Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow this Holy Week

 Keep Your Eye On the Sparrow this Holy Week

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So, do not be afraid: you are of more value than many sparrows." —Matthew 10:29-31.

Kathleen Battle. His Eye is on the Sparrow

On June 7, 2017, in the issue of The Christian Century: Thinking Critically, Living Faithfully, Liddy Barlow, executive minister of Christian Associates of Southwest Pennsylvania, was the guest preacher writing about the sparrow text from Matthew. She talks about the lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who chaired the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, giving money to the families of those who died in the terrorist attack using a formula based on each victim's income and earning potential.

The compensation ranged from $250,000 to $7.1 million. Feinberg struggles with this differentiation at the end of the experience, as he listens to the stories of the victims and their families and wonders if one person is twenty-eight times more valuable than another.

Barlow also reminds us of the Civilla Martin poem, "His Eye Is On The Sparrow," which became a Gospel hymn bringing comfort to the African-American Church in our past century.

We will never forget hearing Kathleen Battle sing a Cappella this hymn in a concert with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center. We were in the first-row center, and she was in front of us, a foot away, in this striking dark red-wine velvet dress. Her soul was singing from somewhere deep inside of her.

This, indeed, is a Scripture passage and a hymn about how valuable each of us is to God. People often come for spiritual direction when they do not feel valued by God. So when we talk, I wish I could sing this song like Kathleen Battle and tell them their worth.

Barlow concludes her message by telling us that Feinberg was again consulted in 2007 by the president of Virginia Tech about distributing the compensation to the families of those killed in that mass shooting. His 9/11 experience has changed Feinberg. He now believes in the equality of all life. Therefore, he recommends that all victims, students, and faculty receive the same compensation.

This is the story of how the God of our understanding works tirelessly to teach us the value of our neighbor. Our God desperately loves and values each and every one of us.

 Every morning, I am reminded of this as I watch the white-crowned house sparrows come to the feeder outside my window above my desk.

When fear fills my heart, the sparrows outside my window comfort me.

I still hear Kathleen Battle singing "His Eye Is On The Sparrow/And I Know He's Watching Over You and Me." 

I often sing this hymn many times during the day, especially during Holy Week. These are seven special days to remember the depth of God's love for each of us. 

Joanna. joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Walking Through Holy Week

Re-living the Passion

“I saw the spot Our Lady met thee carrying thy cross. She swooned and fell. I saw where thou didst wash the dusty feet of those who, when the soldiers came to haul thee off to death, took to their well-washed heels.

With a candle in my hand, I climbed the hill on which they nailed thee to a tree, thy tender flesh so rent and torn it was more full of wounds than ever was a dovehouse full of holes. In a round-shaped church of stone where knights kept vigil, I saw thy Holy Sepulchre itself, the very shelf they set thy body on.”—Frederick Buechner in Godric.

Saint Mark’s Little Rock

We are approaching one of the holiest times of the Christian year, appropriately named Holy Week. In preparing for this time, our tradition suggests the sacrament of the reconciliation of a penitent. So today, I share the rough draft of my confession of the ups and downs of my relationship with God, looking through the lens of the Stations of the Cross.

Today, on Palm Sunday, we walk, and we read the Passion Gospel in Luke; on Good Friday, we will hear the Passion Gospel from John.

St. Luke’s North Little Rock

I imagine myself as one of the many players in this extraordinary drama in all the gospel stories. Come with me and see if you also have a part to play. I have been Judas and betrayed Jesus for politics and money. Yet, at the same time, I have also had the privilege for over twenty-two years preparing Christ’s supper. Jesus has washed my feet.

I have sung hymns with him on the way to the mountaintops. I have publicly declared Jesus as my God in front of large groups of people. I have prayed with Christ and fallen asleep, literally or by staying unconscious to the present moment. I have figuratively cut off ears defending him in my zeal.

St. Mary’s Cathedral Memphis

I have been Nicodemus coming to him secretly at night and speaking out for him in ways that would keep me safe. I have given false witness against him by making my plan his plan. I have been Peter and denied my God more than three times. I have spat on him and mocked him with my actions.

I have been Pilate’s wife, receiving dreams telling me God is among us. I have been Pilate and washed my hands of situations when I should have spoken out for what I knew in my heart was wrong.

I have been Barabbas, the freed criminal, and did not have to face the consequences of my sins. I have been privileged to wipe the face of God present in so many others in pain. I have perhaps been Simon of Cyrene and carried another’s cross for brief periods of time.

I have been among the women who followed Jesus from Galilee and looked helplessly at his crucifixion from a distance. I have been the thief on the cross, crying out for God’s mercy in my distress. I have been the other thief on the cross, still trying to tell God what God should do to relieve my pain.

I have been the centurion at Jesus’ death, finally recognizing God in the lives of so many only after they have died. I have been Joseph of Arimathea and found a resting place for Jesus. I have been one of the spice-bearing women at the empty tomb, still looking for God. I have been Mary Magdalene in the garden, searching for God and not recognizing him.

This is an invitation to walk this Holy Week journey again together. I hear there is a surprise ending.

We will never forget the Holy Weeks of the last several years. This week, we will again have an opportunity to walk with God and many others as we have never done before. We pray for those injured in Arkansas, especially in the tornado now and the Holy Week of two years ago.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com   https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Hope Out of Shameful Acts

Hope Out of Shameful Acts

“In the Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone highlights a paradox of the gospel: out of the shameful and humiliating act of crucifixion comes hope.”—Debra J. Mumford, “Living the Word” in The Christian Century (3/14/2018).

We drove through Montgomery, Alabama, a week before opening The National Memorial and Museum for Peace and Justice—better known as the Lynching Memorial and Museum. We think we caught a glimpse of it in the distance. We felt a call that we must return to Montgomery to visit both parts.

Between 1950 and 1877, more than 4400 African American men, women, and children were lynched by being burned alive, hanged, shot, drowned, or beaten to death. The memorial structure at the center of the site is made of more than 800 steel monuments, one for each county in our country where a racial lynching occurred.

The adjacent museum is built on the site of a former warehouse in which enslaved Black people brought in by boat or rails were imprisoned before going to the slave market.

Ironically, James Cone, one of America’s best-known advocates of black theology and liberation theology, died two days after opening this memorial and museum.

In her Good Friday message in The Christian Century, Debra Mumford reminds us how the horrific lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta in August 1955 sparked national outrage. This led Rosa Parks to move from the back to the front of the bus in Montgomery that December. Her arrest began the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott, a groundbreaking event in the civil rights movement.

The Lynching Museum and Memorial, Black Lives Matter Marches, and the Good Friday services in which we will soon participate can remind us of the shameful acts that did and still take place in our world.

We are to remember this on Good Friday and remind each other, especially our spiritual friends, that our hope, our small part, is not unlike that of Rosa Parks. We are to change the world by remembering the cruelty and standing our ground with trembling hearts in love wherever we see social and racial injustice, as has happened so much this past year.

Cone and Mumford remind us that when we talk with spiritual friends, at some point, we are also to remind them that our traditions teach us about great hope that can follow horrendous and unjust tragedies.

This is part of the problematic walk we will soon walk in Holy Week. The hopeful part is that our last president signed into law that lynching was a federal hate crime. The horrendous part is how long it took for this to happen.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/