20B Wisdom, Proverbs 31:10-31, Psalm 1, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a, Mark 9:3-37, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, AR. September 19, 2021

20B Wisdom, Proverbs 31:10-31, Psalm 1, Mark 9:30-37, St. Mark’s, September 19, 2021.

 “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”

The disciples have knowledge, but they have not received wisdom. Knowledge is a warehouse of information we have learned, while wisdom is profoundly using that knowledge. Wisdom goes beyond learning facts. It is making sense of facts. Knowledge comes from learning. Knowledge helps you make a living./wisdom enables you to make a life. Wisdom is a way of life, a path, a journey.

Knowledge is knowing where babies come from. Wisdom knows how to care for them. Knowledge is learning the distance between here and New York City. Wisdom knows what to pack for the trip.

 When asked about love, a knowledgeable person describes what happens in the mind or body when someone experiences love.

A wise person speaks to the indescribable feeling of love. A wise person who’s experienced love has lived it, touched it and learned from it./

“Today, the quest for knowledge may be pursued at higher speeds with smarter tools,” writes Arianna Huffington. “But wisdom is found no more readily than it was three thousand years ago in the court of King Solomon. In fact, ours is a generation bloated with information and starved for wisdom.” 1

Today’s readings talk about the difference between wisdom and information; the wisdom of a capable wife in Proverbs, the wisdom of trees planted by streams of water in Psalm 1, the wisdom from above in James, and  Jesus’ wisdom of welcoming a child in Mark.

One of our favorite television series for seven seasons was Mad Men. It is a fictionalized story about a New York advertising agency on Madison Avenue in the nineteen sixties. My husband and I identify with the series’ historical accuracy, remembering what happened to us during the time chronicled. We glimpse a world view of the 1960s culture through the prism of this New York ad agency. But, of course, it also is a soap opera. A favorite episode is about the checkered, shadowy past life of the lead protagonist in the advertising agency, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, womanizing Don Draper. /In Korea, in the army, when he lights a cigarette (everyone constantly smokes), he dramatically causes an explosion, killing his commanding officer. He exchanges dog tags and takes the identity of the dead officer, Don Draper. His former self, Dick Whitman, is now dead. I told you it was a soap opera.  Eventually, Anna, a Patricia Marquette-lookalike, a polio victim and the wife of the real Don Draper, tracks him down at a dealership selling used cars and accuses him of impersonating her husband. Anna and Don eventually become close friends as Anna becomes Don’s surrogate mother. Years later, Anna tenderly tells Draper weeks before she dies, “I know everything about you,/ more than anyone else,/ and I still love you.” This is wisdom from above. This is the wisdom Jesus is trying to teach his disciples. The journey from wisdom is so often to unconditional love. “I know everything about you,/ more than anyone else,/ and I still love you.” Thank you, Anna Draper, for teaching us the journey from knowledge/to Jesus’ wisdom,/ associated most often with unconditional love and peace (Proverbs 3:17).

Do you remember times in your life when you were given the wisdom Jesus is talking about?/ You suddenly know what to do when you have all the knowledge possible and are still struggling?/ You receive a tiny glimpse of God’s love when you feel unloved./ You are given wisdom to do something you know you could not have thought of on your own./

The first psalm carries me back to coastal Virginia to a local hospital at my dying grandfather’s bedside. /The dreaded call comes late at night. “Your grandfather is in a coma. We think he had a stroke.” I board the first plane back to my hometown in Tidewater, Virginia, to visit him in the morning.

Thoughts flood my mind on the long plane ride. My grandfather is the most significant person in my growing up years. He is a watchmaker and owns a jewelry store on Main Street in my southern hometown of fewer than 5000 people. I stop by his store every afternoon after school on my way home. He always gives me a nickel to buy an ice cream cone at Riddles’ drug store, two stores down from his.  I spend every Sunday afternoon and evening with my grandparents. We eat the same Sunday dinner: fried chicken, green beans, potato salad, and Mabel’s (my grandparents’ cook) homemade pound cake for dessert. After dinner, my grandfather reads me the funny papers. Then we go to the country to his farm, walking the length of his property by the Mattaponi

River, as he teaches me about trees, plants, and snakes, occasionally shares stories about his growing-up days in the Smoky Mountains. Sometimes we visit nearby relatives and the cemetery where my grandmother’s parents are buried. Back home, we walk from his townhouse for Sunday night church, then home for 7-up floats and the Ed Sullivan show. I spend the night in what seems like the most enormous bed in their guest bedroom, and after breakfast, walk the short nine blocks to school the next day.

