Lent 1B Wilderness Trip

Lent 1B St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, AR

Wilderness Trip Mark 1:9-13

February 18, 2018

 Lent always begins with Jesus sitting in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil, his hair still wet from his baptism by John. As soon as Jesus comes out of the water, the dove that lit on him turns into a guide bird with talons, leading him away from the river, thrusting him into the desert/ while God’s voice still rings in his ears: “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” (Taylor)

Jesus gets this spectacular green light from the commission on ministry at the river/ as the sky opens and the boundary between heaven and earth is removed; but immediately Jesus is presented with these special general ordination examinations he must pass before beginning his ministry.  Amazingly, God does not administer these tests, but the devil does, which points to a strange, almost Job like relationship.

 Jesus also does not wander into the wilderness by mistake. He is led there by his new travel agent, the Holy Spirit, the comforter, our helper in time of need, who guides him not to a quiet three-day silent retreat at a peaceful monastery/ but delivers him instead to the devil, to a forty day canonical examination in the wilderness.  Things keep getting worse.  According to Luke’s gospel, this final exam by Satan takes place at the end of forty days, when Jesus is starving, has run out of his own resources, and might be open to a little help./

What about all this DEVIL talk? Does it make you uncomfortable?  It does me.  Devil talk is red orange, and Episcopalians tend to prefer beige and Brookes Brothers blue. We don’t usually speak about Satan.  Except in reality this devilish figure appears at the very beginning of our faith story cleverly disguised as a serpent tempting Adam and Eve.  You may also recall promises made at your own baptism: “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?  I do.  Do you renounce the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?  I do.”

Well, these are the exact same questions put to Jesus  alone in the desert after his baptism, except his examination is after a 40-day spiritual wilderness experience, and our baptismal examination takes less than 4 minutes while we are dressed to the nines and surrounded by all who love us. So, Lent is our yearly opportunity to stop, rest, renew, and remember our baptismal vows just in case we weren’t conscious or may have spent too brief a time agreeing to them in the first place.

On this Lenten renewal journey, besides reading the gospel of Luke with Episcopalians all over the world, I would like to recommend two other entertaining books by CS Lewis as we discern more about how evil works in our lives. (Busch)   The first is The Great Divorce, Lewis’ classic about why people in Hell stay there.  A busload of the damned go on a holiday excursion to the outskirts of Heaven and are warmly invited in. But even after experiencing Hell, they continue their same self-centered reasoning, reject the peace offered by angels, and with one exception return to the bus. My favorite passenger on the tour bus is the bishop who must return to hell because he is scheduled to give a lecture or sermon there on the meaning of God.

The Screwtape Letters is a series of correspondence from the devil, Screwtape, who sends diabolical advice to his nephew, Wormwood, assigned to negotiating/ into the infernal regions a young man, known only as the Patient, who  devilishly, daily is presented with mundane and spectacular temptations. /

 Typically, Mark, our minimalist, gives few details about Jesus’ own encounter with Screwtape so we go to the recent readings in Luke, our gospel Lenten study, to learn more about what happens in the wilderness. This is the devil’s examination: First he tempts Jesus to perform miracles to take care of his own needs: Command these stones to become loaves of bread. Next, he tempts Jesus to call on God for special protection: Throw yourself down from the temple. Finally, he tempts Jesus to take control of all the kingdoms of the world: All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.

All along, the devil suggests that Jesus deserves better than what God is giving him. If God cannot do better than this for his son, /maybe Jesus should start shopping around for another father. Jesus is tempted to rise above the helplessness of the human condition and seize power, something better for himself—to make himself a full Monty breakfast; to whistle up some angel bodyguards and start planning the largest and  most spectacular inauguration ever, as president of the world. After all, wasn’t he just recently told he is “the beloved son of God.”/

 Jesus is modelling for us how to discover what being the “beloved son of God” really means./

  At this first rest and renewal stop on our Lenten pilgrimage, Jesus gives us the answer straight away. Jesus proves who he is,/ NOT by seizing power, but by turning it down. God’s Beloved will not perform miracles for his own use. He will not ask for special protection. He will remain human, accepting all the usual risks. Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that a Son of God is someone who listens to every good reason in the world/ for becoming God’s rival/ but instead remains God’s SERVANT.

