12-Step Eucharist 21A Yes and No Brothers Matthew 21:23-32

Yes and No brothers Matthew 21:23-32 Proper 21A

12-step Eucharist St. Mark’s October 4, 2023

Today’s parable hits home. Jesus talks about the times we say we are going to do something, change our minds, and do not do it. Anyone in 12-step recovery can identify with this situation. We have an awareness of our addiction, whether it is, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, shopping, gambling, work, or relationships. Each morning we wake up and say “This is a new day. We will stop using or drinking or smoking. We are going to seek help from a recovery group or counselor. We will never use or drink or smoke again.” Usually by early or late afternoon, we have forgotten this promise and are back to our old ways. This is the brother in today’s story who says “yes” in the morning, but by late afternoon does not change.

It is so easy to get our thoughts mixed up with actions. Each of us is aware of at least ten people who deeply love their families, but for various reasons spend very little time with them. We passionately believe in protecting the environment, but we do not practice recycling and drive cars that get less than ten miles to the gallon.

I remember the year I decided to simplify my life. I have a whole bookcase full of books I read about making my life simpler, taking care of the environment, and returning to Walden Pond. At the end of the year, I had only made one change in my life. I stopped using paper towels… and that only lasted for a year. It is a peculiar thing, this vacuum between what we think and what we actually do. We say we are going to work in the vineyard, but instead of harvesting the grapes, we spend our time rearranging the stones along the path.

Whether we say yes or no to the changes God calls us to make in our lives is apparently less important to God than what we actually do. The important thing is what our lives say, and this is as easy to figure out as the story of the Yes and No brothers. Jesus asks us to look into the mirror. What is moving? Our mouths… or our hands and our feet?

Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Yes and No Brothers,” Home By Another Way, pp. 187-191.  

19A Forgiveness Matthew 18:21-35, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, September 17, 2023 5 o'clock

19A Forgiveness Matthew 18:21-35, September 17, 2023, 5 o’clock, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock

 Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa’s most brutal prisons for 27 years. He was released in 1990 in response to international pressure and fear of racial civil war. His first words were about forgiveness and reconciliation. He repeatedly said, “Unless I can forgive those who imprisoned me, I am still in prison.” I am still in prison. Forgiveness is a condition of the mind and heart.

Today, Jesus talks about forgiveness and the kingdom of heaven. We begin to wonder if the kingdom is not a PLACE but a CONDITION, like forgiveness and love.

Howard Thurman writes, “The religion of Jesus says ‘..Love your enemies…’ It may be hazardous, but we must do it.”

Jesus warns us that forgiveness is not an option. Mathew’s comment of “being handed over to be tortured” is the life we lead if we cannot forgive. The people we cannot forgive, including ourselves, pile up in an ugly place in our minds and hearts that blocks us from loving God,/ each other,/ and /ourselves. We start thinking about those who have harmed us more often,/ or sometimes all the time until they become our higher power. I have a great deal of personal experience with this. I don’t want them to become what I obsess about continually. Unless we can forgive, those who have harmed us are still hurting us. This is when I often start on the difficult road of forgiveness. Mandela also said being unable to forgive is like “drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Resentments about the harm done to us poison our minds, hearts, and souls. We don’t have an option if we seek a life of peace and love.

Bishop Tutu and his daughter have written a book about Forgiving. The path starts with telling our story. Then, we try to name the hurt that the harm to us caused. For me, the hurt often is my pride that is hurt. Sometimes, it is physical and mental abuse. We often get stuck between telling our story and naming the hurt. We keep telling our story over and over. We stay a victim. I know you have known other people, or even yourself, who talk about harm done to them years ago. This is being stuck.

 After naming the hurt, we can start on the path to forgiveness. There are numerous rituals we can do to start forgiving. Tutu talks about carrying a stone in our dominant hand for some time. We soon realize how not forgiving impairs our basic daily living.

Richard Rohr1 teaches us basic lessons about how to forgive. It involves seeing the Christ—God in the person we are forgiving—as well as seeing God or Christ in ourselves. That makes sense. But then Rohr throws in this third condition. We must change our concept of God. God is no longer a hall monitor, handing out detention slips, checking a list, looking at our every action, and judging whether our neighbors and we behave correctly. He calls us to enlarge our concept of God to a God of love.

