Constance and her Companions 12 step Eucharist

Constance and her Companions 12 step Eucharist St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

September 6, 2017 5:30

Do any here have Memphis roots or connections? This weekend, specifically on Saturday, churches in Memphis and especially the Cathedral, St. Mary’s, will celebrate the martyrdom of Constance and her Companions./

 It is the summer of 1878, 139 years ago. Memphis is struck with its third epidemic in a decade of yellow fever, the mosquito-borne hemorrhagic viral infection. 30,000 citizens flee in terror. Everyone who can afford to do so packs up their bags and leaves the city and flees away from the river.  200 people are dying each day. 90% of the city contracts yellow fever, 5000 eventually die, and Memphis loses its city charter. A group of Anglican nuns from New England at the cathedral who have only been in the city five years choose to stay and nurse the sick. 4 nuns and 2 priests die. Today, if you go to the altar at St. Mary’s Cathedral you will see their names written on the steps in gold./

As I think of these martyrs, I think of so many who made sacrifices to bring about our new life, our recovery from addiction, people, especially family members, we have harmed that we can only make living amends to, whether they be alive or dead. I think of people who spent hours, hours talking and telling us their stories about recovery and their experience, strength, and hope. I think of people in our past who founded recovery programs before we were born so that we might live. I think of people who daily die without recovery who remind all of us how cunning and baffling this disease, this addiction is. I think of the God of my understanding who so loves all of us that this God becomes human and even dies so that we might really know the depth of God’s love for us and realize in some small way the experience of resurrection…. and that is who we all are. We are all resurrection people. Some of us lived a life with a disease that was becoming a living hell, but somehow, by some mystery, some miracle, we were led by people, many of whom were martyrs, into recovery. We are Easter people. We have been resurrected from the dead. Never forget this. This should be at the top of our gratitude list every day.

Listen carefully/ and as we say our daily prayers of gratitude, we might sometimes hear Constance and her companions and all the martyrs in our lives whispering nearby. “It was all worth it. You are all worth it.”

Joanna                      joannaseibert.com

Take Up your Cross and Follow me

17A Take up your cross Matthew 16:21-28

St. Mark’s September 3, 2017

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

 Our neighbors in Texas engulfed in these unprecedentedflooding disasters from Hurricane Harvey are cross bearing. We send money, we pray. We look back to times of crisis we have experienced in Little Rock trying to remember what that kind of life was like and what we learned.

 18 years ago, Wednesday, June 2, 1999.

All of Little Rock mourns the crash last night of American Flight 1420 from Dallas at the Little Rock airport. During a severe thunderstorm, Tuesday, shortly before midnight, the aircraft skids off the end of runway 4R, crashes into a bank of landing lights and a metal tower/ and lands in a flood plain of the Arkansas River 15 feet below the runway. The steel poles act like a can opener, peeling back the plane's thin shell on its left side, from the captain's controls through the first-class section. Fire engulfs the plane as fuel spills.

The captain and eight passengers have died so far. Five of the dead are from Russellville, one from Havana, Arkansas,

and one from Paragould. Throughout the day Arkansans relive the times they were on that same last flight from Dallas to Little Rock.

One of the dead is Sue Gray, a retired Russellville schoolteacher. Gray, 78, was always doing something at All Saints Episcopal Church -- working the flower garden, teaching Sunday school, embroidering altar linens. She had been on a two-week tour of Britain.

Images of the disabled plane speak to the miracle of the 129 survivors, mostly Arkansans. They are the first to survive a U.S. commercial airplane crash since 1994.   Conversations in this capitol city center around eye witness accounts from survivors.  The stories are a spectrum of human behavior.  One of the first and most haunting reports is by Little Rock native Carla Koen at Children’s Hospital Burn Unit.   As she tries to escape from the burning plane through the hole in its side, she is caught on the jagged edges and becomes trapped hanging by one leg upside down. Other passengers spill out over and on top of her,/ scrambling to get out.  “They poured over me while I was hanging there, but no one stopped to help me,” she cries. “One angry, panicked man even screamed at me as I dangled upside down, ‘Move and get out of my way so I could get out of this wreckage.’ I’ll see his face for the rest of my life,” responds this survivor.

