Easter 7B, John 17:6-19, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, 5 pm, May 12, 2024

Easter 7B, John 17: 6-19

Saint Mark’s 5 pm May 12, 2024

The John’s gospel this last Sunday of the Easter season is part of Jesus’ high priestly prayer to God just before his arrest. He prays on behalf of his disciples and us. “They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” //

Every evening, we surf channels CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS viewing what is happening in the outside world. We peek beyond our isolated world to that larger world where Jesus sends us.

The news details differ every evening, but significant themes recur./  There are always wars. In the Middle East, Ukraine, Africa. People fight for control, power, revenge, and freedom on our streets here at home.

The news always involves some search for peace. Heads of state meet airing old grievances and considering new possibilities for compromise. Muslims sit down with Jews and Christians. Labor sits down with management./

The world is also always hungry. People starve all over the world, and a great majority are children.

That leads to the last recurring theme, homelessness. As a child, we only saw people sleeping in the streets when we visited the Bowery in New York City or the French Quarter in New Orleans. This evening, people sleep on sidewalks all over this country,/ even in well-manicured streets./ Even in Little Rock, they lie in doorways and sit on church steps. They are dispossessed and forgotten./ Home is the place where, if you must go, they will take you in, but these people have no such place anywhere in the world. They have been taken out of the world./

War, the search for peace, hunger, homelessness. Every evening, we recline in our living rooms and watch the same events in our world. What we choose to do about it, where our money goes, who gets our votes, and what issues we support are all important, not just for the world where we have been sent/ but for the world of our own lives.

So, we change channels from the outside world to the headline news story in this our private inner world.

 Buechner believes the best time to view this private news channel is when we turn out the lights and lie in the dark waiting for sleep. It is a time to look at the wars we have engaged in for the last twenty-four hours, or twenty-four years, because we all wage war,/ if only with ourselves. We also search for peace.// For real peace is our nightly/ high priestly prayer. As we lie in the dark, what battles should we no longer fight, and which should we fight more bravely instead of surrendering? We are churchgoers. Nice people. We fight well camouflaged. We are snipers rather than bombardiers. Our weapons are likely chilly silences than hot words. But our wars are no less real, and the stakes no less high.

 “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19). We identify with Paul’s words to the church in Rome as a powerful summation of our private wars. These are the world wars that go on within families and marriages, the wars we wage openly, but more often so hidden that even at the height of the battle, we are hardly aware of what we are doing. These are the wars that go on between parents and children, between people who at one level are friends/ but at another level are adversaries, competitors, strangers/ with a terrible capacity for wounding each other/ deeply, painfully/ because the wounds are invisible and the bleeding is primarily internal. Sometimes, we fight to survive, sometimes to be noticed, let alone be loved. Sniping, skirmishing, defensive maneuvers, subversive aggression  are part of our lives.

 Ken Burn’s television series on the Civil War describes a remarkable scene in the 1913 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg when what is left of the two armies stages a reenactment of Pickett’s charge. The Union veterans on the ridge take their places among the rocks. The Confederate veterans start marching toward them across the field below,/// and 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 half-century earlier, they throw their arms around each other, embrace, and openly weep.///

As we lie in the dark looking back over the daily news of our world, if only we had eyes to see what those older men saw as they fell into each other’s arms on the field at Gettysburg. If only we could see that the people in the world we are at war with/ are less to blame for the bad blood between us than we are./ Often, the very faults we find so unbearable in them are versions of similar faults we are blind to in ourselves./////

Hunger on our private channel, in the literal sense, is unknown to us as a news item. But we do hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our skins. We hunger to be known and understood for all our good and bad times that make us who we are. Being in the world may mean/ we realize we ALL have the same good times and bad times. This truth is why there should be no such thing in all the world as someone who is not our neighbor./ Jesus sends us out into this world not just for our neighbors’ sakes but for our’s. Not helping to feed those who are starving to death is to have some sacred, sanctified part of who we are/ starving to death with them. When we ignore the hungry, we take ourselves out of this world. When we do not give ourselves to our neighbors, starving for what we have in our hearts and souls to nourish them, we take ourselves out of this world.//

 We lie in our beds in the dark.
It is still difficult to see being homeless as a part of our newscast. There is a picture of our children on the bureau. Our clothes hang in the closet. When the weather is bad, we have shelter. When bad things happen to us, we have a place to retreat/ to pull ourselves back together again./

For us, to be homeless, not to belong to this world, is to have homes all over the place but not feel truly at home in any of them. To be really at home is to feel at peace./

 Our lives are so intricately interwoven with our neighbors that there can be no real peace for us until there is real peace for all of us./

This is the truth that sanctifies and makes our world holy, our dealing with wars, hunger, homelessness in our outside world, and the search for peace. This is the truth that sanctifies and makes our daily lives holy, dealing with the wars, hunger, homelessness, in our inner life, and the search for peace./

May our own high priestly prayer tonight be for all of us to find that peace.