My grandfather is my symbol of unconditional love, always there for me, supporting and loving me in good times and bad. Unfortunately, I spend little time with him after leaving my hometown and going to college and medical school. He, however, never forgets me and sends letters every week on his 30-year-old typewriter with intermittent keys that barely print. Every other sentence ends with etc., etc., etc. Each letter is filled with stories of his experiences away from home in World War I and words of love and encouragement. Always enclosed is a dollar bill. When he suffers this stroke twenty years later, I am devastated. I cannot bear to lose the love I knew was always there, no matter what I had done.

I walk into my grandfather’s hospital room for the first time. He sits up, gasps, and there is an immediate look of astonishment on his face. I believe he knows me even though he never again shows any sign of recognition. As I sit by his bed and listen to his labored breathing, I feel helpless. What can I do? All my years of medical practice give no answers.  By some miracle, I have my prayer book with me, but of course, no bible. Suddenly, I remember the joy of hearing my grandfather read the paper to me as a child after Sunday lunch. This child within tells me what to do. Read the Psalms. I hope my grandfather can forgive my reading from the Book of Common Prayer, rather than the King James Bible.

Psalm 1

“On his law, they meditate day and night.

They are like trees planted by streams of water,

Which yield their fruit in its season,

And their leaves do not wither.”

 I am embarrassed when personnel come into the room, but an inner voice says this is what my grandfather wants to hear. I know he hears me. We both are totally in the moment as one lies, and the other sits reading the psalms, as we both anticipate our last moments together. This is what I want at my deathbed-- to hear the Psalms read by someone who loves me. Once more, the source of wisdom comes from my sources of unconditional love, who spoke through my inner child within.//

“Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “’Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’”

My career for over forty years was at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, where I worked with another physician whom I regarded as totally incompetent. I cannot understand her decision-making or methods of handling conflicts and problems. Then, one weekend I take over her job when she is on vacation. I am presented with the issues she daily encounters. Overnight, I become aware of why she makes the decisions she does. Overnight, I gain respect for her and her job. I walk in her shoes and am given that wisdom that now brings me back into relationship with someone I perceived as an enemy, as I glimpse the world from her perspective.  Overnight God transforms my knowledge of facts to the understanding wisdom about another person. This is the wisdom of Jesus I learn in the synagogue of a Children’s Hospital.

 Quaker activist Gene Knudsen Hoffman  teaches us: “An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.” “An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.”

The wisdom from this story tells me that whenever I am in conflict with someone, I may not know their story. Before we resolve our difficulties, I must try to hear their story. //

 God constantly sends us messages of the wisdom of Jesus from above. Wisdom comes from hearing someone else’s story. We may only hear this wisdom when we are desperate, when we are vulnerable and more open. Wisdom often comes from suffering, like the pain of birthing a child. Jesus’ wisdom often leads to unconditional love and the path to peace. //

Wisdom,/ suffering,/peace,/ and love are the words of knowledge we hear today. How do they relate to each other? Their wisdom from on high most often is a contradiction, a paradox. The peace that comes with wisdom is never the absence of struggle or suffering, but always/ comes with the presence/ of love.2

1 April Yamasaki, “Reflections on the Lectionary” in  Christian Century, p. 21, August 5, 2015.

2 Frederick Buechner in Wishful Thinking (HarperOne 1973)

Joanna seibert

14B John 6:35, 41-51. Bread of Heaven. Babette's Feast, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, AR, August 8, 2021

14B John 6:35, 41-51. Bread of Heaven, Babette’s Feast

St. Mark’s Little Rock, August 8, 2021 

Hallelujah!/ This one word is constantly repeated by an elderly villager in Isak Dinesen’s short story, “Babette’s Feast.” The venue for this Academy Award-winning film ( the best foreign film 1986) is a remote Jut(hut)land community in western Denmark. Babette, a refuge from the civil war in 1871 in Paris, arrives mysteriously one night to become the housekeeper and cook for two aging sisters, Martina and Philippa. She is sent by Philippa’s former singing coach, who wanted Philippa to become an operatic star. Instead, both pious sisters give up their own lives and loves/ to continue the puritanical ministry of their deceased father in this tiny coastal settlement. Their father was the founder of this religious sect based on a fundamental return to austere, severe Reformation principles. Martina is named for Martin Luther and Philippa for Luther’s friend, Philip Melanchthon (ma length thong). They and the few remaining sect members are suspicious of pleasure and eat only bland food.

