Funeral Joan Matthews March 6, 2020 St. Mark's Little Rock

Funeral Joan Matthews, March 6, 2020 St. Mark’s

Today we join with family and friends to celebrate the life of Joan Matthews, the 85-year-old Canadian born matriarch of her family of four children, Boyd, Brett, Marci/a, Bobby, their spouses, as well as nine grandchildren. Joan raised this amazingly talented family after the death of her husband, Dr. Robert Matthews in 1992. Our present bishop, Larry Benfield was at St. Mark’s at that time. Dr. Matthews’ funeral was his first to preside over in Arkansas. The family will always remember the pastoral care they received from our present bishop at that time and for many years to come. Joan was a public health nurse, visiting the sick in their homes where she wiped away the tears of many of those she visited. This is part of her family heritage. As a child, she often accompanied her grandmother, Granny Stewart, who took food to the needy in a picnic basket with probably a Bible between the loaves of bread. Joan also served faithfully at this church as a eucharistic minister at this altar and a eucharistic visitor to the homebound. When she became homebound, many eucharistic visitors from this church took communion to her. We need to let them know that they were carrying Christ to someone who had done the same for so many others before them. Joan also was very proud that she was an EFM, Education for Ministry graduate from Sewanee School of Theology. But there was more to know about Joan than what she accomplished. Perhaps you will learn a little more about her/ from what her family shared with us about the day she died at home in her 85th year.

“On the day Joan died, the family had been telling her since the day before, "Marci/a (her daughter) is coming.. she'll be here tomorrow.. she'll be here in 8 hours.. she'll be here in two hours.." After Marci/a arrived all the children would drift in and out of her room, talking, singing, rubbing her feet, brushing her hair, reading from the prayer book. Finally, with every one present, all four of her children, Marci/a, Bobby, Boyd, Brett, three granddaughters, and Virginia, Bobby’s wife, they gathered around Joan’s bed reading psalms and reminiscing. Joan breathed her last breaths with all gathered around/ as Bobby felt a cold wind breeze past him.”/

This is an amazing story of a whole family midwifing the passage of the beloved matriarch of their family back to God in her own home. It is like being present and assisting at her birth into a new world, into a life in the resurrection. There is no more sacred and loving thing than being at that passage,/ the death of someone you love.

Let’s talk a little more about love. Joan’s body has died to this world but her love is still here with each of you. Love is the only thing we leave behind when we die. Remember this verse from 1 Corinthians, “Love never dies.” (1 Corinthians 13:8) Repeat

We don’t understand it. It is a mystery./ I look at pictures of my own loved ones who have died, my brother, my grandparents, I can feel their love as I send my love back to them. Frederick Buechner and Henri Nouwen tell us that our bodies die, but our mutual love somehow returns to God and is kept for all eternity.

Listen again to what St. Paul, Buechner and Nouwen are saying. Love is kept for all eternity. That means love is all we leave on this earth and love is what we take with us into eternal life with the God of love. Joan left her love to you, and also her love is now part of/ and is enlarging the love of our God of love/ in this greater life. If you are a mystic, you have no difficulty understanding this. If you are a person who comprehends mainly by rational thinking, this may be a difficult concept.

Let’s see if this conception of love is not only biblical and in the voice of our theologians/ but also in our literature. This is a closing sentence from Thornton Wilder’s fictional book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey( Sand louise ray), where five people die on a bridge in South American. The passage was read by British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the memorial service in New York for British victims of the attack on the World Trade Center.// “There is a land of the living/ and a land of the dead/ and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” (Repeat) —Thornton Wilder in The Bridge of San Luis Rey (HarperCollins, 1927), p. 107.

