|
| |
Come Before Winter
A Sermon Given
by the Reverend Douglas A. Taylor
on April 2, 2000
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Meditation:
"Self Portrait" by David Whyte
It doesn't interest me if there is one god or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned,
if you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know if you are prepared to live
in this world with its harsh need to change you,
if you can look back with firm eyes
saying "this is where I stand."
I want to know if you know how to melt
into that fierce heat of living, falling
toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing to live,
day by day, with the consequences of love
and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace,
even the gods speak of God.
Sermon
I heard the story of a young ministerial student who was
working in a hospital for his 400 hours of chaplaincy, which most
of us must go through on the road to ministry. This young man
had a particularly rough time of it. Chaplaincy is that time when
you are thrust into the whirlwind of acute spiritual need and you
find out if you have the mettle required for ministry. This young
man, however, had a thing about hospitals. They made him sick.
They made him physically ill! Now, he really wanted to do a
hospital chaplaincy despite this road block, and he worked with his
supervisor for a few weeks before he went out to one of the units.
His first try was about three weeks into the ten week program.
He walked onto the unit, picked the closest room at random and
walked in. "Hi, I'm the chaplain," was all he got out before it hit
him. The sights and the smells that are "hospital" greeted him in
the worst scenario he could have imagined. On the bed before him
lay an elderly man, frail and emaciated; tubes coming out of every
possible body part; machines whining and blinking. Death seemed
to be waiting in every shadow and fervent glance. The scene
swept over him and threatened to overwhelm him. He immediately
sat down in a chair near the bed, put his head between his knees
and focused on his breathing until he had regained enough control
to shakily stand up, exit the room, and make his way down to his
supervisor's office to report his failure.
The young man was not deterred, however. He and his
supervisor had discussed this possibility beforehand and within a
week, he was feeling much better and ready to give it another try.
His first task was to find the man whom he had gone to last week
and apologize for his strange and seemingly rude behavior. He
stood outside the door for several minutes before entering. When
he did go in, the sight that met his eyes was a complete contrast to
what he had seen last time. The old man sat up in bed, no tubes,
bright eyed and happy to see the hapless chaplain. "Oh, I am so
glad you stopped in. I was hoping I would see you before I left.
They're discharging me this afternoon. I just wanted to thank you
for that prayer you said when you stopped in last week. I don't
know what you said, but it sure did the trick."
Lesson #1: Show Up!
Pastoral care is soul draining and at the same time soul
enriching work. It is work I am called to do. It is work I am
blessed to have been called to do. I saw Ed the other day, Ed is
our sexton here at the Church. We fell into conversation and he
was thinking what a hard job I have. I need to be so many
different things to so many different people, he was saying. My
response came quickly to my lips. I said my job is actually so
simple. I am paid to be a human being. I am paid to love our
people, to tend to the needs of our people, to simple be a human
being. But that simple task is so hard to achieve! This is the sort
of thing I learned from my internship supervisor last year. The
Rev. Ruppert Lovely told me that we ministers are called to love
our people, to tend to our people.
Which brings me around to my title for this morning's sermon.
You'll see the connection soon. My sermon title comes from one
of the letters of Paul, Second Timothy. It is the last letter we have
of his in the Bible, a personal letter rather than one written to one
of the early churches in Rome and Corinth for example. We know
from the stories and letters in the Bible that Paul's last trip was to
Rome where he was imprisoned and died. He wrote two letters
while imprisoned in Rome to a young man he had been working
with named Timothy. Timothy was a young pastor and church
leader. Paul wrote out many tidbits of advice for this promising
young leader, some of which is still useful. Like "Have nothing to
do with stupid and senseless controversy; you know they breed
quarrels and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kindly
to everyone." Good advice.
But, what is more interesting is that at the end of his second
letter he asks Timothy to come visit him in Rome, in prison. "Do
your best to come to me soon" he writes. He goes on to say that
other friends near by have deserted him. And he says a second
time, emphasizing the importance of this for him: "Do your best,"
he writes, "to come before winter."
Paul! Paul, who most of us know as the man who wrote long
letters telling people how to behave and how to believe, what to do
and who to be with . . . Paul, with his letters filled with the raw
materials for future creeds and doctrines and constraining
interpretations of who Jesus was, what he did and what it all
means . . . Paul, who we now find, in his last written words calls
for help. "Come to me Timothy. Come before winter."
We can only guess as to whether or not Timothy ever made it
to see Paul before he died. In this act of calling on Timothy, Paul
reveals that the root of ministry is pastoral in nature. Come before
winter. When push comes to shove, it is the pastoral presence of
another that is wanted in the end. I remember a man named Dave.
I met him at a little UU fellowship out in Ohio where I had just
started at the nearby seminary. Dave had cancer, a very resistant
type of cancer. When he found out that I was studying to be a
minister he wanted to meet with me to talk about death. As if I
know anything about death. We met, we talked (he talked mostly)
about the thoughts that tumble about when you know you are going
to die soon. He wondered about heaven. "Not that I believe in
heaven," he said, "at least not the way my next door neighbor
does." He told me that he wondered if he might get nervous at the
end and start calling around to the other faiths to see what their
offering. "You know, hey, what are you offering? Eternal life?