Over time, Babette’s only French connection is a lottery ticket renewed by a relative each year. And you guessed it, after twelve years in exile, she wins the French lottery, a prize of ten thousand francs. The sisters are planning a simple celebration of the anniversary of their father’s hundredth birthday with the ten remaining aging members of the congregation. Babette surprises the sisters by offering to prepare “a real French dinner” for the event with some of her money. The two sisters live to serve; they are unacquainted/ with being served. The exchange between the sisters and Babette is an icon illuminating the generosity of God’s grace and our suspicious response to that generosity. The sisters reluctantly agree. /

Since their charismatic father’s death, the congregation has become joyless. Old quarrels and fears resurface. One woman constantly nags a man about whether God will forgive a sin of their youth. Old hymns they sing fail to bring any sense of comfort or community. The sisters’ devotion is no longer appreciated. What is ultimately lacking in this remote community is grace. Their religion has become abstract, remote, a set of brittle orthodoxies rather than a lived faith of love. The bread of heaven has become stale.

 The sisters are alarmed as they grasp the scope of Babette’s plans when boatloads of supplies arrive from Paris, a live turtle, quail, exotic wines. Babette begins her elaborate preparations, and the sisters fear they have led their congregation to a Satanic Sabbath by a sorcerer.  They  decide they will eat the meal but pretend they have lost their sense of taste. They will pretend they are eating their usual bread-mush and boiled cod.

Martina, Philippa, and the others come to the elaborate dinner in their staunch plainness. However, Babette has become a vessel for the incarnation, for grace itself. Her meal becomes both a feast and a sacrifice, and, like a sacrament, it has an efficacious effect.  The feast table is resplendent with silver candles, fancy serviettes (sur·vee·ets), sparkling china.  General Lorens Loewenholm (Low in home), a last-minute guest, resplendent in full dress uniform, alone brings color and life to the banquet./ He tastes the first wine, the Amontillado (uh·maan·tee·aah·dow). “The finest wine I have ever tasted!” he says. Next come authentic turtle soup and Blinis Demidoff (bla niece  demi doff) thin pancakes with caviar and sour cream.

The general’s astonished exclamation is “incredible!” Meanwhile, the other diners sit quietly eating, drinking with the same blank, disinterested expressions they have every day for thirty years. One woman tastes the vintage champagne and innocently, wonderfully describes it as a kind of lemonade.  The finest wine is poured for each course. The main course is Cailles en sarcophage (k lon sac ro fage), truffle stuffed quails in their pastry shell coffins. Hmmm. Remember quail served at another feast some years earlier in another wilderness with another delicacy called manna. In typical French style the next course is salad, cheese, cake, exotic fruit, brandy and finally coffee. Too much food for 8 or 10:30 but probably not for 5!

 But mysteriously, the meal changes the guests in unexpected ways. Some reminisce about their absent master, making the feast an authentic remembrance meal./

As the extravagant celebration works its transformation, the polarities blur; distance fades between apparent opposites. Sweet exchanges replace bitterness. Phillipa sings with an angelic voice. The company silently, peacefully listens, feeling, remembering. Martina and Lorens, her former lover, gaze lovingly at each other./ The two who agonized over a past elicit relationship kiss.

Our fortuitous military guest, Lorens,  once, Martina’s lover, perceives the meal, and the hand behind it just as the disciples on the Emmaus road came to recognize the Lord in the breaking of bread. You have guessed it. Babette once owned a famous Paris restaurant. Lorens recounts only one comparable meal, years ago in Paris, prepared by someone with the “ability to transform a dinner into a  love affair that makes no distinction between bodily and spiritual appetite.”

The concluding highlight is the General’s speech. He expresses the Pastor’s words spoken so long ago, now illuminating for all. “Mercy and truth, my friends, have met together. Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.”/ Babette reveals she is the famous chef of the Cafe Anglais (on glay) - an artist who longs to express her creative genius. She tells them the dinner cost all of the ten thousand francs. She is again poor. The village and the people are her home forever./  But the transformed sister, Phillippa, embraces Babette saying, “In paradise, Oh, how you will enchant the angels!”1,2,3

Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”

Today’s gospel is about the Eucharist. It is about another feast by the one who gave all that we too might be transformed, have new life today, the beginning of eternal life. This modern story of love and sacrifice was Babette’s own version of the Eucharist, illustrating the life changing transformation, our own transfiguration that can occur when we partake of this sacrificial meal of grace and love with each other.

Some call this remembrance the Last Supper. We call it Eucharist, ευχαριστὠ.It is a Greek word (efkaristo)  meaning thanksgiving. We are giving thanksgiving together for our new life in Jesus Christ.

Others call it communion. We are communing with The Holy One. But we also are communing with each other.4 The priest cannot celebrate alone. Others must be present. Remember the words we hear, “do this in remembrance of me.” Remembrance, a word meaning re- membering. Coming together again. We are giving thanksgiving as we  become a member,/ again of the body of Christ together. We do not participate in a private communion. We come to the altar for transformation that only sacrificial love can give. We cannot explain it, but if this pandemic has taught us one thing, it is how much we miss receiving and sharing the Eucharist together and how different our lives are without it. remembering…remembering….re-membering.

