CARING COUNTS…… AND COSTS

Luke 10: 25-37

      The Christian Church has been criticized for ministering well to crowds of people but not doing as well in dealing with individual, personal pain.   We in the Church need to remember that there are lonely widows who weep their way through seemingly endless nights, divorced persons who add a sense of failure to the loneliness, frightened terminally ill patients who wonder when and how the end will come, depressed persons who don’t want to live but are too afraid to die.   There are thousands of persons, individuals, who are groping in the darkness and feeling guilty because they cannot find that “brightly flowing river of God” we read about in the Psalms.  We need to be confronted with the reality of fear and pain at life’s roadsides being passed by those of us who sit in the pews and stand behind the pulpits.

      Sure, the world is filled with downtrodden groups who need and deserve our voice and our presence.   We who represent the church must be willing to lay our comfortable lives on the line for great principles, to confront issues and stand behind right movements.   Frankly, I do not feel that I have done enough of this in my life.

      A while ago I heard of a Baptist pastor who was one of four pastors in a large southern city in the late 1950’s who had signed a public letter, in the spirit of Christ, calling for an end to segregation.   The Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in his yard (it was actually his neighbor’s yard—these Klansmen weren’t too good with house numbers) and his congregation was so incensed at the letter their pastor wrote that they fired him.   He lost his job because he spoke out against segregation!   You, no doubt, know others who have taken stands at great personal sacrifice.   That pastor was a person of proven courage.   I recognize that there have been too few deliberate sacrifices for great causes in my own life.   When we get to the end of life, I think most of us will feel we didn’t stand up enough for the helpless, the hopeless, the disenfranchised.

       So I am not telling you to turn your back on causes and significant issues.   There are dozens of very important causes to tackle.   We need to run the risk, to stand up for groups and causes, the big picture.     But we are also called to address the individual who suffers apart from the larger causes we support.

     Look at what Jesus did, especially in the last events of his time on the earth.  Much of what he did was ordinary, run-of-the-mill caring for individuals who came into his presence.   He called his disciples to the Passover Supper and that strange new ritual of communion—and washed their feet, one foot, one stinky toe, at a time.  He told them and showed them that the mark of discipleship is serving—not being served.  Then there was the cross.   “Greater love has no one than this—that he lay down his life for his friends.”

      After the resurrection, his friends remembered and recorded some pretty ordinary behaviors of Jesus—a walk on the road to Emmaus and the breaking of bread there, sunrise on the shore of Lake Galilee and Jesus cooking breakfast for a few people.   Nothing dramatic.   Just meeting people where they were and being sensitive to and caring for their human needs.   He was always sensitive to individual, personal need.   He moved through a throng of people, but reacted to the timid touch of a single needy woman.

      In the Membership Orientation classes I lead, I ask the class members to pretend they are painting a picture of Jesus.   What would they paint?  (I got this idea from Jim Simpson, by the way, about 25 years ago.)   I ask the class members what they would paint if they had to paint a picture of Jesus.   Some say they see him preaching to thousands on a hillside.   Others picture him with little children on his lap or weeping with Mary and Martha in Bethany after Lazarus died.   Each picture is authentic.   Jesus was all those things.  He was the superior preacher who related eternal truths to the world around him.  He was the teacher with perfect logic.   And he was the gentle, loving healer who could not turn his back on personal pain or need.   He was preacher, teacher, and personal friend and healer.  He was all of these.

       Certainly part of the work of the Church is to preach.   Certainly we in the Church are called to teach.  But, I tell you that without caring that is demonstrated in person-to-person ministry, what we preach, what we teach, what we say each day will be nothing but a “noisy gong” or a “clanging cymbal”--- a body without a heart.

      Who are the hurting people who call out to us?   A lawyer asked Jesus a similar question.   Jesus had said to “love your neighbor as yourself.”   The lawyer then asked,  “Who is my neighbor?”   In response, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan.   The gist of the story is that our neighbor is not defined by geography or race.   When you see a person in need—you have found your neighbor.   The broken persons who need your help will not always advertise their needs.   Their cries will only be heard by those who want to hear.   And responding to their cries will seldom produce spectacular events.   Your personal, caring ministry will not be front page news.  In fact, you may not even get a thank you.   The Samaritan got into the ditch and held the frightened, bloody victim.   It was not convenient—it even hurt.   But need defined his neighbor and he could not fail to respond to his neighbor’s cries.