Great! I'll take that. What are you offering? Reincarnation? Hey,
sounds great!" Then he looked at me, a glint in his eye that told
me he was only half joking, and said, "What are you offering?"
I didn't know what to say. Thankfully he laughed it off. I don't
think I helped him much. I moved up to Chicago a year and a half
later and read in the church's newsletter that Dave had died. He
died at home.
The day he died, he had struggled to put on his church t-shirt.
His family and a few close friends were gathered in the house.
They sang hymns from our hymnal. I'd say he has shown me what
we have to offer. When push comes to shove, it is not a solid
theology or a clever idea, but the pastoral presence of a companion
that is wanted in the end.
These are my marching orders. Come before winter. Many of
our members are nearing the late autumn of their lives, their
vibrant spring and bounteous summers behind them; many are
going strong in the glorious season of autumn. And I am called
-- to come before winter. Do not delay!
And yet, sometimes I do. The poem I read for the meditation
is one I found a few years back, a friend gave it to me, another
seminarian. She just plopped it on my desk one afternoon saying
she thought I might appreciate it. It gets at the root of what Dave
taught me. "It doesn't interest me if there is one god or many
gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned. If you
know despair or can see it in others." These first few lines give
me chills. This is a sharply poignant statement of what we as a
movement have to offer, of what I have to offer. "Do you know
despair? Or do you shrink from it, ignore it? Do you know
despair?" the poem asks. Yes, I know despair.
Rachel Naomi Remen, the author of Kitchen Table Wisdom,
writes:
At the heart of any real intimacy is a certain vulnerability.
It is hard to trust someone with your vulnerability unless
you can see in them a matching vulnerability and know that
you will not be judged. In some basic way it is our
imperfections and even our pain that draws others close to
us.
Yes, I have known despair. I have shared with you before that
I grew up in an alcoholic home. It was chaotic and unpredictable,
and I retreated from many things. I experienced what I can now
call a "crisis of belonging." I have wrestled with these demons in
both prayer and in therapy. I have also wrestled with depression,
again through prayer and therapy.
I have thought about death, my death. What will it be like
when I die. How do I want to be remembered. I have found that
death is not always the worst part of dying. For me and many
others, "Will I die soon?" is not so fear inducing a question as
"Will I die alone?" This was Paul's question. Will you come to
me before winter? Will I die alone?
The poem I read also asks this: "are you willing to live, day by
day with the consequences of love and the bitter unwanted passion
of your sure defeat?" It is so simple a call, "love our people, and
show up. Come before winter." And yet . . . I recall the name of a
member of this congregation that was mentioned early during my first
months here. She was going through some difficult treatments
I was told, but seemed to be doing all right. I didn't recognize the
name. Two months later when the same name was mentioned
again, I was busily visiting many people who, like in a triage
situation, seemed to need me more. Maybe it was just that I knew
them already. By the third time I heard this person's name
mentioned to me (again, months later) I said, "how about I go see
this person." When I sat with her in her living room she confessed
to me, "I wish I had known you three months ago. I was in the
hospital and feeling very depressed." Come before winter, she said
to me, before the winter of depression hits. And yet, I must live
with the "bitter unwanted passion of my sure defeat." I will fail.
Again and again I will fail at my calling.
And the way I can get some sleep at night with this haunting
fact hanging over me, is that I am secure in the knowledge that I
am not solely responsible for the entirety of this churches' pastoral
needs. Roger and Bobbie share the task. The Pastoral Visitors
share the task. When the choir takes turns visiting an ailing
member of their group, they share in the task. When members of
a dinner discussion group rotate meals for one among their number
in need, they share in the task. Indeed everyone who might ever
be called on to assist in our We Care system shares in the task.
And helping is so easy. Just remember lesson number one: show
up! It means so much.
And here's a secret: in helping others, you find yourself feeling
good for helping, feeling better connected to our church and its
principles and mission. Indeed, helping one another builds
community, it humanizes the institution and strengthens the web of
connections. Increased connections means fewer degrees of
separation, the smaller the church feels. One pastor I met said that
it even makes for softer interactions out in the rest of the world.
Pastoral work is the root from which all other ministry grows.
If I am a good teacher, it is because I care about the students in the
room. If I am an able committee member, it is because I seek the
perspective of others in a compassionate attitude. If I officiate well
at a memorial or wedding ceremony, it is because I can see that
each service is as important as if it were my own. If I am a
stirring preacher, it is because I am trying to connect in a personal
way with each of you here with me now.
So, I charge you now, to listen to the calls for help, however
they are worded; and to go and help. And I further charge you to
call for help when you are in need. Call a friend and ask them to
mention it to the church office, or call me or any of the ministers,
or one of the pastoral visitors. But listen and reach out when you
can, because it is good and right to help one another so. This is
how we live. This is how we die. This is all we have to offer.
In a world without end, May it be so.
cluuc@his.com
|