I know in my heart that the love that Joan had for each of you will always endure. Your love for Joan who has died/ is ongoing, as is her love for you. You will never be lonely. Her Love is always there inside of you. St. Paul, Nouwen, Buechner, and now Thornton Wilder tell us that in some mysterious way this love we have for each other never dies./ Joan’s love stays with each of you as you carry it forward to transform yourselves, transform others you meet, //and transform the universe./ Joan’s love is also now in the resurrected life in some way we do not understand as part of the God of love. The verse from Corinthians and Wilder in his novel are both telling us that the best of this love we have for each other never ever dies. This is a mystery, but I know in my heart it is true and I think you know it as well because this is what Joan taught us and you./ Unfortunately, the Bible does not answer most of our questions about resurrection. It refuses to approach resurrection as something rational for us in our lifetime.1

In this mysterious universe what we do know, however, is that those who mean most to us// mean EVEN MORE to God. In God's way, God will keep them, and because God keeps them, we will never be separated from them, or they from us./

This morning as we carry the ashes of our dear friend, Joan, in and out of this sacred space, we are sac/ra/men/tally carrying her back to God. 2We know she already is with God, but this funeral lit/ur/gy allows us in effect to shout out a prayerful petition to God, “God, get ready! Here comes Joan! A sinner of your own redeeming, and a lamb of your own flock. You have given her to us, and now with gratitude for the gift of her life, we are returning her to you.” Our prayers are like the prayers at the offertory, “We give thee but thine own,”/ except in this case the offering is not money but the life of one we love.

It is an early Christian tradition2 to tell stories about the one who has died as the body is on its pilgrimage to its final burial place. You are a family of story tellers, so keep telling all of us/ and all you meet, stories about Joan/ as I know you will do at the reception. This is how you will continue to share her love. We tell stories because Christians believe that death changes but does not destroy. Death3 is not a period at the end of a sentence, but more like a comma/ where we die but go on to a new relationship with God AND with those we love. Our experience is that our God of love does not give us a loving relationship and then let it stop abruptly as with Joan’s death. This loving relationship is still there but in some different form of love. We tell stories of Joan especially at her death to continue our relationship with her, to know Joan’s never-ending love for you, to remember Joan’s love for the God of love, as seen through the prism of her life, both in glad and sorrowful memories, which will continually be refractions of the grace and love of God.////

“O God of grace and glory, we remember before you this day our sister, Joan. We thank you for giving her to us,..to know and to love as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage…and now 4O God of Love

who loves us/ with a greater love than we can neither know nor understand: We give you most high praise and hearty thanks for the good example of your servant, Joan, who now is in the larger life of your heavenly Presence;/ who here on this earth was a tower of strength for all of us, who stood by us and helped us;/ who cheered us by her sympathy and encouraged us by her example;/ who looked not disdainfully on the outward appearance, but lovingly into the hearts of men and women and children; who rejoiced to serve all people, especially the sick;/ whose loyalty was steadfast, and her friendship unselfish and secure; whose joy it was to know more about You and be of service. Grant that Joan may continue to find abiding peace and wisdom in your heavenly kingdom, and that we may carry forward her unfinished work for you on this earth;/ through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

1Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo (Seabury Books, 2007).

2Thomas Long, “O Sing to Me of Heaven: Preaching at Funerals” in Journal for Preachers, vol. 29, No. 3, Easter 2006, pp.21-26.

3Edward Gleason, Dying we Live (Cowley 1990).

4 J. B. Bernardin Burial Services (Morehouse Publishing 1980) p. 117.

Joanna. Seibert

Love Your Enemies

Lent 1 March 4, Love your enemies 2020 Wednesday 5:30,

Matthew 5:43-48

Today Jesus tells us to love our neighbors,/ ourselves,/ and goodness knows,/ even our enemies. Could this commandment be related to Jesus’ recent journey Sunday into the wilderness where he meets our greatest enemy called Satan? Rachel Held Evans in her last book, Inspired, leaves with us her experience of wilderness, enemies, and how this relates to Jesus and the God of love. She reminds us that unfortunately we will be driven into the wilderness on our journey when we encounter enemies, just like our Jewish relatives before us. We try to stay connected to the God of love but sometimes we seem surrounded by situations that are harmful to us. Our best reaction often is to flee to the wilderness to escape our enemies, just as Hagar and her son are turned out by Abraham and Sarah, or Jacob flees his brother Esau, or Elijah flees Jezebel. Evans believes that even the God of love, when clothed in human form, has to make a visit to the wilderness to prepare for his meeting/ head on with the devil.