Frederick Buechner writes that there are two ways of remembering. We go back from the present, back into the past. We are back with our spouse on our wedding day./ The second is to call, bring back up from the past/ to the present, a memory, a loved one comes from the past back up to the present. We remember those we loved who may have died, our spouse, our mother, our grandmother or grandfather and we feel them back beside us. Re-membering. The Eucharist is not a nostalgic trip. It is a real presence of Jesus that we are called to bring back up5  as we commune with Christ and commune with each other. This is what happens at Babette’s Feast. What returns from the past to the present is love, joy, reconciliation./ The same joy and celebration and love from Christ are offered here at this very table.  Come;/ let us now partake of God’s Feast,/ even/ if it is only the bread of Heaven. Hallelujah!

1Robert A. Flanagan, “Babette’s Feast: The Generosity of God,” Jacob’s Well, http://www.jacwell.org Spring/Summer, 1998.

2Steven D. Greydanus, Babette’s Feast, Vatican film list, 1987.

3Valerie O’Connell, “Babette’s Feast, a Review” in John Mark Ministries, www.jmm.org, December 11, 2003.

4Frederick Buechner “Last Supper,” in Wishful Thinking (Harper Collins 1973) pp.  63-64.. also in  Buechner Sermon Illustrations April 2, 2015.

5Frederick Buechner, “Memory,”  Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words, Frederick Buechner Quote of the Day, August 1, 2018.

Joanna Seibert

July 4th, 2021, 9B Church and State, Mark 6:1-13, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock

9B Church and State July 4, 2021

Mark 6:1-13. St. Mark’s, Little Rock

Here we are in church on the American holiday par excellence, the 4th of July. Today is the Lord’s Day and the Fourth of July.  It happens like this every few years when the sound of firecrackers merges with the tones of the Gloria and the Sanctus.1 There is also something very moving about putting our hand over our heart and singing the national anthem and America the Beautiful.  For the most part, we are proud of our country, birthed to us by the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

“America! America!

God shed his grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea.” 2

 We do live with a healthy tension between our faith in God  whose love transcends all borders and loyalties, and our loyalty to our country.3 If the early Christians had felt that Christianity should be connected to the love of their country, Christ’s message would never have left Israel’s borders.

Chris Keller reminds us that America was born from a religiously divided Christian Europe. Splits among Puritans, Baptists, Anglicans and Catholics are in our nation’s DNA.4 This country’s other DNA strand is the opposite of our religious pluralism. Men and women of different religions and political views come together to form a union of one against an overpowering force. They give up individual power to serve the common good.4   If each religious group or colony had confronted the British singularly, we would not be the United States but a stack of small countries as in Europe. Later, our government does split, with both sides quoting scripture as reasons to do so. Now we are back together, but sometimes only by a thin thread.

When our nation is formed, there is a clear majority of races surrounded by several minorities.5Today we are blessed by having so many races, cultures, religions, categories of people in our country that no longer can one group claim to be the majority. Our ability to live in community as  minorities sharing power and speaking out for the common good is a blessing,/ and a curse.

Can the Episcopal three-legged stool of scripture, tradition, and reason help us find answers?

What can our Christian tradition from the past tell us?

When I was growing up, our country’s darkest enemy is the Soviet Union.1 In grammar school in the fifties, we regularly participate in air raid drills where we hide under our desks anticipating Russia’s impending atomic bomb attack. There is such hope for a new world when the old Soviet regime is torn apart in August 1991, giving way to a new social order with many independent countries struggling to stay that way.  A former Librarian of Congress, James Billington, a student of Russian history, is in Moscow in 1991 giving us an eyewitness account. Boris Yeltsin and a small group of defenders occupies the Russian White House. They successfully manage to face off an enormous number of tanks and troops poised to attack, put down their rebellion, and restore the old guard in the Soviet Union.

A vital role in this successful resistance is played by the Babushkas, the “old women in the church,” and their courageous public Christian witness. These bandana-wearing older women, who keep the Orthodox Christian church alive for years during the Soviet period, are the butt of jokes over the years by Russians and Westerners. No persons seem more powerless or irrelevant than they. These grandmothers are widely regarded as evidence of the inevitable death of religion in the Soviet Union.