       I as well have been haunted for years by this man. Would I have stopped to help Carla Koen or would I have trampled over her in my panic for safety from the burning plane? I know how I hope I would have acted, but I can’t be certain./  When Carla Koen finally frees her leg and jumps to safety, she soon is caring for two young girls alone and terrified in the adjacent hay field in the driving rain and hail. Erin and Cara Ashcraft, 13 and 10, are on the flight to visit their grandparents in Arkansas. Koen stays with the girls and tries to divert their attention from the disaster, asking where they are from (Flower Mound, Texas), and if the have any pets (yes, a poodle) and if they play any musical instruments (Erin plays the clarinet). Koen comforts Erin who is distraught because her hair, singed by the fire, is falling out in chucks. “I tried to talk to them about life and how we were alive and that was the most important thing,” Koen says,/ adding that the girls helped her as well. “They gave me something else to focus on.”  Koen doesn’t allow the lack of consideration to help her become a “stumbling block”, an obsession to keep her from reaching out to others./

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

More stories surface about 25 members of the Ouachita Baptist University choir returning from a two-week European tour where they had entertained Kosovo refugees in Austria. In the chaos that follows the crash, the singers work again as a team. Barrett Barber, a 19-year-old minister's son, lifts passengers through a hole in the plane above an emergency exit that would not open. Choir member Luke Hollingsworth escapes from the tail section only to go back to help wounded passengers escape. On his own shoulders, the young man carries a woman with a broken pelvis across chest-deep water to safety. Choir director Charles Fuller gets his wife out then goes back into the burning plane to help rescue an 80-year-old man with a broken hip. He is later seen guiding other passengers out of the fuselage onto the wing of the plane.

The acts of heroism don't end even after the young people have gotten survivors off the plane. Rain and huge balls of hail are pelting down on injured passengers lying on the ground. Choir members huddle over them, using their own bodies as human shields against the hail and rain. Young men take off their shirts to form makeshift blankets for the injured. When a physician arrives at the crash site, he tells reporters he is "amazed at the calmness and stoicism that I witnessed." /

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

The heroism does not come without a price. Choir member James Harrison repeatedly runs back into the burning plane to pull passengers to safety. He is overcome by smoke, collapses, and dies. One of the young girls saved by James Harrison also later dies at Children’s Hospital. Rachel Fuller, Harrison’s choir leader’s daughter, is fourteen, a 4.0 honor student and oboe player from Arkadelphia.///

 If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”/ /

Flash forward to June 2004./  5 years after the crash at the dedication of a memorial to honor heroes of flight 1420.

Comments from survivors:

“Having a life and not wasting a day is what this is all about, “says survivor Kelly Williams. Sharon Agnleman, 43, no longer wears a watch.  69-year-old Little Rock native, Nancy Wood says, “We live each day to the fullest.” Vocalist Kristen Maddox was an operatic singer before the crash, but smoke inhalation severely damaged her voice. Her hands were also critically burned. She finds a new life, graduating from nursing school the month before the memorial. She believes that she was led to this new vocation by the compassionate care she received during her many arduous hospital stays by nurses in the burn unit like St. Mark’s own Helen McLennon./

 “Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”//

Move forward to July 2009. /Ten years after the crash.// The Ouachita singers meet to remember the two of their singers who died, Rachel Fuller and James Harrison, and sing the songs that made them a community. Their choir director Charles Fuller talks about how music has the power to touch and heal hearts./

“Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”//

Is Jesus calling us today to give up our life as James Harrison and Rachael Fuller did?  The chances of our ever being in a plane crash are unbelievably slim: 1 in 11 million. We do sometimes meet situations that seem like an airline disaster. A friend or family member dies or is gravely ill or develops cancer or dementia. Our children get into trouble. We lose our job. We cannot meet the house payments. Our spouse leaves us. Our children move away. Today friends and family members lose everything as Houston is flooded./ There is no question that we have been given a cross to bear and it is very heavy and we see no Simon of Cyrene around to carry it for us. We feel like Carla Koen, hanging by one leg up side down dangling out of a burning airplane.//

       But there is more to this gospel than about cross bearing and dying. The disciples missed the message and we often do as well. “And on the third day you will be raised.” We know this is true in the life to come, but does the blessing the resurrection occur today, right now for the cross bearing we are doing today? Resurrection and blessing are written all over flight 1420. Kristin Maddox loses her voice, her career, but sees through her pain and suffering another opportunity to serve as a nurse. Nancy Wood, Kelly Williams, and Sharon Agnleman learn what is really important in life, living one day at a time./

