28B Hannah and Lending Children 1 Samuel 1:4-20 November 17, 2024, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, AR

28B Hannah and Lending Children 1 Samuel 1:4-20 November 17, 2024, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, AR

 Several months ago, some of us from Saint Mark’s helped perform school physicals at our sister African American Church, Saint Mark Baptist. We thought we would be seeing mostly elementary school children, but instead, we first saw 150 freshmen football players from Arkansas Baptist College vying for 28 scholarships on their team. The young men were from all over the country: Dallas, Detroit, Memphis, Mississippi, California, and a few from Arkansas.

We learned a lot about football and a little bit about them. Playing football was their ticket out of poverty. My husband told one player as he left, “We will see you on Sunday night Football!” His response was, “That’s my dream!.”

We kidded one large player as he came in, “You’re the quarterback!” He replied, “I’m smart enough to be a quarterback! You know linemen need to be smart, too. We watch the moves and know where to go.” I asked one receiver for his secret of catching the football. He answered, “I keep my eye on the ball at all times. Many receivers watch what is happening around them instead and miss the ball.” I will never forget another receiver, one of the few from small-town Arkansas, about three hours away. He seemed depressed. He said, “I miss my family. They are so far away.”/ I asked him, “Tell us about your family.” “There is my mother, two sisters, and a brother. I rarely saw my father growing up. He was in and out of prison. We often didn’t know if we would have food to eat each day. I am dreaming of a better life.”/ /////

Later, young children did come in to our make-shift examining room. Beautiful. Shy. We will especially remember one woman who brought four foster children, which she keeps. Two were obviously look-alike young sisters close in age. They clung to each other,/ sat huddled in the same chair,/ and did not move from each other’s side./ The foster mother works at a grocery store all day,/ picks up the children,/ and starts her next job of feeding and bathing them at night./////

Before we retired from our pediatric specialties, we cared for patients in these circumstances, but not one right after another. We had forgotten what it was like.

We tried to imagine why the four foster children were no longer with their parents. It must be an unbelievable situation to have to give up your child. I think of parents in England during World War II sending their children to the country to avoid bombings in London/ or Jewish children sent by their parents to this country. Of course, we well know that it is possible for them to find new and loving homes. ////

This leads us to the story of Hannah/ as she so bitterly weeps while praying,/ desperately pouring out her heart to God so dramatically/ that Eli thinks she is drunk. Hannah does not offer a sacrifice or ask the priest to intercede. She prays directly to God. Except she does offer a sacrifice. She vows to give up her first-born son to God.  

Fertility for women in that culture was their role in life. Even though Hannah’s husband profoundly loves her, what she wants is a child, preferably a son. Like the Arkansas Baptist College freshmen football players who dream of escaping poverty with a football scholarship, Hannah dreams of changing her situation with her husband, his other wife, and society by having a son.

Hannah, of course, is not alone with infertility difficulties in the Bible. Many Old and New Testament matriarchs share Hannah’s story: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Sampson’s unnamed mother, a Shu/nam/mite Woman who cares for Elisha, and, of course, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Spoiler Alert! Whenever the Bible mentions that a woman is barren, she most probably will soon be having a baby!

Hannah’s Song, which we also hear today, hints at Hannah’s joy after her son is born. She,/ not her husband, names him Samuel and “lends” him to God. The story goes on to say that Hannah comes to Shiloh every year and brings Samuel a little robe. Later she gives birth to three more sons and two daughters./ Samuel goes on to change the structure of Israel by anointing two kings, Saul and David, who finally lead the Israelites to defeat the Philistines. Walter Brueggemann suggests that the Song of Hannah paves the way for a major theme of the Book of Samuel, the “power and willingness of Yahweh to intrude, intervene and invert.” 1

The Song of Hannah is so similar to the Song of Mary which we will hear next month. Both are songs of praise for God and thanksgiving, like none other, from two strong women with miraculous conceptions. Hannah and Mary sing about a God who has turned the world upside down. Both women have sons who do just that as they dramatically change the world of the Israelites. In fact, there is such similarity between the two songs that some believe Mary knew Hannah’s song and spontaneously praised God using words of Scripture that she had “hidden in her heart.”