The wilderness is usually thought of as a scary or barren place where God seems even more absent,/ but I have learned from my daughter who is a wilderness forester that the wilderness is the most sacred place where we, like Elijah, best hear the silent voice of God. The wilderness is out of sync with our usual routine. It disorients us and leads us to a different way of thinking where we can learn that the only way to face our enemies within and without/ is with love.

We all have had experiences where we have been harmed: death of a loved one, loss of a job, struggling with an addiction, physical, verbal abuse, a serious illness, depression, other mental disorders, difficulty with our children, parents or siblings,/ struggling with our present political scene. Rachel reminds us that as we are driven into the wilderness from these experiences, we will always learn a great deal about ourselves and especially about the God of love that has been there before us. That is the experience of the children of Israel, Hagar, Jacob, and even Jesus,/ our constant companion. When we decide to live in this more barren place, we meet what we perceive as the enemy within or without of us, but instead meet and are saved by the God of love, and are attended by angels. I think the wilderness is where Jesus especially learns about love of one’s enemy, as he confronts the devil, the personification of evil, the one who lives without love, that part of us where love for others does not live. Jesus’ confrontation with the devil, the evil one, is where he teaches us about loving/ our enemy. First Jesus listens. This is the most loving thing we can do, to listen. Then he speaks to the evil one being obedient to the love of God, whom evil does not understand. Evil can never overcome this love./ Jesus may be reminding us how to journey through the wilderness of this political scene and see if we can also / love those whom we consider our enemy. Loving our enemy is listening/ and looking for/ the Christ within what we perceive as our enemy, and offering the Christ, the love of God within us./ The enemy may or may not be transformed, but we always will become more connected to the Christ within,/ whenever and where ever we offer Love./

Lastly, Rachel reminds us to name these wilderness experiences. Hagar names the well in the wilderness which saves her life and her son, Ishmael, “I have seen the God who sees me.” Just as Jacob is about to meet Esau in the wilderness, he wrestles with God and names the place, Peniel, which means “ Face of God.”

Tonight, we will name this, our liturgical wilderness, Lent.// Here,/

the love we find and offer this Lent will never ever be destroyed, especially when we offer it to those whom we may perceive as our enemies.

Rachel Held Evans in Inspired ( Nelson Books 2018) pp. 48-50.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

The Call Epiphany 3A Isaiah 9:1-4, Matthew 4:12-23, Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Gulf Shores, Alabama, January 26, 2020

The Call Epiphany 3A

Holy Spirit, Gulf Shores, January 26, 2020

Isaiah 9:1-4, Matthew 4:12-23

The Call. /Your cell phone rings late one night around three am. You jump out of your skin. You sit up in bed terrified in a cold sweat. You try to pretend it is not ringing, but you know you must answer your phone because it could be a friend in trouble, one of your children, a grandchild, a sick parent. You pick up the phone, giving a sleepy, “hello.” A voice at the other end says, “Listen,/ something has happened, I need your help. Can you come! Please hurry.”//

