Celebration of the Life of Dr. Stephen Kahler, July 9, 2025, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church

Funeral Dr. Stephen Kahler Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church July 9, 2025

 Are you seeking someone with exceptional credentials?

Princeton, Duke, UNC, Johns Hopkins, Melbourne! That is Dr. Kahler.

Have you been looking for a physician who has made significant advancements in pediatric care, especially in Arkansas?

 A clinical geneticist on the forefront of newborn screening, calling for early detection of more than 30 life-threatening disorders. Early diagnosis is life-saving for children and gives hope to the families of the affected infants, who usually do not show symptoms until much too late.

A physician committed to research in Autism! // All this is Dr. Kahler

Or have you been looking for a Renaissance man?

A classical pianist, a musician who knows all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas by heart.

A  bird lover.

Someone with a remarkable grasp of math, world geographyand history, classical literature, fluent in seven languages, a lover of opera,/ and a cradle Episcopalian to boot! By now, you should know who this is.

But, these are facts for a resume or obituary, but here are some more personal observations, known only to the people who directly interacted with Steve Kahler./

Karen Frast, the CMO of Children’s Hospital, describes Steve as “A pediatrician who clearly loved what he did/ and had the ability to intertwine the depth of his intelligence with a warm personality/ that put patients and parents at ease.”

We desperately need more Dr. Kahlers.

Kim reminds us that Steve was a physician with the remarkable ability to work with difficult colleagues that no one else could work with. He had the gift to see the best in others./

How does someone do that?

Christians would say that Steve looked for and saw Christ, the God of Love, in others, even when that light of Christ was a small spark.

My experience is that we can more clearly see that light in others when the love and light of Christ dwell within us. I hope you will see, hear, and feel the light of Christ that still shines through Steve in the hymns Kim picked as his favorites. What about our opening hymn, “I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light, In Christ there is no darkness at all. The night and the day are both alike, Shine in my Heart, Lord Jesus?” Of course, Steve selected the communion hymn we will soon sing because Arthur Sullivan wrote it. While you may feel like you are in a chorus of a Gilbert and Sullivan Opera, listen also to the words of this Easter hymn. The music Steve so loved is telling us more about/ his presence today/ in the resurrection, as does the final hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God,” one of his all-time favorites. Listen carefully to all the music in this service. Stay for the postlude, a gift from Steve, as he shares with us how music carries the embodiment of the light of Christ, while Steve, even more brightly, is “shining” now in the resurrected life.//

I only remember one thing from our confirmation. The priest, Cham Canon, told us that when we sing hymns, we would be saying some of the most profound words we would ever speak. Steve’s gift of music calls us to re-member this and carry home with us the light of Christ that is alive and embodied in the music and the words we hear today. //

But, of course, we do miss Steve’s physical presence. What about the love of Christ, the friendship, the love Steve brought to us? The reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans serves as a reminder of where that love lives. Steve is living in the resurrection, yet remains deeply connected to us through the love he shared with each of us in this world./ Nothing, no nothing will separate us from the love of Christ within him that Steve shared with us. His love is still here/ and also in all eternity. Love never dies. Know this in your heart and mind/ as we listen and sing the music Steve left for us today. Let the music and the words be his homily. /

Alas, Steve does leave us one more gift that may explain the profound presence of the light of Christ within him. This is his nourishment from the holy communion, the Eucharist that we also will soon share. We will hear the words of remembrance of Christ’s presence in this world, Christ’s death, his gift of resurrection, and a reminder of the invitation for us to be united, to be connected to Christ’s love that Christ and the Holy Spirit have given us. Steve received the Eucharist weekly and continued to do so until the day before he died. It was his sus/tenance. It was a reminder of Christ’s love in him, in us, in the world, and in the eternal life where Steve now dwells. The people who took communion to Steve each week will testify to how meaningful sharing communion from this altar was to Steve,/ but perhaps even more to those who carried the consecrated bread and wine from this place to his presence. Remember this/ as you come to this same altar today, that so often served the presence of Christ in the bread and the wine to Steve Kahler.//

The final words in this service are, “Let us go forth in the name of Christ.”  We might respond to these words/ as a way to honor Steve‘s life. A reminder of what we are to do with the love of Christ, we learned from him./ Like Steve,/go out from this place as he did/ and look for the love of Christ in each person/ you meet/ today/ and throughout all eternity.