At the end of this chapter, Hannah uses the word “lent” in our translation when she presents young Samuel to old Eli.// Hannah’s words remind us of Khalil Gibran’s (kuh·leel juh·braan) writing in The Prophet. “Our children are not really ours, but ‘lent’ to us by God.” They are the most important guests we will have in our homes, but they are not ours for the keeping. Gibran compares God to the archer and our job to be a bow, sending our children out into the world as arrows to become the person God created them to be. Listen to Gibran:

“Your children are not your children.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.” 2////

So, as parents and lovers of children, we are called to be the “steady bow.” The steady bow.//////

Of course, we wanted to take home the two sisters at Saint Mark Baptist and ensure all 150 freshmen football players received a scholarship. We remembered that at least one of the foster-care sisters was around five years old, about Samuel’s age, when Hannah lent him to God.

But what could we really do? First, we become aware of the needs of children and their parents right here in our county and in our own state. We read about it, but actually seeing it in person produces an insight like none other.

 Awareness is the first step, and that is where we are. We are keeping those children and young men at St. Mark in our prayers. We can relate more to the children who come to our food pantry./ We can respond to children needing scholarships at Camp Mitchell,/ especially the Dick Johnston Camp for children of incarcerated parents./ We can respond to Free Read,/ giving books to men and women incarcerated at Hawkins./ We can partner more with Saint Mark Baptist in their programs./ We can dream of a time when all children will be loved and cared for./ /

My hope is that we will each be guided to hear a call to make a change for the children and parents of our state and our country.//

We have a responsibility to be a “steady bow” to our own children,/ but we also have a God-given responsibility to be the “steady bow” to the children outside this congregation in the world.

1.  Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel (Interpretation; Louisville; John Knox, 1990), 21.

2 Khalil Gibran “On Children” in The Prophet (1923).

Joanna  joannaseibert.com

All Souls November 2, 2024, Columbarium, noon Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas

All Souls November 2, 2024, Columbarium noon, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

Last Sunday, one of our youth approached me and said, “It has been three years today!” Immediately, I knew he was talking about the death of his grandmother three years ago. I suddenly realized how our youth and children are just as vulnerable to grief as we adults are and may be better at expressing it than we are. I responded by telling him that just mentioning the anniversary of his grandmother’s death was honoring her. His being at the church she loved was honoring her.

Honoring and celebrating the lives of those we love who have died are significant ways of working through grief. We remember their love. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, we hear, “Love never dies.” Their love, which was given to us as a gift from God, is still here. This love never dies. Barkley’s selection for the December Rector’s Book Club is The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. At the memorial service in New York for British victims of the attack on the World Trade Center, British Prime Minister Tony Blair read these closing sentences of Thornton Wilder’s novel. “There is a land of the living,/ and a land of the dead,/ and the bridge is love,/ the only survival, /the only meaning.”

We honor our loved ones who have died by remembering and feeling that love. I told our young friend about today’s workday and the service where Saint Mark’s honors all whose ashes are in this columbarium, including his grandmother.

We still have more ways to honor and celebrate the lives of those in our congregation. Today, we placed flowers on each grave in this columbarium. On Sunday, at the All Saints service, the celebrant at the Eucharist will pray for those at Saint Mark’s who have died in the last year. All the names of those in this columbarium will be read Sunday afternoon at four here in the columbarium, followed by the Faure Requiem by our choir in the church.

There are so many other ways to remember those we loved who died. We write letters and talk to them. We do things with others we once did or planned with our loved ones. We try new things. We tell stories about our loved ones and show pictures, especially to our children. //

“The communion of saints links us with our loved ones who have gone before – and because this union is in Christ, it cannot be broken, even by death. This is a communion at the very deepest level, beyond language, heart speaking to heart.1”

We are here today to honor the life, the love, the support of each member of Saint Mark’s interred here. Love is all we have to contribute to this life that will be lasting. Love is all we will carry with us into the life of the resurrection. Love is the bridge between these two worlds.

Today, we celebrate the love from so many here in Saint Mark’s Columbarium, known and unknown.

