Wednesday in Holy Week, March 27, 2024, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock

Wednesday in Holy Week, March 27, 2024

John 13:21-32. Women serving last meal

We are helping serve this evening meal with Jesus and our other friends. We are right at the table, so we can hear much of what is happening. Jesus seems agitated, not at all like himself. He suddenly blurts out, “Someone at this table will betray me.” The disciples are now agitated. Peter reclines next to John, who is next to Jesus. We hear Peter whisper to John, “See if you can find out who it is.” John discreetly whispers to Jesus, “Who is it, Lord?” Jesus, in a very soft voice, tells John, “It is the one whom I give this bread to after I dip it.” Then he offers the bread to Judas and tells him, “Do what you have to do now.” We go back into the kitchen and talk with the other women. We don’t understand this at all. It makes no sense. But when we return from the kitchen area, Judas is gone. No one runs after him to stop him from doing whatever he is doing. Jesus now speaks in a clear voice, so all can hear, “Now the Son has been glorified!” More words from Jesus that make no sense.

What shall we do? Something is going to happen that does not seem right. Should we go find Judas and tell him not to do what he is planning? Women chasing a man at night is definitely dangerous. Should we tell Peter and John to do something? But they seem as stupefied as we are. We don’t understand it. Surely, if Jesus is about to be betrayed, God will save him. Jesus, who brings people back to life, certainly cannot be harmed by others. We don’t understand it. So, we decide to ignore it.

Women are worriers, though. Our experience is that when we ignore signs of impending danger that we do not understand, terrible things still happen. We don’t have to understand the threat to do something about it. I talk with the other women. We decide we will stay close by Jesus, even if it puts us in harm’s way, no matter what is about to happen. We feel powerless, but have one gift to give to the one we love. It is the gift we have given ever since Jesus has made a difference in our lives. We offer him our presence.

Joanna Seibert

Sending of the 70, Mark 6:1-13, DOK Province VII Shreveport March 16, 2024

 Sending of 70 DOK Province VII Shreveport

Mark 6:1-13. March 16, 2024

Here we are in church a week before Holy Week at this glorious Daughters of the King meeting with old and new friends, as Jesus keeps reminding us how we are called to our order’s vow of prayer, service, and evangelism.

Jesus says, “Here’s what I need you to do: preach the kingdom, anoint with oil, heal the sick, and cast out demons. I only have one more week before Holy Week. I need a little rest before all the next events occur. Could you take over for a couple of weeks!”

This call from Jesus sending us out does not happen only today but happens every Sunday at all our churches. At the end of every service, while the last word of the last hymn is still ringing in the air, the deacon from the back of the church says, “Let us go forth in the name of Christ! Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit!”

These are not words for the consumers of God’s love. These are words for the providers.

We have heard this story about the sending of the disciples so often that we may take our job description for granted. In short, Jesus gives us precisely the same jobs he was sent to do. It did not have to be that way. He could have pointed out that none of us is the Son of God. None of us was born under a blinding star, had angels sing hosannas over our cribs, or received exotic gifts from foreign dignitaries before we cut a tooth.

Barbara Brown Taylor1 tells us that Jesus could have reminded us all that and insisted that we remain his ASSISTANTS for our own safety, you understand, avoiding malpractice suits. He could have let us mix the mud while he heals the blind or spray Lysol while he cleanses lepers. He could have done that, but he does not. Instead, Jesus TRANSFERS his ministry to us while he is still alive. He entrusts it to us. With little training and very little advice, he sends us out to heal wounds and restore outcasts. But he does not send us out alone, but in community, which daughters know so well./

When I was growing up, our country’s darkest enemy was the Soviet Union, as it still may be today. In school, we regularly participate in air raid drills, hiding under our desks in the event of an impending atomic bomb attack by Russia. It is hard to believe that the powerful old Soviet regime was torn apart when it fell in August 1991, giving way to a new social order, even though it did not last. James Billington, the Librarian of Congress studying Russian history, was in Moscow and gives an eyewitness account. Boris Yeltsin and a small group of defenders occupy the Russian White House. They successfully manage to face off an enormous number of tanks and troops poised to attack, stop the rebellion, and restore the old Soviet guard.

The Babushkas, the “old church women,” and their courageous public Christian witness play a vital role in this successful resistance. These bandana-wearing older women, who kept the Orthodox Christian church alive for years during the Soviet period, were the butt of many jokes by both Russians and Westerners. No persons could have seemed more powerless or irrelevant than they were. These grandmothers were widely regarded as evidence of the inevitable death of religion in the Soviet Union.