How do we do this?

First, we place ourselves in a community, like this one today, with others who seem to experience God’s love. Second, we observe how they know how to forgive others.

As we see the Christ in others who know love, the God of love, the Christ in us awakens—and slowly, often very slowly, we also begin to see the Christ in those who have harmed us. We may discover that personal tragedies have brought them to the place of hurting others. This awareness starts as we pray daily, sometimes hourly, for the person who has harmed us. We realize we are still carrying around a heavy load of resentment, which makes it so challenging to live and walk on our journey through life. It is like a cancer, destroying the joy in our lives a little each day. That person is still hurting us. They are becoming our higher power, our God. ///

Father Keating’s Contemplative Outreach group has several meditations that have helped me. I want to share one of them with you. But before we start, I must remind you and me that this is not a one-time thing. You do it daily, if necessary, until God changes your heart. Another reminder is that we think we are over this, and the hurt done to us raises its ugly head when we least expect it. We simply pick ourselves up and meditate again. The harm done to us is powerful. It is usually easier the second, third, or more times around. Soon, we simply get tired of carrying this heavy burden and surrender,/ and God changes us.

Another reminder: some people have harmed us that are toxic, and we must never be in a relationship with them again, but we still must forgive them.//

So here is the Forgiveness Prayer. You may sit and practice it with me in our last minutes together.

“Begin with a period of Centering Prayer.2

 Following this, spend a few moments in silence.  

Close your eyes and gently ground yourself in your body; 

scan your body with your inner eye and relax each part of your body. . .  

Rest in the area of your chest near your heart. https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/

Breathe.

 Focus on your heart and allow your heart to open.

Imagine you are in a sacred space. Where is your most sacred space?

Gently allow the Spirit to lead you through a passageway that is filled with light, warmth, and a welcoming presence.

Breathe the light of the Spirit into your heart, inviting God, Jesus, Holy Spirit into that space to sit beside you.

Invite the Holy Spirit to bring forth a person, living or dead, whom you need to forgive.  

 Or, invite the Holy Spirit to support you as you call to mind a person that you wish to forgive.

Remain open to whoever appears in your sacred place.  

 Greet the person by name.

Share your experience of being in relationship with this person; share how you have been hurt, offended, or traumatized.

 Be specific.

 Allow yourself to share your pain with this person.

 Relax in the process and remain open.

When you feel ready, tell the person that you forgive them.

 Gently say ‘I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you.’

 Repeat as many times as needed until you feel ready to continue the process.

Now ask the person how you have offended, traumatized, or hurt them.

 Wait and listen.  Remain open to the process.

When you feel ready, gently say, ‘Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.’

 Repeat as many times as needed until you feel complete in the process for now.

Observe your thoughts, feelings, and emotions.  Just be present with them.

 Allow the person to leave your sacred, safe place.

 Invite the person to return at a later time if needed.

Rest in the Spirit.

Take as much time in silence as you wish.

Prepare to leave your sacred place.

Move out of the sacred place . . . through the door into the passageway . . . grounded in your body.

Gently open your eyes when you feel ready.

 Close with a prayer.”

Again, this is not a one-time event but may require many encounters.

The Forgiveness Prayer is especially beneficial when the person who harmed us refuses to discuss it. The Prayer allows us to speak to that person in a safe place where we cannot be hurt again, but also to acknowledge mistakes we made as well.

We are then asked to pray daily for the person who has harmed us until we are ready to forgive. I have people who have injured me whom I have been praying for/ for some time. It is not easy, but we have no other option. As we pray daily for that person, they may never change, but my experience is God will always, always change us.

1.  Adapted from Richard Rohr’s Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality (Franciscan Media, 2008), pp. 193-194.

2.  Mary Dwyer Contemplative Outreach. https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/

Joanna Seibert.

12 Step Eucharist Take up your cross Matthew 16:21-28, 17A, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, September 6, 2023

 Take up your cross

 “Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”—Matthew 16: 21-28.

Wednesday, June 2, 1999.

