Transcript

We once, we once had a better platform. Hello, budget operation here, Dean. I appreciate the introduction. Let me set the scene. You are in the hospital, had surgery yesterday, spent the night in intensive care, have been taken now to your private room, you're becoming increasingly aware of the pain in your abdomen, the tubes in your nose and arms, the bag of something clear hanging over your head, flowers in the window. You'll look at the card later, but you know it's from the Berean Sunday School class. About 15 or 20 cards on the table, you'll read them later, but they're from two neighbors and the others are from members of the church. Things are becoming a little clearer, much to your regret. The door is almost open and you see in the hallway, just outside the door, the doctor and your minister talking. What are they talking about? They look a little serious. They're probably talking about me, probably talking about my condition. I don't have to hear what they're saying, I know what they're saying. Well, Reverend, I did all I can do, I'm turning them over to you. I mean, they're not the way the work is divided. Doctor does the best she can and then turn them over for prayer. Who's going to tell him? Are you going to tell him? You tell him. You're a reparationer. After all, you're a minister and now what they do in seminary is help you to find kind ways to give bad news. That's what they're talking about. You're wrong. They're planning a golf date. Has nothing to do with you at all. What really disturbs you, what really disturbs you, is that you are witnessing the collapse, the shattering of mystique. There has been for centuries a mystique surrounding the minister and the doctor. They both have sanctuaries, one works by candlelight, the other one by bright light. Both have robes, one is black, the other is white, one has a Bible, the other has a stethoscope that's kept in the refrigerator. But they're both high priests of your life and part of their success. You know it's true, part of their success is the mystique. Shhh, it's the doctor. Shhh, here comes the rail. Say what you want to. You hate to lose that. But now you're losing it. There they stand. Both of them wearing sneakers, dirty sneakers, one Bermuda shorts, the other one old baggy khakis. You thought you were such a bad case that they ran from home without having time to dress. Now that's the way they dress. The mystique is gone. You know what's the matter with you? You're disturbed that they're talking. Because you had accepted the fact that the doctors don't talk. They don't say anything. You can go home from a visit to the doctor's office a hundred times and your family will say, well what did the doctor say? Nothing. Didn't say anything. The doctor's nurse gave me this bottle of pills and said, make an appointment for three months if you think you can. That's about it. I remember growing up in the country, back in the country, far in the country. Doctor had to come out to see my mother, my father. They couldn't go in. They were usually late. The crisis was over when they got there, but they came. Always dressed in black, always wearing hats, had a black satchel, frightening to children, go to the closed door trying to hear what's going on. You can hear your mother, you can hear your father. What's the doctor saying? Doctor, not saying anything. Comes out, hands you a stick of peppermint candy and leaves. What did the doctor say? Nothing. Later on when I had my tonsils out, we had a different doctor, Doctor Williams. Nice old man. He told me I had to have my tonsils out and then later he took out my tonsils. He hummed. He never said anything, but he hummed. He hummed blessed assurance all the time. I don't know if he had different songs for different occasions, but most of the folk I knew said he always hummed blessed assurance. Never said anything. And now you're looking at your doctor and your minister talking. Your doctor's talking. That's kind of upsetting, really, because your doctor is now joining the core of what we call the interpreters. That's what you want, really, is an interpreter. It starts over here in my left side. And what do you think it is, Doc? What do you think it is? You don't want to appeal. You want an interpretation. Like a child screaming in the night. Mother runs in. What is it? What is it? There's somebody outside my window. She goes over it. She turns on the light. She says, see the little shrub rubbing against the screen? That's what it is. What's what we want is an interpreter. That's all. Why is it upsetting that the doctor is talking? Nettie and I heard Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, who was at that time, Chief of Staff, Georgetown University Hospital, say at Chautauqua some years ago, the greatest single advance in the practice of medicine in this country is the doctor is now talking. Ask your doctor questions, he said. If you have a doctor who will not talk, get another doctor. He said doctors are talking and it's the greatest advance. That's what's disturbing you. You're witnessing something new, a talking doctor. You know what's disturbing you? They're talking about you. They didn't always talk about you. Doctor and minister didn't always talk about anybody because early on the doctor and the minister were the same person. The shaman, the witch doctor, the medicine man, the does the religion, does the medicine, what's the difference? All the same, connects your health with demons and angels and principalities and powers and studies the zodiac and gives you a reading. Are you a minister? Yes. Are you the doctor? Yes. They didn't talk to each other because there was no each other. And then Hippocrates and Hippocrates successors, we used to date around 500 before the Christian era, did something absolutely remarkable, separated