Or.. there is another call./ It is a gray windy day at dusk on the gulf coast. The constant rhythm of the waves slows your frantically racing heart and life. You look out from your deck at the deserted beach. The brown pelicans sweep over the sea in their distinctive parade patterns in pairs and groups. They fly so closely to the water that their wing tips certainly must get wet. They flap their large wings for several strokes/ and then glide./ You are on beach time; a time to glide/ after days of flapping. You watch the laughing gulls stick by the pelicans, as if they were best friends. They follow the brown pelicans in their spectacular plunging headfirst high dive for their last supper. Then the gulls shamelessly and expertly try to snatch the fish directly out of the pelican’s enormous bill before he can swallow it. So reminiscent of the life you have left behind. Are you a laughing gull or a brown pelican? Some days a gull, some days a pelican./ Without warning, a flock of pelicans silently fly right by your head on their way home for the night. Their silent majestic flight leaves you speechless as well. The adults do not have a voice. Only their young nestlings speak with loud grunts and screams. / There is something so wild and brave and beautiful about the silence of nature you have just witnessed. You want to write it into a poem or paint it into a picture or sing it into a song,/ but there are no proper words or colors or notes to express it, and you have to live out the rest of that night in a way that is somehow true to the little piece of wonder that you have been a part of, the call to a different life that silently reaches out to you.//

And then, comes a third call. You are aware that you have become overwhelmed by the difficulties of your own life: your addictive life style, problems at work, conflicts at home. A friend asks you to go with her to visit a treatment center for women where the mothers keep their children with them. Suddenly you see young women just like you, with the same addictions, same problems, same family and work difficulties, same children,/ but they never had any of the advantages you are given. You watch their lives change, lights go on in eyes dulled by abuse and drugs… and it is like the phone ringing in the night again/ or the silent pelicans soaring by your head so close that your hair rustles. It is a summons for you to answer a call to something greater than yourself and your own small world. Answers to your own problems are right there in front of you.//

Today’s gospel is about that call to ministry: the call by Jesus to Simon Peter and his brother, Andrew. Buechner says that the word, “vocation,” has a dull ring to it, but in terms of what it means, it is not dull at all. Vocare, vocation means our calling, the work we are called to do in this world, what we are summoned to spend our lives doing./ We can speak of our choosing our own vocations, but more than likely our vocations choose us. A call is given; our lives hear it/ or do not hear it.

How do we listen and hear the call? Our lives are full of a great multitude of voices calling us in all directions. Some are voices from inside, some are outside voices. The more alive and alert we are, the more clamorous our lives. What kind of voice do we listen for?/

There is a sad and dangerous game we play when we get to a certain age. It is a form of solitaire. We get out our yearbook, look at the pictures of the classmates we knew best. We remember all the exciting wonderfully characteristic things we were interested in and our dreams about what we were going to do after we graduated. We think about what these classmates and ourselves are actually doing with our lives now. If we have kept in touch we know that many are spending their lives at work where few of their gifts are used, at work with neither much pleasure nor any sense of accomplishment/… and what about ourselves?/

When we were young like Peter and Andrew and Jesus, perhaps our hearing is better. When we are young, before we accumulate responsibilities, we are freer to choose among all the voices, and to answer the voice that is our deep gladness, as Buechner1 describes the call,/ when “our deep gladness intersects with the world’s deep need.” The danger is that there are so many voices, so many needs, every voice, every need, in its’s own way promising “gladness.” The danger is when we do not listen to the voice that speaks to us through the silent pelican, or the voice we hear in the synagogue of our inner soul, or the voice of the prophet that speaks from outside specifically to us out of the specific events in our life. Instead we listen to the great blaring boring banal voice of our mass culture which threatens to deafen us by blasting forth that the only thing that really matters about our work is how much it will bring us in salary and status,/ and if it is gladness we are after, we can save that for the weekends./ One of the grimmer notions we inherited from our Puritan forebears is that work is not even supposed to be glad, but, rather is a kind of penance, repenting for the sins we do during the hours we are not working.

