Thursday, November 6, 2008

I have to do a theological reflection on my experience of being the emergency on-call chaplin at a hospital, and I've been struggling with just what to say. (The following will not be the finished product...). The events in question happened two weeks ago. We had two calls--the first I went with my supervisor, the second I was on my own. Graciously, though tragically too, both times were much the same. Late-middle aged man dead of a heart attack. We were there to greet their widows. Neither one had any church affiliation. But neither kicked us out.
It was strange being present at such a traumatic time, with people I had never seen before and likely won't see again. At times I felt voyeuristic. At times I wondered precisely what I thought I was doing there. And yet, had I/we not been there, it seems quite likely that no one would have offered these women prayer (which both accepted). Perhaps too, it showed them that someone cared about their pain beyond those who were expected by the ties of family and proximity. I hope that occured to them, because I continue to pray for them and wonder quietly how they're coping.
It's trite, but I wonder what carries people through such painful and life-altering times when they don't have faith and a faith community to fall back on. (Not to suggest that the lives of the faithful aren't often wrought with difficulties). Being in the room with a weeping widow to whom I had no communal ties gave me a sense of Jesus' obsessive compassion. His yearning for those like sheep without a shepherd--those mired in pain, made haggard by the uncertainties of the world, who long to have a reason to hope again. I have a hard time not crying with those women.

A scripture passage that's jumped out a lot at me as I learn to negotiate the different challenges of different clinical settings--hospital, nursing home, terminal care, group homes--is Matt 25:36, "...I was sick and you cared for me..." When I don't want to go to the hospital, or the nursing home, I try to repeat that over to myself. It's helped me to look people in the eye, to try to meet them on a level that transcends their physical pain, to see the child of God--sick as they might be. For the most part I've been shocked at the life left in people's eyes. Pity and discomfort can turn into actual care and a longing to restore dignity where it's often been stripped away.

Indeed that whole sheep and goats passage is one that rings loudly as often as I let it. I'll be preaching on it in two weeks and I'm pretty excited about that. It coincides nicely with the Bible study I've been offering on the epistle of James. It reminds us that while what we believe is important, the questions Christ will ask us when we find ourselves in front of him won't have much to do with our theological opinions. "But someone will say, 'You have faith and I have works.' Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder" (James 2:18-19).
The combination of the Matt 25 passage and that passage from James forces me to submit to the nagging of the Spirit, forces me to take the call of Jesus seriously. It forces me to recognize that the grace of God demands response--we can't truly even begin to understand what God's grace means for us, if we don't live as though we're changed by it. To truly "'believe [in the gospel]means to accept the situation that is created by [the decision of God in Jesus Christ]" (Karl Barth)--that is, to believe is to live as though the Kingdom of God has indeed come near; we are already being made new.

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