Today 18 years later if you attend a performance of the Arkansas Symphony at Robinson Auditorium, you will see that the oboe principal chair is a memorial to Rachel Fuller. If you go to the burn unit at Children’s Hospital you will learn that the doctor there is being supported by an endowed chair in burn treatment given by Rachel’s parents, Cindy and Charles Fuller. /

 My prayers are that if called to do so, I might become a James Harrison and give up my life for others. But my ability to do this is still in doubt. More realistically I pray that I can be a Carla Koen.  When I feel as if I am hanging by one leg upside down in a burning disaster, my experience tells me, that I will survive. And when I get back on my feet, instead of harboring resentment for the situation and for the people who were not helpful, I pray I can reach out to serve others in similar circumstances. My experience tells me this is the only way healing occurs. Another name for this is /gratitude/. Another name for it is resurrection.

Linda S. Caillouet, “Fleeing survivors trod on entangled woman”, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Thursday, June 3, 1999.

Joanna Seibert, “Flight 1420, A community of Survivors and Servants,” The Living Church, July 11, 1999.

Andrea Harter, “Surviving 1420,” A Four part series, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 23-26, 2000.

Andrea Harter, “Flight 1420 survivors to gather, crash memorial dedication today”, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Tuesday June 1, 2004.

Joanna Seibert              joannaseibert.com

Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame

Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame     August 24, 2017

My husband and three small children came to Arkansas over forty years ago on July 4, 1976, the bicentennial year, to help develop Arkansas Children’s. We were welcomed into Arkansas with fireworks. Actually, my first introduction to Arkansas was as an intern when my husband and I drove from Memphis and back another starry night in June, 1969, when Lilly Peters brought the Philadelphia Orchestra to the hall just down the street. I suspected then I would fall in love with Arkansas.  I have been one of those lucky people who happen to be at the right place at the right time. Having a supportive family, a dear cousin and her husband from my Virginia roots who are here, mentored by Dr. Webster Riggs at Le Bonheur and his wife Sandy who are here, three children who taught me so much, and as Garrison Keillor says, “produced six way above average grandchildren,” two of whom are here, an amazing husband whom I do not deserve, and many supportive friends who are here.  Being on the ground floor ofbuilding Arkansas Children’s was a privilege, and I owe a debt to Bob Fiser, the pediatric chair for bringing us here as he moved pediatrics to Arkansas Children’s. I have had some world class pediatric radiology partners joining me, one of them is here, Dr. Charles James and his wife Laura, and I met some tireless advocates for children like Sharon and John Bale.   As you know, I now have a second career as a writer and an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church. I have served at four churches and am now at St. Mark’s and I thank so many from St. Mark’s who came.  

I learned from medicine to be curious but not to fear illness or death and this has been affirmed in my pastoral ministry. I have nothing but gratitude for my life and only hope I can live up to this amazing honor.

Walking on Water

A Walk in the Water   The Rev. Joanna Seibert

 August 13, 2017 Searcy

14A, Matthew 14:22-33

The story of Peter's brief water excursion appears exclusively in the gospel of Matthew. Mark includes only the story of Jesus walking across the sea and calming the storm. John has an even shorter version.  Luke leaves the story out entirely. The three gospel writers who do tell the story all agree that it follows the feeding of the five thousand, and that Jesus' calming of the storm at sea is a miracle worked only for the disciples--- an unusual occurrence in the New Testament.

There is something so appealing about Peter, brash, passionate, always rushing into things, saying what others are only thinking, doing what others would not dare. It is Peter who asks Jesus to explain his parables, answers Jesus' questions first, understands Jesus' true identity, but fails to understand the cost. Continually Peter is the disciple who takes risks, makes great leaps of faith, stumbles, but keeps brushing himself off and gets up totry again. Like the seed sown on rocky soil, he sprouts rapidly but dies back quickly.  It is easy to love Peter, for he is so much like most of us, full of faith one minute and full of doubt the next. He is real. He wears his heart on his sleeve. What you see is what you get.

But let's get on with our story. After feeding five thousand men, besides women and children, Jesus makes the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him.   Herbert O'Driscoll tells us that Jesus is always pushing the disciples and us toward independence. He is always encouraging initiative, pushing us ahead of him.