Those  who practice contemplative or centering prayer will recognize that as Luke describes the temptations, Jesus never  dialogues with the devil. “Instead of being trapped  in a noisy commentary with the thoughts that Satan puts in his head, Jesus quotes lines from scripture.”  (Laird) This is similar to the prayer word used in centering prayer that refocuses the pray-er from  distractions.  When we are approached by temptations, distractions, Jesus’ example is not to engage with them, but instead “look over temptation’s shoulder” and re-center with a prayer word. Martin Laird calls us to keep a prayer word with us which is “an anchor in the storm and a bulldozer gently “excavating the present moment.” Great idea! While we read Luke and Acts this Lent and Easter, look for a word or phrase that can be a prayer word against temptation and evil. //

 St. Mark’s Sabbath theme this year is Remember, Rest, and Renew. During these  40 days as we try to rest and listen to the Spirit within us, how will  we recognize evil and temptation interfering with our renewal? I am  reminded of that powerful line by Kevin Spacey in the movie, The Usual Suspects: “Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the devil is to make us believe that he does not exist.”  

My experience  is that  evil does not show up with horns and a tail, wearing red tights. The Prince of Darkness is the grand force of subtlety, reasonable, charming and convincing.  That dark power in my head says, “If you are a child of God, shouldn’t life be going a little smoother?” This is my favorite: “Are you the only one working today/ while every one else is sitting around eating bonbons?”/

The tempter in Eden and in the desert does not ask, “Do you wish to be as the devil?” but suggests, “Do you wish to be as God?” There is no mention of the debauchery associated with temptation. No self-respecting Satan would approach a person with offers of personal, social and professional RUIN. That is in the small print at the bottom of the temptation. (Craddock)

We also think that the evil one’s greatest temptations are the sensational ones:  sex, money, drugs, alcohol, gambling—the fluorescent temptations. Not true. The work of Screwtape is accomplished in the mundane, day-to-day, small decisions that harden the human heart. The real work of evil is in the small resentments we cling to, in the raised eyebrow, in the snort of contempt. It is in the relative or co-worker or  friend we refuse to forgive. It is our self-righteous attitude about those different from us. It is our refusal to forgive those who have harmed us. It is in the hatred we think we disguise behind a well-mannered look. It is in our blindness to the human needs and suffering of others---that is where the real devil’s work is done, in the normal activities of our daily lives. (Busch)///

We are invited today to retrace this desert journey which Jesus also took/ to become acquainted with our own humanity, to begin to know when we are living in self will and when we are living in God’s will.

Today we are invited to take Jesus’ same journey into the desert of our soul./ The struggle against evil in the world begins within OURSELVES./// But this gospel makes promises about this renewal journey:  we are guided by the Holy Spirit, we have the journal of one who took this Outward Bound trip of the soul 2000 years ago, and we are told we will be ministered to, waited on, by angels and even wild beasts.  We go in with one guarantee. When we journey into our wilderness to rest and renew,/  we will learn about places where we desperately need healing and forgiveness,/ and we will always meet Someone we never expected to be there at that bus stop in the middle of nowhere. We will always stumble on to Jesus/ who has already been there/ and who is waiting there/ to welcome us/ and carry / all the baggage we brought with us.

Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Wilderness Exam,” Bread of Angels, p.36-40, 1997.

Kenneth S.B. Campbell, “In My End Is my Beginning,” Homily from Church of the Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, 2002.

Glenn E. Busch, “Talking to the Devil,” Preaching Through the Year of Mark, p.21-24, 1999.

Laurence Hull Stookey, “Lent 1, Year B, Tuesday Morning, January-March 2003.

Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land, A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation, pp 69. 123-125.

