Tag Archives: Funerals

Gathering in Worship Again: Ways to Mark Change

As many congregations return to gathering in new or partial ways after a period of virtual worship, there are both logistical challenges and shepherding challenges. Essentially, widespread change has occurred in a condensed and contentious time. Some shared rituals in worship function as rites of passage, like funerals; the loss of sharing these rituals as a community has at times been devastating. For many, the past 12 months have been marked by uncertainty, frustration, fear, loss, anxiety, stress, and relief; but not only are we, in the midst of life, in death; we are also, in death, in the midst of life. Babies have been welcomed, weddings performed, new vocations discovered. In liminal times of emotional complexity, humans crave communal markers to express the cry of the heart and to clarify seasons and meaning. Symbols can carry layers of meaning when life experiences are so tangled that mere literal words struggle to hold the weight. In Christian worship, these symbols aren’t only functions of community expression; they are received as means of grace that reveal the very heart of God. Not every Christian symbol is a sacrament, but many moments in embodied Christian worship have the capacity to serve as means of grace.

As believers begin gathering in person again, what are some practical ways a community can bear witness to the loss and hope woven throughout the past year? Surveying the sheer scope of change – good or bad – that individuals and communities have endured, how is room made for lament, celebration, and the exhaustion in between? Finding ways to mark change sits peacefully with the reality that everyone – individuals, communities, regions, countries – will re-enter familiar patterns at different paces, due to varying needs and conditions.

What are some recurring cries of the heart expressed by Christians and non-Christians, leaders and laypeople alike? Many are echoed in Psalms of lament. Gathering again stirs a variety of responses among people. There may be:

Relief, celebration, joy
Grief at the empty spaces of those who have died
Grief at the loss of daily rituals and companionship
Fear that accommodations for the disabled or home-bound will be forgotten
Distrust of others fueled by differing perspectives
Impatience for places and practices to look like they used to
Fatigue of tragedy and bad news
Relief at return to familiar space and practices
Guilt from surviving or experiencing the pandemic relatively unscathed
Anxiety from uncertainty in social interaction
Gratitude for the ability to begin gathering again, even with adaptations

Thankfully, there are some helpful liturgical resources from The Episcopal Church, the Church of England, and the Methodist Church in Britain that provide some markers to guide worshipers through the fog. From the inability to write in a coffee shop to the death of a loved one, from losing a business to losing facial expressions to educational upheaval, there is space to mark changes big and small, yet not-so-small. Jesus wept over the dead and heard the cry of the falling sparrow alike; and people who live alone, and people who live in families with children, all have something they’ve lost and found in the past year. There is room in the heart of God, and there is space in the worshiping community, for all of it – tragic fatality and kids’ disappointed plans alike.

The Liturgy of Gathering Again: Lament, Remembrance, Thanksgiving

The loss of usual funeral rituals has stolen the opportunity for loved ones to receive the healing honor of community witness. Not only have families of the deceased been affected, but communities themselves have endured the loss of sharing in these rituals. Some communities have lost many – so many it’s difficult to keep track. Health care workers sometimes lost the in-person support and services of hospital or hospice chaplains, finding themselves end-of-life witnesses. At the same time, many people have been limited in ways they can express thanks and gratitude for the many health care workers who labored often behind the scenes in very difficult circumstances.

The Church of England has shared valuable resources and reflections on opportunities to hold general services of lament, specific services of remembrance or memorial, and services of thanksgiving. For instance, on remembering and memorials, the counsel in one guide prompts that,

“The two main elements that memorial services and remembering events need to offer are opportunities to mourn and to give thanks:
• Acknowledgement of suffering, loss and death
• Gratitude for all who have helped in so many ways
• Thanks for survival, health and wellbeing
• Thanks for the life of the individual(s) who has died”

There are also insights on the value of services of restoration – a time of worship designed to bridge worshipers from crisis and loss toward renewed trust for the future. “Naming the unexpected gifts of this crisis as well as its challenges, celebrating the rediscovery of the importance of the local, and the resurgence of neighbourliness will enable the journey of renewal and restoration. Consideration may be given to bring an act of worship to focus in some sort of symbolic act of restoration, entrusting ourselves to the God who leads us into his future.”