And yet,/ on the critical night of August 20, 1991, when martial law was proclaimed, and people ordered to return home, many of these women disobey and go to the place of confrontation. Some feed the resisters in a public display of support. Others staff medical stations, others pray for a miracle, while still others astoundingly climb up onto the tanks, peer through the slits at the crew-cut men inside, and tell them, “There are new orders,/ those from God: Thou shalt not kill.” The young men stop the tanks. “The attack,” said Billington, “never comes, and by dawn of the third day, the tide has turned.”/

Let’s come closer to home.2 Little Rock, summer of 1958. Governor Faubus invokes a hastily passed state law to close high schools, rather than obey the federal order to integrate after the 1957 crisis at Central High. Three women, Adolphine Fletcher Terry, a prominent “old family” in her seventies, Vivion Brewer, and Velma Powell, meet while organizing a dinner party honoring 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). WEC becomes a highly effective organization that bombarded the city with ads, fliers, and statements challenging Faubus’s actions. At peak membership, WEC musters 2000. Largely inexperienced in politics, these women become articulate, confident public school promoters and help others understand that schools must remain open and integrated.///

So, take a break this weekend, but remember that we are baptized and have taken a vow to pray, serve, and evangelize for Christ. Somewhere along this journey, we will take a deep breath and head out into places we never imagined in the name of Christ. Maybe we will go to comfort a friend in the hospital, take communion to the sick, speak a word of reconciliation in a neighbor’s living room, or stand up for injustice at work. Maybe we will visit our crowded prisons or talk to someone about recovery. Perhaps we will start a food ministry. Maybe we will become healers in distant places or take a courageous stand at a public forum./ We will carry only ONE thing:/ Jesus’ gospel of peace and love and the power of our daily prayers. The way may not always be easy, and the path is sometimes uncertain, but by the grace of God, our work will become a part of God’s work and (will help knock the powers of evil off the throne. Satan will fall from the sky like a flash of lightning, and names will be written in heaven). God will help us change the heart of stone into a heart of flesh /in ourselves/ and the world ./

 May you have a blessed Holy Week and Easter./

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

1Barbara Brown Taylor, “Heaven at Hand” in Bread of Heaven, pp. 151-155.

2Sara Alderman Murphy, Breaking the Silence ( University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, 1997).

Joanna Seibert

Lent 1B And Angels waited on Him. Mark 1:9-15, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, February 18, 2024

Lent 1B And Angels waited on Him Mark 1:9-15

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, February 18, 2024

“Wild animals were his companions, and angels took care of him.” 1

They hide behind an assembly of desert shrubs, but their overpowering presence cannot be easily concealed. They are overwhelmed by the Spirit’s recent assignment. The dust of the wilderness is particularly holy ground in his presence. The awe of his holiness fills the slightest breeze that passes by his stilled body.

The angels feel like intruders in the presence of their God, known as the Word, now an exhausted person tempted by all the evil the world can muster. This holy one has taught the angels that Love is the way,/ the unconditional love that enfolds and reaches out from God the Father, God, the Spirit, and God, the Word.

The Angels attempt to whisper a plan among themselves but cannot utter a word. They are motionless, their wings folded as close to their bodies as possible. This is their God, but they have never seen the God of Love so up close in this form. They instinctively take off their sandals and kneel as their white robes and bare feet dust the ground. He lies motionless with an occasional shallow breath, raising the thin woven garment over his chest ever so slightly. His unkempt black hair is matted and wringing wet with sweat. His head rests on a nearby flat rock, and his body lies lifeless, extended on the cold ground./  He is not yet aware of their presence.

 The Angels have observed his forty-day fast from afar. They remember the fast of Elijah, Moses, Esther before their great struggles. The Angels hold their breath each time the devil tempts him. They hang on to his every answer. They also hear his inner voice echoing, “Serving the God of love is why we are born. Love is the way.” 3/

The angels’ proximity to the physical presence of the most holy in human form continues to render them paralyzed. They have served this God of love since time began. Now, their God is in great distress after an unbelievable ordeal carrying all humanity to his appointment with all the world’s evil, not just personal temptations of the flesh but a confrontation with the collective economic, religious, and political realities who claim godlike powers.4 Their holy one, now human, has collapsed after this physical, mental, and spiritual ordeal. The animals, the lion, the leopard, the foxes, move in beside him, keeping him warm as the desert temperature drops dramatically as night approaches.