religion and medicine, separated medicine from superstition and all kinds of beliefs in demons and spirits and things, and made the practice of medicine the practice of reason and observation. Extraordinary. And so effective was the separation that sometimes the separation got to be too much. Doctors were heard to say sometimes, I don't care how much the minister wants to pray, what she needs is surgery. And sometimes the minister was known to stand in the pulpit and say, we're glad to see Mrs. Brown here today. You know the doctor told her she had six months to live and that was five years ago. Oh, applaud, one for God, zero for the doctor. And other forms of foolishness. They are talking and they're talking about you. And this is what they're saying. The surgery went well, but there's got to be a long period of healing. His wife, I understand, is in a wheelchair. She can't attend to him like she wants to. They'll have to be other people helping. He will need to be encouraged some days, keep him from getting too discouraged, helping to get his exercise. Somebody's going to have to run errands. Somebody's going to have to pick up prescriptions. Somebody's going to have to fix some food. Somebody's going to have to sit with him and talk with him and bring him up to date and discuss the news and watch television with him. Somebody's got to do all this. And the doctor turns to the minister and says, now look, doctors don't have congregations, but ministers do. And healing takes a whole community. So Reverend, you're going to have to take the initiative now. Yeah, they're talking about you and you're getting well. I tried to find in the scripture, as is my custom, an example of a good healthy conversation about sickness. And I found one about sickness and health in Galatians 4. A strange place, really. Galatians 4. This is the way it goes. You know, it was because of an illness that I preached to you the first time. What does that say? It says more than I ever said. I've never said that in my life. I have said, if I hadn't been sick, I'd have preached. I have said, even though I was sick, I preached. But I've never said, because I was sick, I preached. That is one extraordinary minister, Paul. It was because of my illness that I preached to you the first time. I want you to notice how positive he regards his illness. There is nothing that happens to us that is not opportunity for improvement. It was because of my sickness I was brought up to recover into the mountains of Galatia, apparently that's the case. And good things happened. You extended to me hospitality. You hear the word hospital in that. You hear the word hospice in that. It is hospitality. You extended to me hospitality. And I knew this is a good community in which to be sick. Now, I hope you take that seriously. Those of you about to retire will retire. Long way from retiring, make a note. When you pick a community in which to retire, make sure it's a good place to be sick because you will be. And not all communities are good places to be sick. When we were visiting in Enid, Oklahoma, Nettie said to me one morning, I think we need to go to the hospital. She had had two stents put in arteries. We went to the hospital. In a couple of hours she was having two bypass surgeries. We were telling that when we finally got back to Georgia and they said, isn't it awful? It's bad enough to have sickness and have to have surgery, but to have it away from home, what a terrible thing. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. We lived in that community 19 years. We were members of a church in that community 19 years. I taught a Sunday school class in that community 19 years. All we had to do was pick up the phone, a network of information, need a doctor, need a cardiovascular doctor, need someone who says, this, this, and it happened. Oh, it was a wonderful place to be sick. Can't think of any better, really. Paul said to the Galatians, you have a good place for a person to be sick. And the remarkable thing about it is you did not associate my illness with demons. You did not regard my illness as offensive or anything negative. See, they could have, all they could have, it was fairly common back then to believe if you were sick, then you were a bad person. You remember Luke telling about that story of Paul when he was shipwrecked and got on the shore and they built a fire to dry out their clothes and the fire warmed up a snake and the snake bit Paul and the natives sat around and said, let's watch him die. He's a bad person. Why did the snake bite him? He's a bad person. He didn't die. And they said, let's get back to our books. Our theology is a little off here. The thing is, it was common to associate illness with badness of character, just as it was common to associate good health with godliness and goodness. You know, this happened with success and money in this country in the late 19th century. It was called the Gilded Age. It was the age of the gospel of wealth. Andrew Carnegie blessed his library heart. Andrew Carnegie said, God in God's infinite wisdom has given to the virtuous the wealth of the nation. Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts said, godliness is in league with riches. It is to the virtuous that the money comes. Phillips Brooks, wonderful preacher, said, show me a poor man and I will show you a sinner. Now you and I are of greater sensitivity. We do are rich, good. No, we don't do that. We don't do that. But what's remarkable in the New Testament, in the first century, middle of the first century, there was a community of people that said this is not associated with any demon. And so they were not offended by him. They did not avoid him. They did not quarantine him. They did not sit by and say, let's watch him die. He's bound to be a person to be the sick. And that is most remarkable because here is an apostle who is preaching the suffering and dying Jesus and he himself is sick. Now a sick apostle preaching a crucified Jesus doesn't exactly send balloons in the air. This is actually a remarkable community, a really remarkable. Your sickness put us to the test, Paul, but we were not offended. We didn't even think demons. And Paul said, I know, I know you treated me as an angel of God, as Christ himself. It's a wonderful place to be sick. He said, you wanted so much for me to be well. He didn't get well. He never got well. He carried around in his body the dying of Jesus. He never got well, but they wanted so much for him to get well. He said, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me, but it wouldn't help. This is an aching, caring community. And now he says, the tables have turned and you're the one who's sick. Oh, I don't mean physically sick, but you belong to a church that is torn up, conflicted, adversarial, even violent, screaming in each other's face, dividing into small groups. It's not a healthy place to be sick. And therefore he said, I am again in pain, but it's a different pain. I am in pain like a woman writhing and turning and sweating and groaning in the birthbed. If I could just be there with you, I'm like a woman trying to have a baby and she can't have the baby, my little children. If there's anything you really look for, I don't mean you look for, I mean you really look for is a place to live, a place to raise a family, or have your grandchildren visit, as in our case, but a place where you can be sick. In fact, we all look for a good place to die because we need that. We need that community, call it church, synagogue, whatever. We need that. We can't live without it. Maya Angelou has told us that, lying last night, thinking, how to find my soul a home where the water is not thirsty and the bread loaf is not stoned. I came up with one thing and I don't believe I'm wrong, that nobody, I mean nobody, can make it all alone. Amen. [Music] Oh God, we come with eyes and hands and feet with breath and hearts, with all that we are and we come with our hopes for the future of the work of this conference. Reports, please. We are going to see the bridge being built from paradigm and theory. We are going to see the warehouse going to include it and discover it. From opposing it, from should and from must, to listening and encouraging leadership. From arrogance, to partnership, to those bridges that you built with numbers. From systems of 15-minute diagnosis to lifetimes of relationship. And from a precedent exclusive theology, faith for the whole curve, the whole community where you are a whole God. And now that we lay down the bridge before us, you listen to the strength, the power, the courage to walk in front, comfortable halls, conferences and conversations, dirty, frightening and messy actions. This is ours. We pray that clergy and laity would support each other and give to each other each other's means for help. We pray that clergy and cross denominations would be leaders and models of good health and all that that means. We pray Lord for less denial, less guilt, less blame and less affection. So that good health would liberate us for service in the world and for life. Lord you have called each of us to be your ministers of healing. Help us to [inaudible] our lives with the words that say and actions that protect us. We're [inaudible] soul. It is our call from God above to [inaudible] Through the help of healing, the white church and the community. I was shaking and baptized against the power of ministry and evolution. Lord, help us to be our ministers of healing. We came together across many disciplines and sharing many disciplines. As we brought our hopes and our dreams, we're linking our faith to ministries of healing and calmness. But we also brought our weirdness into our doing. We shared the volumes of despair as we heard the stories of those in the floodlands of South Georgia. We heard the hopelessness of the abandoned hill towns and of those who struggled to bring healing ministries of care. We heard about refugee children who are committing suicide because of their despair and the transition from the old pump to a new land. We heard of elderly who are dying alone and obese children who are caught in the trappings of our consumer society. We lifted up our dreams and our hopes, and we bring them to this day, praying for roadmacks as we go forth to cross many new bridges and old bridges of hope and of care. We pray that we may come together as communities to share together a collaborative action to address our policies of care and of faith and to work together to bring hope and health to this land. And now, oh God, we dedicate these hopes as we pray for your world and all your people. Let us pray for the people who work to tear down walls erected to keep us from one another. Walls of prejudice, walls of power, walls of presumption, walls of will, walls of memory and boundaries that no longer matter. Let us pray for all those divided from us by distance or disease or dislocation or difference of opinion, this ripping of the common fabric of belonging and becoming, this shred of unity. Let us pray for those who need healing of body, of mind, of spirit, of relationships. And let us pray for those who heal, whose dedication and care, whose knowledge and skill bring restoration and comfort. Let us pray for places of conflict and suffering, for the Sudan, for Haiti, for Iraq, for Afghanistan, for our cities, for rural communities and for refuge camps. Knowing the need, trusting in your mercy and your power, we give ourselves to you. Eyes, hands, feet, heart, breath, because you have looked for us, reached for us, walked with us, loved us, and lived and breathed in us through Christ and in the Holy Spirit. Amen.