12-Step Eucharist June 5, 2024 4B Mark 2:23-3:6 Plucking and Eating Grain on the Sabbath, Healing on the Sabbath, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock

4B 12-step Eucharist June 5, 2024, Mark 2:23-3:6, Plucking and Eating Grain on the Sabbath, Healing on the Sabbath

This past Sunday's Gospel comes from a section of Mark's Gospel where Mark gathers a group of stories establishing Jesus' authority—authority to forgive sins (2:1-12), to call a tax collector and eat scandalously with sinners and tax collectors (2:13-17), to permit his disciples not to fast (2:18-22) and tonight, the authority to pluck grain and eat on the Sabbath (2:23-28) and heal on the Sabbath (3:1-6). 1

Many devout Jews found the Torah Sabbath laws too vague and confusing. By Jesus's time, there was a vast body of scribal interpretation that was codified into the Mishnah. 

Some Jewish religious leaders interpreted the Mishnah (rabbinic interpretation of the Torah) almost as authoritative as the Torah, the Law of Moses.

Yet we suspect more is happening here in this argument than simply a debate over obeying the law. By saying, "The Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath" (v. 27), Jesus indicates that the Sabbath is not an end in itself. The Sabbath is a gift from God for the welfare of the people, not for burdensome restrictions. By not working on the Sabbath, we honor God and remember our identity as God's people, but we also have a day of rest with our families. In Deuteronomy, sabbath is also described as a sign of liberation. Taking a sabbath rest is proof that we are no longer enslaved and forced to work without rest (Deut. 5:12-15).

 God gave us the laws to guide us, give us boundaries, and help us become our best selves, but we should not worship the laws. The laws are a gift to us, but they are not God. The spirit of the law should always be love.2  //

Jesus enters the synagogue and meets a man whose hand is withered. "They watched him, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day, that they might accuse him" (v. 2). "They" undoubtedly refers to the Pharisees conducting ongoing surveillance in an attempt to expose Jesus for violating Jewish laws.

 Jesus authoritatively orders the man to stand up before everyone and angrily asks an ironic question: "Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or harm? To save a life or to kill?"  The spirit of the law should always be love.

His critics are silent. (v.4). Jesus judges their hearts to be "hard."

They keep silent, waiting for a more appropriate time to entrap Jesus. Jesus has bested them in argument, so why continue to risk public debate? There's still plenty of time to wait for the opportunity to conspire now with the Herodians to expose Jesus.

Jesus glares around at the Pharisees and is sad because of their hard hearts (verse 5). He asserts his authority by noting how we can pervert so noble a tradition as Sabbath-keeping.

In 12-step work, we would also suspect that Jesus might suggest to his critics, "Clean up your side of the street." The religious authorities see all the problems with everyone else. If only others would listen to them and behave as they think they should. Their hearts are hardened, so they are unaware of looking inside themselves to see and hear that they may be mistaken. They have become worshippers of the law rather than God.

On another occasion, Jesus tells those who criticize and judge the immorality of others, "Better pull that log out of your eye before you attempt to remove the speck in your neighbor's eye."

Finally, if we look at this story through Easter eyes, all that now remains is the resurrection and the story of one who heals and turns his life and will over to the care of God, who continues to heal each of us/ against all odds/ and sets us free/ tonight.3

1William Willimon, Pulpit Resource, April, May, June 2024.

2 Dean Kate Moorehead Carroll, Morning Devotion, May 24, 2024.

3Tom Long, Christian Century, June 3, Ordinary Time (Mark 2:23-3:6), May 9, 2018.

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com

Isaiah's Call, Trinity Sunday, Isaiah 6:1-9, May 26, 2024, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock

Trinity Sunday, The Call, Isaiah 6:1-9, May 26, 2024

 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock

The phone rings in the early morning. Your heart stops beating for a second, and you jump out of your skin. You pretend it is not ringing, /but it continues to ring. You recognize the caller ID. It keeps ringing. You finally pick up. The voice on the other end fires back. “Something has happened.

