Peace of God

Peace of God

“Jesus doesn’t offer peace of mind. Instead, he offers the peace of reconciliation.”—Diane Roth, “Living the Word,” Christian Century, March 14, 2018, p. 23.

This response by Diane Roth to Lectionary Readings for the Second Sunday in Easter from John 20:19-31 is another wake-up call for us to reconcile with those we are struggling with. Jesus calls us to love that neighbor who is so different, and love our relatives who look at our political scene through a different pair of glasses. This also involves seeing Christ in the most unlovable person we work with, loving those whose belief systems are precisely opposite ours. I could go on for several more pages of examples.

A verse that haunts me often said at the offertory is Matthew 5:23-24, “So when you offer your gift at the altar, if you remember your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first, be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”

Family systems models tell us that we must make every effort to get back into a relationship with any family members from whom we are estranged.

The heart of 12-step recovery is looking at our resentments for others, seeing our part, causing the estrangement from others, making amends, and seeing how we are alike instead of seeing our differences.

These teachings remind us that when we cannot love our neighbor, it is hard to love God, for the God of our understanding also lives in our neighbor, as does God live in us. 

This is an essential message for us to share with spiritual friends. We may not be trained as the person to help our friends reconcile with those with whom they are having difficulty, but we are called to share our experience that reconciliation with our neighbor is a straight pathway to the peace of God.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation are at the heart of our pathways to our relationship with others and our God.

across the divide

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

 

John Updike: Short Easter

John Updike: Short Easter
“The fact that the day is Easter means something to him—something he can neither name nor get out of his mind.” —John Updike, “Short Easter” in The Afterlife and Other Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and The Penguin Group, 1994). Originally published in The New Yorker (3/19/1989).

John Updike wrote one of my favorite short stories about resurrection in The Afterlife and Other Short Stories called “Short Easter,” about a year when Daylight Saving Time begins on Easter Sunday. I first read the story in Volume 2 of Listening for God, a series of short stories selected by Paula Carlson and Peter Hawkins—Carlson then from the Department of English and Hawkins, a professor of Religion and Literature, both at Yale University. The four-part series includes a DVD about the author of each contemporary short story, which can work well in a book group study using literature as an icon to hear and see God.

In “Short Easter,” this high holy day for Christians becomes one hour shorter when the clocks are jumped forward and an hour of sleep is lost. “Church bells rang in the dark.” Updike goes through the day of a well-to-do man named Fogel, who keeps wanting to attend church services on Easter Day, but puts it off until—at the end of the day, he has never gone.

At the story’s end, Fogel wakes up from an afternoon nap “amid that unnatural ache of resurrection, the weight of coming again to life,” and realizes that “although everything in his world is in place, there is something immensely missing.”

This is the moment of clarity that God continuously reveals to us. I regularly need to remind myself and my spiritual friends to be open to that moment, which is often as fearful for us as for Fogel. It is like the fear of the women at the empty tomb on Easter Day. It is resurrection. It always speaks to something more powerful than we can understand. We become aware of some love we cannot understand.

We have put something else in our “God hole,” and whatever it is—prestige, money, marriage, work, family, fame, beauty—it will never fill the emptiness inside us where only the God of love is large enough to live. This is the God who desperately loves us and relentlessly calls us to be part of his and our resurrection in this life and the life to come.

I would love to hear more of your resurrection stories this Easter Season. You can email them to me or put them on Facebook or the website where this blog is posted. joannaseibert.com

women at the empty tomb

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.

He Qi Women Arriving at the Tomb

I remember preparing to present a workshop at the International Community of Hope conference one summer in Texas. Community of Hope began to train those not ordained to be hospital chaplains at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston. The training program is now used worldwide 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. I continue to see it as outstanding preparation and study for anyone called to a ministry involving pastoral care in any form. (Some may believe this may be for all ministries!) 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 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 been the story for many called to the ministry of pastoral care.

They know what it is like to be wounded and be ministered to by other healers. They understand what it is like to be loved and cared for by others. Their only way of sharing, continuing, and keeping that love is to carry what they learned to someone else.

What happens with the myrrh bearers’ visit is something totally unexpected. They go to honor their friend and teacher; 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 visit. We take our most precious possessions, ourselves, our time, and our presence, and make an offering. In return, we always meet the resurrected Christ in so many forms.

Our visits during the pandemic were over Facebook, Zoom, and individual phone calls. In addition, our Daughters of the King, vestry, and clergy called everyone in our parish twice. 

We also offered Community of Hope training on Zoom at St. Mark’s for those interested in using pastoral care in whatever their ministry. We had 33 graduates from all over our diocese now using what they learned in 28 different ministries. We still meet once a month on Zoom to continue our studies and support each other.

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