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

Ascension Day, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, May 9, 2024

Ascension Day, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’”—Matthew 28:16-20.

 Today, we celebrate the little-known Feast Day of the Ascension of Jesus to Heaven, 40 days after Easter. Barbara Crafton1 describes this as the feast of the “simultaneous presence and absence of Christ.” 

Charles Chatham,2 a former priest at St. Mark’s, reminds us that the New Testament scholar Raymond Brown coined this helpful phrase about the Ascension: “the presence of the absent Jesus.”

There is an absence of the physical body of Christ, but in some mysterious way, he is still with us, inside of us, beside us, and inside our neighbors as well.

Barbara Brown Taylor3 often writes about our wanting to feel the presence of Jesus. We think he is absent. She tells us we should look around us instead of looking up to heaven. Look in our neighbors. Look inside of ourselves. Jesus is still here. Remember how God cared for us in the past. God has never abandoned us.

We know that the Ascension means Jesus took part of the world’s humanity to be forever part of God, the Holy. But Taylor describes the Ascension as if Jesus not only ascended but exploded, with the holiness once concentrated in him alone flying everywhere, far and wide, with the seeds of heaven now sown in all the fields of the earth at that time and in the future. The body of Christ is not somewhere beyond our telescopes but here, beside, and inside of us.

We weekly celebrate this presence in the Eucharist. Christ’s presence is still with us, “always to the end of the age,” Mathew tells us. Jesus also promises that soon, in ten days, we will celebrate the promise of the presence of the Holy Spirit within each of us at the Feast Day of Pentecost.

Both feast days are a mystery.

Kate Alexander4 at Christ Church gives us a prayer attributed to the 16th-century Spanish mystic Carmelite nun Teresa of Avila, which may help explain what so many are trying to tell us:

“God of love, help us to remember

That Christ has no body now on earth but ours,

No hands but ours, no feet but ours.

Ours are the eyes to see the needs of the world.

Ours are the hands with which to bless everyone now.

Ours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good,

Ours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world. Amen.”

1Barbara Crafton, “Almost Daily Email from Geranium Farm,” Ascension, 2004.

2 Charles Chatham, “Presence of the Absent Jesus,” in Thinking Faith #172, 2012.

3Barbara Brown Taylor, “Looking Up to Heaven,” Gospel Medicine, pp. 72-78.

4The Rev. Kate Alexander, Feast of the Ascension, Year B, Christ Church, Little Rock, May 21, 2009.

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

12-Step Eucharist, Feast Day of Phillip and James, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock,May 1, 2024

Saint Philip and Saint James May 1, 2024, 12-step Eucharist,

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock

 We remember two disciples tonight, Phillip and James.

In John’s gospel, Jesus calls Philip after calling Andrew and Peter. Philip, in turn, convinces his friend Nathanael to see Jesus, the Messiah. When Jesus sees a hungry crowd, he asks Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” (John 6:5) Philip’s practical response is, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little” (John 6:7). Later in John’s Gospel, Greeks came to Philip seeking Jesus. At the Last Supper, Philip asks Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied,” which evokes Jesus’ response, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:8, 9).

So, we know Philip is an evangelist, bringing friends such as Nathanael and Greeks to Jesus. Philip is a Greek name, so that Greeks may see him as approachable./  He is from Bethsaida, like Peter and Andrew. Jesus sees Philip as a man who solves practical issues, like feeding a crowd. The feeding of the 5000 is near Bethsaida, so Jesus may think Philip knows where to find food. Phillip may have been a missionary to Asia and martyred in Hierapolis in today’s Turkey. Finally, we know that Philip is a seeker, looking for the way to God through Jesus, even though he still has difficulty at the end of Jesus’ ministry. So, Phillip is an evangelist, practical, perhaps a slow learner, a seeker, and someone others seek out to learn about Jesus.

How about James? There are three James among the followers of Jesus, James the brother of Jesus who is not among the twelve but is the first bishop of Jerusalem, James the son of Zebedee and brother of John, and this James called James the lesser. He may be Matthew’s brother, since they both have a father named Alpheus. James the lesser or younger is mentioned in the Bible five times, but only in a list of names. His mother is one of the women watching Jesus being crucified. Otherwise, nothing is known about him.

So why are these two martyred disciples sharing the same feast day? They are so different. James is quiet, not showy, and stays close to home. Phillip becomes an evangelist, probably teaching practical Christianity to far-away places, and is unafraid to speak up.