Fred Craddock, “Test Run,” Christian Century, p. 21, February 22, 2003.

joanna  joannaseibert.com

Last Epiphany B

Last Epiphany B

February 11, 2018 New Beginnings Church, North Little Rock, Arkansas

Mark 9:2-9

 My husband’s father, Bob, calls. He is experiencing excruciating back pain and can barely walk. My husband and daughter are in Greece. I get off the phone and seek the advice of colleagues who perform tests, and then I go with Bob to a specialist. As I impatiently and nervously wait, a lone older woman in the waiting room briefly reminds me of all those who do not have friends or family to call and must wait for long hours in emergency rooms in pain before answers come./

 The specialist says that my father-in- law has advanced metastatic cancer to the spine. The medical team starts Bob on a trial protocol. Two days later on my way home from church, I realize the hospital has been paging me. My father-in-law is in intensive care and has had a reaction to the new drug. My husband and daughter rush home from Greece. Bob is put back on a more standard treatment for his cancer. Our oldest son, Rob, takes a leave of absence from graduate school and moves back home to help care for his grandfather. Six months later Bob falls and breaks his hip. We can no longer care for him at home and go through all the decisions of nursing homes and assisted living that many of you have faced. Each day presents a new unfamiliar, often exhausting challenge of how to minister to someone we so dearly loved.//

The disciples in our story today also have faced one new challenge after another. They are exhausted by the nonstop demands of the crowds. Recently they were sent off  to cure and heal the sick. They have an amazing run of success and return to tell Jesus all about it. But when he takes them for a well-earned respite, more crowds interrupt them. The weary disciples beg Jesus to send the crowd away, but we all know what happens next—"fish sandwiches” for 5000, or probably 15,000 if we add in the women and children.

The next day  doesn’t feel much like a vacation either because Jesus starts telling them about his upcoming  suffering and death, something they might expect as well. We can’t blame them for missing the rising part on the third day. Heidi Neumark says, “when you think you are heading for the dungeon, anxiety and panic tend to block out everything else.”1

Eight days later they are still in no shape for mountain climbing, even to pray as Luke’s gospel mentions prayer as the reason for this ascent up this steep mountain for Jesus, Peter, James, and John. You know the disciples are wondering what is so special about praying on top of this mountain?/

 If I am honest, on most days, attempts to pray/ are a steep uphill climb on weary legs. If I make it, it is only thanks to my many faithful companions beside me in community,/ as it must be for yourselves, those who are  part of this faithful community  at New Beginnings, as well as  the communion of saints, past and present, that support all of us and pray with and for us.//

On top of the mountain, Jesus is doing all the praying. Peter, James, and John can’t keep their eyes open, according to Luke’ account, which connects the disciples’ humanness on the mountain of transfiguration and their inability to stay awake later at  Mount of Olives. Suddenly, just as sleep is about it overcomes the three, a brightness startles them. Their eyes open wide. Jesus, who must have reached the summit  slightly before them, now shines with a brightness they have never seen. His clothes become “dazzling white as no bleach on earth could make them.” I can’t resist saying,  maybe 1000 times brighter than the recent Tide commercials for the Superbowl!/  The disciples have an unforgettable experience of seeing the divinity of Jesus./ They also see two other figures as well talking to Jesus. Mark identifies the two men as Moses and Elijah who  speak in Luke’s account to Jesus about his departure that will be accomplished in Jerusalem. “The word departure comes from the Greek word for exodus, referring not only to the trip down the mountain and into Jerusalem, but also to Jesus’ death.1” Moses’ presence brings to mind the exodus of the Jewish people through the Red Sea from Egypt, and suggests that now Jesus will accomplish a second exodus, leading God’s people safely through the waters of death to resurrection, as Moses had parted the Red Sea and lead his people safety to the promised land./

But this dramatic change in appearance from man to God,/ is lost on the three disciples. They are terrified.  Peter expresses the confusion of his stunned companions by suggesting that they arrange to stay on the mountaintop, make dwellings or monuments to all three even though they still may have a partial awareness of Jesus’ real divinity.1///

On tops of a mountain we see the world differently. In the Hebrew Bible mountain summits are stages for crucial events. Noah lands on Mount Ararat. Abraham nearly kills  his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah. God gives Moses the ten commandments on Mount Sinai, and today we hear about the transfiguration of Jesus on an unnamed mountain.2

