12-Step Eucharist, Edge of Adventure

12-step Eucharist, Mark 9:38-50, 21B October 2, 2024, Images of Sponsorship, Evangelism, Edge of Adventure

We know that the 12 steps have saved our lives, but we, like Jesus’ disciples, see others who are healed by the 12 steps, not working the steps the same way we do. Jesus warns us not to be a stumbling block to any of his children but to be well-seasoned, salty, and at peace with one another. How do we lead others from the edge of this adventure into the adventure of recovery and not be a stumbling block to them? How do we also live totally into the 12 steps, staying immersed in the adventure and not just living superficially on the edge of this adventure?

 The Edge of Adventure is a book by Bruce Larson and Keith Miller in the 90s about the Christian life as an adventure. This book changed my life just as AA did almost 34 years ago./  Recently, I see a metaphor of our 12-step adventure, of intervention, a 12-step call, sponsorship as I watch from a balcony on the Gulf Coast while an evening’s pageant plays out at the water’s edge.

A sleek young couple drives to the beach at sunset with their young daughter. The barefoot darling cannot be more than two as she holds her father’s hand. They walk to the ocean’s edge, but she will go no farther. Her parents coax her to put her tiny feet into the surf, but the little one refuses to get her feet wet. The father goes into the surf, picks out beautiful shells, and places them in her hands, but she still will not budge into the water. It is evident that her parents love the sea, and they want their daughter to experience it. Finally, her parents walk into the surf together, and the daughter plays and runs about the dry sand in front of them.

Just a few feet away, a shirtless grandfather comes to the surf with his grandson, perhaps 4 or 5 years old. The grandfather strokes his white beard, shows the grandson how to bait his hook, and casts a line into the surf for his grandson on the surf’s edge while the grandfather ventures into the salty blue-green ocean just a few feet in front of his grandson. He constantly looks back to check on him. The grandson is less interested in fishing and more interested in the rise and fall of the surf. The young boy playfully goes to the edge of an oncoming wave but awkwardly runs away from the rising surf. He decides the surf is too scary. Then something happens. Either he does not move fast enough, the foaming white breakers come in as a larger wave, or he takes a chance and gets his feet wet. He quickly runs away from the water, but with the next wave, he ventures slightly into the water’s edge. Finally, he stays beside his grandfather, getting more than his feet wet with each wave.//

The young parents try to entice their toddler to the adventure, but she is not ready. The grandfather lets the older child venture alone while the grandfather stays close by. The grandson finally leaves the edge and ventures into the sea. We wonder how often he has been by his grandfather at the gulf’s edge and not gone in. Perhaps as they go deeper into the waves together, the grandfather will give him a life jacket in case he slips and loses his grip on his grandfather’s hand.

This is sponsorship, intervention, the 12th step, and what it is like to share the good news of Alcoholics Anonymous.

We tell our story about this new adventure, as vast as the ocean, something they have never experienced,/ but sometimes they are not ready. They may be too early in their addiction. Their old life is safe, a known quantity. Recovery is an unknown. When we get a hint that they are ready to walk to the edge of this new adventure, we go with them, but we have to let them decide when to go.

As we go with others to the edge of the recovery adventure, we take their hand and slowly go deeper into the salty water. We tell them about a new blue life jacket, the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com

DOK Fall Assembly, Little Rock Arkansas, September 28, 2024, Wisdom

20B Wisdom, DOK Fall Assembly, Little Rock, AR, September 28, 2024     

 Proverbs 31:10-31, Psalm 1, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8, Mark 9:30-37, Christ Church, September 28, 2024.

“But the wisdom from above is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”

We have heard so much wisdom today from Michaelene and so many of you.

All of today’s readings describe the wisdom we seek. The disciples in Mark’s gospel do not understand what Jesus is saying. They have knowledge, but they have not received wisdom. Knowledge is knowing where babies come from. Wisdom knows how to care for and love them. Knowledge is learning the distance between here and New York City. Wisdom knows what to pack for the trip and how to make the journey a pilgrimage.