Amen

Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com

12-Step Eucharist, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, July 2, 2025, Independence Day

July 2, 2025, 12-step Eucharist, praying for Enemies.

Matthew 5:43-48 Independence Day, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

We have spent this day in prayer for ourselves, our neighbors, our city, our state, our country, and our world. We have prayed for peace. We also prayed for our enemies, as directed by tonight’s reading from Matthew’s gospel on Independence Day. Praying for others who have harmed us/ or we have harmed is also a significant part of 12-step recovery. As long as we have people we perceive as enemies, we are carrying resentments about people who have harmed us/ or whom we believe are our enemies. We become obsessed with these people and how they have/ or could hurt us. They become our higher power as we spend so much time thinking about how to get even/ or expose them. Therefore, we must forgive them for the sake of our own inner peace of mind. A significant part of forgiveness is praying for those who hurt us or hurt those we love. We must pray until God has changed us. It is not a quick fix. It is painful.

In our forum, we recently studied one of C. S. Lewis’ books in the Narnia series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a favorite among children of all ages. In this story, Eustace is such a difficult young boy that he turns into a dragon. That is what having resentments, sins, defects of character, and enemies can do to us. Eustace the dragon comes to realize who he really is and wants to become a boy again. He tries to take off his dragon skin. He takes it off, but it comes right back on again. Aslan, the Christ figure, says, “Let me undress you.” Aslan does, and it is painful. Eustace again becomes a boy, a much nicer boy,/ most of the time. On our own, it is difficult to rid ourselves of resentments, our defects of character, our sins, and our desire to return evil for evil. We acknowledge our sins,/ then ask God to help us/ ask for forgiveness for those we have harmed/ and for us/ to forgive those who have harmed us.

Take another look at the 12 steps in our service. Look at Steps 6 and 7. Just before thee two steps. we acknowledge our mistakes 4, admit them to someone we trust 5, and then 6, we are ready for God to remove them. We then 7 humbly ask God to remove the defects of character and shortcomings in our lives. It is a process, being ready, and then asking, in which God is deeply involved. We acknowledge our mistakes and then put ourselves in a position for God to change us.// We cannot do it on our own, just as we could not become clean or sober on our own./////

Today, celebrating Independence Day, we give thanks for a British writer who wants us to know the loving God who made us, putting God’s message in a language that children can understand, so we can as well.

Joanna Seibert

12-Step Eucharist Easter 7C John 17:20-26 Being One Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock , AR

Easter 7C John 17:20-26. Being One 12-Step Eucharist

 Saint Mark’s,  June 4, 2025 

The gospel for this last Sunday of Easter between Ascension and Pentecost is always from Jesus’ high priestly prayer the night before he dies. Jesus prays for his disciples and us: “Father, the world does not know you, but I know you.”

Every evening, we channel surf CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and PBS, viewing the world’s news. We peek out from our comfortable chairs to that larger world where the Father sends Jesus and us.

Every evening, details are different, but significant themes recur./ Stocks plunge. Stocks rise. Gunman Opens Fire. Wars./ Wildfires. Floods. Hungry. Homelessness.

A search for peace.

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.. that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have loved them.” ///

We change channels to the headline news story in our private world, where often our anchor newscaster is the Christ within us. 

The best time to hear this private news channel is at night after the lights are out. We lie in the dark, waiting for sleep as we listen to the sound of silence whispering inside of us. It is a time to reflect on our own search for peace and connection, which is our own nightly, high priestly prayer.

We are churchgoers, lovely people. We fight battles well camouflaged. We are snipers rather than bombardiers. Our weapons are more likely chilly silences than hot words. But our wars and disasters are no less real, and the stakes no less high.