And yet, on the critical night of August 20, 1991, martial law is proclaimed. People are told to go home. These women disobey and feed the resisters in a public display of support. Some staff medical stations. Others pray for a miracle. Still, more astoundingly, others climb up onto tanks, peering through the slits at the crew-cut men inside,  saying, “There are new orders from God: Thou shalt not kill.” The young men stop the tanks. “The attack,” says Billington, “never comes off, and by dawn of the third day, the tide has turned.”/

Do you remember the movie, The Pianist, about the Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman who plays Chopin’s “Nocturne in C-sharp Minor” live over Radio Warsaw in its last broadcast in September 1939 as German shells explode all around him?1 He spends the war as a fugitive in hiding. Near the end of the war, he is discovered in the attic of an abandoned Warsaw home by Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, a Christian Austrian German officer.  At great danger, Hosenfeld provides food, clothing, and protection to Szpilman. Earlier, Hosenfeld had helped other Jews, defying orders and risking execution himself. He releases prisoners from concentration camps and spares the lives of Jews slated for execution. Unfortunately, before he is found, he dies in a Russian prisoner of war camp. /

Let’s come closer to home to look for Christians using reason.6 Little Rock, summer of 1958. Governor Faubus invokes a hastily passed state law closing high schools rather than obeying federal orders to integrate after the 1957 Central High crisis.  Three women, Adolphine Fletcher Terry, a prominent “old family” civic leader in her seventies, Vivion Brewer, and Velma Powell, meet while organizing a dinner party to honor Harry Ashmore, the Arkansas Gazette editor and recent recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. In addition,/ they organize the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC).  Episcopal women are very involved, including the leader, Adolphine Fletcher Terry. Much-loved Episcopalians Virginia Mitchell, Mary Wortham, Naomi May, Babs Penick, and Phyllis Brandon, and Bettie Ahrens, and Betty Rowland from St. Marks are at their first meeting. WEC becomes a highly effective organization that bombards the city with ads, fliers challenging Faubus’s actions. At peak membership, WEC musters 2000. Largely inexperienced in politics, these women become articulate, confident promoters of public schools and the integration of schools.

  Little Rock 1963. White, African American, Asian American, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish mothers come together and initiate public discussion about diversity. Overcoming fears for their safety, they carry that message to civic groups across the state. They confront public opinion as well as their own stereotypes and perceptions and found “The Little Rock Panel of American Women.” /

Finally, our scripture today from Mark’s gospel reminds us that Christ goes about “among the villages” of Soviet Russia, Poland, Arkansas sending out people to cast out demons and cure the sick.  Today, at this very moment, Christ is visiting the village of St. Mark’s, sending us out beyond these walls to heal the sick and cast out demons by caring for our environment and immigrants, feeding the hungry, visiting  prisoners, the homebound, the sick, and those seeking recovery from addiction.////

When I am growing up, the 4th of July is a family event where my grandmother’s relatives come out of the woodwork, joining us on my grandfather’s farm for a picnic like none other. We churn ice cream freezers until they wouldn’t move and feast on fried chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs, and watermelon/ on picnic tables by the river. Later in my medical practice, the 4th of July becomes the most unpopular holiday to be on call because we are working with new residents and interns just out of medical school. A warning. Do not get sick on July 4th weekend.

Now, as I am aging, I think more of the sacrifices made to form our country and then keep it together as a democracy. I also honor those who spoke out and tried to heal our country. There are ways to do this individually, like Captain Wilm Hosenfeld or in groups like the  Russian grandmothers and the Little Rock women. They are our mentors of how to heal our country when it becomes sick. I know many learned about healing in congregations just like ours./ My prayer on this July 4th is that St. Mark’s will continue to be a sacred space where soldiers, grandmothers, mothers, men, children come to learn about God’s healing love as Jesus sends us out into other villages to make our country a caring community.

Today is the Fourth of July. Today is the Lord’s Day. Enjoy.   

But remember if we want our lives to count as did our ancestors’, we have orders from a commander who sent out so many BEFORE us during the heat of the summer. We carry with us this heritage with only ONE thing, Jesus’ gospel of peace, to cure the sick and cast out demons./

“America! America!

God shed his grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea.”2

 In years to come, when our great-grandchildren sing “America the Beautiful,” will they be as proud of these United States as we are. It all depends on us/ and our ability to love and heal each other.5 /

1Thomas Long, “’ Today is….’ A Sermon for Sunday, July 4” in Journal for Preachers, Vol 27, no 4, Pentecost 2004, pp. 40-46.

2Katherine Lee Bates, Congregationalist, July 5, 1895.

3Samuel T. Lloyd III, “A Humble Patriotism” in Sermons from the National Cathedral (Rowman and Littlefield 2013) pp. 189-193.

4Keller, Christoph III, “July 4, Out of Many, One,” sermon Trinity Cathedral, Little Rock,  July 5, 2015.

5Wade, Francis, “An American Agenda” in Rites of Our Passage (Posterity Press 2002), pp. 82-85.

