Walking Through Holy Week

Re-living the Passion

“I saw the spot Our Lady met thee carrying thy cross. She swooned and fell. I saw where thou didst wash the dusty feet of those who, when the soldiers came to haul thee off to death, took to their well-washed heels.

With a candle in my hand, I climbed the hill on which they nailed thee to a tree, thy tender flesh so rent and torn it was more full of wounds than ever was a dovehouse full of holes. In a round-shaped church of stone where knights kept vigil, I saw thy Holy Sepulchre itself, the very shelf they set thy body on.”—Frederick Buechner in Godric.

Saint Mark’s Little Rock

We are approaching one of the holiest times of the Christian year, appropriately named Holy Week. In preparing for this time, our tradition suggests the sacrament of the reconciliation of a penitent. So today, I share the rough draft of my confession of the ups and downs of my relationship with God, looking through the lens of the Stations of the Cross.

Today, on Palm Sunday, we walk, and we read the Passion Gospel in Luke; on Good Friday, we will hear the Passion Gospel from John.

St. Luke’s North Little Rock

I imagine myself as one of the many players in this extraordinary drama in all the gospel stories. Come with me and see if you also have a part to play. I have been Judas and betrayed Jesus for politics and money. Yet, at the same time, I have also had the privilege for over twenty-two years preparing Christ’s supper. Jesus has washed my feet.

I have sung hymns with him on the way to the mountaintops. I have publicly declared Jesus as my God in front of large groups of people. I have prayed with Christ and fallen asleep, literally or by staying unconscious to the present moment. I have figuratively cut off ears defending him in my zeal.

St. Mary’s Cathedral Memphis

I have been Nicodemus coming to him secretly at night and speaking out for him in ways that would keep me safe. I have given false witness against him by making my plan his plan. I have been Peter and denied my God more than three times. I have spat on him and mocked him with my actions.

I have been Pilate’s wife, receiving dreams telling me God is among us. I have been Pilate and washed my hands of situations when I should have spoken out for what I knew in my heart was wrong.

I have been Barabbas, the freed criminal, and did not have to face the consequences of my sins. I have been privileged to wipe the face of God present in so many others in pain. I have perhaps been Simon of Cyrene and carried another’s cross for brief periods of time.

I have been among the women who followed Jesus from Galilee and looked helplessly at his crucifixion from a distance. I have been the thief on the cross, crying out for God’s mercy in my distress. I have been the other thief on the cross, still trying to tell God what God should do to relieve my pain.

I have been the centurion at Jesus’ death, finally recognizing God in the lives of so many only after they have died. I have been Joseph of Arimathea and found a resting place for Jesus. I have been one of the spice-bearing women at the empty tomb, still looking for God. I have been Mary Magdalene in the garden, searching for God and not recognizing him.

This is an invitation to walk this Holy Week journey again together. I hear there is a surprise ending.

We will never forget the Holy Weeks of the last several years. This week, we will again have an opportunity to walk with God and many others as we have never done before. We pray for those injured in Arkansas, especially in the tornado now and the Holy Week of two years ago.

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

Hope Out of Shameful Acts

Hope Out of Shameful Acts

“In the Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone highlights a paradox of the gospel: out of the shameful and humiliating act of crucifixion comes hope.”—Debra J. Mumford, “Living the Word” in The Christian Century (3/14/2018).

We drove through Montgomery, Alabama, a week before opening The National Memorial and Museum for Peace and Justice—better known as the Lynching Memorial and Museum. We think we caught a glimpse of it in the distance. We felt a call that we must return to Montgomery to visit both parts.

Between 1950 and 1877, more than 4400 African American men, women, and children were lynched by being burned alive, hanged, shot, drowned, or beaten to death. The memorial structure at the center of the site is made of more than 800 steel monuments, one for each county in our country where a racial lynching occurred.

The adjacent museum is built on the site of a former warehouse in which enslaved Black people brought in by boat or rails were imprisoned before going to the slave market.

Ironically, James Cone, one of America’s best-known advocates of black theology and liberation theology, died two days after opening this memorial and museum.

In her Good Friday message in The Christian Century, Debra Mumford reminds us how the horrific lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta in August 1955 sparked national outrage. This led Rosa Parks to move from the back to the front of the bus in Montgomery that December. Her arrest began the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott, a groundbreaking event in the civil rights movement.

The Lynching Museum and Memorial, Black Lives Matter Marches, and the Good Friday services in which we will soon participate can remind us of the shameful acts that did and still take place in our world.

We are to remember this on Good Friday and remind each other, especially our spiritual friends, that our hope, our small part, is not unlike that of Rosa Parks. We are to change the world by remembering the cruelty and standing our ground with trembling hearts in love wherever we see social and racial injustice, as has happened so much this past year.

Cone and Mumford remind us that when we talk with spiritual friends, at some point, we are also to remind them that our traditions teach us about great hope that can follow horrendous and unjust tragedies.

This is part of the problematic walk we will soon walk in Holy Week. The hopeful part is that our last president signed into law that lynching was a federal hate crime. The horrendous part is how long it took for this to happen.

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

Parker Palmer: Seeking Sanctuary in Our Own Sacred Spaces

Parker Palmer: Seeking Sanctuary in Our Own Sacred Spaces

“Sanctuary is wherever I find safe space to regain my bearings, reclaim my soul, heal my wounds, and return to the world as a wounded healer. It’s not merely about finding shelter from the storm; it’s about spiritual survival. Today, seeking sanctuary is no more optional for me than church attendance was as a child.”—Parker Palmer, “Seeking Sanctuary in Our Own Sacred Spaces” in “On Being with Krista Tippett” (9/14/2016).

by the mattaponi and york rivers, a sanctuary

Our news has been full of churches, towns, and cities providing sanctuary for new and old immigrants from Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Central and South America, as well as undocumented immigrants facing possible deportation—dreamers, many of whom have been working, living, and raising families in our country for years. They sought a better life for themselves and their families and feared losing everything sacred.

Many who come for spiritual direction seek a sanctuary for their sacred spaces, a chance to revive a spiritual life that once had been vibrant but now may seem lost. They had decided to live boldly and follow a road less traveled, but they have come to a spiritual fork in the road, or perhaps a dead end. They fear they have lost the spiritual life they once had. They are now on a path that seems uncharted.

Our ministry as spiritual friends is to be a sanctuary for the souls of those who seek our trust and guidance, especially when they feel isolated from their connection with God. It can be a lonely time. We must treat this precious part of all people as sacred, that presence of God within each of us that sometimes is nearly undetectable.

We must never lose sight of the privilege or awesomeness of being asked to care for another’s soul, especially at a vulnerable time in their lives. This is a holy trust, a rare chance to make a difference—just as our churches in the past were and will remain places of sanctuary in the future.

The red doors of some of our churches are an ancient sign of sanctuary within. When we meet with a spiritual friend, may we imagine sitting together within the protection of red doors? We are called to relate to other seekers who need sanctuary at this time of their lives—in prayer and in person—remembering that we are all seekers, and we, too, are on an undocumented, uncharted path.

We hope that we will have the courage to stand, sit, sleep, work, eat, and pray beside all who need sanctuary within the red doors of our churches, as well as within our minds and hearts. Sanctuary is vital during this time when so many parts of our being, including our churches, are still in conflict.

We are called to find a place of sanctuary where our soul is renewed, a chair by the window in our home, a bench outside, a bank by a river or ocean.

We are also called to be a sanctuary for those who are homebound, with visits, cards, phone calls, and food.

May we also be ready to give sanctuary to those fleeing their homes in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and our southern neighbors.

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