Advent Remembrance St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Mystics

Advent Luncheon St. Mark’s December 7, 2019

Past Advent Gatherings of St. Mark's Women."

Thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of your Advent program. I first spoke at this amazing Advent gathering of St. Mark’s women probably around 40 years ago when we met at night in homes. How exciting that we are now too large a group for most homes. I don’t remember what I talked about, but I do remember one thing about it. As I was holding my plate in line to get dinner, Margarite Metcalf, whom a few will remember, pulled me aside and quietly whispered with a bright twinkle in our eyes, “I didn’t know you were a mystic.” I thanked her. I had no idea what she meant, but I knew that I had been anointed a mystic that night by one who was.

So, 40 years later I would like to pass that torch on to each of you from Mrs. Metcalf for this Advent season and anoint each of you a mystic just for Advent. If you like the anointing, see if you would like to try it on for Christmas and Epiphany and Lent and Easter and Pentecost and then Advent again next year.

First let’s describe who you now are. A mystic is someone who can see and carry mystery. For Christians that means we can see the mystery of God’s presence above us, in our neighbor, around us and within us. For Advent, we mystics are waiting, looking for the Christ child within the world, within us and around us. We are looking for the Christ in ourselves and the Christ in our neighbor. We are seeking that connection within us from which we came.//

About that same time as my encounter with Mrs. Metcalf, another St. Mark parishioner, Dean McMillin, whom some of you may know, told me a story about the mystery of finding Christ that has become a part of my being. The story goes that God wanted God’s love to be more related to the world God had made. AS God is thinking about this, God looks into a very very large mirror. Suddenly God decides to break the mirror with God’s reflection within it into millions and billions of very tiny pieces that then fall to earth and became a part of each being in the world. Part of this tiny piece of God within each of us is that yearning that is constantly calling us to a relationship with the God of love. It is God’s own GPS embedded in each of us. Our spiritual journey: following spiritual practices such as prayer, silence, the Anglican rosary, centering prayer, fasting, journaling, gathering in community, worshipping, reading scripture and other spiritual sources is what we are doing to make and keep that connection. When we each do find that relationship, that piece of God within us, we are sooo excited. I have found God!! We have found God!!!

That, however, is where many people stop and get stuck on this spiritual journey. They believe that this very tiny piece of God that they have found within themselves is the ONLY image or likeness or portrait of God. They cannot relate to any other idea or picture of God that anyone else might have. Theirs is the only understanding of God. But we mystics know that the great mystery of God is much bigger than any one person’s relationship with God. Our job as mystics on this spiritual journey is to try to connect our piece of God to the many other pieces of God that each person in our community, each person in our world now also has embedded within them. Each of us has been given a small image, a small understanding of God. As we listen to others, we learn to connect our piece of the mirror of the image of God with the piece of God in our neighbor. Consequently, our God becomes much larger and larger as we make more connections. Sometimes we talk to people as they describe their understanding of God, their piece of God, and we think, “This cannot possibly be God.” Sometimes this especially happens when we are talking with our children. However, as we continue to connect our piece of the mirror of God to the relationship others have with the God of their understanding, we start to connect now to that piece from our children or our neighbor whose understanding is distant from ours. Eventually we learn to see God in that neighbor or child which we could not see before. Our image of God keeps growing and becoming larger and larger. //

You are especially looking this Advent for the Christ in yourself. For this Advent, also keep looking for the Christ in your neighbor. Often as you see Christ in your neighbor, that piece of God in your neighbor reflects back to you the Christ within you./ After all it is a piece of a mirror!//

I promise you that as you continue to make connections, your understanding and your relationship with God will keep growing. It is a mystery, just as mysterious as the birth of Jesus. But this is the path of a mystic, searching for the presence of God in ourselves and in the world. I welcome you to walk this mystical journey of mystery with me and so many others this Advent. Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

27C, Luke 20:27-38, 12 Step Eucharist November 6, 2019, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, 5:30pm

12 Step Eucharist St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, November 6, 2019, 5:30, Luke 20:27-38, 27 C

Our gospel passage is about resurrection, new life after death, being “children of God, children of the resurrection.” John Sanford told us that the kingdom of God or what some might consider heaven is not only in the afterlife but also present in this life around and especially within us.1 So many of the Psalms remind us that heaven is here on this earthly home if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear and hands to care for it.