Suddenly a synapse, a whisper, a sticky note on one side of their brains uniformly brings them back to the reality of why they are now in this wild desert. They are to minister to him, revive his body,/ heart,/ and soul. But for a last moment, they remember the holiness of their God of love, becoming human and tested almost to the point of death. Also, they recognize the privilege of being called by the Spirit to care for him./

Jesus slowly turns his head toward the Angels, and they intuitively rush with fluttering wings to his side carrying all the nourishment, herbs, spices, and balms known to heaven. They surround his body with their wings, protecting him from any more harm. But the greatest healing power comes in the unconditional love from the multitude of Angels who take turns caring for Jesus./ The more usual circumstance is his ministering to them. ///  

On this first Sunday in Lent, we always observe Jesus taking an outward-bound wilderness excursion. We honor the God who created us and remember the depth of God’s reckless love, where God becomes one of us so that God might know all our trials and temptations. How else can God relate to us unless God walks in our shoes? Our creator loves us beyond our comprehension and is reckless with the generosity of his love, even when we treat that love with rejection.

 The Angels ministering to Jesus in the wilderness are icons of the holiness of this event. They are messengers reminding us that the Spirit will likewise send angels to us whenever we encounter suffering./ Buechner writes that angels are powerful spirits whom God sends into the world to let us know how much God loves us. Since we don’t expect to see them, we don’t. An angel spreads its glittering wings over us, and we say things like, “It was one of those days that made you feel good just to be alive,” or “I had a hunch everything was going to turn out all right,” or “I don’t know where I ever found the courage.” 5

Martin Luther King Jr. preaches that Jesus, in this Lenten story, gives us a new norm of greatness. Jesus models what it is like to be a servant minister, keeping a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.6  Servant leaders differ from the smartest, the greatest, or those needing to control or looking for admiration from others. Servant leaders build up others, not polish the system or the leader’s self-importance.7//

Some may have seen the recent documentary, A Case for Love, inspired by the teachings of Bishop Michael Curry. His question to us is, “Can unselfish love serve as the healing force needed to mend our fractured society?” Bishop Curry writes about this love ministered by Angels in his book, Love is the Way8. Curry describes God’s love in his journey from childhood to becoming the presiding bishop. Like Jesus, and dare say all of us, he struggles and suffers but is always ministered by angels whose nourishment is God’s love. There is Josie Robbins, who stops by his father’s church to drop off a neighbor’s children before she goes to her own Baptist church. (12-13). When Bishop Curry’s mother has a stroke and his father, an Episcopal priest, is overwhelmed, Josie steps in and becomes Michael’s surrogate mother. Cousin Bill takes a teaching job in Buffalo to help care for Bishop Curry and his sister. (31) A local dentist and his wife care for the children during the week whenever Bishop Curry’s maternal grandmother from Yonkers cannot come. (32) Erna Clark, the Sunday School superintendent, picks up the children from school every day and later helps Bishop Curry decide on colleges. (32) Curry’s seminary encourages him to preach in the style of his grandfathers, instead of telling him that emotional preaching is a sign of inferior intelligence. (107-108). Others teach Curry how to receive anger without giving it back. (181). Perhaps this explains why our presiding bishop knows so much about God’s love being the way. 

Bishop Curry teaches us a Jewish proverb, “Before every person, there marches an angel proclaiming, ‘behold the image of God.’” (95-96).///

Can you now remember the angels who dropped or marched into your life at difficult times? Give thanks for them this Lent./ If these angels are still alive, call or write./

Always remember how Curry becomes an Episcopalian. His father comes from a long line of Baptist ministers. His mother becomes a devout Episcopalian while at the University of Chicago. When the couple becomes engaged in the 1940s, she takes his father to an Episcopal church outside racially segregated Dayton, Ohio. When Curry’s black parents are offered the common communion cup along with the whites at the Eucharist, his father knows this is where angels live. (34). Imagine the difference in our lives if his parents had gone to an Episcopal church where the cup was segregated!/

At his mother’s funeral when he is 14, Michael Curry is surrounded by all these angels who wipe the tears from his eyes and remind him of St. Paul’s words, “Love never dies.” 9 Love builds,/ hate destroys. (89) “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.” 10

Bishop Curry writes about that day. “Community is love…… And so, at fourteen years old, I did not conclude that the world is a broken, bitter, and ruthless place. I am not abandoned—I am loved.” (43).

  “The way of Love will show us the right thing to do every time.” (27).

We will be ministered by Angels as Love leads the way.

1 Eugene Peterson in The Message Study Bible, Mark 1: 12-13.

*2 Stephen Mitchell in Parables and Portraits, p. 34.