While Jesus goes alone to pray, the disciples are caught in a storm. In their distress, Jesus appears to them walking on the turbulent water.

At first the disciples mistake Jesus for a ghost. How frequently do we do the same? Christ is often a shadowy figure. We consistently fail to recognize his over powering presence in our lives.  We allow the Christ we are expecting to dim our vision to the Christ who is standing right beside us.

As Jesus gets closer, Peters says to him, "Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water."  Now this is a strange thing to say. Barbara Brown Taylor believes Peter is testing Jesus. If this is so, why doesn't Peter say, "Lord, if it is you, make this storm stop right now?”  But the test that Peter proposes is: "Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water."  Peter asks to duplicate what Jesus does.  "Teach me to do what you can do. Take away my doubt. Make me have faith."

"Come," Jesus says. So Peter swings his legs over the side of the rocking boat while all the other disciples watch with their hearts pounding in their throats as he places his feet on the surface of the  turbulent water. With the waves crashing against the side of the boat, the wind whipping his hair into his eyes-- Peter puts his feet flat on top of the water, takes a huge trembling gasp, and stands. He takes a few hesitant steps towards Jesus across the heaving surface, like those first steps he took as a toddler. He is doing fine until a gust of wind almost topples him. Peter gets scared, and feels his feet sinking into the black waves below. He goes down like a rock.

Even if you have never tried to walk on water, you know how Peter feels. You are learning to ride a bicycle, and have gained enough speed that suddenly you stop wobbling and start flying.  The wind is in your hair, the scenery is whizzing by, when just as suddenly you lose your confidence. You drop one foot to the ground and the whole adventure comes crashing down on top of you.

Or maybe you are standing up in front of a meeting to say something you passionately believe. At first the words just flow from your mouth, exactly the words you need at right moment, and then you look at all those blank faces staring back at you, and you lose your nerve. Your brain turns to mush.  You quickly sit down, your cheeks burning, your hands sweating, and your heart throbbing in your ears.

"LORD, SAVE ME," Peter cries out, and Jesus does, reaching out his hand, catching him, hauling him out of the cold water like a big, frightened flounder, dragging him over to where the other disciples pull him back into the boat.  And then the awful words: "O man of little faith, why Did You Doubt?" So why don’t we name Peter, doubting Peter, the name Jesus gives him, instead giving Thomasthe name?

These are the same words many of us ask ourselves every day. Why don't I have more faith? Why can't I trust God? Why am I afraid to let go and let God care for me? Why do I doubt? I believe I am in God's hands and they are good hands, but then the person I most love dies. The lonliness goes on and on, I lose faith, and I begin to sink.

I believe that God is present and active in the world, but how do we reconcile all the innocent suffering occurring with heart wrenching regularity around us?/   Believing that bad things will not happen to good people of faith is like/ being in a bullring and thinking that the bull is not going to attack us because we are vegetarians./

Let us suppose this story had been told differently. What if Peter jumps out of the boat with perfect confidence, lands splat/ with both feet flat on the water and smiles across the waves at Jesus, surfing towards him without a moment's hesitation?  What if the other disciples follow suit, piling out of the boat after Peter. All of them, with perfect faith, romp and run on the surf while the storm rages and the wind beats the sails, and lightning splits the dark night above their heads.

This is how Cecil B. DeMille would have written this story. It might even be a better story, but it would not be our story. The truth about us is that we are so like Peter. The truth about us is that we obey and fear, we walk and sink, we believe and doubt. But it is not like we do only one or the other. We do both. Our faith and our doubts are not mutually exclusive; they both exist in us at the same time, buoying us up and bearing us down, giving us courage and feeding our fears, supporting our weight on the wild seas of our lives and sinking us like stones.

Which is why we need Jesus. Which is why we would not be caught dead on the water without him. Our fears and doubts may paralyze us, but this is often the time we STOP/ long enough to catch a glimpse of him beside us in the storm.  We take one step to God and God takes a million steps towards us.

One more point about what Jesus does when we are in the storm?   He gets into the boat with us.  He does not give us directions from offshore by short wave radio. He gets into the boat of life with us.