Bishop Jake Owensby and the writings of Marcus Borg remind us that the “Christian life follows the pattern of resurrection: dying and rise.”2 Resurrection to a new life occurs in this life as well as at our physical death. Those in a 12-step group should know more about resurrection than many other people. In our addiction we are living a life of death, death to the person God created us to be, but also a living death for those around us. Our addiction becomes the God of our understanding. Everything begins to center around that addiction to the exclusion of others. If we are traveling, we must make sure we carry plenty of hidden alcohol with us just in case we cannot find enough at our destination. The same is true for food, drugs, and even work. Our homes are filled with secret storage places for our drug or alcohol or food of choice. We drink or use to celebrate, and we drink or use when things are not going well.

Recovery is resurrection to a new life, a new life where we gradually can hear and see heaven on this earth, within us, and within others, without the use of mind-altering substances. As we not only recite these same 12 steps we say tonight and actually work them and put them into practice, we discover a new God of our understanding, always a God of love. We learn from this God about surrender, forgiveness, and gratitude. We learn about love for our neighbor and love for the person God created us to be. Our addictive substance is no longer the love of our life.

At our physical death, the only thing we will leave on this earth is that love, the love we give to the earth itself, the love we give to everyone we encounter each day, the love we give to our family and friends. The only thing we carry with us into the final resurrection to be more connected to the God of love is also that same love we shared on this earth. The love we have learned about and shared in our resurrections in this life is the only thing that will never die. Love lives in this life and is alive in the life to come. It is a great mystery that we and the Sadducees must keep learning about it and practicing it through these 12 steps each day, one day at a time.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

1 John Sanford in The Kingdom Within

2 Jake Owensby in A Resurrection Shaped Life (Abingdon Press) XIV.

24C Jacob Wrestling Genesis 32:3-8,22-30, St Mark's Episcopal Church, October 20, 2019

24C Jacob Wrestling

Genesis 32:3-8, 22-30.

St. Mark’s, October 20, 2019

In the name of our God, who wrestles with us and blesses us. Amen.

Just before my father’s birthday the day before Halloween,, I would always ask him, “What would you like for your birthday?” Every year he gave the same answer, “Peace and quiet.” /I learned at an early age the importance of the basic human need/ to control the chaos around us. We pray that God will bring order to our lives, restore the status quo, let us feel safe and comfortable again. That is how we know God is present and has blessed us, when all is peace and quiet. When our heart stops pounding and we can breathe normally again. We know God’s presence when we no longer are afraid,/// like that sigh of relief we experience when our teenaged children drive the family car late on Saturday night safely back into the driveway. /This viewpoint of knowing God’s presence is appealing, but unfortunately the Bible does not always support this perspective of our relationship with God. Many of God’s greatest blessings take place in total chaos, with people scared out of their wits:/ Mary, listening to an angel’s ambitious plans to plunge her into scandal; Paul, lying on the Damascus Road with his life’s mission wiped out in the dust./ Since we know the ending to these stories, we may forget the wrestling, the sheer terror, the collapse of the known world that accompanied these blessings.///

It has been twenty years since young Jacob ran away from home fleeing Esau’s vow to kill him after he steals his twin brother’s blessing from their father, blind Isaac, with his mother, Rebecca, as an accomplice. Soon afterwards in the wilderness north of Beersheba, our imposter dreams his famous vision of the holy parade between heaven and earth. Jacob names the place Bethel, and our King of Deals cannot resist cutting another one. Speaking to no one in particular, but loud enough for anyone at the top of the ladder to hear, he shouts, “If God will be with me,/ and will keep me in this way that I go,/ and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear,/ so that I come again to my father’s house in peace,/ then /the Lord shall be my God.”/ We are so like Jacob, praying the Bethel prayer, listing the conditions for us to be in relationship with God./ We see God like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz, answering the petitions of his subjects. But our God and the God of Jacob is not in the business of granting wishes. Our God is in the business of resurrection, of raising the dead, giving people new life./ Have you ever witnessed someone coming to a second life? It is a blessed, painful process. An alcoholic who has lost almost everything has a moment of clarity, seeks help and after many stops and starts, gradually becomes one of the most amazing women helping others in her community./// Doctors’ I Phones cry out “code blue.” You are having a cardiac arrest. Your lips are purple; there is a terrible pounding on your chest. The smell of fear is in the air. Finally, you feel the choked return of your breath, like a drowning person rising up for air./ For many this wrestling with death becomes a life changing event. There are people in our congregation who can validate these stories.// We would rather make this return to a new life like sleeping beauty by candlelight with the smell of tea roses and the cello in background, a soft kiss on the lips and gentle rubbing of our hands and feet until feeling returns. But this is not the way that new life comes. The birth of a baby constantly reminds us that new life is a blessed, painful process, often filled with chaos./