Knowledge is a warehouse of information, while wisdom uses that knowledge. Wisdom is making sense of facts. Knowledge helps us make a living./Wisdom enables us to make a life.

“Today, the quest for knowledge is pursued at higher speeds with smarter tools, but wisdom is found no more readily than three thousand years ago in the court of King Solomon. Our generation is bloated with information and starved for wisdom.” 1

We hear in Proverbs the wisdom of a capable wife,/ in Psalm 1 the wisdom of trees planted by streams of water, in James the wisdom from above, and in Mark Jesus’ wisdom of welcoming a child.////

One of our favorite television series was Mad Men, a fictionalized story about a New York Madison Avenue advertising agency in the 1960s. We see a world view of the 60s culture through the prism of this agency. Of course, this is a soap opera. A favorite episode is about the checkered, shadowy past life of the lead protagonist in the agency, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, womanizing Don Draper. /In the Army in Korea, he lights a cigarette (everyone constantly smokes in the 60s) and 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 wife of the real Don Draper, finds him working at a used car dealership 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 to wisdom so often comes from and leads to unconditional love. “I know everything about you,/ more than anyone else,/ and I still love you.” (Proverbs 3:17).

Do you remember times when you were given the wisdom Jesus talks about?/ You suddenly know what to do when you have all the knowledge possible and are still struggling?/ When you feel abandoned and unloved and you hear a tiny glimpse of God’s love./ You are given wisdom to do something you know you could never 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. When I hear he has had a stroke, someone I never take advice from tells me to leave my busy medical practice and go home. /

Thoughts flood my mind on the long plane ride home. My grandfather is the most significant person in my growing up years. He owns a jewelry store in my southern hometown of fewer than 5000. 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’ Drugstore, two stores down.

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. After dinner, my grandfather reads the funny papers to me. Then we go to the country to his farm, walking the length of his property by the Mattaponi River, where he teaches me about trees, plants, snakes, and stories about his growing up in the Smoky Mountains. Sometimes, we visit 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 their seemingly enormous guest bed and, after breakfast, walk the short nine blocks to school.

My grandfather is my symbol of unconditional love, always there for me, supporting and loving me in good times and bad. Unfortunately, I see him infrequently after leaving my hometown to attend 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 contains 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 cannot bear to lose the love I knew was always there. /

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 know he recognizes me even though he never again shows any sign of recognition. Suddenly, I now feel his love and forgiveness. As I sit by his bed and listen to his labored breathing, I feel helpless. All my years of medical practice give no answers. By some miracle, I have my prayer book with me, but of course, I do not have a 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 that same inner voice tells me 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,  wisdom’s source comes from my sources of unconditional love, which speaks 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.’”

God constantly sends messages of Jesus’ wisdom from above. We may best hear this wisdom when we are desperate, vulnerable, and more open. Wisdom often comes from suffering, like the pain of birthing a child or the pain of being with a dying loved one. Jesus’ wisdom most often leads to unconditional love and the path to peace. //

Wisdom from on high is often a contradiction or 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. joannaseibert.com

17B Honoring with our lips, not our hearts, Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation,” Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, 12-step Eucharist September 4, 2024, Saint Mark’s Little Rock Joanna Seibert

17B Honoring with our lips, not our hearts, Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation,” Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23, 12-step Eucharist

September 4, 2024, Saint Mark’s Little Rock Joanna Seibert

“This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

If Jesus told a story today about honoring God with our lips but not our hearts, he might share Flannery O’Connor’s last short story, “Revelation.”

The story begins in a southern doctor’s waiting room, where a smug Ruby Turpin surveys and assesses the others seated around her. Next to her is the mother of an overweight, homely daughter, Mary Grace, whose face is blue with acne and is reading a thick blue book. She is home from a school in the north called Wellesley.

Mrs. Turpin feels tremendous self-satisfaction regarding her position in the waiting room and the world. Her caste classification boils down to race and property.