All of Little Rock mourns the crash last night of American Flight 1420 from Dallas at the Little Rock airport.

This was our headline story over 20 years ago.

During a severe thunderstorm shortly before midnight Tuesday, the aircraft skids off the end of runway 4R, crashes into a bank of landing lights and a metal tower, and lands in a flood plain of the Arkansas River 15 feet below the runway. The steel poles act as a can opener, peeling back the plane’s thin shell on its left side. Fire engulfs the plane as fuel spills.

The captain and eight passengers have died so far.

Images of the disabled plane speak to the miracle of the 129 survivors, primarily Arkansans. Conversations in this capitol city center around eyewitness accounts from survivors. One of the first and most haunting reports is by Little Rock native Carla Koen at the Children’s Hospital Burn Unit. As she tries to escape from the burning plane through the hole in its side, she is caught on the jagged edges and trapped, hanging by one leg upside down. Other passengers spill out over and on top of her, scrambling to get out. “They poured over me while I was hanging there, but no one stopped to help me,” she cries. “One angry, panicked man even screamed at me as I dangled upside down, ‘Move and get out of my way so I can get out of the wreckage.’ I’ll see his face for the rest of my life,” responds this survivor.

       When Carla finally frees her leg and jumps to safety, she soon cares for two young girls alone and terrified in the adjacent hay field in the driving rain and hail. Erin and Cara Ashcraft, 13 and 10, are on the flight to visit their grandparents in Arkansas. “I tried to talk to them about life and how we were alive, and that was the most important thing,” She adds that the girls also helped her. “They gave me something else to focus on.” She doesn’t allow the lack of consideration of others to cause her to become a “stumbling block,” a resentment, keeping her from reaching out to others.

 “Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

The chances of our ever being in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million. However, our chances are 1 in 10 of being caught in an addictive lifestyle, which often leads to a life that looks like an impending airline disaster, a life controlled by alcohol, work, drugs, or a person. There is no question that addictions become a cross to bear. Those caught in addiction often feel like Carla, hanging by one leg, upside-down, dangling out of a burning airplane.

       But there is more to this gospel than about cross-bearing and dying. Unfortunately, the disciples missed the message, and we often do as well. “And on the third day, you will be raised.” He is talking about resurrection. Those in 12-step groups know it as recovery, a new life. Resurrection and recovery are written throughout Flight 1420, especially in Carla’s story.

 The message to those in addiction is that when we feel as if we are hanging by one leg upside down in a burning disaster, the message of 12-step groups is that we can get out of that burning plane, that old life, and find a completely new life waiting for us. One of the secrets to this new life is that instead of harboring resentment for situations and people in the past, we are called to reach out to serve others in similar situations, just as Carla did. This is also called the Twelfth Step of recovery. This is a significant way healing occurs./ This recovery is also called resurrection.

Linda S. Caillouet, “Fleeing survivors trod on entangled woman,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Thursday, June 3, 1999.

Joanna Seibert, “Flight 1420, A community of Survivors and Servants,” The Living Church, July 11, 1999.

Andrea Harter, “Surviving 1420,” A Four-part series, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,  January 23-26, 2000.

Andrea Harter, “Flight 1420 survivors to gather, crash memorial dedication today”, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Tuesday, June 1, 2004.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Feast of Transfiguration, August 6, 2023, Luke 9:28-36, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, AR

Transfiguration Experiences

August 6, 2023, Luke 9:28-36 St. Mark’s

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

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

The next day doesn’t feel like a vacation either, when Jesus tells them about his upcoming suffering and death,/ which they may also experience. Who can blame the disciples for missing that resurrection part on the third day. Heidi Neumark says, “When you think you are heading for the dungeon,/ anxiety, and panic tend to block out everything else.” 1

Eight days later, the disciples are still in no shape for mountain climbing, even if it is to pray. But there go Jesus, Peter, James, and John ascending up a winding, steep mountain. //

 If I am honest, on most days, attempts to pray/ are a steep uphill climb on weary legs. The world’s insistent demands challenge finding a spiritual focus. Like Barbara Crafton, I keep thinking of a million silly things while praying. Did I send out that last email? What’s for dinner?2//  If I make it,/ it is only thanks to many faithful companions beside me in community here at St. Mark’s,/, as well as the communion of saints, past and present, who constantly support and pray with us and for us.//