My image of God when we suffer was given to me by the grandmother of a young patient I visited who was dying.  I remember reluctantly entering the room of that little girl at Children’s Hospital whose body had been disfigured by cancer and its treatment.  She was in constant pain. As I neared her bed, I was overcome almost immediately by her suffering--so unjust, unfair, unreasonable.  Even more overpowering was the presence of her grandmother lying in bed beside her with her huge body embracing this precious, inhuman suffering.  I stood in awe, for I knew I was on holy ground.  I was in the presence of the living God. I will never forget the great gentle arms and body of this grandmother.  She never spoke while I was there.  She was holding and participating in suffering that she could not relieve, but somehow her silent presence was relieving it.  No words could express the magnitude of her love.  I know this is where God is when we suffer, and I think this is where God calls us to be as well.

What does all this mean?  We do not have answers to suffering and doubt--but we are given the promise and the experience of a relationship with a God who hears us and walks beside us. When we are in a storm, Christ comes to us; sometimes in a form we may have difficulty recognizing. He reaches out to us and gets into the boat with us. And every time we step out of the boat, attempting something that seems impossible,  Jesus' hand also will be there to keep us afloat. So... let's go get our feet wet.

    * Barbara Brown Taylor, "Saved by Doubt," pp. 21-26, The Seeds of Heaven, 1990.

    * Herbert O'Driscoll, The Word Among Us, pp. 84-85.

    * Fred Craddock, "Faith and Fear," The Cherry Log Sermons, pp. 31-36.

    * Ralph Groskoph, Worship that Works, 11th Sunday after Pentecost, year A.

Transfiguration 12 step Eucharist

Homily 12 step Eucharist

Feast of Transfiguration, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock AR

August 2, 2017

Welcome to the 12 step Eucharist at St. Mark’s every first Wednesday. To me this Eucharist is a reminder of how the 12 steps are an integral part of the liturgy of our communion service practiced by the people of God for almost two thousand years. For anyone who knows very little about 12 step groups, this liturgy is an introduction to the spirituality of the 12 steps.

I frequently hear in 12 step meetings how the church has failed people in their attempts at recovery. For many, the church could not keep them clean and sober because the God of their understanding in church was a judgmental God, pointing a finger at every wrong doing with promises of hell for all our actions. Those in addiction as well as their families and friends were already in a life of a living hell. They did not have to consider some future event. They were already there.

On the other hand. I knew from the beginning that God loved me and suffered with me daily in my addictions… and that God prayed for and with me for my recovery. I was taught that the story of God and God’s people as revealed from Genesis to Revelation is the story of a God who lives with and beside oppressed people. Those of us in addiction and our families were certainly oppressed by this life style.

The message of the 12 steps came as you know from the Oxford group, a renewal group out of the church. So, from the beginning, the spirituality of the 12 steps has been steeped in a religious foundation.

 However, I could not find recovery in the message I heard at church.  Recovery did not begin until I went to 12 step meetings. The same message is there in both my church and in 12 step groups; what is the difference? Some say we must reach a certain bottom before we hear the message. Some say that churches are for people who are afraid of going to hell, and 12 step groups are for people who have already been there.

Some say people in 12 step groups realize that their spirituality is a life and death matter, and when I speak of life and death, I am talking about a living death, which is what living in addiction is like.

Tonight, we remind ourselves that the message was there in our religious life all along. Just because our church could not initially keep us clean or sober, we should not throw the baby out with the bath water. We are returning to our roots and finding the answer still here, but we can hear and see it now that we have on a new pair of glasses./

Sunday, we will celebrate the feast of the transfiguration, when Jesus reveals himself on a high mountain to three of his disciples as the incarnation of God. Anyone in 12 step recovery can identify immediately with transfiguration, seeing the light, a moment of clarity, seeing the God who has been there all along,/ but we never saw because we were busy making “dwellings” for other idols. Moments of transfiguration happen in our lives when we are transported from our deep sleep to a moment of bright light when we see, feel, taste, and touch God. Transfiguration is about knowing our own true nature, the part of us that is of God,

that part of God that is in others. It is the moment when all else falls away and we are simply of God, and have the desire to turn our life and our will over to the care of God. It is that moment when we let go,/ and let God. Transfiguration is the message and the promise of recovery. Tonight, we gather here to celebrate recovery/ and transfiguration.

Joanna     joannaseibert.com