The Timing of Gathering Again: Scattered & Together

Depending on the region or specific community needs, some congregations have not yet begun to re-gather, or haven’t started gathering again fully. One resource from the Methodist Church in Britain provides a service guide called “Beyond Exile: A service to celebrate a return to public worship.” Adaptable for local circumstances, it includes liturgy, planning notes, preaching notes, and new hymns for “a returning congregation” for situations that include congregational singing. From this service, one excerpt from the “litany of lament” questions,

“We thought we knew how the world was meant to be. We would see colleagues, friends and loved ones again, and we would embrace, laugh and share stories as we always have. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

And now, we know something new. We know that the world is not ours to control, and that our plans are confounded by the smallest microbe. God is teaching us a new song, for a new land.“

For places with many restrictions still in place, when believers may still be scattered or unable to provide in-person support, the Methodist Church in Britain also has adapted prayers for “the dying, the bereaved, and those who cannot attend a funeral.”

The Visual Cues of Gathering Again: Re-Entering the Public

This global moment invites people of all walks of life to re-engage with the practice of public mourning: not as a maudlin display of self-importance, but as a healthy tool of communication. But it’s been decades since people regularly wore the formerly common black armbands, like the character George Bailey when his father died in the film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” A black piece of fabric around the upper arm is a visual cue to strangers and acquaintances alike: be kind, tread gently, this person is grieving, give some extra grace for a while. A more modern version is a simple black silicone band marked with words like, “I’m grieving” – just enough to remind the wearer and others that all is not well.

Sometimes, biblical phrasing like, “sackcloth and ashes” or “weeping and gnashing of teeth” is used figuratively – few Americans would grieve now wearing scratchy cloth or ashes. But grief and lament are not antithetical to faith. They are emblems of love, that “greatest of these.” They do not betray a lack of hope or trust; they hope and trust in God’s character, willing to express without repression. Demonstrating grief is Christlike: Christ, who groaned at Lazarus’ death, who wept over Jerusalem. (Tish Harrison Warren’s uncannily timed Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep is a gift for the grieving and those who love them.)

For those who re-enter worship or public gathering with other infirmity, like ongoing health risk, there are other visual cues available to communicate simply with others. Wrist bands like Social Bands quickly cue an individual’s risk and desire for physical engagement. Ongoing consideration for others may well be one of the strongest notes of public witness that Christians can sound right now – consideration regardless of one’s own assessment or perception of risk.

At a basic level, hospitality is in part anticipating the needs of another and proactively preparing for them. Welcoming the jubilant alongside the dazed and shell-shocked means providing space and opportunity for both to bear witness to the changes in the lives of the other. In gathering, all are invited to bring the cries of their hearts to God in worship, receiving the same shared grace that offers hope, comfort, and celebration to each vulnerable heart.

Featured image courtesy Luke Carliff via Unsplash.

Doctors & Dying: Caring for Caretakers

In the tug of prolonged strain, physicians, like their patients, are vulnerable. Some corners of the United States remain relatively quiet and unaffected by outbreaks of the coronavirus, Covid-19. In these areas, extra sanitizer, virtual appointments, and doctors’ office face coverings are the cue that something is happening elsewhere. But in other regions, despite the summer months, health care systems are overwhelmed; at the time of writing, Texas, Arizona, and Florida are being pummeled by significant spikes. For some cities, hospitalists have seen a steady stream of critical patients for months.

For doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, anesthesiologists – anyone who spends hours in personal protective gear, anyone who spends months caring for critical and dying patients – several dynamics are changing the way in which they encounter death. This is significant for clergy caring for burned-out parishioners; it is significant for laypeople who approach their career in medicine as a vocation; and it is significant for hospice chaplains and workers, and for hospital chaplains.

One journalist, writing on the challenges of administering last rites during a pandemic, observed:

“The Coronavirus has led the United States to the valley of the shadow of death. In just three months, a microscopic particle has laid bare human mortality. The entire nation has worked to avoid death, shutting down cities, masking faces in the streets, and isolating the dying from their loved ones in their final hours. And yet, more than 100,000 people have died, and often, died alone.