Inevitably, Ruby Turpin’s reflections about her superior position break into a joyful speech, “When I think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got, I just feel like shouting, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!’ It could have been different!... Oh, thank you, Jesus, thank you!”//

 At that moment,/ Mary Grace can no longer tolerate this self-satisfaction and hurls her book, Human Development, at Mrs. Turpin, hitting her over the left eye. Mary Grace then lurches across the waiting room and lunges for Ruby’s throat, yelling, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog!”

Mrs. Turpin finds this comment unsettling and wonders if it may be a message from God ( Mary Grace, Catholic, Holy Mother): “How,” she asks God, “am I both a hog and me? How am I both saved and from hell?”

  Ruby returns home and now questions God out loud. As she contemplates the “message,” she has a vision of the souls of the characters from the waiting room walking up to Heaven. “There were whole companies of the dirt poor, clean for the first time, bands of blacks in white robes, battalions of people she considers freaks and the lowest dregs of society shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession is a tribe of people she recognizes like herself, having always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right...They march behind the others with great dignity and are accountable for good order, common sense, and respectable behavior. They alone sing on key. Yet she can see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues are being burned away.” And all the souls are shouting Hallelujah.

There is, of course, a difference between Mrs. Turpin and the chief priests and elders. When Ruby has “the book thrown at her,” she stops to see if there is a message. The priests never do. Jesus’ message of change is too painful. The Mary Graces of our lives represent “Holy people,” whom we do not see as authority figures since we feel superior to them due to our education, social standing, and race.”

We are here tonight because we all also encountered the holy Mary Graces and listened to them. They are sponsors and those we meet in 12-step groups. Mary Grace can also speak to us from inside of us as well as outside. O’Connor says Mary Grace may not be pretty. Mary Grace was probably not the authority we would ever listen to./ Let us continue to look the Mary Graces in the eye,/ attempt to sit closer to them in the waiting room,/ and, if possible, ask them to tell us a little more about Human Development so that we may continue to sing Hallelujah.

Joanna Seibert. joannaseibert.com

12-Step Eucharist, Transfiguration, August 7, 2024 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rcok

12-step Eucharist St. Marks, August 7, 2024

Tonight, at this 12-step Eucharist, we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration, which officially was yesterday. We hear the story about Jesus’ divinity being revealed to three disciples on a high mountain. Anyone in 12-step recovery can identify immediately with transfiguration, seeing the light, a moment of clarity, and encountering the God who has been there all along within us and others. Still, we never saw this before because we were too busy making “dwellings” for other idols, alcohol, food, drugs, work, etc.

Bill W. saw that light in the “fresh-skinned, glowing face, with a different look in his eyes” of his friend Ebby, who had become sober using the principles of the Oxford Group.1

Later, Bill W.  prayed, “I’ll do anything, anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!” Then Bill writes:

“What happened next was electric. Suddenly, my room blazed with an indescribably white light. I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description. Every joy I had known was pale by comparison. The light, the ecstasy – I was conscious of nothing else for a time.

Then, seen in the mind’s eye, there was a mountain. I stood upon its summit, where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. In great, clean strength, it blew right through me. Then came the blazing thought, “You are a free man.” I know not at all how long I remained in this state, but finally, the light and the ecstasy subsided. I again saw the wall of my room. As I became more quiet, a great peace stole over me, and this was accompanied by a sensation difficult to describe. I became acutely conscious of a Presence, which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world.”2

Moments of transfiguration occur when we are transported from a deep unconscious sleep to a moment of conscious bright light when we see, feel, taste, and touch God’s presence. Transfiguration is about experiencing our true nature, the part of God inside ourselves and others. It is the moment when the veil of all else starts to fall away, and we connect to the presence of God within us, and eventually desire to turn our life and our will over to the care of God. That is that moment when we let go and let God.