We recently celebrated Memorial Day, a day when we remember Americans who have died in wars. Memorial Day began three years after the end of the Civil War in 1868. Ken Burns’s PBS series on the Civil War describes a remarkable scene on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913 when the remnants of the two armies reenact Pickett’s charge. The old Union veterans on the ridge take their places among the rocks. The old Confederate veterans start marching toward them across the field below./ Then something extraordinary happens./ As the older men among the rocks rush down at the older men coming across the field,/ a great cry goes up,/ only instead of doing battle as they had a century earlier,/ this time they throw their arms around each other, embrace, and openly weep./“They become one.”//

As we lie in the dark digesting the daily news of our world, if only we could see what those older men saw as they fell into each other’s arms at Gettysburg. If only we could see the people in the world we are at war with through the lens of the Christ within us and the Christ light within them..////

When we stay together in a Christian community, such as St. Mark’s, even when we disagree, like the veterans of the Civil War, the Father and the Son within us will continue to speak to us, even if we fail to talk to each other. The Father and the Son will not allow us to stay disconnected from someone we meet weekly, pray with, and kneel with before this altar.//

We lie in our beds in the dark. It is still difficult to see ourselves hungry or homeless in our personal newscast.

For you and me, to be at home is staying connected to the Christ within ourselves and our neighbor./That is truly being at peace./ / We do this by living our lives so intricately interwoven with the Christ within our community, within recovery groups, the Christ within this congregation, the Christ within our families, the Christ within our mothers and fathers, the Christ within the homeless in our city, the Christ within our neighbors on Mississippi, the Christ within the people of Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Russia, Syria, Afghanistan, Texas, Florida./ We realize there can be no real peace for any of us until there is real peace for all of us. As we all begin to become one, we experience in ourselves the love between the Father and the Son./ This is the love offered here, especially at this table.

Frederick Buechner, “The News of the Day,” in Secrets in the Dark (2006 HarperSanFrancisco) pp.245-250.

Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com

Easter Vigil Gaiilean Women C Luke, April 24, 2025 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Joanna Seibert

Easter Vigil C Luke 24:1-12 April 24, 2025, Saint Mark’s Galilean Women

Mary reaches for the bag she brought from Galilee holding pilgrim water flasks filled with spices. The most precious spice is cinnamon, more valuable than gold. She brought them for healing and to embellish food,/ but they will use them in the morning for embalming. She searches for the fragrant myrrh and aloe, recently used to anoint Jesus’ feet but now deployed to mask his whole de/com/posing body in the dry, hot, late spring.1 Her tears do not stop. They form tiny round droplets on the oil as she mixes in the dry spices.

Joanna cries even more as she realizes all the spices they brought from Galilee now have a sad, unexpected, completely different purpose. Mary, the mother of James, comforts the younger Galilean women who cannot hide their grief with more silent tears. The women who usually share stories about Jesus’ ministry now work silently,/ for no words can express how they feel. They are comforted only by each other’s presence and their tears.

The day before, a young Roman Guard orders them to stand at a distance from the crucifixion area. Even so, they are among the only witnesses to the horror and ignoble nature of Jesus’ death beyond words. His body is so disfigured that sometimes, they pretend it is not really Jesus./ They very carefully watch to see where his body is placed: unwashed, naked, hair unbrushed, simply wrapped in a linen cloth. //

No one mentions that they are now working on the Sabbath. They all unconsciously know their preparation of spices for Jesus’ body is a liturgy of prayers for the dead. They are on that auto-pilot that allows them to function in acute, raw grief but leaves no room for rational thinking. No one mentions that these are the last of their spices and ointments—the last of their money. No one mentions that there is a large stone to roll away to enter Jesus’ tomb. /Instead, they sit expectantly as dawn approaches.

Mary Magdalene convinces them to leave in the early pre-dawn. “It will be safer if we leave when there is still darkness.” The spices and ointments are heavy, so the women take turns carrying them./ So far, they see no one as the pink and orange sky pro/cesses before the sun.

They reach the tomb. /

The stone has been rolled away! What is going on? The last insult. Someone has removed Jesus’ body. Mary, the mother of James, inches toward the tomb’s entrance, followed closely by the other Galilean women. They are barely inside when they see dazzling light coming from the clothes of two men. Joanna faints into Mary’s arms. All the women drop their faces to the ground and drop the spices as they race back to the entrance. Suddenly, the dazzling men shout out, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. Remember  how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified,/ and on the third  day rise again.”