Many rituals, a guide through life’s most sacred moments, have been impossible. Children said final goodbyes to dying parents through windows or on FaceTime, if they bid farewell at all. Only rarely have religious leaders been allowed into hospitals and nursing homes. Families attend funerals on Zoom.

The country is facing a deeply personal crisis of spirit, not only of health or economics. A virus has forced a reckoning with the most intimate questions we have, questions not only about how we live, but also about how we die. About what we can control, and what we cannot. About how to name human dignity, despair and hope. And especially about how to make meaning of our final hours on this earth.

‘This major disaster is going to change our relationship to death; I’m not exactly sure how, but I am certain it will,’ Shannon Lee Dawdy, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, said. A century ago, priests were ‘answering sick calls night and day,’ one Catholic newspaper reported at the time. Now nurses and doctors, not spiritual leaders or families, are most likely to be death’s witnesses.”

In cities like Boston, priests occasionally have been allowed special clearance to administer last rites in personal protective equipment. During the early coronavirus outbreak in Italy, priests were given some freedom within pandemic protocol to visit the dying; some who offered spiritual care to coronavirus victims themselves died of it.

Meanwhile, American hospital chaplains accustomed to offering comfort through personal presence have struggled to serve patients and family members through the distance of a device screen. Last spring, many hospitals put restrictions on chaplain presence due to shortage of personal protection equipment. Other chaplains are present in hospitals and able to respond to a request for their presence if they don protective gear and follow protocol. Distanced or present in mask and scrubs, chaplains are offering support not only to patients and family members but to exhausted health care workers. One journalist writing on the changes in hospital chaplaincy noted:

“The infectious nature of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, has changed everyone’s jobs in healthcare, including chaplains. The obvious shift is the inability to physically visit patients in hospitals to be a resource to them and their families.

The subtler changes are the extent of tending to those who tend to the ill. It’s watching out for what [chaplain David] Carl describes as ‘compassion fatigue and burnout’ among healthcare workers. Because nothing is routine now in healthcare.”

One chaplain noted how fatalities took a toll on New York City doctors during the tragic spike in the city: “How do I help a nurse who is new to nursing and has walked into all this death and it’s nothing that she had ever imagined? …This is very hard because this is personal. No patient is a number. And this is a very good hospital. Our patients usually live. And to have so many of our patients not making it — it’s even hard on the seasoned doctors.”

Even experienced chaplains, who have developed routines and habitual pressure valves to let off steam from regular engagement with grief, aren’t immune from the additional strain of providing care during a pandemic. As one journalist observes, “For most hospital workers, as for so many others around the country and the world, the last couple of months have been something like a prolonged trauma. ‘We’re all living right on the cusp, in this buzzing, anxious place’ [says Reverend Kate Perry]. She’s seen hospital workers who are typically reserved, now living on the edge of panic. ‘Every patient, family, and staff is all living with the same emotions,’ she says. ‘They feel anxious and helpless and this deep sadness. And then there’s this anger.'”

Usually, hospice workers provide robust, sensitive end-of-life care for dying people, from the elderly to cancer patients to a variety of patients; occasionally, patients rally and make a partial recovery, even able to leave hospice care. Whatever the outcome, hospice caregivers and facilities excel in quietly tending to the physical needs of the dying and the emotional needs of their family members, shepherding them through the process of dying, death, and loss, answering mundane questions, being present in grief.

But with Covid-19 patients, isolation is often required to contain further spread. For some patients, their last moment to speak is right before they are sedated and placed on a ventilator, so the good-bye may come weeks before the moment of possible death. Not only that, often critical Covid patients take a quick turn for the worse, so that even if one family member is allowed to come to the hospital, they may or may not make it in time. The loss of a typical progression of dying, the loss of hospice or chaplain bedside presence, these are also fatalities of this disease. Not only are family members unmoored and chaplains frustrated at a distance, but in strained, crowded Covid units, at times doctors find themselves attempting to calm patients terrified of being intubated and dying; and as chaplains noted above, even seasoned hospitalists have been caught off guard by the sheer number of fatalities during the worst spikes.

Just like testing and treatment protocol are becoming more familiar and hopefully more efficient, as time progresses, chaplains and hospice workers will find new means of offering care to the dying. Last spring, hospice workers creatively tackled obstacles to meaningful connection in a variety of ways. Hopefully, curves will flatten in Miami, in Houston, in Tucson, relieving pressure on overtaxed hospitals and exhausted doctors; hopefully, spikes will be prevented in other states on the edge of exponential growth.