Richard Rohr believes we cannot see God in others until we first see God within ourselves. That moment of clarity speaks from within us that we are better than the life we are leading. So, recovery is seeing that spark of God first within ourselves, which leads us to see God in others. We encounter that person who once annoyed us and caused us to have a resentment, and we begin to notice a tiny glimpse of the face of God in our neighbor and possibly can respond in love./

“If we want to find God, then connect to God within ourselves, and we will always then see God beyond us. For it is only God in us who knows where and how to look for God.” 3

Frederick Buechner reminds us that as we see God within ourselves, we then begin to see God in situations we never saw before: “the face of a man walking his child in the park, a woman picking peas in the garden, sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, or just sitting with friends at a Saturday football game in September. Every once and a while, something so touching, incandescent, and alive transfigures another human face that it’s almost beyond bearing.” 4

If you are having difficulty seeing the face of God, stop for a moment and look at our young children. God’s presence seems to burst force from them. I have been overwhelmed by a heavy dose of God’s presence this week in the 100 children at our Vacation Bible School at Saint Mark’s.

Transfiguration is the message and the promise of recovery, seeing the face of God first in ourselves and then in others. Tonight, we celebrate the transfiguration that recovery continually brings to our lives and the face of every person we encounter. Transfiguration is a daily living reality.

1 Silkworth.net.

2 Pass It On, Silkworth.net.

3 Richard Rohr Adapted from The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (The Crossroad Publishing Company: 2009), 159-161.

4Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark (HarperSanFrancisco 1988), p. 120.

12B Behind the Scenes of Feeding of the 5000, John 6:1-21, July 28, 2024, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Joanna Seibert

12B Behind the Scenes of Feeding of 5000 John 6:1-21 July 28,  2024, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church,  Little Rock, Joanna Seibert 

Once, I took a six-month sabbatical from my medical practice at Children’s Hospital, planning an international meeting for my specialty. The meeting went well, but few people knew about the many behind-the-scenes events that made it happen. The conference was in Colorado Springs in early May. As the meeting began, I looked/ in disbelief /out a window and saw a heavy snowfall/ on the spring tulips. Quickly, overnight, we changed the planned golf and tennis events to winter sports. We taped the speakers after their session, as this was the first year of our specialty’s re-certification. I casually asked another pediatric radiologist, Marilyn Goske, to look in on the taping. Marilyn ended up never attending the meeting sessions, spending time with one speaker, never satisfied with his recording, who redid his talk five times. Perhaps the most innovative behind-the-scenes event was the spontaneous, impromptu marriage of two pediatric radiologists who lived continents apart. Our “yes, we can do it” meeting planner set up the ceremony in less than twenty-four hours. That wedding stands as the only nuptial event at this annual conference to date! ////

John’s telling of the feeding of the 5000 also lets us in at a rare/ behind-the-scenes look at how miracles take place.1 A large crowd follows Jesus as he heals the sick. Jesus goes up a mountain and sits down with his disciples. Unlike in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), JESUS, /not the disciples,/ initiates a discussion about how to feed the now-hungry multitude. Phillip is practical and realistic, does the math, and sees no possible plan. Andrew, resourceful and observant, reports that a boy offers five barley loaves and two fish. However, Andrew, known for bringing people to Jesus, like this boy, his brother Peter, and later some Greeks,/ min/i/miz/es the possibility that this plan will work. Jesus then asks the disciples to have the crowd sit in a grassy area. He takes the barley loaves, the bread of the poor, and the fish, offers thanksgiving, and then Jesus distributes the food./ In the synoptic gospels, the disciples hand out the food. John reiterates that Jesus is always the giver, even if the gift is mediated through us./

 After the people are satisfied, Jesus asks the disciples to gather the fragments so “nothing may be lost.” They fill twelve baskets. The people are so astonished that they want to make Jesus king, but he withdraws up the mountain by himself. Jesus knows well that being king of the Jewish people is not his calling. He comes to teach us about a different kingdom.//

So much of this miracle, the movement of the Spirit, happens behind the scenes in this story/ and in our everyday lives. We witness Jesus’ resourcefulness bursting open our notion of limits and possibilities in our lives, work, callings, and relationships,/ possibilities we have missed in our shortsightedness. Here is a story of resourcefulness and generosity, using what we have, our small gift, that can have a significant impact. It is about having faith that God’s power is operational and overabundant. Andrew and Phillip especially remind us of the times we minimize how God works in our lives. Sometimes, our gifts are ready to be used, but we wait until we might be even more prepared. The enemy of good is perfection! That desire for perfection turns into a miserable, isolating, never-ending addiction. This story also reminds us how Jesus cares for our physical needs as much as our spiritual concerns. Jesus cares for the whole person. This is why the Benedictine rule of life is so vital for us to consider: time for prayer, study, eating, sleeping, working, and recreation.