We all have had those mountaintop experiences of seeing God in our lives, even if it is through a glass darkly./ Yet, truthfully,/ most of our transfiguration experiences occur below /at the bottom of the mountain, / where we daily work and play, /where theological bones take on flesh, and flesh becomes divinity, / That is where we will most see the transfigured face of God.. in places where premature babies are born and thrive, where loved ones and patients’ appearance change as they return to life from near fatal illnesses, where addicts and alcoholics find recovery, where we forgive those who have harmed us, and we are forgiven; where we forgive those who have not accepted us as  the gender God created us to be, where we see God in the face of a homeless man or woman at a traffic stop, or in our neighbor who irritates us, or in the slow and tired checker at our local grocery/, times where for a brief moment/ we see as a real person, we see Christ in one another.

A priest friend, Pat Murray, believes that perhaps Jesus, God, is transformed all the time, but only at certain times can we see the likeness God in each other, perhaps most often when we live in the present moment and in difficult times when we are experiencing “altitude sickness.”   ///

We all take turns taking Bob for his many treatments. As I look about the crowded waiting rooms, again for a brief moment I think of the very ill who do not have family to support them. How do they get here? How do they survive and keep coming back?/

 At one visit, Bob is too weak to dress himself after his examination. I see our son, who looks so much like his grandfather at an earlier age, / dress Bob, / pull up Bob’s baggy trousers, / tighten his belt/ and lift Bob up to stand. / The young and the old man hug each other./ I see the look they give to the other; one, the look of loving surrender, the other, the look of a loving servant. / They see the face of God in each other. / They each are transfigured in front of each other at the bottom of the mountaintop. /

Transfiguration also occurs the night Bob dies as he is cared for this last time by both of his grandsons. Bob lies in his nursing home bed/ unable to speak/ but his face shines like the sun as he radiantly,/ continuously/ smiles at his two grandsons he so dearly loves/ as we sit at the bottom of the mountain and he  begins his ascent. /

Today, if we listen carefully, we can still hear the voice that interrupts Peter: “Listen to him,” we are told. Listen for dear life. Listen to words of forgiveness and mercy, promises of paradise, words we will too soon hear from the cross. Listen without ceasing, on the edge of glory/ and on the brink of death.  We have heard this voice before at his baptism, “Here is my only begotten son with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” Listen on this hill, but also listen later on another hill when darkness closes in.1////

“When cures and healing are beyond our powers, when the shine on a loved one’s face comes from tears reflected in the fluorescent lights of intensive care, / on such days remember to put yourself inside this very story, listening for the voice that urges us to stop and listen for his Voice.  When you are overcome with weariness and difficulty, remember to look for the transfigured  face of God in all those you will meet/for the Beloved, the Son of God, the son of Man, will always be there beside us and will  shine in the darkness,/ and the darkness will never,/ ever overcome it.1”

1Heidi, Neumark, “Altitude Adjustment,” Christian Century, p. 16, February 6, 2007.

2Thomas Jay Oord, Christian Century,  January 17, 2017.

Joanna Seibert  joannaseibert.com

12 step Eucharist Sam Shoemaker

 12 Step Eucharist St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Sam Shoemaker January 31

Do you ever wonder where the 12 steps we will be repeating tonight came from? Listen to this story.

 Let’s take a time travel trip back to Calvary Episcopal  Church New York, City 1934.

The Rev. Dr. Sam Shoemaker has been rector of Calvary, for 10 years. He has developed Calvary House, a hostel and center for ministry and small groups in the city. He also runs Calvary Rescue Mission, a place for the “down and out” to get a meal and rest. Bill Wilson, an alcoholic New York stockbroker, visits there during his last days of drinking. Bill is influenced by Ebby Thacher, a friend who has become sober through a spiritual program called the Oxford Group led by Sam Shoemaker while Ebby meets at Calvary House.

We time travel to one year later, 1935,  Bill Wilson becomes sober and spends more time with Sam Shoemaker in his book-lined office talking with Shoemaker and attending Oxford Group meetings as well as visiting  at Calvary Mission and Calvary House. Dr. Shoemaker sends Bill a letter when he is 60 days sober thanking him for his help getting a chemistry professor sober.