We need you. For God’s sake, can you come?”//

You walk along the beach as the sun is coming up. Walls of pink clouds streak across the horizon. The constant rhythm of the waves calms your soul. A blue heron lands next to an early morning fisherman looking for a gifted meal from his new friend. A squadron of pelicans silently flies by in precision,/ so close to the breaking gulf waters that their feathers must be getting wet. The lone osprey makes a magnificent dive for his first catch of the day. A pod of dolphins majestically glides in and out of the waves. The calmness, the wildness, and the magnificence of the spectacular morning are overwhelming. You long to sing or write or paint about it. You live out the rest of the day in a way that somehow is true to the marvel you have seen.////

You have great difficulty with someone at work. You don’t understand why she does what she does. She must be incompetent. Then, she becomes sick, and you must do her job. Overnight, you understand her. It is like the phone call ringing at night/ or the early morning sunrise at the Gulf. It is a call, a call to a new relationship, a new way of living and working. When she returns, you want to work together as a team instead of discounting each other.//

In the year that King Uzziah died, or the year John Kennedy, or Robert Kennedy, or Martin Luther King, or someone you deeply loved died, you go to the chapel to pray. You fill your lap with tears and finally cover your face with your hands. If you are not careful, you may hear a voice whisper, “I know you have experienced deep pain. Unfortunately, you now know what pain is like. Whom may I soon send to heal others in pain in this world?” After multiple visits, you reluctantly reply, “Send me.” A voice lovingly reverberates in your ear, “ You are a wounded healer. You are needed. I will be with you.”//

The work we do, our call, is what we are summoned to do in the world. We may think we choose our vocations or callings, but more accurately, they call us. Calls are given, and our lives listen or not listen. We hear all sorts of voices calling us in all directions. Some voices come from inside, and some from outside. Which voices do we listen to? Maybe both.///

For many people, Memorial Day is the unofficial beginning of summer. But this weekend, thousands of volunteers are busy placing American flags on the graves of men and women in National Cemeteries. Tomorrow, all over our country, people will honor and mourn those who died while serving this country. Each of those who died heard the call to go, and they went. What must it be like/ to hear a call/ that will likely/ cost you/ your life?

 I hear MLK again in his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech at the Bishop Charles Mason Church in Memphis as a storm rages outside the night before he is killed. He had awareness that  the call to go was stronger than his fear./ This is the last paragraph of his sermon that night.

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead.

But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.  And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place.

But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.

And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land.

I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.  

And so, I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”1///

There is also a sad game we sometimes play. We go through our high school, college, law, medicine, seminary, or advanced degree yearbook. Buechner2 calls it a game of solitaire. We look at the friends we best knew, remember their dreams, and then recall what they are doing now. More than a few are spending their lives not using their gifts. It is easy to ponder if we also are in that group but are too blind to see.

When we are young, without responsibility,/ where there may be fewer voices, we may better hear our true call. We may better listen to the voice of the silent pelicans or the rising sun, but we may also succumb to the banal voice of mass culture of money and status, and only feel gladness on weekends away from work. We may hear the voice of our Puritan forebears that work is not supposed to be joyful, but is a penance for working through the guilt we accumulate while we are not working!

There are many plays and novels about men and women who realize they have listened to the wrong voices and are engaged in a vocation where they find no pleasure or purpose. They wonder if, instead of choosing status and salary, they could have better supported their family in a calling that was fulfilling with purpose. One such novel is Point of No Return by John Marquand. I disagree with the author’s title, however. The people I work with keep telling me, “It is never too late to change.”

To Isaiah, the voice accompanied by Se/raphs (seh·ruhf)

 said, “Your sins are forgiven. Now, whom shall I send?”/ How do we know that voice? Buechner2 writes that we should go where we most need to go, and where there is the greatest need: Where our deep gladness meets the world’s great need.” What can we do that makes us feel the most joyful and leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true north with a sense of joy and peace? Where does our great joy in living meet the world’s greatest neediness?

How do we know where we are most needed? The world is so full of deep needs,/ grief,/ emptiness,/ fear,/ and pain even before we walk out of our house. I promise it will happen if we stay open and keep our eyes,/ ears,/ and hearts open. The phone will ring, and we will not jump out of our skin as much as we jump into our skin. If we keep our lives open, the right place will find us. Ultimately, our callings should be/ to be Christ in the world. To be Christs with whatever gladness we have in whatever place/ among whatever people we are called to./ That is Christ’s call to us all,/ even before the beginning of creation. And the great promise is that he will be with us, beside us all the way. Christ’s presence may be with us in the love of another friend, or in beauty in Nature like the sunrise or pelicans or dolphins… or maybe like Isaiah, we will be surrounded by six-winged Se/raphs (seh·ruhf) as we become the person God created us to be! ///                 

1 CNN,  Wednesday, April 4, 2018, 10:07 A.M. EDT.

2 Frederick Buechner in “The Calling of Voices,” Secrets in the Dark (HarperSanFrancisco 2006), pp. 35-41.

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com 

Closing Eucharist Mourner's Path, Saint Mark's Little Rock, May 22, 2024

Closing Eucharist Mourner’s Path, St. Mark’s May 22, 2024. John 11:21-27

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

What a journey we have been on. It has been a privilege to spend these eight weeks with these amazingly gifted people, as we learned from each other how to minister to those grieving the death of a significant person in their lives. We have been walking in each other’s shoes, sharing our own loves, losses, and triumphs held up by the prayers of many prayer partners, as you see with you tonight.