6Sara Alderman Murphy in Breaking the Silence (University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, 1997).

 Joanna Seibert

Parables and Seeds Scattered 6B, Mark 4:26-34. June 13, 2021 St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock

6B Parables and Seeds Scattered, Mark 4:26-34 June 13, 2021, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church Little Rock

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.”

This seemingly innocent English nursery rhyme has been given many hidden political and historical interpretations. Ordinary poems have often disguised a point of view allowing people to speak out against an issue/ but not be immediately arrested or killed because of this belief. Is the rhyme about Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary Stuart killed by her cousin Elizabeth, or Bloody Mary, Elizabeth I’s sister?  My favorite interpretation is that this is Jesus’ Mary.  The cockle shells are the badges worn by pilgrims who take the Camino Walk to the Shrine of St. James in Spain./ The bells are the Sanctus bells we hear at the Eucharist telling us something holy is happening. The sanctus bells we hear today rest on a cushion made in memory of Cindy Miller which will soon be blessed.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.”

A crowd follows Jesus to the seashore. The gathering is so large that Jesus gets into a boat, sits down, and begins to preach in parables. If people are looking for a lesson in theology this particular morning,/ they are disappointed. But the farmers and gardeners are excited as they hear the kingdom of God is about seeds, crops, and plants. However, this gardener scatters seeds all over the ground, not deeply in parallel rows or in fitted holes in socially distanced rows.  Our gardener and farmer sleep and get up each day,/ but not much happens except this feverish activity. Eventually, out of the darkness,/ rising from the ground,/ the seeds sprout and become plants. No one knows how this happens,/ but at varying times,/ depending on the seeds,/ we see stalks of wheat, corn, an iris, a daffodil, a tulip, a pumpkin, or a watermelon appears./ Jesus seems to say the kingdom of God mysteriously occurs in ordinary things/ in ordinary places in our ordinary lives./

 When Jesus is alone with his disciples, he retells the parables and explains the stories in more detail.

Why this hiddenness and secrecy? Why does Jesus only speak in parables to the crowds? Well, previously, the scribes from Jerusalem declare Jesus as a Satan follower. Jesus’ disciples say he now speaks in these parables to keep out of prison,/ at least for a while. Talking about seeds and dirt should not get him arrested for preaching heresy and treason.1

So, what is Jesus really telling us?/ The seeds in the parable go into the ground and become plants in some mysterious way, unknown to most of us except maybe the botanists! It all happens in the dark. Remember that creation itself occurs in the dark. Jesus’ life story teaches us the miracle of heavenly things happening in darkness in the most significant events of his life: his birth, his arrest, his death, and of course, his resurrection, all in darkness. No one is present to see his resurrection. It happens in the darkness of the tomb, now empty,// as do so many of our own resurrections occur in the dark tombs of our lives.2  /

Amy Jill Levine calls parables Jesus’ short stories. Like a favorite short story or poem, we find different meanings previously missed each time we read it, usually because of our life experiences since our last read.3/

 So, let’s dig deeper into the story itself. Herbert O’Driscoll asks us to consider that we are the ground,/ and the seeds are sown within us. The seeds are words and actions from our experiences with family, friends, or enemies.  Perhaps they are words we hear at this church. Words spoken or sung each Sunday. Words placed there at our baptism, or Vacation Bible School or Camp Mitchell. Actions of love come to us from so many possibilities. Sometimes they are stories told us by friends sharing their Christian journey and faith. These seeds are sown within us in some mysterious way and are also miraculously nurtured within us,/ sometimes for years.4

I would like to share one story of a seed planted here at St. Mark’s many years ago.

My husband is cleaning out our basement and intermittently brings up treasures to decide if I want to give them away, throw away, or keep them. Recently he brought up a book, The Edge of Adventure, by Bruce Larson and Keith Miller. Many may remember Keith Miller, who visited Little Rock several times and wrote about the 12 steps of recovery for everyday living for ordinary people. I remember we studied The Edge of Adventure in a weekly book group led by Dean McMillin at St. Mark’s at the old gift shop called the Bookmark,/ where the youth recently met and will soon be the outreach center. When I read a book, I usually write on the title page the date I begin reading it. There were two dates, 1981 and 1984.

The plot thickens. Pay close attention. Inside The Edge of Adventure is this newsletter, The Postmark. It was what our online Friday Remarks has become.  (Now, don’t get Postmark, Remarks, Bookmark and St. Mark’s confused.) The Postmark is dated September 5, 1984.  Inside are predominately outreach opportunities, reminding us that St. Mark’s has always been a church reaching beyond our walls. Outreach describes this church from its roots.  The other pillar of St. Mark’s besides music and liturgy has been children and adult formation. On the front cover of the newsletter is the list of formation opportunities in the Forum for September, October, and November 1984. On November 18, 1984, in italics is Alcohol Awareness Sunday – a special program in Forum.

