Nouwen: Crushed Grapes

Nouwen: Crushed Grapes

“Sometimes our sorrow overwhelms us so much that we no longer can believe in joy. Life just seems a cup filled to the brim with war, violence, rejection, loneliness, and endless disappointments. At times like this we need our friends to remind us that crushed grapes can produce tasty wine.” —Henri Nouwen, “April 7” in Bread for the Journey (HarperOne, 1997).

Freeman Playground in Helena ribbon cutting

Our God never promises that we will not experience sorrow or tragedy; but God does promise to be with us through our despair. Out of every Good Friday experience can come a resurrection, an Easter. When we, our friends, or those we come to comfort are in the middle of sorrow and pain, the words we offer are not comforting. We are called at first to be the love of God just by our presence with those who grieve. There are no words sufficient to fix things—only our love and standing with the broken can bring healing life.

As the sorrow of the grieving eases, we can slowly offer this promise of an Easter experience in which crushed grapes turn into wine. For example: some people whose son committed suicide have developed a plan for suicide prevention so that others will not have to go through their experience. I see those who have endured the death of a loved one become the first ones to reach out to others whose loved one has died, sometimes sitting beside them for hours. Parents whose child has been killed in a tragic accident go and build a playground or a trail so that other children will have a safe place to go. A family whose teenage daughter dies in a car accident begins an arts program for teens in public schools, since art made such a difference in their daughter’s life. Participants who develop a friendship in a grief recovery group form a funeral team at their church to care for families before, during, and after the service.

All of us are a product of our wounds. We have a choice. We can learn and work and live through our sorrows, and over time—at some point— may experience another Easter, taste a new wine. Or we can stay isolated and buried in our Good Friday tomb. My experience is that Christ stays there with us as long as it takes, ready to roll away the stone as new life emerges.

Joanna. joannaseibet@me.com

Purchase a copy of A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter from me, joannaseibert@me.com, from Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, or from Amazon.

Myrrh Bearers

Myrrh Bearers

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared.” —Luke 24:1.

One of the myrrh bearers

I am preparing to present a workshop at the International Community of Hope conference this summer in Texas. Community of Hope began out of a need to train those who are not ordained to be hospital chaplains at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston. The training program is now used all over the world for people interested in visiting the sick and homebound. I have been involved in the Community of Hope in our diocese for more than twenty years, and continue to see it as outstanding preparation and study for anyone called to a ministry involving pastoral care. One of the hallmarks of the training is that it is steeped in Benedictine spirituality.

The image of the Community of Hope Chaplains that keeps coming to me is that of the “myrrh bearers,” the women who brought spices to the tomb of Jesus on that early Easter morning. They brought their most precious resources to honor the one who had cared for them. My experience is that this has also been the story for many of those called to the ministry of pastoral care. They know what it is like to be wounded, and they have been ministered to by other healers. They understand what it is like to be loved and cared for by others. Their only way of sharing and continuing and keeping that love is to carry what they have learned to someone else.

What happens with the myrrh bearers’ visit is something totally unexpected. They go to honor their friend and teacher and instead they are promised a new life, a resurrection in this life and the next.

I have never experienced a visit at which I did not receive resurrection. We are touched and healed by those we go to visit. We take our most precious possessions, ourselves, our time, our presence, and make an offering. In return we always meet the resurrected Christ in so many forms.

Joanna. joannaseibet@me.com

Purchase a copy of A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter from me, joannaseibert@me.com, from Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, or from Amazon.

Recognizing God and Angels

Recognizing angels and God

“But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).”

—John 20: 11-17

My mind and my heart are flooded with thoughts about this Easter as I am reading the works of others and have new images from old readings like this one about the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene. Bishop Jake Owensby of Western Louisiana suggests in his Easter blog this year “that Mary Magdalene did not recognize Jesus because “She is looking right at the risen Christ.. and yet she sees nobody. For Mary Magdalene the gardener is a nobody.” Owensby’s theme is that our vocation as people of the resurrection is to “find the risen Christ in every body, no matter what their physical appearance.” Christ is no longer in one body but in each and every one of us. No exceptions.

Frederick Buechner also speaks to this theme in The Faces of Jesus. Buechner writes that “it hardly matters how the body of Jesus came to be missing because in the last analysis what convinced the people that he had risen from the dead was not the absence of his corpse but his living presence.”2

One more insight into Mary Magdalene’s visit to the tomb. Angels speak to her. There is no recognition that this is an awe filled moment. Perhaps she sees and speaks to angels all the time, but if we try to put ourselves into the scene, we may have been more like the other Mary at the annunciation, full of fear or astonishment or wonder. My best guess if I stay in the scene with Mary Magdalene that she may not recognize them as angels. We are reminded one more time about the difficulty in recognizing the Christ in our neighbor as well as the angels in our life who come to guide us at formidable times.

Mary Magdalene must have recognized all this later, as is often our case. Otherwise we would not know her story.

1Jake Owensby, “Every Body is Somebody,” Looking for God in Messy Places, Jakeowensby.com, April 19, 2019.

2 Frederick Buechner “The Cross as the crossroads of eternity and time,” in The Faces of Jesus (Paraclete 2005), p. 87.