1Br. Geoffrey Tristram SSJE Society of St. John the Evangelist

Joanna Seibert  joannaseibert.com

12-Step Eucharist, Edge of Adventure

12-step Eucharist, Mark 9:38-50, 21B October 2, 2024, Images of Sponsorship, Evangelism, Edge of Adventure

We know that the 12 steps have saved our lives, but we, like Jesus’ disciples, see others who are healed by the 12 steps, not working the steps the same way we do. Jesus warns us not to be a stumbling block to any of his children but to be well-seasoned, salty, and at peace with one another. How do we lead others from the edge of this adventure into the adventure of recovery and not be a stumbling block to them? How do we also live totally into the 12 steps, staying immersed in the adventure and not just living superficially on the edge of this adventure?

 The Edge of Adventure is a book by Bruce Larson and Keith Miller in the 90s about the Christian life as an adventure. This book changed my life just as AA did almost 34 years ago./  Recently, I see a metaphor of our 12-step adventure, of intervention, a 12-step call, sponsorship as I watch from a balcony on the Gulf Coast while an evening’s pageant plays out at the water’s edge.

A sleek young couple drives to the beach at sunset with their young daughter. The barefoot darling cannot be more than two as she holds her father’s hand. They walk to the ocean’s edge, but she will go no farther. Her parents coax her to put her tiny feet into the surf, but the little one refuses to get her feet wet. The father goes into the surf, picks out beautiful shells, and places them in her hands, but she still will not budge into the water. It is evident that her parents love the sea, and they want their daughter to experience it. Finally, her parents walk into the surf together, and the daughter plays and runs about the dry sand in front of them.

Just a few feet away, a shirtless grandfather comes to the surf with his grandson, perhaps 4 or 5 years old. The grandfather strokes his white beard, shows the grandson how to bait his hook, and casts a line into the surf for his grandson on the surf’s edge while the grandfather ventures into the salty blue-green ocean just a few feet in front of his grandson. He constantly looks back to check on him. The grandson is less interested in fishing and more interested in the rise and fall of the surf. The young boy playfully goes to the edge of an oncoming wave but awkwardly runs away from the rising surf. He decides the surf is too scary. Then something happens. Either he does not move fast enough, the foaming white breakers come in as a larger wave, or he takes a chance and gets his feet wet. He quickly runs away from the water, but with the next wave, he ventures slightly into the water’s edge. Finally, he stays beside his grandfather, getting more than his feet wet with each wave.//

The young parents try to entice their toddler to the adventure, but she is not ready. The grandfather lets the older child venture alone while the grandfather stays close by. The grandson finally leaves the edge and ventures into the sea. We wonder how often he has been by his grandfather at the gulf’s edge and not gone in. Perhaps as they go deeper into the waves together, the grandfather will give him a life jacket in case he slips and loses his grip on his grandfather’s hand.

This is sponsorship, intervention, the 12th step, and what it is like to share the good news of Alcoholics Anonymous.

We tell our story about this new adventure, as vast as the ocean, something they have never experienced,/ but sometimes they are not ready. They may be too early in their addiction. Their old life is safe, a known quantity. Recovery is an unknown. When we get a hint that they are ready to walk to the edge of this new adventure, we go with them, but we have to let them decide when to go.

As we go with others to the edge of the recovery adventure, we take their hand and slowly go deeper into the salty water. We tell them about a new blue life jacket, the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com

DOK Fall Assembly, Little Rock Arkansas, September 28, 2024, Wisdom

20B Wisdom, DOK Fall Assembly, Little Rock, AR, September 28, 2024     

 Proverbs 31:10-31, Psalm 1, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8, Mark 9:30-37, Christ Church, September 28, 2024.

“But the wisdom from above is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”

We have heard so much wisdom today from Michaelene and so many of you.

All of today’s readings describe the wisdom we seek. The disciples in Mark’s gospel do not understand what Jesus is saying. They have knowledge, but they have not received wisdom. Knowledge is knowing where babies come from. Wisdom knows how to care for and love them. Knowledge is learning the distance between here and New York City. Wisdom knows what to pack for the trip and how to make the journey a pilgrimage.

Knowledge is a warehouse of information, while wisdom uses that knowledge. Wisdom is making sense of facts. Knowledge helps us make a living./Wisdom enables us to make a life.

