Blue Christmas, Holiday Healing Service, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Wednesday, December 15, 2021 5:30 pm Joanna Seibert

  Blue Christmas, Holiday Healing Service, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Wednesday, December 15, 2021, 5:30 pm

The holidays are often the most challenging time after the death of a loved one. Also, after other losses, such as losing a job, dealing with addiction, divorce, depression, or severe illness. We hope the healing service tonight will help you know that this congregation has some awareness of how difficult this season is./ My only brother died seven years ago, the day after Christmas. I still miss him every day, especially in December, since he was such a Christmas person. My world has changed since he died. ///

Living through these difficult times is a painful journey. Tonight, we will consider road maps for the journey to bring comfort. The first journey is with the paralyzed man carried by his friends on a pallet/ through the roof to Jesus./

We cannot depend on ourselves alone to know and feel the healing love of God. We need spiritual friends. That is why God constantly calls us to community. We are like this man brought to Jesus on a pallet by his friends and lifted through a roof to Jesus below/ because the man cannot move. A crowd blocks access to Jesus. When we become paralyzed with fear, loneliness, pain, we feel trapped, blocked out of joy, the sunshine of the Spirit. We need spiritual friends to carry us on that pallet through the roof to God. Initially, we are the person on the pallet.\Later, we may become the friend helping to bring another companion on that pallet to healing./

At St. Mark’s, we glimpse 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 a child, a spouse, a parent, a brother, a sister, a partner. We see despair, especially after tragic deaths and the death of the young, but as we meet in community, we always experience hope and healing. By simply coming to the group, participants make a positive commitment to look for new birth, new life. As facilitators, we hold the group together to encourage, listen, give people who sometimes seem paralyzed a time to speak as they are able. We figuratively walk beside,/ sit along,/ and sometimes carry each other, as we hold together the group with love.

However, the real healers, the real companions carrying their friend on a pallet to healing, are the participants themselves. They know most recently about despair. All are at a different stage of grief, but they honor and embrace the stage of each other. They radically hold and support each other. They 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. / Once again, we see healing in community, as we are called to be present,/ aware,/  listen/ and be open/ to the Christ Child present beside and within each other./ Those in recovery also know that this same healing through community is available in 12 step groups.

Recently, I had a Christmas lunch with a Mourner’s Path group who has met annually for almost ten years to support and love each other, especially during the holidays./ We 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 remind us that we are no longer alone and are surrounded by love.  Once again, this new birth of the Christ Child, we yearn to meet at the manger/ in a stable of a  crowded inn/ takes place best, in community. /////

Another struggle on our journey through despair to new life speaks of its length and difficulty. We will hear about this journey on Christmas Eve, the road less traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem to the manger, new birth, recovery, and 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 travel that 100-mile perilous, 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./ 

Both Archbishop Tutu and Richard Rohr1 also describe 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—will hold on to us because we sometimes cannot hold ourselves if we only allow it. 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./

Romans also 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 also writes that the Christ Child, is especially present in the dark times with those who are sick, disabled, hungry, grief-stricken, struggling with addiction. God is always with us on this journey. We are called to keep looking for tiny openings,/ small blessings,/ moments of clarity, surprising experiences of love we never expected, or from people we least expected, connecting us to God who so loves us. We are to keep allowing those God sends to walk part of this journey with us,/ when it is offered,/ most often at surprising moments.//

 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 Buechner receives a call from a friend living in Charlotte, North Carolina, nearly 800 miles away, saying he hears Buechner is having a difficult time and wants to come and visit. He 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 remember/ a friend who radically decides to come and walk that challenging  journey to Bethlehem for a few days with him,/ and they both are changed.//  This is the love of presence that brings on new birth that God calls us to share and offer to each other./

So tonight, I lighted a candle to honor my brother, Jim. My life has changed since his death. I have become closer to his three sons who live  in Virginia. I am sharing my love for my brother now with his children. I send texts and call and plan to visit them soon. I want them to know I am walking this journey to Bethlehem,/ to new birth with them.

I look out into your eyes and remember I learned how to take this journey from so many of you.

May God bless each of us as we walk to Bethlehem together.

 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

12 Step Eucharist, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas, December 1, 5:30, Advent I

12 Step Eucharist

Advent 1 St. Mark’s December 1, 2021

Luke 21:25-31. Second Coming and Waiting   Joanna Seibert

Advent signifies the beginning of our church’s new year. We begin our new year celebration out of sync with the rest of the world by hearing about Jesus’ second coming. Indeed, there is almost always a small 50-word news item about predicting Jesus’ eminent return, sometimes using signs from holy scripture. Others predict Jesus’ return by what is happening in the world, “the roaring of the sea and waves, people fainting from fear, distress among nations,/ signs in the sun, the moon, and stars.”/ Indeed, we believe this second coming will happen sometime in the future, maybe sooner than later.