Jesus doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for feeding the 5000. He lavishes food on them until they are satisfied, and then gathers the leftovers to take to those not there. There should be no waste. Jesus does not want anyone to be left out. The story is not just about abundance, but an overwhelming cup full,/ running over.//

Do you remember when Jesus asked Saint Mark’s, “How will you feed the hungry crowd?” There had been a capital campaign where money was left over. The Spirit moves the people of Saint Mark’s to remember the miracle of that abundance. They put that money into an outreach account, with part going to outreach and the other to Mustard Seed start-up grants for new outreach projects. We all know the story. Here comes another behind-the-scenes miracle. At about that time in 2016, another church on Mississippi cannot sustain its food pantry and asks if Saint Mark’s can support it. There are discussions similar to Phillip’s that Saint Mark’s might not take in enough money to support it, and Andrew’s that the proposed food pantry’s needs might exceed their allotted amount. Established ministries may have to share space. How will people needing food impact the day school? But again, somehow, there is another miracle. One person speaks up, saying, “Saint Mark’s needs this ministry. I hope we can find a way to work together to say yes.” The whole direction changes. The Holy Spirit takes over and turns a food pantry serving 500 people and 90 families monthly into a large-scale weekly food ministry to our neighbors that this May serves 3000 people and 650 families, with a continued yearly increase in people served. In the meantime, another behind-the-scenes miracle. Long-time members of Saint Mark’s, Gladys Beal, a VA operating nurse, and her husband leave money in their will to renovate the youth area and enlarge the food pantry to its present state. Need and abundance that keeps on growing. Thank you to so many who make the core value of Saint Mark’s identity a place of miracles and abundance.////

Lastly, in this feeding story, Jesus embraces a child’s extravagant generosity,/ reminiscent of a child offering to help their parents buy a new house by offering up their piggy bank. This takes us back to another behind-the-scene story at our Colorado Springs meeting. We engaged the nearby Air Force Academy chorus to sing at our banquet, but overnight, they go on maneuvers. Our meeting planner again responds, “We can make this work,” and books a local children’s chorus. I am distressed,/ thinking they will be amateurish. But they are amazing professional voices, leaving the audience in tears. As the children conclude the program, they go to each pediatric physician, sing directly to them, and give them a gentle hug and a thank you. The children bring to each person that source of abundant love we so often learn from the young. ///

 Today’s final adventure with the disciples finds them in a storm in the Sea of Galilee. Jesus walks on the water toward them. They are terrified and initially cannot recognize him. Jesus speaks one of his favorite lines, “It is I, do not be afraid,” and “The boat reaches land where they were going.” This is how Jesus works when we are in difficult situations. He walks in “behind the scenes.” Often, we do not recognize his presence. Finally, when we do, we come to a safe harbor. When we lose our capacity to wonder, we become skeptical about the extraordinary and miss the extraordinary within the ordinary. The miracle in this last story is that Christ’s presence in ordinary, fearful people can calm their anxieties and cause them to walk where they feared to walk before. I believe Christ was present in that person at Saint Mark’s,/ you know who you are, /who finally speaks up and says, “Saint Mark’s needs this ministry. I hope we can find a way to say yes.”/

May each of us say our prayers and stay connected to the Christ, the Holy Spirit within us. May we be that person at Saint Mark’s who has experienced abundance and love, who can speak truth at the right moment,/ often behind the scenes, and says, “Saint Mark’s needs this ministry. I hope we can find a way/ to reach out of ourselves/ and support/ the needs of  our community around us and in the world.”

1Jean Greenwood in Feasting on the Gospels ( Westminster John Knox Press 2015), pp.10-174.

Joanna Seibert