There is also one more spoiler alert. Sometimes our call is not the message we were hoping for. Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Elijah, or sometimes even Jesus question their calls. And yet,/ with each call is a promise/ that God’s strength/ will be present in our weakness.2 /

All this means that we must be vigilant about what we hear as our call. We have only one life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not the choice we let another or the world call us to. We must never mistake success for victory/ or failure for defeat. We must learn that all people are one, and that there can only be joy for one person when there is joy for all./

All of us, no matter how old we are, are still at the place in our lives where we continue to think about our call. Maybe we think it is too late in life to hear our call. I learned that this is not true from another young boy, in his early teens./ Events in my life told me that I had become blind and deaf by the cacophony of the world, and I was using substances to ease the pain. I wanted to find a new life, answer another call. My teenaged son, looked across the luncheon table at our favorite restaurant and responded,/ “Mom, it is never too late to change.”//(repeat) That has been my experience and I offer his wisdom to you./

So,/ what is your call? Buechner says it is where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need./ Deep gladness. What we do that leaves us with an overwhelming sense of peace, something we do which energizes us and other people./

The world’s great need./ In a world where there is so much drudgery, so much grief, so much emptiness, fear, and pain, if we keep our eyes and ears and heart open, we do not have to go far to find that place of need./ The phone will ring/ and we will jump /not so much out of your skin/ as into our skin. /If we keep our eyes, ears, and heart open, the right place of need will call us… and in that day/ “all people, including ourselves, who have sat in darkness will now begin to see a great light.”

1Frederick, Buechner, “ The Calling of Voices,” Secrets in the Dark, pp. 35-41.

2-Br. David Vryhof, Society of Saint John the Evangelist ssje.org.

Joanna . joannaseibert.com

Baptism of our Lord, Second Sunday after Epiphany, Matthew 3:13-17. 12 Step Eucharist January 8, 2020, New Year, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas

12 Step Eucharist January 8, 2020, New Year, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas

Baptism of our Lord, Second Sunday after Epiphany, Matthew 3:13-17.

Our new church year started over a month ago on the first day of December as we began the season of Advent. As you know, we have moved through Christmas and celebrated the Epiphany with the visit to Jesus of the wise men two days ago. This coming Sunday Jesus will be baptized as well as many others at our church, and we all will recite the covenant we made at our own baptism to follow “The Beloved.”

On the other hand, our secular world is just getting started as it only began a new year eight days ago. This gives you a little hint of how we are called to be out of sync with the secular world. We are to listen to the beat of a different drummer. This is always the paradox of our lives:/ how to live connected to the spiritual world we make promises to at our baptism,/ while we also live in this secular world where the only covenant may be how to get ahead.

However, we are not called to reject the secular world, for we know from the Christmas story that God has been born and is now among us in this world. We are called to be part of God’s own promise to make “all things new”1 in this world. But we are so often at a loss as to how we possibly can live into this promise to bring love to this world which seems so broken.

Bishop Steven Charleston in a recent Facebook message2 gives us a few clues when he first reminds us that this new year may be even an especially difficult roller coaster ride as we prepare for national elections, and most especially the election of a president. He reminds us that this is not a new norm, for presidential elections are always like this. I so appreciate his native American heritage as a role model for how to live in this secular world holding on to our connection to God. His challenge for us is to stay calm, a non-anxious presence in this new year. But, I know from my own experience that I have never been able to be a non-anxious presence. There is always some little question of anxiety nagging and gnawing at my soul. I do know that I may have a chance of being the least anxious presence at times this year. When I am in a group swarming with controversy, if I can only stay one step below the anxiety level, I am hoping to make a difference.

I also know that practicing the 11th step is going to be my best answer for accomplishing this. “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”3

Now this does not necessarily mean that we are to pray and meditate continuously for the next 365 days, even though that might be nice. We are still living in the world. We are called to follow a rule of life where we do meditate and pray at certain times during the day to try to keep our connection to God that is within us and around us and above us. From those prayers and meditations, we are called to action when we see wrong in ourselves and others. We are called to support those who also seem to voice concern for the needs of those in our world and especially those living around us. But we are called to stay as calm as possible and stay one degree less anxious than those around us. This is where we can make a real difference. As the least anxious person we are staying connected to the God of our understanding who really is in charge, and we are keeping God’s presence in the conversation. This is living out the covenant we make at our own baptism. It is the story of the incarnation. This is living with one foot in the secular world and one in the spiritual world,/ in essence helping to reconcile both worlds to become one.4