But those in recovery perhaps know better than any others about the Second Coming. We have already experienced it. It happens to us every day if we allow it. We undoubtedly had some experience of God as a child. It may have been the God of love or a God who was a hall monitor, watching for our every mistake. Something kept tugging at us like a dog nipping and barking at our heels. We would listen to this call at times, but ignored it when we became too busy or when things were not going our way. We found other forms of love and comfort and holiness, our work, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, shopping, relationships, even family. The list goes on. Then all these experiences of self-love turned on us and became part of the problem, rather than the solution. We became hopeless.

By some miracle, in our desperate state, we heard the voice of God of love more clearly. Some might call it a moment of clarity. We learned we were loved despite all the harm we had caused. We discovered, no matter what we had done or thought that this God still loved us. God loved us as we are/ but loved us also enough to want us to change. We learned about staying connected to this God. We learned about forgiveness. We realized we were more than what we did or said. I keep remembering a very wealthy woman who had it all, who once sat beside me at a recovery meeting. She was called on, and she spoke. Then she immediately turned to me and asked, “Was that all right?” I still see the pain in her face. We all indeed share her story. We want to say the right thing. The God of love tells us to speak our truth, but then let it go. Honestly, this is the story of our whole life. Do the next right thing, and give the results to God. We strive to stay as connected to the God of love as possible, and turn our life, the results, all over to God.

In Advent, we are reminded to stay connected to the Christ Child who came into the world and the Christ Child already within us. This Christ Child keeps becoming more present in our lives if we only listen./

 Advent is a time of quiet, of listening, of waiting, of gratitude. There is no way adequately to give thanks for the presence of the Christ Child in our lives. Our veiled attempts to give thanks/ become genuine by remembering and sharing our story with others, especially members of our family who may be at risk. Advent is a time to remember that the Christ who comes and lives in our hearts is best heard in the silence of our lives. Like the Christ Child, who was first born so many years ago, the Christ Child in our hearts is the antithesis of our culture, which has become noisier and noisier this time of the year./ 

 So tonight, we come here one more time to this holy place, to experience silence, to give thanks for Christ’s presence in the world and within us. We remember the miraculous rebirth,/ the second coming that came, and continues to come into our lives.

26B How do we learn to Love?Mark 12:28-34, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, October 31, 2021

26B How do we learn to love?, Mark 12:28-34, October 31, 2021, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church  Joanna Seibert

A scribe overhears Jesus’ response to Sadducees arguing about the resurrection. He is impressed. So, he asks Jesus a more challenging, perhaps a trick question, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus immediately  answers, “ ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself./ There is no other commandment greater than these.’”

Jesus calls us,/ no, commands us every Sunday to love God,/ our neighbor,/ and ourselves. So how do we learn to love? Most of you have read Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages. It outlines five general ways to express and experience love, which Chapman calls “love languages.”/ They are acts of service,/ gift-giving, /physical touch,/ quality time,/ and words of affirmation. Chapman even has a quiz helping us decide the love language we best use. Our love language may differ from our family or friends and is notably different from those we do not understand. The book is a summary of how humans love.

But how does God love? The God of our understanding indeed incorporates all of these, but we know there is more. Much more.

Hear, O Israel .. listen…/ God is telling us we love by listening. God listens. Sometimes we think God doesn’t hear us. We forget that the still, small voice of God speaks loudest in the silence. The experience of God’s love and presence may come and go. We may have dry periods, the dark night of the soul. But God is still there. God’s presence is so immense that we cannot imagine or comprehend it. We experience God as absent, but the vast presence of love is still there. God promises always to be with us.

God also loves with generosity beyond belief. We are given the gift of this planet to care for. We are given gifts beyond comprehension, a mind, a heart, a soul, the presence of God within us.

All human forms of love usually have strings attached, the wants and needs of the one giving love. But God’s love is unconditional. No strings, no conditions. So how do we learn about unconditional love?/ We are taught by spiritual friends who have experienced God’s love and have learned how to pass it on. We discover about love when we receive it from others. Love is a gift. This is why God calls us to this community./

When our family first came to St. Mark’s in the 1970s, Truman Welch from Wetumpka, Alabama was one of the priests. Almost all of his sermons were filled with stories of relatives and neighbors from his hometown, mostly older women. We especially remember Aunt Mary Fannie with all her prejudices. Dean McMillin still remembers the story when Aunt Mary Fannie first met a Republican. The people in my stories are not as colorful as Truman’s, but I am again, like Truman,  sharing stories about a significant person from my growing up days. My grandfather is the central person who taught me about unconditional love./