To those in recovery, we see two kinds of people who lead others to recovery—those who reach out through their words and those who reach out in faithful, quiet actions. The same is true for those who lead us to Christ. Some attract others because of their actions, and some by their words.  

Ponder today if you are more like Philip or James. Would someone feel safe coming to you to hear about recovery,/or if they wanted to know about Jesus? Are you a safe person to talk to about recovery or being a follower of Jesus? Do we share our life in recovery, or our life as a Christian in our words/or in our actions, or maybe both?

Joanna.  Joannaseibert.com

Easter 3B Resurrection Stories, April 14, 2024, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas

Easter 3B Sunday, April 14, 2024, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

It’s the third Sunday after Easter. The joy of Easter Day is still in our hearts, but we now have 50 days of the Easter Season to reflect on its significance.

The resurrection was not Jesus’ private miracle. It was life-changing for all of us.

“Seeing things as they actually are, usually takes time. No one notices the resurrected Jesus at first sight. Resurrection requires a second look, another glance. It takes time for our eyes to adjust to how life is radically different. Seeing God’s “new thing” is seeing an old thing in a new way/ through a new lens. The miracle of Gospel sight is seeing what has always been there in such a radically new way/ that it becomes a new thing. This is always the work of grace, and we can only handle so much grace at once.” 1

Our best guides to understand this miracle are the gospel resurrection stories. Today, we hear Luke’s story of Jesus’ sudden appearance to the disciples the night of Easter Sunday. He greets them, saying, “Peace be with you.” The disciples are terrified, frightened as if they have seen a ghost. Jesus tells the disciples he is not a ghost. “Look at the scars on my hands and feet. Touch me. Give me something to eat.” He next eats broiled fish. He tells them repentance and forgiveness must now be proclaimed in his name to all nations, reminding the disciples that they are now his witnesses to these things.

 Are there similar occurrences in other resurrection stories?

The disciples on the road to Emmaus,/ Mary Magdalene at the tomb,/ the disciples out fishing also do not recognize Jesus. In today’s story, the disciples do not recognize him until they see the scars on his hands and feet, and he eats something. //

There are at least eight resurrection stories. The resurrected Jesus comes and goes through locked doors, but also does ordinary things like giving fishing tips, cooking meals, eating dinner with his friends. This Easter Season is an excellent time to practice Ignatian meditative practices, putting ourselves into each scene. 

John’s gospel tells us Jesus appears to the disciples the night of Easter Sunday (John 20:24-29), where he breathes on them and gives them the Holy Spirit. Jesus returns the next week when Thomas is present to show him his scars and put his finger in his side. John writes about Jesus’ appearing to seven disciples at the Sea of Galilee, asking Peter to feed His sheep (John 21). Matthew and Paul both describe Jesus’ appearance on a hillside in Galilee (Matthew 28:16-20), possibly to over 500 people (1 Corinthians 15:6). Jesus is later seen by his brother James (1 Corinthians 15:7). And Luke tells us about Jesus’ final appearance giving the Great Commission. (Luke 24:50-52, Acts 1:9-11, Matt 28:18-20). Then Paul encounters Jesus a few years later on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:5, 1 Corinthians 15:8).2 //

How do theologians interpret these resurrection stories?

Henri Nouwen writes, “Through the resurrection, God says to us, ‘You are my beloved children, and my love is everlasting.’ Resurrection is God’s way to reveal that nothing belonging to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God is never lost — not even our mortal bodies.

The resurrection doesn’t answer any of our curious questions about life after death, such as: How will it be or look like? But it does reveal to us that love is stronger than death.” God loved us before we were born, and God will love us after we die. This is a very fundamental truth of our identity. God offers love now in our brief lifetime, where we receive God’s love,/ deepen it,/ grow love,/ and give love away. When we die, our love stays with those we leave behind, but also continues in full communion with God.”3///

How do the resurrection stories tell us how we might also meet the resurrected Jesus?

Each visit by Jesus is a surprise. He speaks love and peace. He calls people by name. He visits ordinary people who are frightened. Jesus is initially not recognized. The scars on his hands and feet are now how the new Christ is known.

The scars symbolize immense pain and suffering. But Jesus uses the scars to comfort his disciples,/ confirm his identity,/ and empower his story as a wounded healer to the disciples/ and us. Jesus’ scars tell a story of refusing violence in favor of peacemaking and returning love in the face of hatred. “If we do not let Christ transform our pain and suffering,/ we most assuredly will spread it,” says Richard Rohr. The transformation of the risen Christ’s pain spreads healing and hope to flow from his wounds to the disciples and now us,/ healing us when we are in pain.4 We can respond to hurt with forgiveness and healing,/ or we can respond to hurt with hurt, spreading the pain. //

The difficulty people have in recognizing Jesus tells us that the presence of the resurrected Jesus is so overwhelming that it is almost impossible initially to believe. Jesus looks different. He looks like an ordinary person, but does extraordinary things. He still has his scars. He still cooks and eats food, but sometimes walks through walls and suddenly appears and disappears.