 Later Bill Wilson  says, “Every river has a wellspring at its source. AA is like that. In the beginning  there was a spring which poured out of a clergyman, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker. He channeled to the few of us who then saw and heard him.. the loving concern, the Grace.. to walk in the Consciousness of God- to live and to love again, as never before. 4 Dr. Sam Shoemaker was one of AA’s indispensables. Had it not been for his ministry to us in our early time, our Fellowship would not be in existence today. Sam Shoemaker passed on the spiritual keys by which we were liberated. He was a co-founder of AA.”  The first three Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous were inspired in part by Shoemaker. “The early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in American, and no one else.” I am  quoting Bill Wilson directly.

So, Dr. Shoemaker provided a refuge for alcoholics in New York and directly influenced the Twelve Steps through his long and close friendship with Bill Wilson. 1.2,3

You have heard from Bill Wilson. Now here are the words Sam Shoemaker later said.

“I believe the church has a great deal to learn; not from any individual member of AA, but from the incredible collective experience of AA. I pray to God that what is happening pretty steadily and consistently throughout the fellowship could happen in every church. The AA fellowship is made up of people who are beginning to be changed, not saints, and not perfect. We in the church can all learn by this example and if we think we’re above it we are in real danger.”5/

Last Wednesday and every January 31, the Episcopal Church remembers the ministry of this Episcopal  priest in New York City who saved and changed the life of so many people at this service today.  One of my most spiritual moments was attending an AA meeting  seven years ago in Sam Shoemaker’s office at Calvary.

Perhaps you have seen an Episcopal presence in AA, but even more, perhaps you can see that Sam Shoemaker transmitted to AA a message, that it is all about love.. the same message we hope to transmit at this church and at this Eucharist.

1.Dick B, “Calvary House and the Oxford Group,”  The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous, A Design for Living that Works, p. 114.

2“A Biography of Sam Shoemaker,” AlcoholicAnonymous.org.

3“AA Tributes ,Samuel Shoemaker, ‘Co-founder’ of AA,” Dickb.com

4Karen Plavan, “A Talk on Samuel Moor Shoemaker,” Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburg, January 31, 2010

5 Michael Fitzpatrick, “Rev Sam Shoemaker, His Role in Early AA Part 11,” Recoveryspeakers.com

Joanna Seibert

Epiphany 4B The Unclean Spirit

Epiphany 4B Mark 1:21-28 The unclean spirit, Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Gulf Shores, Alabama January 28, 2018

My friend John begins experimenting with drugs and alcohol in his twenties when he is a surgery resident. He begins very scientifically as a curiosity about how his patients feel with their pre-op medications. John immediately knows he feels good, very good, especially with the opiates. He is conscious that what he is doing is wrong, he feels guilty, but he becomes powerless over this “unclean spirit,” so similar to those beautiful but dangerous Sirens in Greek mythology whose enchanting musical voices cause sailors to be shipwrecked. Indeed, his life soon is a shipwreck. John loses his job, his marriage, and his medical license. He is depressed, feels unlovable. His mother rejects him. He spends a few days in the hospital but does not go to treatment.  He goes to a few AA meetings, only going through the motions.  He rejected a belief in God after his father died. Why would a loving God allow a good man like his father to die and keep alive a bad person like himself?

John applies for a psychiatry residency in New York and is accepted with the understanding that he goes regularly to an analyst. He finishes his residency and works again in medicine as a psychiatrist, using his great gift of charm, but soon he experiments again, this time with beer, pot, and codeine. With codeine, he knows euphoria as he has never known before. Codeine and alcohol cover up all his feelings of inadequacy. His addiction, his unclean spirit grows like Topsey. For the second time he loses his job, his license, and all his money. He learns about a treatment center in Little Rock. The founder is a black man, Joe McQuany, world renowned for recognizing and calling out “unclean spirits.”