My grandfather saved my life three times. The first occasion was when we were swimming in the muddy Mattaponi River next to his farm. He had taught me how to swim, and I know I was a good swimmer, because I often swam for hours along the shoreline. This near-miss tragedy occurred when I was in my primary school years. I have no definite recollection why I suddenly could not stay above water. I think maybe it was high tide, and I had unconsciously gone out beyond the dock where the water was now over my head and panicked when I could not touch the bottom. My grandfather quickly rushed to my side and swam me to shore. I remember later he told me that he as well would have drowned trying to rescue me if he had not been able to save me. /I remembered much later how that best described the depth of his love./ 

 Previously I told you that my grandfather wrote to me every week when I left my small Virginia tidewater town to go far away to college, medical school, residency, and practice. I recently told a story about being with my grandfather shortly before he died and reading Psalms to him from The Book of Common Prayer as he lay in a coma.

A week or so later, I returned for his funeral shortly after his ninety-first birthday. It was an open casket service, which bothered me as disrespectful of the dead and a spectacle for the curious living. I do not remember the service, but I  can remember crying without embarrassment during the funeral in the same Baptist church where I sat between my grandparents on Sunday nights, often with my grandfather’s arm over my shoulder. As family and friends gathering afterward at my parent’s home, I remember my uncle, my grandfather’s son, humorously asking me why I, a grown woman, loudly cried at the funeral. I have no idea what I said, but I do remember I couldn’t understand why someone would question that.

 The next few days after my grandfather’s death, I knew I had to do something to honor my grandfather’s life. He rarely was critical of my behavior, even during the time of my divorce in medical school, but he often did gently tell me he was praying that I would stop smoking cigarettes. His mother died a respiratory death from tuberculosis when he was five years old. He must have remembered something about that kind of death. I had twenty pack-years of smoking. Something in my grief told me to honor him by quitting smoking. I had tried several times but without long-standing success. Quitting smoking to honor my grandfather became a spiritual experience. I have not had a cigarette since his funeral, December 7, 1979. This is the second time my grandfather saved my life. My mother died twenty years ago from complications related to her smoking. My younger brother also died five years ago from a smoking-related illness, and I could have undoubtedly done the same. My grandfather saved my life while he was alive,/ and now even in his death.

It has been over forty years since that day of my grandfather’s funeral. At the time, I had become overwhelmed in my medical studies and practice while raising our three children. As a result, I had no time for any spiritual life. However, my Christian upbringing taught me about resurrection and the possibility of again being with those we loved in the resurrection. I had to believe that/ and live that. I had to believe I would, in some manner, be with my grandparents again. So, after at least fifteen years, I returned to the Episcopal Church, which I had joined in medical school during my divorce. At the time, I felt like a bad person. No one in my family had been divorced before, even though many should have. However, the Dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis, William Dimmick, welcomed me and reconnected me to the God of unconditional love.

Now on my second journey back to the church, and St. Mark’s, in particular, I learned about a whole new way of living for myself and my family. If we are talking about being saved,  I believe we were saved on Good Friday over 2000 years ago when Jesus taught us about sacrificial, unconditional love and led us to a new life in the resurrection. However, I do believe my grandfather saved my life again in his death by leading me to a life built on the unconditional love of God toward us and each other. In turn, this leads us out of ourselves to love unconditionally in the world, as my grandfather once taught me. Through him, I learned that God never gives up on us and, like the “hound of heaven,” constantly calls us to be connected to God’s unconditional love. I am counting this as the third time my grandfather saved my life./

Once you have experienced unconditional love, you will never be the same./ Hold on to that. /Also, know you can only keep it by giving it away,/ giving it back to God, to your neighbor, and yourself. So, live in a community and stick with those who have learned the most about unconditional love. From them, you will become aware of receiving it. Then you have no choice but to share it./

I also learned from my grandfather that this love never dies. Love is the only thing we leave on this earth when we die. Love is also the only thing we take with us when we return to God. I still feel my grandfather’s love sometimes even more than when we were physically together. I feel his love when I am capable of doing things I never thought I was able to do, like quitting smoking. I feel his love drawing me closer to God through a community like St. Mark’s. I feel his love telling me to take care of myself so that I may be able to love others. I feel his love when I am in danger, as when I was drowning./

I want to live in this community of St. Mark’s because here we experience this same love. Here we are daily reminded in scripture, tradition, and stories of those who lived before us that the only way to keep this love/ is to love ourselves as a gift from God and give this love away, back to God, and our neighbors./ This, my friends, indeed is the great commandment.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com

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