Understanding The Gospel of Mark -- Epiphany Bible Study
Episode 49 - Release Date 01/11/2024 — Listen Here!
Better understand the Bible readings for this week & pass them on to your family with our weekly Bible Study - this conversation discusses the Bible Readings for the week of 01/11. Find the prayer service and readings here.
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In this episode, we are joined by J. Sierra Reyes. Natalie first met Sierra when they were both members of the Crossing, an Episcopal faith Community in Boston. The Rev. Canon J. Sierra Reyes serves as the Canon to the Ordinary for the Episcopal Diocese of California, acting as chief of staff and assisting the Bishop in supporting clergy and congregations throughout the Bay Area. Previously, she served as Canon for Ministry in the Diocese of Chicago, where she oversaw pastoral transitions and supported clergy. Sierra is also on the Board of the Episcopal Divinity School.
Key moments in our conversation include:
00:25 Introduction to J Sierra Reyes
03:46 Introduction to the Gospel of Mark
05:31 Understanding the Demonic Presence in Mark
08:17 The Everyday Presence of Evil
09:47 Addressing Perfectionism in Children
11:08 St. Peter's Confession
Things we talked about in this episode:
Christian Response to Systemic Evil (note this is one article's approach -- not the only approach)
Sierra spoke about the role of systemic evil in our world - we spoke about this at length with Gary Comins in Episode 9.
Let’s stay connected!
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Monthly Newsletter:Sign-Up Here00:00:00 Natalie Thomas
Hello and welcome to Bedtime Chapel's weekly scripture study episode. I'm Natalie Thomas.
00:00:05 James Thomas
And I'm James Thomas. We are deacons in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.
00:00:09 Natalie Thomas
Bedtime Chapel grew out of a shared desire of ours to support families who want to know, love and follow Jesus in a post Christian world.
00:00:18 James Thomas
We offer a nightly prayer service that includes a short gospel reading. In this episode, we'll be covering the readings for the first week of Epiphany.
00:00:25 Natalie Thomas
Today we are joined by Sierra, who is the canon to the ordinary in the Diocese of California. And as you have come to know, we are not fans of biographical introductions on this podcast. So I will say briefly that Sierra and I met each other, I think way back. Yeah, I think now, 15 years ago, at least 15 years ago.
00:00:49 Natalie Thomas
And we were both serving and part of the Crossing, which is an Episcopal community outside of the Cathedral of St. Paul. And it was started by the Reverend Cannon Stephanie Spellers. We were both part of that community and have stayed in touch through the gifts of social media. And I will pass it to you, Sierra, so you can introduce yourself to share a little bit more about your faith story and how you came to be in the role you are today in the church.
00:01:16 J. Sierra Reyes
Yeah. Thank you, James and Natalie. I'm really excited to be able to talk about something that I think a lot about, but no one's ever asked me me about, which is sort of how to just create a space of faith for our family. So thanks. Let's see. I am an Episcopal priest. We met Natalie in Boston.
00:01:40 J. Sierra Reyes
I was in seminary at Harvard Divinity School. I met my husband there as well. We were both students there. And I was on a ordination track and he was more on a academic teaching track. And we have just through the course of education and serving the church, have lived in various places and we are now most recently here in California.
00:02:06 J. Sierra Reyes
Throughout it all, I was ordained first and then I became pregnant and we had our daughter. And I had to learn how to be priests differently than I was before having children. And I've enjoyed being priest and also parent because I feel like that's more realistic to what the church is calling us to be.
00:02:29 J. Sierra Reyes
Just in the sense of the church can't be everything because you've also got this child that's also depending upon you for survival. And so being able to balance the two has been for me, a really good exercise of faith and of how to be faithful in the calls that God has given us, both ordained and family.
00:02:48 J. Sierra Reyes
And I am now in a more administrative role as Canon to the Ordinary. But I really am enjoying getting to know the stories of our clergy and their families. And I feel like within the church, our clergy give so much, but I also want to make sure the church is caring for the clergy and their families as well, because that's just as important.
00:03:15 J. Sierra Reyes
And I'm feeling very blessed to be able to be part of that. So I'm really thankful to be with y'all.
00:03:21 James Thomas
Thank you for that. And we will just briefly say without, because this could become the podcast in and of itself that our hearts are very close to. The remarks you just made about the balancing act that it is, and that is something we've been living with for. It will be exactly three years this.
00:03:38 James Thomas
This week when our oldest child turns three. So thank you for that. Those words of introduction.
00:03:45 J. Sierra Reyes
Absolutely.
00:03:46 James Thomas
Yeah. So for the next couple weeks, we're going to be reading through Mark, specifically the first nine chapters of Mark. As we begin the journey with Mark, can you give the people listening a sense of what to expect in Mark's portrayal of Jesus? Another way of thinking about this, we've been discussing with our previous guest the identity of Jesus.
00:04:07 James Thomas
Who is Jesus, for example, as a healer? And what might you say as we begin this first week, which takes us up through Mark 2 to people who, you know, what should folks be paying attention for in the first two chapters of Mark?
00:04:24 J. Sierra Reyes
I feel like from all of the gospels, out of Mark, we get a Jesus that is very aware of his identity and asking of others, who do you say that I am? And open to what folks may be considering and then being able to provide a different narrative in the passages reading for our conversation, I was really struck about how much Jesus strength and healing power is identified.
00:04:56 J. Sierra Reyes
And when I'm thinking about conversations with our family, with my daughter, she's very much into what she can do. Like, I can do that. I'm old enough to do that. And so I love the empowerment part of this of saying, you know, look at what Jesus is able to do, just the strength and the power, from the healing miracles to the feeding miracles.
00:05:20 J. Sierra Reyes
There's just a lot of opportunity there to talk about what it means to be strong and what it means to be able to do things that you don't think you can do.