The “unclean spirit” eventually does come out of John convulsing and crying in a loud voice. John describes that experience as becoming humble, so humble he can listen and follow someone else’s direction. He still cannot believe in God, but as CS Lewis and Joe teach him, he “acts as if.” He says his prayers, works the 12 steps. He acts as if there is something greater in his life, and slowly and surely this God of his understanding fills the hole in his heart previously occupied by the “unclean spirit.” He knows he can only become clean and sober with the help of God and a recovery community, for he has tried everything else to stop his addiction, and nothing he could do on his own worked. John goes to three AA meetings a day for a year. These meetings begin with a prayer presumably written by Reinhold Niebuhr that begins, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” The meeting ends with the Lord’s Prayer: “thy will be done, give us this day our daily bread, forgive us as we forgive, deliver us.”1

 John moves to a half-way house and earns money re-upholstering chairs. Friends in recovery help him find another job in medicine.  He is on probation for his medical license for twenty years. That means he has to have papers signed at several meetings a week and has drug screens for 20 years. He now works helping others with their “unclean spirit” of addiction, marries an amazing woman in recovery, and they are hopelessly in love after 20 years.

We often talk about why he is in recovery and the great majority (90%) are still living and dying with their unclean spirit, their addiction.  We both agree that Mark’s story is true, that the “unclean spirit” knows and recognizes God so readily. There also  is the part of us that tries in every way to believe in ourselves, that we can recover on our own. We do not need this God that we are so angry at because this God has abandoned us. We have to reach a place of desperation, a bottom, where we are ready to turn our will and our life over to this God, for as in John’s and Mark’s story, only God is the one who heals and commands these “unclean spirits” to come out of us.

Addictions are not the only “unclean spirits” that live among us, but they are the flashy, spectacular, florescent ones, for they are like tornados, destroying or wounding and crippling everything in their paths. There are more subtle unclean spirits that are just as harmful that harden our hearts:/ gossip, the need to control ourselves and others, functional atheism which is a belief that only we can do the job, the resentments we hang onto for harms done to us, the family member or co-worker we refuse to forgive, our hatred and self-righteous thoughts we hid behind well-mannered looks, our blindness to the suffering of those around us. We may not be a part of the heroin or cocaine epidemic occurring in our country presently, but without thinking about it we gossip or try to take control, or do things not healthy for our bodies, or take credit for something someone else has done, or say something unkind./ I have had an intimate experience with all of these as well./

Mark starts the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with this short story set in Capernaum, Jesus’ home base in Galilee.  Jesus calls his disciples by the sea shores, and they leave their fishing boats and follow him on the Sabbath to the local synagogue, where Jesus teaches “with authority” as he encounters a man with an unclean spirit. In Jesus’ time, an unclean spirit could be anything, any illness, any disease. Again, note that the demon recognizes Jesus, and has the most dialogue in this story, the most dramatic soliloquy, filled with fear, crying out with a loud voice, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

 Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, Holy One of God!’”

Our unnamed man with the unnamed unclean spirit is teaching us that whatever our illness or addiction or sin or character defect is, it is always coming out, leading us in a straight path to Jesus. People in recovery will tell you this is true. It is their addiction that leads them to God, just as it does for our friend John and the man in Mark’s story today. People with debilitating illnesses will tell you that their illness leads them to God. Does God cause theses illnesses in order for us to reach out to God? Don’t go there. Just know God redeems every part of us, constantly trying to heal us. There is some form of resurrection in every Good Friday experience. Remember this. /

Are you wondering what a man with an unclean spirit is doing in the synagogue? Not allowed! We, like our friend in this short story, take our unclean spirits with us to places where we think the unclean spirits will not be recognized.  We are so good at hiding our unclean thoughts and actions, but we are powerless and not as good at hiding our unclean spirits. At some inopportune time, like in church, or in front of our children, or with our spouse, or at work, it appears like a flame-mouthed dragon as it did for John and for the man in the synagogue.