In the meantime, health care workers on the front lines of Covid outbreaks face unprecedented losses, often without the physical presence of chaplains or hospice workers to bear the brunt of witnessing death. What might be some starting places for clergy and chaplains spiritually caring for medical caretakers?

Hospice resources are extremely valuable for everyone – pastors, laypeople, and those working in medicine. If exhausted doctors are feeling the absence of hospice workers, there are still bite-sized, helpful hospice resources that can help provide a new lens with which to approach dying patients – even in unbelievably hectic times. For example, often in-home hospice nurses have short pamphlets they give to family members. While medical professionals are familiar with the basic biology of the dying process, hospice resources also frame the process of letting go and grieving. For instance, while this printable resource is primarily for families of terminally ill people, a portion of the caregivers section is relevant to frustrated specialists encountering critical patients suffering from a little-understood disease, Covid-19, still being researched: “Caregivers are often overwhelmed by the intensity and mixture of emotions they feel. These may include: Fear that you do not know the right thing to do and that you are failing as a caregiver mixed with moments of realization that you are doing the best you can and amazement that you can do as much as you are doing.” These kinds of insights can help reinforce the reality that family caregivers and doctors alike sometimes experience very similar dynamics. In other words: this response is not unusual; it is common; you are not alone. In The Family Handbook of Hospice Care, the physical toll of grief is named: “Grief can take a toll on you physically. You may lose interest or gain interest in food. You may lose weight. You may have intense dreams or disturbing sleep patterns—if you can sleep at all. You may be extremely restless, unable to concentrate or relax. Furthermore, grief can hurt: You might feel a knot in your stomach, a tightness in your throat, or a heaviness in your chest. Often grief requires more energy than you would need to chop wood. You may require lots of rest to maintain your health.” In areas hit by a surge of infections, many ICU nurses and specialists are simply – grieving; or, they would be if they had the energy to do so. Grief can be delayed, but it will come out in some form or another eventually.

Be ready for both the curve and the flattening. In the middle of a huge spike of positive cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities, few ICU nurses will have time or energy to read up on a theology of death and dying, or the problem of theodicy – how suffering can exist if there is an all-powerful, all-good God. During a crisis, there’s barely energy left over just to do laundry. The waxing and waning of relative normalcy vs an explosion of emergency can also be captured in Ignatius’ approach to seasons of life as “consolation and desolation.” If you’re a chaplain or physician in the midst of relative normalcy (or “consolation”), now is a moment to explore resources and shore up mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Now is the time to call up a pastor or professor friend and talk through hard questions; now is the time to read God on Mute. However, for doctors numb with exhaustion, forcing themselves through rote motion each day (“desolation”), you probably simply need to eat, sleep, sweat, and laugh daily. Though Ignatius was addressing Christians, some of his advice would be picked up later by recovery groups as well: “in a time of desolation, followers of Christ should practice the habit of recalling God’s faithfulness in prior times of desolation; resist the temptation to see suffering as pointless; resist desolation through meditation and prayer; avoid making big decisions, “because desolation is the time of the lie—it’s not the time for sober thinking. That is, in our disheartened state, we’re more prone to be deceived”; pay attention to the spiritual insights found during desolation; and confidently look for the quick return of a season of consolation.” It can be challenging to see the possibility of a season different from whatever you’re in now; but even identifying these rhythms can encourage the exhausted or motivate the distracted.

Develop a Personal Ritual; Don’t Feel Ashamed of PTSD

Rituals help order chaos; they are, as someone once described, a kind of “scaffolding” exterior to our own emotions. Rituals also pause activity out of deference to something bigger. In the absence of chaplains, medical workers of any or no faith may find a swift motion, gesture, or pause helpful in marking the passing of a patient. A few seconds holding their hand, silently offering a quick thanks for their life, or even folding their blanket before it is taken to laundry can help acknowledge loss of life before moving on to the next pressing need.