The startled women all nod their heads with a loud chorus of “Yes, yes, we now remember!” The women are no longer silent. They begin telling all the stories about Jesus they had wanted to say the night before, but Grief could not bear to hear or speak. They excitedly run back to the disciples, presumably hiding out in the upper room. They fling open the door and breathlessly shout, “Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia.”/// But, alas,/ the disciples believe it is an idle tale! ///////////

So take a deep breath./ Open your weary eyes./ Do you have any idea what just happened? We, you and I, are here tonight with Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, and the other Galilean women. At this Easter Vigil, we and these beautiful children are the first to hear that Christ has Risen from the grave. We hear the first Easter sermon from the women.

Should we run out tonight, fling open doors, and tell everyone the Good News? There is a chance they will think we are telling an idle tale. The women’s news is life-changing, life-changing. It is so startling that we may decide to tell our families tonight, sleep on it, and start telling other friends the good news tomorrow at the coffee hour or brunch, the flowering of the cross, or even the Easter egg hunt./

This/ is how the story spreads, from friend to friend, /and we who hear the story first/ are especially obligated to share the good news with those we meet/ in our everyday lives.// And when we do, we will occasionally/ still/ catch a hint in the air/ of the ar/o/mat/ic spices/ the Galilean women/ left behind// at the empty tomb.//// Alleluia, Christ is Risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!!!!!!

 Joanna joannaseibert.com

1Sean Gladding, “Resurrection of the Lord,  Christian Century, p. 30, April 2025.

2Herbert O’Driscoll, “Standing By,” A Greening of Imaginations (Church Publishing 2019). p. 55-58.

Last Epiphany C Transfiguration Experiences

Last Epiphany C Transfiguration Experiences

March 2, 2025, Luke 9:28-36 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock

 My husband’s father develops excruciating back pain. Tests reveal Bob has advanced metastatic cancer to the spine. Our oldest son, Rob, takes a leave of absence from graduate school to move home to care for his grandfather. Six months later, Bob falls and breaks his hip. We can no longer care for him at home and go through assisted living decisions many of you face. Each day presents a new, unfamiliar, often exhausting challenge of ministering to someone we dearly love.//

Today’s disciples in our story also are exhausted, facing one new challenge after another. Jesus sends them to heal the sick, and they return with great success. Jesus takes them for a well-earned respite, but crowds interrupt. The weary disciples beg Jesus to send the crowd away, but what happens—“fish sandwiches” for 5000, maybe 15,000, adding women and children. Next, Jesus cheers them up with alarming news about crosses and that he is going to die, but he will rise again.

Eight days later, the confused disciples are not in shape for mountain climbing even to pray. //

On top of this mountain, Peter, James, and John can’t keep their eyes open as Jesus does all the praying./ Suddenly, an indescribable brightness startles them. Jesus shines like the sun, leaking light everywhere, says Matthew,/ and his clothes, Mark says, become “dazzling white as no earthly bleach could make them.” The three disciples experience the divinity of Jesus./

But they are mystified, dumbfounded by Jesus’ dramatic change in appearance from man to God.1////

We all have had brief mountaintop experiences of seeing God, even when we barely comprehend them, often at Camp Mitchell in the Chapel of Transfiguration./ Yet, truthfully,/ most transfiguration experiences occur below /at the bottom of the mountain, / where we daily work and play,/ where theological bones take on flesh. Flesh becomes divinity. / This is where we see the transfigured Face of God, in places where patients’ appearances change as they return to life from near-fatal illnesses, where addicts and alcoholics find recovery, where we forgive those who have harmed us, and we are forgiven; where we see Jesus, the Christ, in the Face of a homeless man at a traffic stop, or in our neighbor who irritates us. We see someone as a real person. We see Christ in each other.////

Many have also described seeing God’s presence in others in our lifetime.   

Caryll Houselander, the 20th-century English mystic, describes a powerful vision of Christ’s presence in an ordinary underground train journey in London. “I was in a crowded underground train, with all sorts of people crowded together, workers of every description going home at the end of the day. Quite suddenly, I saw with my mind, as vividly as a wonderful picture,/ Christ in them all./ But I saw more; not only was Christ in every one of them,/ living in them,/ dying in them,/ rejoicing in them,/ sorrowing in them—but because He was in them, and because they were here,/ the whole world was here too … all those people who had lived in the past, and all those yet to come.” 2 

Caryll’s revelation is similar to Thomas Merton’s epiphany in Kentucky.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, /that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.” 3 

Merton, a Trappist monk for seventeen years, is on an errand for the monastery on March 18th, 1958. His revelation becomes so famous that Louisville erects a plaque at the site. Ordinary people and popes continue visiting the corner of Fourth and Walnut.

