Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21
When I was uploading my midweek message
this week, YouTube, as it always does, suggested videos that I might want to
watch. One of them had to do with smiling — apparently YouTube thought I needed
some help with this. And it did grab my attention, so I watched it. It was made
by a young woman in the far eastern part of Russia where apparently no one ever
smiles in public. She spent a year as an exchange student at the University of
Minnesota, not just an American school but a midwestern school where people smile
a lot and it freaked her out: she couldn’t deal with all these friendly people
being nice to her. Eventually, she adjusted and came to really enjoy it -- and
then she moved back to her hometown, where she had to learn again to give and
receive smiles rarely. Watching it reminded me of a conversation I once had
with a man up in Worcester. His wife and children came to worship every week,
but he did not. So we were chatting one day and I asked him why he didn’t come
more frequently. And he got quite animated and said that the people at church
were too friendly. He didn’t think they were being fake: he thought they were
too friendly: they would smile at him and greet him, and he didn’t like that.
When he came to church, he didn’t want smiles and warmth: he wanted to be left
alone. He told me this with great conviction. I just listened and smiled.
We humans are funny. We want to be loved
and cared for — just not too much. It’s like we can only handle so much love.
I’ve seen this many times in church life. People will be welcomed as newcomers,
or have meals delivered to them after surgery, or be thanked publicly for
something they did and they will tell me how hard that was for them, in some
cases excruciatingly hard. And I get it. When parishioners were kind enough to
remember my fifteenth anniversary of service here at COOS last year, I received
many cards and notes. And they were wonderful, but my first instinct, my
deepest reflex, was to close down. I couldn’t
even read those notes at first: it felt overwhelming to me — it was more
than I deserved, more than I could handle. And if that’s the way we are with
other people, how can we even begin to deal with God?
This is a crucial question, because God
comes to us with love that is literally beyond measure. Jesus again and again
reveals a God of infinite generosity. In the Gospel today, not only does he
feed thousands of people, he feeds them until they are full and satisfied and
then there are twelve baskets, and not little picnic baskets -- kophinous is the Greek word, where we
get our word coffin from -- so twelve large baskets of leftovers. And so it goes with Jesus. Whether he is
offering food or forgiveness, healing or acceptance, he holds nothing back, but
gives it away not just abundantly but with divine profligacy. It is stunning,
but people being people, sometimes they just can’t deal with it. When Jesus
helps Peter catch a huge load of fish in Luke 5, for example, a catch so large
that the boat starts to sink, Peter falls to his knees and says, Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful
man.
One of our chief tasks as followers of
Christ, one of our chief tasks as human beings, is to grow in our capacity for
God, to grow in our ability to receive all that God wants to give us. We too
easily project our scarcity mindset onto God. I have had many people tell me
that they are afraid to ask too much of God, but the real problem seems to be
that we ask too little. That would explain this amazing passage from Ephesians,
where Paul prays that these people will have the grace to open up even more to
all that God would give to them: I pray
that you may have 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. That’s a
lot for our frequently unsmiling hearts to take in, a fact which Paul
recognizes. He concludes his prayer: Now
to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far
more than we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ
Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. More than we can ask or
imagine — think about that!
Most of us here have ample food and
adequate financial resources. God can certainly provide for our material needs,
but that is not my primary concern for this congregation. More pressing for our
parish is to experience more fully God’s infinite and unconditional love for
each of us and for every human being. Everything depends on that. The two great
commandments to love God and love others make no sense apart from that, because
we cannot share what we do not have, we cannot give away what we have not
received. But we also cannot force any of this. We are limited creatures, only
able to handle so much love, so much light, so much God. The mystical poet
William Blake wrote in one of his Songs
of Innocence that “we are put on earth a little space that we may learn to
bear the beams of love.” So in that spirit, let me ask: where do you need help
learning to bear those beams? Where do you need help growing in the experience
of God’s love? Maybe you just need to feel more loved, or maybe you need to
feel more forgiven. Perhaps you need emotional or spiritual healing. Maybe you
hunger for more joy or yearn for peace. I’m not going to ask you to do this
later in the week: I love you, but I know most of you won’t do that. So we are
going to pause and do it right now. How would you like to experience God’s love
more in your life? I’ll give you a minute or so, then I will conclude with
prayer.
(Pause)
Let us pray.
Dear God, you want to give us more than
we can ask or even imagine. Please open our hearts, expand our minds, and
inspire our imaginations so that we may grow more and more in the experience of
your love. Help each one of us in the particular ways each one of us needs, so
that we might receive your love more fully and share your love more generously.
We know that you want this even more than we do. So we pray this with
confidence and gratitude, and we do so in the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment