 to 15 years, and they will learn to fear and hate each other. That’s what this world will teach them. Our society is broken.”

    You might be wondering why I started out with something like this today. After all, our Gospel is about the disciples, afraid, hiding from the authorities that might come to arrest them because of their association with Jesus. But Jesus shows up, shows them his scars, eats with them, and opens up the scriptures for them, so that they might understand everything they need to know about the Messiah.

    Jesus has shared these things with them so that they understand that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

    “To All Nations.”

    This phrase in the Bible has more meaning than just “other countries.” In fact, it routinely is used in both the Old and New Testament to mean, “people of different races and ethnicities.” In short, you are to preach the gospel to strangers, those you don’t understand, those whom you might fear, those unlike you in many ways.

    The disciples were given the task of proclaiming the Gospel to all the world, to all nations, to everyone, to strangers – no exceptions. And that is what the disciples in that room did, eventually. 

    And thanks to them, you and I stand here today, disciples of that same Jesus. And so, by extension, we are called to proclaim that very same Gospel to all people, of all nations, of all races and ethnicities, to strangers – no exceptions.

    Several years ago, while still in seminary – so actually, quite a lot of years ago – I went to a workshop that proclaimed that it would help you to live life to the fullest, to help you break through those things that were holding you back from being your best you. You know the type, I’m sure you’ve all seen one of these workshops advertised before. Because it had been recommended to me, and out of curiosity, I went.

    At one point, those leading the workshop had the entire crowd do a thought exercise, in which we were told to envision ourselves walking down an empty street, as the day is coming to an end, and the light is beginning to dim. On that street, we see a stranger approaching us, and then we are guided through several questions, like “What are they wearing?” “Where are they looking?” “Where do you think they are going?” “Why do you think they are out this time of night?” You know, all the questions that you would ask yourself if you were walking down a street and came across a stranger. What we discovered is that everyone’s mind came to the conclusion that the other person could not be trusted, and that we had to protect ourselves from the possible evil they might wish to do to us. In short, everyone realized that the image we had created in our minds expressed our deepest fears. 

    And then the instructors asked us to put ourselves into the shoes of the other person. To imagine seeing ourselves through their eyes, and what they might be thinking. It took a while, but slowly people started having an aha moment, because we realized that the stranger was asking the same exact questions, and coming to the same conclusion about us: that we are people who might do evil, and we are people who could not be trusted. To them, we were the construct of their fear.

    We fear what we do not understand. We fear what we do not seek to understand. We fear what we refuse to understand. And we will never be able to love what we fear.

    The question the instructors asked afterward was this: “What would it change if you approached each stranger on the street by trying to understand them and view their life through their eyes and experience, rather than a person to be mistrusted and feared? What would your life look like then? How might your life be shaped for the better?” 

    The lesson learned was straightforward: we need to be able to separate fact from fiction, because most of our fear is learned behavior. Learned through our families, our friends, our neighborhoods, our communities, our cultures.

    That understanding of learned behavior can easily be summed up in the phrase, “Like Father, Like Son,” “Like Mother, Like Daughter,” or “Like parent, like child.”

    Our New Testament reading today begins with the words, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” Through our baptism, we have been made a part of a heavenly family: we have been adopted into the family of God. And, as Children of God, we have now inherited all the benefits that are due to those who look to God as a parent, and Christ as a brother. We are no longer just Americans, or Chinese, Brazilian or Latvian, German or Canadian. We are first, and foremost, citizens of the New Jerusalem, citizens of heaven, the Holy City of God. We are children of a family that transcends time and space, race and ethnicity, boundaries and borders.

    The ideal, of course, is that the phrase, “Like parent, like child” would apply to each of us. That we would look to the example of Christ, and become like our brother, who is one with the Father. That in all of our actions, the humility, the grace, the passion, and, of course, the Love of Jesus would be evident in each of us.

    That is the ideal. 

    That is what we hope for. 

    Mahatma Gandhi, whom I’m sure you’ve all heard about, led a successful campaign for India’s independence from England, by employing non-violent protests as a form of resistance to British rule. He was born into a Hindu family, but at some point found himself reading the Gospels, and he wanted to know more about Jesus, whom he found intriguing. So, one Sunday morning he set out to go to a Christian Church in Calcutta, but was turned away at the door, because, he was told, the church was only open to Whites and Indians born into the High Castes. Since he was of a lower caste, he could not enter, and was sent away. He never pursued Christianity again, and told people that “If it weren’t for Christians, I would be a Christian.”

    “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”

    The Church in Calcutta lost an opportunity to share the Good News of Love with a man that later went on to gain freedom for not only his own people, but inspired work among people throughout the world in similar situations. Think of the amazing witness that was lost through Gandhi’s work in the world, only because that church’s learned behaviors caused them to express their fear and pride at allowing a commoner to enter into their community and worship the God of Love with them.