      Hospice is a program to help the dying and their families deal with the process of death.   I served as the Hospice Chaplain for Jefferson County for 3 years, when I was the Pastor of the Port Townsend Presbyterian Church 25 years ago.   In Tucson, Arizona there is a 33-bed institutional hospice called Hillhaven Hospice.   The chaplain there told of a certain weekend when 8 of their 30 patients had died.   Knowing how close-knit a family of caretakers, of caregivers they were, the chaplain was asked about the effect of so many deaths on the staff.   She replied that it was tough—and then recited this moving story.

      It was the story of one patient—one death.   On Saturday a patient who had been there a couple months called her favorite nurse and said,  “I think this may be it.  I may be dying.”    The nurse checked her vital signs and replied,  “Yes, it is quite possible that this could be the time.”   The patient then said to her nurse friend,  “Will you climb up here on this bed and hold me?   I think if you hold me I can get through it okay.”    The nurse did just that, getting into the bed and cradling that emaciated little body in her arms—and held her until she passed on.

      The question came up to the chaplain,  “What about that nurse?   What did that experience do to her?”   The chaplain replied that the nurse, after that happened, had taken four days off to go to the mountains to think and feel and decide whether to come back to work again.   She did come back.   The chaplain commented,  “You learn in a place like this that caring not only helps but also hurts.   But when you really care, you offer something special—and become special yourself.”   Caring costs—but also counts.

      A young boy in my church in Port Townsend had Cystic Fibrosis.   In the months before his death I visited Ross over here at Children’s Hospital several times.   I was impressed with the medical staff at Children’s who invest so much of not just their skill but also their personal interest and love to the children and their families, knowing that many of those children will die and they themselves will feel the pain as well.   Most of the staff become emotionally involved with the children.   They cheer for them, pray for them, and hurt when they don’t make it.   Many of them were present at Ross’ Memorial service at our church in Port Townsend.   Isn’t that love- the risk of giving yourself to others, even if it hurts?   Caring costs.   In real life we know the cost of sharing and caring is sometimes great.  
     A poem written years ago by a Chicago columnist, Elsie Robinson, says it so well:    

       “God, all night long I miss him.

       Lying half asleep—my conscious memory lost,

       I wonder if he tossed the blankets off,

       Or if the rain is blowing on his sill,

       Or if he’s ill--- my baby.

      “And often waking, I find myself beside his bed,

        Stooping to kiss the little tousled head that is no longer there.

        I stand and stare with streaming eyes

        At the smooth pillow and unruffled spread,

        Remembering, slowly, that my son is dead.

      “All day long I listen for his step,

        His whistle and his sweet, uncertain song.

        I listen until the silence tightens ‘round my throat.

        O God, you know I’d give my life to hear his voice again,

        To feel once more, the touch of his young, eager hand,

        To stand and watch him play,

        And feel the pride leap in me like a flame.

       “I’d give my life, I say—and yet I wouldn’t

         I must stay right here and do my job,

         ‘Til I have earned the right to go away.

         The past has passed.

       “I loved him--- yes!   But love is not a toy

         To satisfy one’s private pride and joy.

         No—love’s a part of that eternal plan

         By which God is manifest to everyone.

        “And we who love must also dare to keep the faith

         When those we love are lost,

          Lest weaker spirits, watching, should cry out that love’s

          Not worth the cost.

         “And so, my Lord, take my grief today as tribute

           To the glory that went away.

           I lay my little son within your arms,

           Safe now, forever, from the hurt and harm

           He would have known, had he lived.

           I give him up, I drink the bitter cup reserved

           For those who dare to love and lose.

           Forgive our fears!

          “There is a nobler duty facing us than tears.

            It is our proud and shining mission to express

            Love’s rare, abiding pride and loveliness.

            We, only, who have lost, can know that love is worth

            Whatever it may cost—yes, whatever it may cost!”

       The message is—caring counts--- caring costs.

       It is in caring that you will know that your life has counted—whatever the

cost.   Amen.