3 Eugene Peterson in The Message Study Bible, Matthew 4:1-11.

4 Kris, Rocke, and Joel Van Dyke in Geography of Grace in InwardOutward February 2, 2021.

5 Frederick Buechner, “Seeing Angels” in Wishful Thinking and Beyond Words, Harper &Row (1973).

6 Martin Luther King Jr in “Drum Major Instinct,” sermon, Atlanta, February 4, 1968.

7 Bennett Sims in Servanthood, Leadership for the Third Millennium.

8 Bishop Curry in Love is the Way (Avery 2020).

9 I Corinthians 13:8.

10 Martin Luther King in A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

 Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com

12 Step Eucharist Epiphany 5B, Mark 1:29-39, Healing Peter’s Mother-in-law, Wednesday, February 7, 2024 Saint Mark’s, Little Rock

12 Step Eucharist Epiphany 5B, Mark 1:29-39, Healing Peter’s Mother-in-law, Wednesday, February 7, 2024 Saint Mark’s, Little Rock 5:30 p.m.

Jesus’ healing stories of people who were “sick or possessed with demons” abound in tonight’s chapter from Mark,/ but the story of the healing of Simon Peter’s unnamed mother-in-law is most intriguing./ Jesus “takes her hand,/ raises her up,/ the fever leaves her,/ and she serves them.” These two verses in Mark’s first chapter may be the heart of what happens when Jesus heals.

This very short story describes our experience of Jesus’ healing in our lives.

At some point in our addictions, we are touched by God/ and come to a moment of clarity. When we respond, we are raised,/ lifted up, eieiren.” the same Greek word for resurrection. Indeed, recovery is a resurrected life. It is not the same old life. It is a new life where sometimes people do not recognize us, as is Jesus’ resurrection when Mary Magdalene and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus did not know who he was. In recovery, we are changed,/ brought back to life from a dead life. Family members do not believe their eyes and ears, and may have difficulty relating to us. Ours and their old modes of operation no longer work.

“The fever left, and she began to serve.” Some think this means she cooked for them, because Jesus and his disciples were hungry! This may be true,/ but the Greek word here for serve is “diekonei,” the same word for deacon, servant minister, or radical service. Jesus talks about it later in Mark (10:42-44) when he says, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant. I did not come to be served, but to serve.” To serve others is the mark of true discipleship. Service is what we are also called to do. A significant part of the healing of our addiction continues as we serve others, telling our story, working with those still sick and suffering from their addiction./

So, what happens next to Peter’s mother-in-law? We never hear from her again. She is like John’s woman at the well, Matthew’s magi, Luke’s prodigal son’s older brother, and the rich young ruler Jesus tells to go sell his possessions and give to the poor. We don’t know what they do next “to serve.”/

 Some may see “Peter’s unnamed mother-in-law as an unlikely icon. Her story is only recorded in a scant two verses, and like many women in the Bible, we don’t even remember her name. We do know that having been touched by Jesus,/ she is raised to the new, high calling of serving others, even before his so-called inner circle learns about it./ She gets up,/ newly healed,/ and she serves./ I would bet she doesn’t stop serving others at verse 31. 1”

1Victoria Lyn Garvey, “Living by the Word, In the Lectionary, February 7, Epiphany 5B, Mark 1:29-39,” Christian Century, January 27, 2021.

 Joanna Seibert

Funeral Cathryn Ann Coston noon January 24, 2024 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church

Funeral Cathy Ann Coston, noon on January 24, 2024, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church.

We have come today to Saint Mark’s to celebrate and give thanksgiving for the life of Cathy Ann Coston. We gather as friends and family suffering an empty space in our lives. We also express gratitude for everything Cathy has meant to us and everything she continues to stand for. It is a day for tears and smiles. Friends have described Cathy’s unique humor, love of nature, and uplifting faith even after becoming homebound and having early retirement for health issues. Camille describes her mom as the embodiment of a life well lived. Cathy left all she touched with the gift of love and fun for life—a life of laughter and good humor.

I think the scripture readings and music Camille selected for this service give us an extraordinary hint of the love Camille knew from her mother and her mother’s parents. Camille described her mom as a great gift-giver. She and her friends are still receiving gifts from her mom that have arrived after her death. I can’t help but tell one of Camille’s stories about how her mom brought humor to every part of life she touched. Camille was being wheeled into emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix. Her mother was writing little notes to Camille with a magic marker on Camille’s hands and toes. The best one was what her mother wrote of the bottoms of Camille’s feet for her surgeon and all to see, “Dr. Tucker, don’t let me die!”

Camille loved going to church with her mom, because her mother had a pocketful of pipe cleaners that her mom made stick figures for her during the service. When they went out to eat, her mom made puppets out of their napkins. What great childhood memories.