00:05:31 Natalie Thomas
Like you said, we can zoom out and look at Mark from a wide lens. And in addition to having these themes of strength and active, you know, Jesus is a very active participant in Mark. We also have themes of Jesus combating the powers of evil. And that's a phrase talking about demonic powers and the demons and the pigs we get in the next few weeks.
00:06:00 Natalie Thomas
Those might be phrases that parents or humans in general aren't used to really grappling with. And we'd love it if you could expand a little bit on those, on that idea of combating the demonic and think about how we might engage with this with our families.
00:06:20 J. Sierra Reyes
That's something that me and my husband, we talk about a lot. Both he and I are very justice oriented. And if you look at the news, there's so many examples of people treating others less than and having to interpret that for a child of why are people evil? Or treat others as though they don't matter?
00:06:52 J. Sierra Reyes
And we have had to use the words there is evil in the world. And to not personify it as sort of a demon or a devil, but to really talk about it more of like distance from God that, you know, when we are not as close to God or we forget that we belong to God, we can forget who we are and we can then do things that could bring hurt or harm to others.
00:07:24 J. Sierra Reyes
And so in reading the scripture passages, particularly, you know, out of Mark, there's a understanding I feel like I would want our daughter to have in. It's not that just those people are evil, whatever that means, you know, just sort of the other, but that if we are not careful and are not discerning about our actions and our way of being in the world, we are capable of being that if we're not prayerful about it.
00:07:57 J. Sierra Reyes
So, like, I don't know, just trying to not other it, but really say, this is humanity. This is what it means to be human. And there's beautiful things about it. And there's also some really difficult things about it. And how do we stay as close to the source, which, you know, in my understanding is God.
00:08:15 J. Sierra Reyes
How do we stay close to that source?
00:08:17 Natalie Thomas
Yeah, I love what you're saying, Sierra, because a while back I went to a church and there was a sermon on string theory. And the fact that there are often, you know, this idea that there are parallel worlds that are existing right up against each other. And he was talking about the life of faith as operating in a parallel way, you know, in the world.
00:08:39 Natalie Thomas
And it is so often that in almost every single moment that we're in as humans, there's a choice we can make that is of God and brings us nearer. I love that language of nearer to God or more deeper into our understanding that we belong. That we all belong to God or is a movement away from that truth.
00:09:00 Natalie Thomas
Right. And so not Making it some sort of huge, magnificent idea of what is evil and what is not evil. But just the everyday, which you really see in the Gospels is that Jesus is having these miraculous healing encounters. We'll see this throughout, Mark, in these everyday encounters. And then in each of these everyday encounters, there's an option either to choose to acknowledge our nearness to God or to forget it.
00:09:28 Natalie Thomas
And that, that forgetting it can often spiral into some of the systems that we see in this world that really deny the belovedness of people of color, of queer people, of women, and that it's not so far away. Right. So it's a natural trail to laughing at the joke at the table, to getting to that next place.
00:09:47 J. Sierra Reyes
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, with our daughter, I've noticed that she is very passionate, very. She feels her feelings very deeply. And part of that has been, like, around making mistakes. She is so hard on herself when she makes mistakes, even to the point where she will vocalize some really, like, hard things.
00:10:08 J. Sierra Reyes
Like, I'm horrible. She says that, right? So, like, I have found in reading, my husband and I, we've talked about having to create a narrative for her that even if you make a mistake, it is not the end of the world. And that there's always a way to look at it again, to try again, to return to what you know to be true.
00:10:33 J. Sierra Reyes
But that's hard for an eight year old to, like, wrap her head around. But there's just such a. I don't know, there's a perfectionism, there's a want to do it right. And like, I know where she gets it from. I know her parents. Like, she gets it from us. Like, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
00:10:49 J. Sierra Reyes
To see her go through it in real time. In many ways, it's an opportunity for me to like, also be curious with myself as to how do. How do we do this and how do we use our faith as a resource for strengthening ourselves and not tearing ourselves down?
00:11:08 James Thomas
And we conclude this week with the Confession of St. Peter in our lectionary calendar. And one of the interesting features of Mark, this is probably true in all the synoptic gospels, but I think in Mark in particular, it comes across that Peter's, you know, he misses a lot of the information in the beginning.
00:11:25 James Thomas
I once read an interesting translation of Mark that I really liked, where Jesus calls him rock. And when you're reading it, I don't know if you've ever read one of those, but, you know, and he says, rock. You know, you missed it Rock. And it really gives it this colloquial flavor where you really understand that nickname of Peter.
00:11:43 James Thomas
And to what you were just saying about the natural process of not getting it perfect. Peter in so much of the Gospel doesn't get it perfect. As a matter of fact, in many cases he misses it until in Acts 2, Peter standing with the 11 you men that are Israelites and he gives the first testimony on Pentecost.
00:12:04 James Thomas
And it's an interesting way to wrap up this week in this particular aspect of the conversation to say that Peter, who has know his characterization throughout Mark as being rock or rocky and then ultimately being the one who does in Acts make the confession of the true identity of Jesus despite having a, having a a checkered past with his own faith journey.
00:12:33 James Thomas
I think that's an interesting kind of end to this week as we begin our Mark and journey.
00:12:38 Natalie Thomas
Thank you so much, Sierra, for joining us today. You're going to be with us for the next three three weeks, which we're very excited about. And thank you, James, for being on this journey with me and to you and thank you to the wider community of people praying with us. We want to stay in touch with you.
00:12:55 Natalie Thomas
You can find us on Facebook and Instagram. Both of our handles on both of those accounts are Bedtime Chapel. You can also write us an email – bedtimechapel@gmail.com We want to know what's working for you about this and what you'd like to be different. And until then, we will be praying with.