“Today, the quest for knowledge is pursued at higher speeds with smarter tools, but wisdom is found no more readily than three thousand years ago in the court of King Solomon. Our generation is bloated with information and starved for wisdom.” 1

We hear in Proverbs the wisdom of a capable wife,/ in Psalm 1 the wisdom of trees planted by streams of water, in James the wisdom from above, and in Mark Jesus’ wisdom of welcoming a child.////

One of our favorite television series was Mad Men, a fictionalized story about a New York Madison Avenue advertising agency in the 1960s. We see a world view of the 60s culture through the prism of this agency. Of course, this is a soap opera. A favorite episode is about the checkered, shadowy past life of the lead protagonist in the agency, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, womanizing Don Draper. /In the Army in Korea, he lights a cigarette (everyone constantly smokes in the 60s) and dramatically causes an explosion, killing his commanding officer. He exchanges dog tags and takes the identity of the dead officer, Don Draper. His former self, Dick Whitman, is now dead. I told you it was a soap opera. Eventually, Anna, a Patricia Marquette-lookalike, a polio victim and wife of the real Don Draper, finds him working at a used car dealership and accuses him of impersonating her husband. Anna and Don eventually become close friends as Anna becomes Don’s surrogate mother. Years later, Anna tenderly tells Draper weeks before she dies, “I know everything about you,/ more than anyone else,/ and I still love you.” This is wisdom from above. This is the wisdom Jesus is trying to teach his disciples. The journey to wisdom so often comes from and leads to unconditional love. “I know everything about you,/ more than anyone else,/ and I still love you.” (Proverbs 3:17).

Do you remember times when you were given the wisdom Jesus talks about?/ You suddenly know what to do when you have all the knowledge possible and are still struggling?/ When you feel abandoned and unloved and you hear a tiny glimpse of God’s love./ You are given wisdom to do something you know you could never have thought of on your own./

The first Psalm carries me back to coastal Virginia to a local hospital at my dying grandfather’s bedside. When I hear he has had a stroke, someone I never take advice from tells me to leave my busy medical practice and go home. /

Thoughts flood my mind on the long plane ride home. My grandfather is the most significant person in my growing up years. He owns a jewelry store in my southern hometown of fewer than 5000. I stop by his store every afternoon after school on my way home. He always gives me a nickel to buy an ice cream cone at Riddles’ Drugstore, two stores down.

I spend every Sunday afternoon and evening with my grandparents. We eat the same Sunday dinner: fried chicken, green beans, potato salad, and Mabel’s (my grandparents’ cook) homemade pound cake. After dinner, my grandfather reads the funny papers to me. Then we go to the country to his farm, walking the length of his property by the Mattaponi River, where he teaches me about trees, plants, snakes, and stories about his growing up in the Smoky Mountains. Sometimes, we visit the cemetery where my grandmother’s parents are buried. Back home, we walk from his townhouse for Sunday night church, then home for 7-up floats and the Ed Sullivan Show. I spend the night in their seemingly enormous guest bed and, after breakfast, walk the short nine blocks to school.

My grandfather is my symbol of unconditional love, always there for me, supporting and loving me in good times and bad. Unfortunately, I see him infrequently after leaving my hometown to attend college and medical school. He, however, never forgets me and sends letters every week on his 30-year-old typewriter with intermittent keys that barely print. Every other sentence ends with etc., etc., etc. Each letter contains his experiences away from home in World War I and words of love and encouragement. Always enclosed is a dollar bill. When he suffers this stroke twenty years later, I cannot bear to lose the love I knew was always there. /

I walk into my grandfather’s hospital room for the first time. He sits up, gasps, and there is an immediate look of astonishment on his face. I know he recognizes me even though he never again shows any sign of recognition. Suddenly, I now feel his love and forgiveness. As I sit by his bed and listen to his labored breathing, I feel helpless. All my years of medical practice give no answers. By some miracle, I have my prayer book with me, but of course, I do not have a bible. Suddenly, I remember the joy of hearing my grandfather read the paper to me as a child after Sunday lunch. This child within tells me what to do. Read the Psalms. I hope my grandfather can forgive my reading from the Book of Common Prayer rather than the King James Bible.