On top of this mountain, Jesus does all the praying. Peter, James, and John can’t keep their eyes open, connecting the disciples’ humanness on this mountain to their inability to stay awake later at  Mount of Olives. Suddenly, an indescribable brightness startles them. Jesus, standing at the summit, now shines with the brightness of the sun, leaking light everywhere, says Matthew, and his clothes, Mark says, become “dazzling white as no bleach on earth could make them.” The three disciples have an unforgettable experience of seeing the divinity of Jesus./ Moses and Elijah also appear, speaking to Jesus about his imminent departure in Jerusalem. “The word departure comes from the Greek word for exodus, referring to the trip down the mountain and into Jerusalem, but also to Jesus’ death.1” Moses’ presence reminds us of the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt through the Red Sea, suggesting that Jesus will now accomplish a second exodus, leading God’s people safely through the waters of death to resurrection./

But Jesus’ brief dramatic change in appearance from man to God/ is lost momentarily on the three disciples. They are mystified, dumbfounded. Peter expresses the confusion of his shocked companions and their lack of awareness of Jesus’ true divinity by suggesting they stay on the mountaintop to make similar dwellings or monuments to all three.1///

Like the disciples, we all have had brief mountaintop experiences of seeing God in our lives, even when we barely comprehend them, especially at Camp Mitchell in the Chapel of Transfiguration./ Yet, truthfully,/ most of our transfiguration experiences occur below /at the bottom of the mountain, / where we daily work and play,/ where theological bones take on flesh. Flesh becomes divinity. / This is where we most often see the transfigured face of God, in places where premature babies are born and thrive, where loved ones and patients’ appearances change as they return to life from near-fatal illnesses, where addicts and alcoholics find recovery, where we forgive those who have harmed us, and we are forgiven; where we forgive those who do not accept how God created us to be, where we see Jesus, the Christ, in the face of a homeless man at the traffic stop, or in our neighbor who irritates us, or in the slow and tired checker at our local grocery/. In these times, for a brief moment/ we see someone as a real person. We see Christ in each other.

A priest friend, Pat Murray, believes that in reality, transfiguration occurs all the time, but only at certain moments can we see the likeness of God in each other,/ perhaps most often when we live in the present moment/or in stressful times where we are experiencing “altitude sickness.” We, humans, seem unable to bear much reality, writes T. S Eliot. It is too incomprehensible to look God in the face/ for any length of time.2 //////

We all take turns taking Bob for his many treatments.

 At one visit, Bob is too weak to dress himself after his examination. I see our older son, who looks similar to his grandfather at an earlier age, / dress Bob, / pull up Bob’s baggy trousers, / tighten his belt/ and lift Bob up to stand. / The young and the older men hug each other./ I see the look they give to the other; one, the look of loving surrender,/ the other, the look of a loving servant. / They see the face of God in each other. / They are each transfigured in front of each other at the bottom of the mountain. / “Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it is almost beyond bearing.3”

We observe Transfiguration again the night Bob dies, as his two grandsons care for him in his last hours. Bob lies in his nursing home bed/ unable to speak/, but his face shines like the sun as he radiantly,/ continuously/ smiles at his two grandsons he so dearly loves/ as we sit at the bottom of the mountain/ and he begins his ascent. ////

So, what are we going to take home from our transfiguration stories?/ The transfiguration is one more story reminding us that the Bible is less a book about certainties, but instead a long, continuous parade of stories of encounters with God where people run into God and are changed forever. Faith has more to do with staying present to what happens right now in front of us than knowing for certain what it all means. 4We soon learn that shrines on a mountain are not what Jesus’ ministry is all about.5

 The answer may be in God’s voice that interrupts Peter and lifts the hairs on the back of his neck.4 “Listen to him.” Listen for dear life. Listen to words of forgiveness and mercy, promises of hope and paradise, words we will soon hear from the cross. We heard this voice before at Jesus’ baptism, “Here is my only begotten son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” Listen on this hill today, but also listen again on another hill when darkness closes in, and all hope seems lost.1////

“When cures and healing are beyond our powers, when the shine on a loved one’s face comes from tears reflected in the fluorescent lights of intensive care, / on such days remember to put ourselves inside this story. Listen for the voice that urges us to stop, look, and listen for his Voice, his Face./ That voice,/ that face/ may be from a friend, a patient, a minister, a nurse, a doctor, a stranger.