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

1 Revelation 21:5

2 December 27, 2019

3 Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 59

4 Beatrice Bruteau, God’s Ecstasy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 1997, 2016), 37, 178.

Blue Christmas, Holiday Healing Service, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Wednesday, December 18, 2019, 5:30 pm

Blue Christmas, Holiday Healing Service, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Wednesday, December 18th, 2019, 5:30 pm

The holidays are often the hardest for those of us who have experienced the death of a loved one or another lost, such as the loss of a job, addiction, divorce, depression, or serious illness. Several congregations have services around Christmas like this one to let those in their community know that the church has some awareness how difficult this time can be./ My only brother died five years ago the day after Christmas. I still miss him every day, but especially in December since he was such a Christmas person. /

Living through these difficult times can be a painful journey. Tonight, we are going to look at two road maps for the journey that may bring comfort. The first journey is that of the paralyzed man carried by his friends on a pallet/ through the roof to Jesus./

We cannot depend on ourselves always to know and feel the healing love of God. This is why we need spiritual friends. This is why we are called to community. We are like this man who is brought to Jesus on a pallet by his friends and lifted through a roof to Jesus below/ because the man cannot move. A large crowd blocks access to Jesus. When we become paralyzed with fear, loneliness, pain, and feel trapped, we need spiritual friends to carry us on that pallet through the roof to God. Sometime we are the person on the pallet.\At other times we will become the friends carrying another companion on the pallet to healing./

At St. Mark’s we have a glimpse of the depth of the pain on this journey as we help carry friends to healing in a yearly grief group, Walking the Mourner’s Path. We walk with people near their lowest point after the death of child, a spouse, a parent, a brother, a sister, a partner. Participants share the difficulty of anniversaries and birthdays,/ but the holidays often seem the hardest. We see despair, especially after tragic deaths and death of the young, but as we meet in community, we always experience hope and healing. Sometimes it is only a small transformation, sometimes it is huge. By just coming to the group, participants make a positive commitment to look for new birth, new life. So, they already make a step forward even before they come. As facilitators, we hold the group together, to encourage, listen, give people who sometimes seem paralyzed a time to speak, when they are able. We figuratively walk beside,/ sit along,/ and sometimes carry each other, as we all hold the group in love.

The real healers, however, the real companions carrying their friend on a pallet to healing, are the participants themselves. They know most recently about despair. All are at different stage of grief, but they honor and embrace the stage of each other. They radically hold and support each other. They have experienced a death maybe a year ago, maybe after 20 years. They know the pain better than anyone else. Each year I say less and less, for the wisdom comes from the group carrying each other. / This is one more story of seeing healing in community, as we are called to be present,/ aware,/ listen/ and be open/ to the Christ Child present beside and within us./ Those in recovery also know that this same healing through community is available in 12 step groups.///

There is another explanation of our journey through despair to new life that speaks of its length and difficulty. That is the road we will hear about on Christmas Eve, the road less traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem to the manger, to new birth, to recovery, new life. This is the journey Mary and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem for Jesus’s birth. Our Christmas story concentrates on the manger scene, but that journey before the birth is unbelievably stressful with rugged terrain, dangerous encounters at every turn. Like Mary and Joseph, those experiencing difficulty during the holidays are traveling that 100-mile dangerous, often lonely desert journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The journey is not safe for Mary and Joseph to travel alone. Their only option is making the journey in community, in a caravan./

Recently I had a Christmas lunch with a Mourner’s Path group who has met annually for almost 10 years to support and love each other, especially during the holidays./ We meet that morning to hear stories of incarnation, new birth, surprises, seeing God’s presence in each other when all seemed lost on that road to Bethlehem and new birth. We talk about little experiences of love that carry us on our journey when we can no longer walk alone. A card, a call, a visit, even an email or text reminds us that we are no longer alone and are surrounded by love. My experience is that this new birth we meet at the manger/ in a stable of a crowded inn/ takes place best, like this,/ in community.