I remember this Forum! People in recovery from all walks of life and religions share stories in the old parish hall about their addiction and what life is like now in recovery.  I know one of the women speaking! She is an active member of this church! I identify with her story! I have known for some time that I have a problem. I say in my mind that I am going to meet with her. I write her a letter, even put a stamp on it, /but I never mail it. I often see her at St. Mark’s services and functions but never say anything about my addiction to alcohol. It is not until 1990/, six years later, that I walk into a 12-step recovery room and seek help. Six years later!/

One more mind-boggling thing, or maybe it is Spirit-filled. My sobriety date is November 18th, the exact month and day of this Forum, just six years earlier, November 18th.

Does this tell you anything or make the hair on the back of your neck stand up? It does for me. I can barely talk about this parable. The God of our understanding, the Holy Spirit,  through so many other people, plants in the innermost ground of our being, tiny seeds like the mustard seed./ These seeds are nurtured particularly by decaying parts of ourselves. The seeds grow and sprout just when they are ready to become edible flowers and plants that produce fruit for ourselves and other people. This fruit of the Spirit allows us and others to become the persons God created us to be. God never, ever, ever gives up on us, even when we stray way off the garden path or out of the field. The seeds are scattered everywhere. /

I have heard some of your stories. I know many of you also have experienced God planting seeds within you when you never realized it.  God just waits for us, often in what seems like the darkness of our darkest times. The Spirit waits for us until we are ready,/ now and throughout all eternity,/ to experience this resurrection in our lives.//

 Mary,/ who we think you are,/ this is one more story,/ one more parable,/ one more poem/ about how your garden grows,/ and grows,/ and grows/ to produce the fruit of the Spirit. Cockle shells and Sanctus bells ringing all over this place. Amen.

1 Barbara Brown Taylor in The Seeds of Heaven (Westminster John Knox Press 2004) p. 24.

2  Sue Monk Kidd in When the Heart Waits, Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions  (HarperSanFrancisco 1990).

3 Amy Jill Levine in Short Stories by Jesus, The Enigmatic Parables of A Controversial Rabbi  (HarperOne 2014).

4 Herbert O’Driscoll in The Word for Today, Reflections on the Readings of the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B Vol. 3,  p. 29.

Easter 5B John 15:1-8, Life on the Vine, St. Mark's Episcopal Church Little Rock May 2, 2021

Life on the Vine

Easter 5B John 15:1-8, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church May 2, 2021

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower, and you are the branches. Abide in me as I abide in you.”

What is your image of abiding in Christ, of living on the vine?

Most of us have a pretty specific image of what it is like being in union with Christ.  One common belief is that those connected to the vine never have difficulty speaking their truth if asked what they believe.  In a heartbeat, they can speak eloquently about their faith and walk with Jesus in ways that move and convert others. They are never embarrassed if asked what they believe, and are never shy or reluctant to answer. 1

Let’s see how this sometimes works in practice. Mike and Marty Schaufele share  with us a dear friend, Bob Scott, now a priest in Tulsa.  Bob tells the story of the morning many years ago when he returns from his first Arkansas Cursillo weekend, empowered to reach out to his neighbor and speak about his abiding relationship with Jesus Christ.  He prays in the elevator on the ride up to his office that early Monday morning that God will put someone in need in his life. He walks into his office as a co-worker immediately meets him and asks to speak with him about a spiritual crisis.  Bob looks at him/ and says, “I’m sorry, I have been away for the weekend and am behind in my work. You’ll have to come back later.”

         Barbara Brown Taylor tells us there are more common knowledge false beliefs about real Christians.1 Believers in Christ constantly communicate with God.  They understand what happens to them every day, or at least have the faith to accept whatever comes gracefully. Believers do not have doubts, and  are never afraid. They have absolute confidence that they are in God’s hands and that God will take care of them. When they say their prayers at night, they hear God speaking directly back to them. 1

Another popular belief is that those living on the vine consistently encounter worship as a meaningful experience. They leave church and go out and act on whatever the preacher says. They believe every word of the Nicene Creed. They have a spiritual experience as they receive communion every Sunday.  The faithful are never bored, disagreeable, or feel left out. They have a steadfast sense of belonging to God and to one another. 1

Have we come to your belief about life on the vine yet? What spiritual goal have you placed so high that you can never achieve it? Do you not pray enough, or witness enough, or read and study enough theology? Are you not knowledgeable enough, or enthusiastic enough, or certain enough about what you believe? Whatever it is,/ please stop./ Please stop exiling yourself from the vine, because of your beliefs about what you think it takes to belong to the body of Christ. You are connected to Christ.  You belong on this vine simply because God says you do, not because of what you do or who you are,/ but because you are so loved by God.1