There is nothing wrong with letting God know what we want, but we must not mistake our list for God’s covenant./ God’s covenant is unconditional, not a deal. It is God’s promise to be our God not by consent, but because of love. It is a relationship. Our only choice is whether to believe it; but we are never in charge of the relationship. If we choose to believe in this relationship, we must give up our illusion of control. /

Jacob has been the poster child for the struggle to control. He poaches his brother’s birthright, flees with the stolen goods, picks up a dream along the way, and arrives in Haran, where he meets his deal-making match in Uncle Laban. He also meets the love of his life, cousin Rachel, and serves fourteen year’s hard labor for her hand. /The struggles of domestic life become life changing for Jacob; there is nothing like two wives, two mistresses, and eleven children to extinguish the illusion of control. Jacob changes, but cannot imagine that after over twenty years that Esau has. He fears that the brother he twice robbed will still want to kill him. In a last-minute effort to repay this debt, he sends hundreds of animals ahead of him, moves his family to another camp, and waits alone across the river./ In the darkness he meets what appears to be a new adversary, a muscular angel. They cannot see each other in the moonless night. They fight by feel until the rosy light of early dawn. Just as Jacob seems in control, the “angelic” stranger drops all his weight on Jacob’s leg, and “pops” Jacob’s hip out of joint. But Jacob will not let loose of the angel. He is in extreme pain and crippled but smells the scent of heaven. Then Jacob does what Jacob does best; he makes a deal. “I will not let you go,” he says, “unless you bless me.” Locked in each other’s arms, the angel asks, “What is your name?”/ If we really listen, we can hear the echo of the same question, another time when someone else who barely sees Jacob asks his identity. “I am Esau,” he said that previous time. “Jacob,” he answers this time, and the name falls away from him like a snake losing its old skin. He is no longer Jacob, the supplanter. He is Israel, the survivor, the one who strives, who struggles with God. Jacob limps to his reunion with Esau, in whom he sees the face of God for the second time in one day. His exile is over. He is home.///

Let us fast forward to several years and imagine that we are sitting around the campfire with old Jacob and his grandchildren and ask him the question we all want to know. “Why didn’t you let go of the angel when you had your chance?”/

Old Jacob’s eyes brighten as he whispers, “Because that was the most alive I ever felt. I have never seen anything like the light in that face and I could not let go.”

“But Jacob,” we ask, “what about the limp and the hurt leg you have for the rest of your life?”

“Oh my, it indeed hurts, but it goes with the blessing. They are a matched pair. Every time I lean to the right and feel that shooting pain in my thigh, I remember my new name, Israel, the one who strives, who struggles with God.”/

It is the answer to Jacob’s Bethel prayer, not the comfort and safety part, but the “God be with me” part. It is the end of making deals with God, the last act in his struggle for control. /

Of course, this is all a Bible story until we, ourselves, have some new life-changing event like a stranger with the faint scent of heaven on our back wrestling us for all it is worth. When it happens, do not let anyone tell you there is something wrong. Do not let anyone convince you that if it were really God it would not be scary and it certainly would not hurt. Hang on with every part of your mind, body, and spirit, even if it hurts. Insist on a blessing to go with your wound/ and do not let go until you have one. Then, thank God for your new life, LIMP AND ALL, and leaning on your cane slowly make your way home.”

Barbara Brown Taylor, “Striving With God,” in Gospel Medicine,(Cowley Publications 1995) p. 107-114.

St. Francis 12 step Eucharist

FRANCIS OF ASSISI (4 OCT 1226)

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas,12 step Eucharist, 5:30 pm Oct 2, 2019.

On October 4th we will celebrate the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi. Francis was born in 1182, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. His early years were frivolous. He joined the military and was captured early in the Assisi-Pe/rug/ia war. A year’s harsh imprisonment and a lengthy illness, probably malaria, at age 19 lead him to reflect on the purpose of life. Like many people starting 12 step-recovery, he became “sick and tired of being sick and tired” and prayed that he could be guided and helped from returning to his old life. One day, in the church of San Da/mi/ano while looking at its now famous cross, he seemed to hear Christ saying to him, "Francis, repair my falling house." He took the words literally sold a bale of silk from his father's warehouse to pay for repairs to the church of San Da/mi/ano. His father was outraged, and there was a public confrontation at which his father disinherited and disowned him, and Francis in turn renounced his father's wealth. A favorite account says that he not only handed his father his purse, but also took off his expensive clothes, laid them at his father's feet, and walked away naked.