    If Jesus gave his dsiciples the commandment to preach the Good News of repentance and forgiveness to all nations, then by extension, that includes us. So the next question is “How do we do that?” Not all of us are preachers, or writers, or have the opportunity to express our beliefs to people through some form of mass media. 

    St. Francis of Assissi is known for this saying: “Preach the gospel at all times. … And when necessary, use words.”

    When necessary. Use words.

    What St. Francis knew, is that the language of Love is the loudest form of communication that the world has ever seen. From the beginning of written history, we have stories of greed, selfishness, war, hate, anger all growing out of the fear of the unknown. The need to keep ourselves safe, to acquire more, to put ourselves and our own above everyone else has been written into our cultural DNA. To fear the outsider, to be selfish, and to look out for one’s own interests – those things are culturally accepted behaviors. And fear plays itself out in the form of anger and hate.

    But Love, and peace, and understanding – those behaviors are countercultural. Which is why we enjoy videos like the two best friends running toward each other that I mentioned earlier. Those videos remind us of the humanity that we long for, yet overlook for the sake of securing for ourselves those things which make us feel less afraid, make us feel more in control, and feel like we have some power. 

    When we behave like the world expects us to behave, no one ever asks us: What makes you so different? And, How can I find what you have found?

    People ask that question when they see us behaving in a way that expresses the what John was declaring in the New Testament passage:

    “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God.”

    What makes us different?

    What makes us different from the culture around us?

    When we find the answer to that question, when the answer to that question takes root in our hearts and minds, that is when we begin to live into the commandment Jesus gave us to share the good news of repentance and forgiveness to all nations.

    And that is when we begin to preach the Gospel without words.

    When we find the answer to that question, that is when we might see a fearful stranger on a dark road not as someone to be feared and hated, but as a potential Child of God, to whom we can run toward with open arms, and fall into a puddle of joy, laughing and giggling.

    [This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on April 14, 2024.]

  • Jesus Loves Me?

    Daily Office Readings – New Testament ( 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 )

    Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. 

    1 Corinthians 15:8-10

    Just recently, our church asked parishioners to take part in a spiritual life inventory, a survey really, and we were asked questions relating to our spirituality all the way to how often we attended church in a typical month. Almost all of the questions had a six answer range from “Very Strongly Disagree” to “Very Strongly Agree.” I am on the committee that will evaluate the responses and determine how we want to move the church forward in the future.

    One particular question that was included in our survey results had to do with core beliefs, namely, “I believe that God loves me unconditionally.” Now, I won’t tell you how many of our parishioners said yes to this, but I will tell you that it was lower than the norm across all people of all denominations that took this survey. The norm for all denominations for which this group had data said that only 66% of people believed that God loved them unconditionally.

    When I saw that, I mentioned that from a theological standpoint, I really found that disconcerting. The pastor agreed, and said that we have “lots of work to do.” Naturally, I agreed.

    But I’ve been thinking on this concept of Grace and Unconditional Love for a bit now, and one of the things that I notice when I speak with people who explain that they do not feel God’s love is that they have often experienced some kind of hurt as a child. That hurt has left them with feelings of shame, or guilt, or simply with the feeling that love has to be earned. Through no fault of their own, they have been hampered in their experience of the divine.

    A few years ago, while in another denomination from my current, I heard a story of a pastor who had prepared a sermon he was quite pleased with and was looking forward to preaching. But when he stepped up to the pulpit, he felt that God had told him to simply preach “God Loves You.” And so he did. He kept saying the same three words over and over with different emphasis and at different speeds, and after a while, several people int he congregation began to cry. It wasn’t because the pastor had been going on for about fifteen minutes by then and that they were bored to tears, but rather, those people told him afterward that they had well and truly felt God’s love for the very first time in their lives.

    Out of all the people who were there that day, only four people in that congregation had started to cry and felt God’s love for the first time in their lives. Perhaps the others already knew and experienced God’s love, or, perhaps, they belonged to the group that has not felt unconditional love before, and they too heard the words, but didn’t feel God’s love that day. We can’t know for sure.

    As I thought about this story, and about the conversations I have had with people, I realized that there isn’t so much that we can do to teach about unconditional love or grace. Sure, I can share all the passages of scripture that deal with God’s love, or share all the theological concepts of grace and love, but it won’t help. It is something that has to be felt, and no amount of “book knowledge” will help people to understand it. It is something that needs to be left up to the Holy Spirit.

    And so while I agreed at first that we have “a lot of work to do,” I think now the only work that I can truly do is to continue loving my neighbor as best as I can, and to continue praying for those people that they will be blessed with experiencing God’s love in actuality.