I think you are hearing this message today because you seek an awareness of your presence on this vine.  Chances are the way true believers believe is valiantly on some days, pitifully on others, with faith enough to move mountains on some occasions and not enough to get out of bed on others.  One of my most spiritual friends tells me that she has a deep and abiding faith in God that comes and goes.  Another friend shares with me: “I believe in God frequently.” I have another friend who tells me she sometimes feels she is like the Athenians Paul speaks to in Acts, worshiping an “unknown god.”

         Reread your Bible. Dear friends on this vine, we are all in good company. From Adam and Eve to Jesus and his followers, the Old and New Testaments are a continuous saga about people who have doubts about their relationship to God and what God is calling them to do. Sometimes the best we can do is take C. S. Lewis’s suggestion and act “as if,” as if we are aware of our presence on the vine, and when we do, somehow it becomes true.

Some days we are as firm in our faith as apostles.  Some days we are like tired branches bearing over-ripe fruit.  This means that we belong to the vine not because we are certain of God but because God is certain of us. No one, no action, can take us off of this vine./

Be patient with yourself,/ and while you are at it,/ be patient also with the rest of us on this vine with you. /

What is life like on this vine?  Some years ago, my husband and I spent a week at Kanuga, an Episcopal conference center in North Carolina, learning about life on the vine and living a spiritual life. It was called a Summit on Spirituality, and it was just that.  We listen to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Walter Wink, Thomas Keating, Alan Jones, Phyllis Tickle, Barbara Crafton, and many others, including our own Stuart Hoke.  They share their experience of the spiritual disciplines which keep us aware of our presence on the vine: keeping the daily office, centering prayer, meditation, yoga, scripture, sacraments, corporate worship, journaling, movies, spiritual direction, dream work.

Alan Jones tells us that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.  I should repeat it: the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.  This also is now a favorite quote of Anne Lamott. If you go far enough back, you find it in the writings of Paul Tillich.

Barbara Crafton tells us that when you lose sight of your place on the vine and become spiritually dry, change your spiritual disciplines. That is why there are so many ways to feel and know that connection to the vine, to Christ, and each other.

Finally, this is what we learn about life on the vine from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a genuinely holy man.

We are all so loved by a vinegrower who creates us by the bubbling over of his love.  The vinegrower loves us before we are born, and will love us throughout eternity.  The vinegrower loves us so much that all of us are given a divine connection to the vine,/ Jesus Christ. Each of us is a branch connected to this vine. By this connection, we become a God carrier, a carrier of the love of Christ.

         Insight! A vine does not just work vertically. A vine also connects the branches horizontally to each other. Jesus describes in John a dynamic system of nurture, feedback, growth, groundedness.  Christ is the vine, giving himself to the branches, helping them grow and provide fruit. We are dependent on him. / The vine, Jesus Christ, is also the MEANS of our interdependence, our connection with each other, this community. We are born needing to connect to each other.2 This is why we so longed for each other during the pandemic. God calls us to community on the vine. /Right now, get involved in one of the communities here at St. Mark’s, men’s Bible study, Daughters of the King, a Christ Care group, choir, youth group, food pantry, EfM, Sunday forum, Shrimp Boil, Community of Hope. And so many more.

 We are cared for on this vine by the love of Christ/ and by the love of Christ in each other. Like the centurion’s servant healed by  the faith of his master, and the paralytic healed by the faith of his friends who lowered him through a roof to Jesus, we do the same for each other.

Last insight. There is nothing we can do to lose this connection on the vine. We can do nothing to earn God’s love/ or lose it. But, yes, our lives may be pruned, some times more painfully than at others. Harmful parts of ourselves are discarded when we can no longer bear the pain they have brought to our lives and others. We are pruned of the withering parts of our lives that are not God: our addictions, our need for control, our self-centeredness. But the vine grower, God, never gives up on us throughout all eternity.   Jesus calls us today to be aware and to accept this incredible gift of love and connection to the love of God in Christ and each other.

And so, my dear leafy friends, “as we are connected to this vine, the Risen Christ runs through our blood like sap, nurturing us through community, giving our new and old branches more fruit than we can ever believe possible. In this world that is so hungry, so thirsty, what could be better than to be a living branch abiding on this vine of love, fed and cared for by Christ and each other?” 2

1Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Voice of the Shepherd,” The Preaching Life, pp.  143-144.

2Susan Klein, “Fruitful Connections,” Preaching Through the Year of Matthew, pp. 60-62.