“We learn from this that risen Christ is apt to come into the very midst of life at its most real and ordinary times. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon,/ not in the throes of a religious daydream,/ but at supper time,/ or walking along a road/ or when we are working,/ or hungry,/ when we are frightened,/ or repeatedly/ if we miss seeing him the first time like Thomas. These are the basics that the stories about Christ’s return have in common: Mary waiting at the empty tomb and suddenly turning around to see someone she thought was the gardener who calls her by name; all the disciples except Thomas hiding out in a locked house, and then Jesus’ coming and standing in the midst; and later, when Thomas returns, his coming again and standing in the midst; Peter taking his boat back after a night at sea, and there on the shore, near a little fire of coals, a familiar figure asking, “Children, have you any fish?;” the two followers at Emmaus who knew him in the breaking of the bread. /He never approaches from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.5

But eventually, we realize that the resurrection is too unknowable in the way we want to know things; the journalistic who-what-when-where/ how we grandchildren of the Enlightenment think truth is discovered. The gospel writers are our guides. They are willing to have their lives changed before they fully understand what is changing them.

Actually, this is the only way life changes. We won’t understand marriage until we’ve been there for a while—maybe not even then. We will not know what having a baby is like until we have one. We don’t even know our profession until we’ve been in it for a while. Nothing in life is obvious immediately. It all grows on us.

This may also be a way to approach resurrection and the presence of the resurrected Jesus in our lives. No, we don’t understand it. We let it grow on us,6 or as we have repeatedly heard from this pulpit, “Resurrection and the presence of Christ is a daily, lived experience.”

1 Kris Rocke and Joel Van Dyke in Geography of Grace, Doing Theology from Below from Daily Quote, InwardOutward/ Church of the Saviour, InwardOutward.org, April 30, 2019.

2Msgr. Charles Pope, Blog, April 9, 2012, blog.adw.org

3 Henri Nouwen in You Are the Beloved (Convergent Books 2017)

4 Josh Scott in “Third Sunday of Easter, April 14, Christian Century, April 2024 p. 25.

5 Frederick Buechner in The Magnificent Defeat

6 Barbara Crafton in Christian Century Website 2012.

 Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com

12 Step Eucharist Resurrection, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, April 3, 2024, 5:30, Wednesday in Easter Week, Luke 24:13-35

12 Step Eucharist  Resurrection, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock,  April 3, 2024, 5:30, Wednesday in Easter Week, Luke 24:13-35

Today is the Wednesday of Easter Week. We hear the story of the disciples meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Our gospel is about opening our eyes to the resurrected life with Jesus. John Sanford tells us that the kingdom of God, or what some might consider heaven, is not only in the afterlife, but also present in this life around and especially within us.1 Many Psalms remind us that heaven is here on this earthly home if we only have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands to care for it.

Bishop Jake Owensby and the writings of Marcus Borg remind us that the “Christian life follows the pattern of resurrection: dying and rising.”2  

Resurrection to a new life occurs in this life, as well as at our physical death. Those in a 12-step group may know more about resurrection than many others. In our addiction, we are living a life of death, death to the person God created us to be, but also a living death for those around us. Our addiction becomes the God of our understanding. Everything begins to center around that addiction to the exclusion of others. If we are traveling, we must carry plenty of hidden alcohol with us, just in case we cannot find enough at our destination. The same is true for food, drugs, and even work. Our homes are filled with secret storage places for drugs, alcohol, or food of our choice. We drink or use to celebrate, and drink or use when things are not going well.

Recovery is resurrection to a new life, a new life where we gradually hear and see heaven on this earth, within us and others, without using mind-altering substances. As we recite these same 12 steps tonight and actually work them and put them into practice, we discover a new God of our understanding, always a God of love. We learn from this God about surrender, forgiveness, and gratitude. We learn about love for our neighbor and love for the person God created us to be. Our addictive substance is no longer the love of our lives.  

At our physical death, the only thing we leave on this earth is that love, the love we give to the earth itself, the love we give to each one we encounter each day, and the love we offer to our family and friends. The only thing we carry with us into the final resurrection to be more connected to the God of love is the same love we shared on this earth. The love we have learned about and shared in our resurrections in this life will never die. Love is a great mystery that we must keep learning about and practicing through these 12 steps every day,/ one day at a time.                

 Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

1 John Sanford in The Kingdom Within

2 Jake Owensby in A Resurrection Shaped Life (Abingdon Press) XIV.