 James Finley describes a similar experience as “having a finger in the pulse of Christ, realizing oneness with God in life itself.” 4

 This experience may be similar to St. Francis’s realization in Nature, where he calls the sun his brother and the moon his sister. Richard Rohr calls it finding our True Self, “our basic and unchangeable identity in God.” 1

Methodists might relate to John Wesley’s experience at 8:45 pm on May 24th, 1738, at a Society meeting in Aldersgate Street when someone reads from Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to Romans, and Wesley says, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” 5

 Pat Murray, beloved Episcopal priest, believes that in reality, Transfiguration occurs all the time, but only at certain moments can we see the likeness of God in each other,/ perhaps most often when we live in the present moment/ or in stressful times where we are experiencing “altitude sickness.” We, humans, seem unable to bear much reality, writes T. S Eliot. It is too incomprehensible to look God in the face/ for any length of time.5 //////

We take turns taking Bob for his many treatments.

 At one visit, Bob is too weak to dress himself after his examination. I see our older son, who looks like his grandfather at an earlier age, / dress Bob, / pull up Bob’s baggy trousers, / tighten his belt/ and lift Bob up to stand. / The young and the older man hug each other./ I witness the look they give to the other; one, the look of loving surrender,/ the other, the look of a loving servant. / They see the Face of God in each other. / They are each transfigured in front of each other at the bottom of the mountain. / “Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human Face that it is almost beyond bearing.6”

We observe Transfiguration again the night Bob dies, as his two grandsons care for him in his final hours. Bob lies in his nursing home bed/ unable to speak/, but his face shines like the sun as he radiantly,/ continuously/ smiles at his two beloved grandsons/ as we sit at the bottom of the mountain/ and he begins his ascent. ////

The Transfiguration reminds us that the Bible is less a book about certainties but instead a continuous parade of stories of encounters with God where people run into God and are changed forever. Faith is more about staying present to what happens in front of us than knowing what it all means.7,8///////

 On the mountain top with Jesus, answers soon come in God’s voice, interrupting Peter and lifting the hairs on the back of his neck.4 “Listen to him.” Listen for dear life. Listen to words of forgiveness and mercy, promises of hope and paradise, words we will soon hear from the cross. We heard this voice before at Jesus’ baptism, “Here is my only begotten son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” Listen on this hill today, but also listen again on another hill when darkness closes in, and all hope seems lost.1////

“When cures and healing are beyond our powers, when the shine on a loved one’s face comes from tears reflected in the fluorescent lights of intensive care, / remember to put ourselves inside THIS story. Listen for the voice urging us to stop, look, and listen for his Voice,/ his Face, his Light./ That voice, that light,/ may be from a friend, a minister, a nurse, a doctor, a stranger. Hold on to that light, no matter how small,/ and it will lead you through the darkness.

When we are overcome with weariness and difficulty, remember to look for the ever-present light in the transfigured Face of God./ Scripture reminds us God was there in the past. We see it today. Remember. Remember. The Beloved, the Son of God, will always, always be there/ beside us/ and shine in the darkness,/ again, and again, and again,/ and the darkness will never,/ ever overcome it.1”

1Heidi Neumark, “Altitude Adjustment” in Christian Century, February 6, 2007, p. 16.

2 Caryll Houselander in A Rocking-Horse Catholic (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 137–139, 140. 

3 Thomas Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. pp. 140-142.

4 James Finley in Christian Meditation: Experiencing God’s Presence.

5Barbara Crafton “Last Epiphany” in The Geranium Farm, February 1, 2008.

6 Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark.

7Barbara Brown Taylor, Always a Guest (Westminster John Knox Press 2020)

8Rt Rev. Dr. Bonnie Anne Perry, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, sermon, 2022.

Joanna Seibert  joannaseibert.com