Later after hearing a sermon about Jesus’ command to go out and proclaim the kingdom taking no money or walking stick or shoes, (Matthew 10:9) Francis realized that God was not calling him to rebuild the building of his church but the people of his church, especially the poor, and the rest of his life was spent doing that.

Like people in 12 step-recovery, Francis made a dramatic change in the direction of his life and turned his life over to his higher power. There are so many stories for us to study about Francis, his life of absolute poverty, his love of the Eucharist, love of animals and his love and connection to God in creation and Nature. A now famous quote about the well know saint1 is that “Francis of all the saints, is the most popular and admired, but probably the least imitated!”

To honor St. Francis, our clergy will be here Sunday at 4:00 to bless all and any of your animals.

Tonight, let us concentrate on the prayer that is attributed to him. It is in our Book of Common Prayer on page 833, but there is a copy in your seat. This is a prayer asking God, our Higher Power to change us just as God did for Francis. It could be considered a third step prayer. Let us read it together.

PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. BCP 833

1Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2006, p. 404.

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com

16C Healing of the woman bent over: Teaching Moment, Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Gulf Shores , Alabama, August 25, 2019

16C Healing of woman bent over. Teaching moment

August 25, 2019. Jeremiah 1:4-10, Luke 13: 1-17 Holy Spirit

We are making rounds with Dr. Gregory House and his select group of fellows at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. House is unquestionably unconventional,/ but he is an expert teacher and healer. He is trying to explain basics of diagnosing and healing disease. Suddenly he becomes interested in another physician’s patient who has had a disease for 18 years that no one has been able to cure. The patient is bent over, almost in a fetal position, making eye contact only with her feet. The nurses whisper, “No one has visited her in the three months she has been in this hospital.” House seizes the “teaching moment”, diagnoses the condition, shows his fellows how to restore this woman to new life. In walks the patient’s real doctor who is furious that Dr. House has interfered with the workup and diagnosis of “his” patient. ///

But today we learn that Jesus is the real master of seizing the “teaching” moment. He is teaching in the synagogue in the south, not on his home territory, half way between Galilee and Jerusalem. This is one of two Sabbath stories occurring during this journey and Jesus’ last appearance in a synagogue.1 Which Hebrew scripture is he discussing? Is it today’s reading from Jeremiah? “The Lord touched my mouth; and said to me, ‘I have put my words in your mouth. Today I appoint you to overthrow, to build and to plant.”/ As he is teaching, out of the corner of his eye, Jesus sees on the periphery of the synagogue the bent over woman. He calls her to the center, does the unthinkable,/ talks to her, touches her, and cures her on the Sabbath no less. The leader of the synagogue is furious!/ Jesus then seizes that moment with that woman/ ignored for years in order to teach us, his disciples, his lay leaders, his vestry, what the scriptures say/ what should be our mission statement.. building up, planting new life/ especially for those that the world ignores and rejects. /

Now, certainly Jesus heals out of compassion for the sick, but notice that each of his healing miracles is unique. Some healings require faith, but not this one. The unnamed bent over woman never speaks. Some people are asked if they want to be healed, but not this woman. Sometimes Jesus heals by touching, at other times he is not even present with the ill person. Each healing is a “teaching moment,” giving us a specific lesson about how we are healed and how we are to heal others today, 2000 years later,// but all too often the teaching moment of the miracle is passed over because we do not get past the “miraculous” packaging of the healing and the endless issue of “did it really happen.” Each of Jesus’ healings and the reactions to them are lessons for change in our lives today. We must get inside the miracle, let the miracle get inside of us so that our eyes will be opened, our ears unstopped, and our bodies raised up.2

Jesus’ healing of the bent over woman is reminiscent of two other stories of Jesus healing on the sabbath which were opposed by the religious leaders: the healing a man with a withered hand (Luke 6:6-11) and the healing the man with dropsy (Luke 14:1-6). This story also points to a series of Jesus’ healings of every category of people whom society’s purity laws specifically exclude, label unclean, distance at varying degrees from worship: menstruating women, lepers, Samaritans, Gentiles, tax collectors, prostitutes, adulteresses, women in general, children, people with physical and mental disease, the dead./ Jesus’ healing of today’s bent over woman is also one of many stories of Jesus’ liberating and startling attitude towards women. This woman’s ailment may be symbolic of a society that literally has bent over the spirit of women. That this woman finally stands erect in a male religious space represents not just a cure, but a healing. It reveals the dawn of a new world order.2