When we are overcome with weariness and difficulty, remember to look for the transfigured face of God that is always present./ Our scripture reminds us God was there in the past. We ourselves have seen it in our own lives today. Remember. Remember. The Beloved, the Son of God, the Chosen One, will always, always be there/ beside us/ and shine in the darkness, again, and again, and again,/ and the darkness will never,/ ever overcome it.1”

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

2Barbara Crafton “Last Epiphany” in The Geranium Farm, February 1, 2008.

3Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark.

4Barbara Brown Taylor, Always a Guest (Westminster John Knox Press 2020)

5Rt Rev. Dr. Bonnie Anne Perry, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, sermon, 2022.

Joanna Seibert  joannaseibert.com

10A Sowing Seeds, Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, July 16, 2023 St. Mark's Episcopal Church, 5 pm Joanna Seibert

July 16, 2023, 10A Sowing Seeds, Matthew 13:1-9,18-23  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 5 pm. Joanna Seibert

Randy Hollerith,1 the dean of Washington National Cathedral, reminds us that in Jungian psychology, every character in our dreams actually represents a different part or version of ourselves. Each character can teach us something about us. Applying this thought to the parable of the sower, the various types of soil may represent varying states of our soul at different times in our lives. After all, God does not spread the seeds of grace, truth, and love only once in our lifetime, but most probably constantly./

 The dean asks us, “What kind of soil represents the state of our soul, our spiritual life tonight?/ Is our connection to God tentative?/ Is our faith superficial,/ only going about the motions with no depth or roots, so when difficulty comes we abandon God, because we think God has abandoned us?/ Is our soul nourished by relationships with others in this community who are on the journey with us?/ Is our heart closed off to keep out the pain that surrounds us?/ Are the cares of the world choking us to death?”

If any of this is true in your life, you are among the right people and in the right place. We are here to ask God constantly to come into our hearts and change us. We are here to remember and learn how to become aware of God’s constant presence, sowing seeds of grace, beside us/and inside us. It is a daily, hourly spiritual practice for all of us to be aware.

Also note that using images of birds, sun, and thorns, Jesus points to the truth that the way we hear and receive the word and grace of God is impacted by more than our own will and desire. There will always be circumstances beyond our control that keep us from being the good soil we hope to be. This reminds us to be cautious with our moralizing and judgment against others and ourselves.2

Hollerith also reminds us that the sower is quite extravagant.

He doesn’t sow the seed in only the finest soil. God casts his love widely and with abandon to all of us no matter where we are at any particular moment in our lives. God never gives up on us. The seeds keep coming. Our job is to be aware of the presence of the seeds and become the good soil for them. That means learning spiritual practices to help us constantly turn our life and our will over to the care of God.

Barbara Brown Taylor3 also believes this parable focuses on the generosity of our maker, the prolific sower who does not obsess about the condition of the fields,/ is not stingy with the seed but casts it everywhere, on good soil and bad. The sower is not cautious, judgmental, or even practical, but seems willing to continue reaching into his seed bag for all eternity, covering the whole creation with the fertile seeds of truth, grace, and love. This is also the God of my understanding.

Let us never give up on ourselves and each other. God never does. God never abandons us, no matter how poor the state of our soul is. God is sowing seeds of love and grace for our souls in this quiet place, right now, tonight. Be aware of this. Be aware of God’s presence here with us, beside and inside each of us. As we leave this place,/may we continue to help each other keep nourishing that seed inside and outside of each other/with the seeds and the good soil offered here tonight/as we say prayers, sing, listen to music, light candles, and share this Holy Eucharist with each other.

1 Randy Hollerith, “Sowing seeds,” National Cathedral Lenten Meditation Feb 28, 2021.

2 Libby Howe ,”Sunday’s Coming, Christian Century, July 16, 2023

3 Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 25–26.