We indeed do reach out today to Cathy’s family, especially her father, George, and her daughter, Camille. How do we tell them that someone they so cared for has gone on to life in the resurrection?/ How do you explain that eternal, resurrected life differs from immortality? Immortality means we never die. That is what we believed when we were teenagers. Eternal life is a new life, moving into new territory, different from the past. Remember that sometimes friends recognized the resurrected Jesus immediately, and sometimes not. Sometimes, he ate with them, and at other times, he walked through walls. He would suddenly appear, and then just as suddenly disappear. Eternal life is a new and different life, not more of the same old life. How do we say that dying is not a PERIOD at the end of a sentence, but more like a COMMA, where we die and go on to a new relationship with God AND with those we love?

This new life is truly a mystery. How I wish there were more stories about it in scripture. Couldn’t Jesus have spent a little more time telling us what this eternal life would be like? I wish we could have had some eyewitness stories about life after death, from Jarius’ daughter, the widow’s son, or Lazarus,/ those three people Jesus brought back from the dead. Maybe just a paragraph from them about life after death, but their words and experiences are not recorded.

We only know about the resurrected Jesus. When Jesus was raised from the dead, he did not bring us back any pictures of a place. All he brought back was himself in person. The resurrected Jesus did not resume his previous life. Nothing in the Gospel resurrection stories implies that he died, came back, and carried on life “as usual.” He did not seem confined to time and space. He would appear and disappear. Sometimes, his closest followers, like Mary Magdalene, could not recognize him until he called her specifically by name. He still had his wounds in his hands and feet,/ but they were healed.

The disciples who meet Jesus after the resurrection on the road to Emmaus do not recognize him as he walks and unbelievably explains the scriptures to them UNTIL he breaks bread with them.

And so here we are today, so much like those friends on the road to Emmaus, grieving the loss of someone we loved, our friend, a close companion, the one we did learn so much about love from when we ate with her at those family meals that were so important to her.

  Like Mary Magdalene, like those on the road to Emmaus, we will know that both Cathy and Christ’s love is very much here with us, but for some reason, we often may not recognize it. We may sometimes feel that love in our prayers or for you, Camille, when you sing. Sometimes, we will genuinely feel that love beside us. Sometimes, it will be more difficult, but that love will be there. The love of those who loved us and Christ’s love is always near, in death as in life. The love from the Good Shepherd they gave to us remains with us. It is that love from God that never dies.

We are told that the light we see in the night sky is the light of a star long since dead, but the light reaches us and leads us on. We are not surprised, therefore, when a light stranger than the light of any star falls across our way, warming us, leading us, reminding us, and pointing us to love we have known in the past. The light is real; we know where it comes from. It is the love from God that was always there in your relationship with Cathy.

Camille, your experience tells you that God loves you so much that God brought you to live with your mother, Cathy,/ who loved you / more than either of you can describe. Our experience tells us that this Good Shepherd would not just let this love stop with Cathy’s death. The love from your God reached out to you in the life of your mom, and will still embrace you in her life beyond death.

It is impossible to believe that Cathy, her strength, her love, and her kindness are extinguishable. The God of our understanding would not do this. In this mysterious universe, we know that those who mean most to us mean EVEN MORE to God. The Good Shepherd will keep them, and because God keeps them, we will never be separated from their love, or they from us. //

Camille, do you remember the year your mom went with you when you started school? Remember that first day of school and how new and exciting everything was? You were the same little girl,/ but everything in your life suddenly changed. Death, too, is the beginning of something new and different. That’s what it is like right now for your mom, like starting at a new school, maybe a graduate school, and goodness knows you know she will LOVE IT, for she loves to learn and share with others. Somehow, we also know she may still share that new love with the rest of us. Perhaps you intermittently will receive some new understanding of her love from a particular piece of music/ or a prayer/ or when you are sitting outside in nature/ or watching a sunset, or at the Eucharist.

Some say that when the body dies, life stops. Our experience is that life continues in some form when the body dies. This was Christ’s gift to us. We know this is true because he has told us/ and we also know it because he has shown us in his life and the lives of so many others still going on.

Today, we give thanks for the life of Cathy Coston, who was a tower of strength, who stood by us and nursed and nurtured us; who cheered us by her sympathy and encouraged us by her example, who looked not disdainfully on the outward appearance, but lovingly into the hearts of men and women and children; who rejoiced to serve others; whose loyalty was steadfast, whose friendship was unselfish and secure; whose joy it was to be of service. May Cathy find abiding peace in God’s heavenly kingdom, and with God’s help, may we carry forward her unfinished work on this earth. Amen

Theodore Ferris,  Death and Transfiguration (FM Maxi Book 1974).

Edward Gleason, Dying We Live (Cowley Publishers 1990)

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

 Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com