Richard Rohr1 also describes healing in these times of seemingly darkness when we have experienced the death of a loved one, depression, a lost job, divorce, a family member who is not in recovery. “We need a promise, a hopeful direction, or it is very hard not to give up.” When we cannot see or feel or hear the path along the narrow road to new birth, “someone--- some loving person/ or simply God’s own embrace—needs to hold on to us because we sometimes cannot hold ourselves. When we experience this radical holding in love, this brings salvation,” the hope of new birth! This is why we are here tonight to acknowledge loss/ and hold each other in love on this journey./

I have no doubt that everyone here has experienced a Blue Christmas. My ongoing journey to healing occurs best here in community, often over a meal, sharing stories, listening to each other, looking for the Christ Child in each other that has been present long before we were born. Romans reminds us that Christ is always here, reaching out to heal us. Nothing can separate us from God’s love. God never abandons us.

Henri Nouwen2 reminds us that if we have any doubt where God, the Christ Child, lives and walks,/ it is with those of us who are sick, handicapped, hungry, grief stricken, struggling with addiction. God is always with us on this journey. Those in distress may not always feel God’s presence, but God is there holding us at every turn. As we become more isolated, God’s presence may sometimes be just too overwhelming, too vast, for us to feel./ We are to keep looking for little openings,/ small blessings,/ moments of clarity, surprising experiences of love we never expected, connecting us to God who so loves us.

As we await the coming of the Christ Child, I remember the words of many new mothers, “ Now, I know I will never be alone after the birth of my baby.” But this is true for all of us now and forever. We are never, ever alone. Nothing can separate us from God. We may feel alone on this journey, but the Christ child is already here inside of us, inside of the world around us, inside our neighbors. The God of love is here to hold and walk with us to new birth, most often in communities of love such as is gathered here tonight.

Now I am not suggesting we need to start deep spiritual conversations with another who loves us, or someone who may know a little of our grief or distress. We are simply to keep allowing those God sends to us to walk part of this journey with us,/ when it is offered, most often when we least expect it.//

Frederick Buechner3 knows about this difficult journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem before there is new birth./ Buechner is at the lowest point in his life. His daughter is possibly dying, he is helpless, and in some ways he has become almost as sick as she is. One day he receives a call from a friend living in Charlotte, North Carolina almost 800 miles away saying he hears Buechner is having a difficult time and wants to come and visit him. This is a minister acquaintance, not a longtime friend. Buechner replies he would love to see him, and they should arrange a time. His friend says, “Well,/ actually,/ I am presently at the local inn about 20 minutes from your hilltop home in Vermont.” Buechner’s friend comes and stays several days. They take long walks, drive around, eat together. Buechner does not remember any deep theological conversation, and they may not have even mentioned Christ,/ but they do experience/ the touch of the tiny hands of the Christ Child/ reaching out to both of them. Buechner will always remembers/ a friend who radically decides to come and walk that difficult journey to Bethlehem for a few days with him,/ and they both are changed.// This is the kind of love that brings on new birth that God calls us to share and offer to each other./

So tonight, I light a candle and honor my brother, Jim, by sharing what I have learned from you and so many others who have traveled this journey with us. May God hold all of us, as God always does, in the palm of God’s hand,/ as God and this community/ walk this journey to Bethelehem,/ to new birth within us,/ especially tonight/ and throughout this Advent and Christmas season.

1Richard Rohr, Adapted from Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation, disc 10 (Franciscan Media: 2002), CD.

2Henri Nouwen, You Are Beloved.

3Frederick Buechner in The Clowns in the Belfry.

Joanna joannaseibert.com