But this is the season of Epiphany, the season of light and this sermon is becoming more appropriate for Lent. Let’s turn on the light. The light bulb goes on when we like the man in Mark’s story and our friend John recognize that God uses every part of us, the unclean and the clean. God uses the unclean part of us, our demons, to draw us to him just as he uses the clean part, the Sunday best of us, the part that says our prayers and visits the sick, and makes soup and sends cards to the homebound and grieving./

Today’s story is about how deeply God desires our healing; how God will interrupt whatever is going on, even a church service, to heal us. Mark is the premier gospel writer emphasizing Jesus’ healing power. Of the eighteen miracles in Mark, thirteen are about healing.2 Typically Mark only records a few of Jesus’ words as he heals in the synagogue. Mark’s Jesus teaches by doing, by action./

 Our unnamed man in Mark is healed in the daytime on the Sabbath in church. John in our story is also healed in a church but in the church basement perhaps on the Sabbath but at night as well as daytime, just as many are healed in rooms in this church in 12 step meetings almost every day, as well as at your Wednesday night healing service.

 Buechner1 describes what happens at these church basements and meeting rooms. (Note the similarity of spirit and spirits.) The people who come to these 12 step rooms “try to follow a kind of spiritual rule, not only uncovering their own deep secrets but making peace with the people they have hurt and been hurt by. Through prayer and meditation, through seeking help from each other, they try to draw near any way they can to God. They sometimes make serious slips. They sometimes make miraculous gains. They laugh a lot. Once in a while they cry. When the meeting is over, some of them embrace. Sometimes one of them will take special responsibility for another, agreeing to be available at any hour of day or night if the need should arise.

They also have slogans, which you can either dismiss as hopelessly simplistic, or cling on to like driftwood in a stormy sea. One of them is "Let go and let God.” Let go of the dark, which you wrap yourself in like a straightjacket, and let in the light. Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you, your children's lives, the lives of your husband, your wife, your friends, because that is just what you are powerless to do. Remember that the lives of other people are God's business because they all have God whether they use the word God or not. Even your own life is not your business. It also is God's business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become life-transforming.” Turning our life and our will over to God is turning on and looking to the light. And Jesus replies, “Be still,” and suddenly all that has been tormenting us comes out, as we stand before Jesus, quiet and healed.3

1Frederick Buechner, “Let Go,” Telling Secrets, pp. 91-92,

2P C Ennis, Feasting on the Word year B, Vol 1, p. 310.

3Walter Russell Bowie, “Epiphany 4,” Synthesis, January 2018.

Holy Name Twelve Step Eucharist

Holy Name, January 1, 12 step Eucharist at 5:30

St. Mark’s, Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas, Wednesday January 3, Luke 2:15-21

Two days ago, on January 1st, we celebrated the Circumcision of Christ. Since we are more squeamish than our ancestors, modern calendars often list it as the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, but the other emphasis is the older. Every Jewish boy was circumcised and formally named on the eighth day of his life, and so, one week after Christmas, we celebrate the occasion when Jesus was given the name which was given to Mary before he was conceived.  Our great gift that we celebrate on Holy Name is that we now have been given a name for God, Jesus.

Today as Christians we are given our names at baptism. This Sunday at the 10:30 service six people will be baptized and receive their names. / They will be named and made a member of this community, a member of body of Christ, a child of God, and a member of God’s kingdom forever.. Do not ever, ever forget this about your own baptism./

If you attend a 12-step meeting and speak, the first thing you say is your name. My name is “Joanna”, and then you identify yourself further with the addiction that brought you there. “My name is Joanna and I am an alcoholic.” I can well remember the first time I said that over 27 years ago. I did not want to say that. I knew I had this addiction, but I did not want everyone else to know it, as if many did not already know. However, naming ourselves and our addiction is the first step to recovery, letting others know who we really are, not pretending to be something that we are not, beginning to take off that mask that we are the perfect person. It is our first step to freedom.

Today, remember your name and who you are and remember Jesus who was named on this day, and remember that his whole life was lived to teach us how to be free people, free of addiction, free of all the masks we wear, free to be the person that God created us to be.

Do you remember something else that was said at your baptism? “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” No matter what our name is, at our baptism, God calls us by that name, and we are “marked as Christ’s own forever.”/

On this special feast day we celebrate the naming of a vulnerable eight-day-old infant who came to this earth so that we might know God’s name, so that we might know God more clearly, more dearly.

Do not ever, ever forget that we as well have been named and marked as Christ’s own, God’s own forever. May you especially remember that you have been marked as God’s own forever, every time someone calls you by your name.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com