Unfortunately, in many countries our religious institutions still disallow equal status for women even if it is granted in the rest of the society. But the living Word can not be stifled even if it takes our church one century to include Gentiles, eighteen centuries to include slaves, or twenty-one centuries to include women. 2/

The teaching moment in each miracle stories remind us that the way things are is not the way they will always be, and that there is a greater power caring for all of us. We can all see miracles happening every day if we only are open to God at work continually in our lives. The most obvious miracles I see daily are people recovering from addiction to alcohol and drugs whose lives and the lives of those they love were destroyed by their disease. These miracles are living proof that God’s will for us is not chaos, but wholeness. /

The major problem, however, with miracles is that it is difficult to witness a miracle in someone else without wanting one for ourselves or our loved ones.1 Not everyone who prays for a miracle seems to get one, and some people get one without asking, like our bent over woman. Religious people spend much time looking for a formula for a miracle. Is it two parts prayer, three parts faith, one part good works?3 Instead of looking for the teaching moment in the miracle, we study the healing stories to find out who does what right, hoping we will become irresistible to God. Only this does not work. A major teaching moment in the healing stories is that God rarely does anything the same way twice.

One of the most frequent pastoral questions is, “why did the miracle not happen to me or my loved one”? One of the meanest things religious people do is blame the absence of a miracle on a lack of faith. Barbara Brown Taylor 3 writes that we tend to believe that miracles work along the same lines as those strength tests at the state fair, the ones with a big thermometer and red ringer at the top. It is all a matter of how hard we can hit the thing with a sledgehammer. If we are really strong, we can ring the bell and win the prize. In other words, miracles are something we control. Only this is idolatry, one more attempt to be in charge of our lives, instead of owning up to the truth that every single breath we take is a free surprise and miracle from God. To concentrate on the strength of our own belief is to practice magic. To concentrate on the strength of God is to practice faith.

I remember visiting Federal Judge Richard Arnold shortly before he died. Previously he had been on a short list for the Supreme Court. Clinton appointed RBG instead! A St. Vincent’s hospital chaplain visits Richard asking him what to pray for. The judge says he is hoping for containment of his cancer. The chaplain responds, “Let’s pray for containment.” No,” retorts Richard Arnold, “let’s pray for a cure.” At that same visit Judge Arnold is writing his obituary as a gift to his family. Here is a man, not giving up on the miracle, but turning the results over to God./

It also helps to remember that Jesus prays for a miracle on the night before he dies.3 “For you all things are possible,” he prays to his Abba. “ Remove this cup from me.” Only when he opens his eyes the cup is still there. Does Jesus lack faith? The miracle is that he drinks the cup, believing in the power of God more than he believes in his own. Living that kind of life is always a miracle, living constantly in a teaching moment, knowing that every miracle is a resurrection and believing that in every Good Friday experience where the miracle does not seem to materialize, God still promises a resurrection. We must be open to it. It is there in front of us./ One person’s illness brings the whole family together. A doctor whose mother dies of cancer spends the rest of his life working on a cure. A person who is ill as well as his whole family learn what is really important in life. A patient with cancer spends every afternoon sharing strength and hope with others recently diagnosed with cancer. A man who is dying is moved by the people he sees in the hospital waiting room who do not have the support system he has had. He tells his church who begins ministering to patients in that oncology waiting area to honor him after he dies. A mother whose son commits suicide starts an organization to alert people to the signs of depression and suicide. These stories go on and on.. This is the miracle…Every one of these healings, every one of these miracles is like a hole poked in the opaque fabric of time and space. The kingdom breaks through and for a moment or two we see how things will be,/ or how they really are right now in God’s mind. These are the miracles many people miss. Keep looking for them. And keep sharing your stories about them/… especially if those miracles occur on the Sabbath!./ /

1 Richard Swanson, in Provoking the Gospel of Luke, A Storyteller’s Commentary, Year C, p. 183.

2Jeffrey John, in The Meaning in the Miracles, pp. 1-33, 203-213.

3Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Problem with Miracles,” in Bread for Angels, pp. 136-140.