Psalm 1

“On his law, they meditate day and night.

They are like trees planted by streams of water,

Which yield their fruit in its season,

And their leaves do not wither.”

 I am embarrassed when personnel come into the room, but that same inner voice tells me this is what my grandfather wants to hear. I know he hears me. We both are totally in the moment as one lies, and the other sits reading the Psalms as we both anticipate our last moments together. This is what I want at my deathbed--to hear the Psalms read by someone who loves me. Once more,  wisdom’s source comes from my sources of unconditional love, which speaks through my inner child within.//

“Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “’Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’”

God constantly sends messages of Jesus’ wisdom from above. We may best hear this wisdom when we are desperate, vulnerable, and more open. Wisdom often comes from suffering, like the pain of birthing a child or the pain of being with a dying loved one. Jesus’ wisdom most often leads to unconditional love and the path to peace. //

Wisdom from on high is often a contradiction or a paradox. The peace that comes with wisdom/ is never the absence of struggle or suffering,/ but always/ comes with the presence/ of love.2

1 April Yamasaki, “Reflections on the Lectionary” in  Christian Century, p. 21, August 5, 2015.

2 Frederick Buechner in Wishful Thinking (HarperOne 1973)

Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com

17B Honoring with our lips, not our hearts, Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation,” Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, 12-step Eucharist September 4, 2024, Saint Mark’s Little Rock Joanna Seibert

17B Honoring with our lips, not our hearts, Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation,” Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, 12-step Eucharist

September 4, 2024, Saint Mark’s Little Rock Joanna Seibert

“This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

If Jesus told a story today about honoring God with our lips but not our hearts, he might share Flannery O’Connor’s last short story, “Revelation.”

The story begins in a southern doctor’s waiting room, where a smug Ruby Turpin surveys and assesses the others seated around her. Next to her is the mother of an overweight, homely daughter, Mary Grace, whose face is blue with acne and is reading a thick blue book. She is home from a school in the north called Wellesley.

Mrs. Turpin feels tremendous self-satisfaction regarding her position in the waiting room and the world. Her caste classification boils down to race and property.

Inevitably, Ruby Turpin’s reflections about her superior position break into a joyful speech, “When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, I just feel like shouting, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!’ It could have been different!... Oh, thank you, Jesus, thank you!”//

 At that moment,/ Mary Grace can no longer tolerate this self-satisfaction and hurls her book, Human Development, at Mrs. Turpin, hitting her over the left eye. Mary Grace then lurches across the waiting room and lunges for Ruby’s throat, yelling, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog!”

Mrs. Turpin finds this comment unsettling and wonders if it may be a message from God ( Mary Grace, Catholic, Holy Mother): “How,” she asks God, “am I both a hog and me? How am I both saved and from hell?”

  Ruby returns home and now questions God out loud. As she contemplates the “message,” she has a vision of the souls of the characters from the waiting room walking up to Heaven. “There were whole companies of the dirt poor, clean for the first time, bands of blacks in white robes, battalions of people she considers freaks and the lowest dregs of society shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession is a tribe of people she recognizes like herself, having always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right...They march behind the others with great dignity and are accountable for good order, common sense, and respectable behavior. They alone sing on key. Yet she can see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues are being burned away.” And all the souls are shouting Hallelujah.

There is, of course, a difference between Mrs. Turpin and the chief priests and elders. When Ruby has “the book thrown at her,” she stops to see if there is a message. The priests never do. Jesus’ message of change is too painful. The Mary Graces of our lives represent “Holy people,” whom we do not see as authority figures since we feel superior to them due to our education, social standing, and race.”

We are here tonight because we all also encountered the holy Mary Graces and listened to them. They are sponsors and those we meet in 12-step groups. Mary Grace can also speak to us from inside of us as well as outside. O’Connor says Mary Grace may not be pretty. Mary Grace was probably not the authority we would ever listen to./ Let us continue to look the Mary Graces in the eye,/ attempt to sit closer to them in the waiting room,/ and, if possible, ask them to tell us a little more about Human Development so that we may continue to sing Hallelujah.

Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com