We listened and told each other stories of our own loved ones who died. We shared pictures and talked about how we learned to grieve as children. We discussed the physical side of grieving and remembered how tears are helpful and appropriate in grief. We shared how we can live on after death, and how the relationship continues very differently. Finally, we wrote a letter to our loved ones that we will offer on this altar.

We addressed questions about God’s presence in our sadness, tragedy, and loss. It is not unusual that the God of our understanding may seem absent or at some distance. Yet, many have come through this experience with a different and even deeper relationship with God.

Those who grieve each have a different story and are at a different place on this journey. That has been especially beautiful about this group. I think each of you has respected the other and not insisted your neighbor’s journey be like yours. This will be so important as you continue your grief process.

Devote followers of Jesus,/ Mary and Martha, question why he was not there to save the person they loved dearly. We learned how Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus. Our mentor tells us weeping is appropriate. At his own death,/ Jesus asks, “God, where are you?” Jesus reminds us that doubting, arguing, and feeling abandoned are feelings just as Christian as feeling held in God’s arms.

Our faith is built on the resurrection. We know in our minds that our loved ones are experiencing a new life in the resurrection, but a part of our hearts still wants them part of our physical lives here with us. /

We have a rich tradition that tells us about death. Karl Barth, Friedrich Schleiermacher, William Sloane Coffin Jr, and John Claypool preached after close family members died. All these towers of faith are shaken to their roots. As they look for hope, they write profusely and vividly about what does not help in their grieving. One of the universal dead-end theologies for these preachers is the often-quoted phrase/ that the death of someone is God’s will. This is not the God of their understanding, and I know it is not yours. After the death of his son in a tragic car accident in a violent storm when the car went off a bridge into Boston Harbor, William Sloane Coffin preaches, “My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that my son die; as the waves closed over his sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.” /

Lastly, reason and experience tell us a great deal about death. Death is not a period at the end of a sentence, but more like a comma. Some in our group affirmed that loved ones who died are in a new relationship with God and with them. Death changes, but does not destroy our communion with those we love. We shared experiences of knowing the presence of loved ones after they died, our doing things we had never done before because of some presence very near guiding, still caring for us.

I Corinthians (13:8-13) tells us that love never dies. Therefore, we can still experience the love of those who have died. We can also still share with them our love.

 The Hebrew Bible gives us a life-giving description of this experience. As Elijah is about to die, he asks Elisha, his beloved companion, “Tell me what I may do for you before I am taken from you.” Elisha responds, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” You know the story. As Elijah ascends in a whirlwind into heaven, he leaves his mantle or shawl for Elisha as a sign of his spirit. That has often been my experience. Those we love but see no longer have left us a spiritual mantle like your prayer shawl that a past Mourner’s Path participant knitted for you. We wear it, knowing their presence will no longer depend on time and space.

We all have seen that shawl about each of you. I think you have felt it as well. So our prayer today is that we all will continue to feel the mantle of the spirit, the love, the endurance, the humor, the strength, the song of those we love who have died,/ and that we will see and share it as we continue this process of grieving. You will become the vessel holding other family and friends who mourn, supporting and helping them see the shawl each of them is also wearing.

Finally, in the silence of your days to come, may you feel the quiet, loving arms of this group as God silently holds you on your new journey.

Bless each of you as you continue a healing ministry you already have been doing so well. May you continue to heal and hold others as you have healed each of us these last few days. We give thanks and rejoice in your new life as we send you out into this grieving world where you will continue to heal others by listening, as you have learned these eight weeks, listening with the ear of your heart.   

 Joanna Seibert

Jeffrey J. Newlin, “Standing at the Grave,” This Incomplete One, pp. 121-130.   

Gary W. Charles, “The E Prayer,” Journal for Preachers, 47-50, vol. 29, no. 3, Easter 2006.

Prayer 63 In the Evening BCP 833.

Thomas Long, “O Sing to Me of Heaven: Preaching at Funerals,” Journal for Preachers, 21-26, vol. 29, no. 3, Easter 2006.

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/