After several successive losses in my own life, I had simple black silicone bands debossed subtly with the words I’m Grieving. On especially hard days, I wore one. The simple visual cue often gave family members quick insight into a mood, and sometimes it opened up meaningful conversations with strangers. I mailed some to others going through season of grief. Decades after the common use of black mourning armbands to signal grieving in public, the simple wristbands were a good modern substitute. In times of grief and loss, tangible items are valuable in marking things that are difficult to verbalize and express.

Tangible touchstones are also helpful for anyone with PTSD. Doctors, clergy, military medics, chaplains, nurses – people in all these professions sometimes come away with post-traumatic stress. Panic attacks, flashbacks, insomnia, obsessive habits – none of these experiences are shameful; none of them indicate a lack of faith or a lack of expertise or a lack of professionalism. Certainly, none of these experiences or others indicate a lack of strength. They simply mean we are all finite, neurological creatures.

It seems likely that we have quite a ways to go in order to flatten curves, wait for vaccine production, understand the long-term health impact of this virus, and discover whether or not yearly vaccines, as with influenza, are necessary. Would you describe your days as being in a time of consolation or a time of desolation? Are you finding a need for ritual – for scaffolding outside of yourself? Take it gently. Remember – for now is not forever. And recall the words on how, “even in the darkest places, joy and goodness can be found” from International Justice Mission founder Gary Haugen: “Joy is the oxygen…”

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES for PASTORS & MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS:

Physicians Start Hotline for Doctors Struggling with Mental Health

Physician Support Line: For Doctors Navigating Covid-19

A Caregiver’s Guide to the Dying Process: The Hospice Foundation of America

When Death Enters Your Life: A Grief Pamphlet for People in Prisons or Jails

Spanish Language Resources: from the Hospice Foundation of America

For American Healthcare Workers Coping with Pandemic Stress: from the CDC

For Emergency Responders Coping with Pandemic Stress: from the CDC

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Remembering Church History: Pastoral Care during Outbreaks

Today’s piece is adapted from “Pastoral Care and Contagion” which originally appeared on Wesleyan Accent in 2014, when Ebola was wreaking havoc. It should not perhaps come as a surprise that while the disease may differ, the topic re-emerges in bleak relevance every few years. Certainly, it may seem counter-intuitive to consider church history in any discussion of outbreak, pandemic, or plague; we live in an era of hazmat suits, microbiology, and gallons of gelatinous hand sanitizer. But while our approach to disease containment and pathology is far different than you would find in rural Germany in the 1500’s – while we know so much more about the value of quarantine or the spread of disease – still, there is profound if sad wisdom and perspective in reflecting on the posture of faith communities in our past. These ancient faith communities encountered epidemics without access to antibiotics, antivirals, IV bags, or basic sanitation. The wisdom echoing through church history like a wail in the catacombs remains relevant partly because areas of the world still lack access to medical supplies, physicians, or hospitals; pastoral care during outbreaks is a quite urgent topic for many Christians. It is also instructive to note the panic that grips even people who do have access to health care best practices, because in the age of globalization, supply chains are vulnerable. Independent of actual risk, fear itself can cause markets to yo-yo or consumer hoarding to worsen shortages. Even if people are accustomed to relative health and ease – or especially if they are – it is impossible to insulate any life from certain realities: illness, vulnerability, lack of control, mortality. Pastoral care during outbreaks is in part the quiet calming of deep existential fears usually ignored, avoided, or drowned out by many people in the Western world.

Even though we are equipped to know more about disease outbreaks faster than ever before, human nature hasn’t changed: the response is still fear, even if the risk is much lower than it would’ve been a few centuries ago, even if fatality rates, while tragic, are relatively low. So in addition to hanging signs reminding guests to wash their hands, in addition to taking sensible precautions and exercising common sense and good cheer, we can outfit ourselves with wisdom from church history. Perspective is never so valuable as in a time of panic, warranted or unwarranted or somewhere in between. So let’s inoculate ourselves against denial, on one hand, and fear, on the other, with a visit to the Book of Common Prayer and a cantankerous German monk, Martin Luther. – Elizabeth Glass Turner, Managing Editor

In The Proposed Book of Common Prayer of 1689, under the blunt heading, “In the time of any common Plague or Sickness,” you can read this prayer: “O ALMIGHTY God, who in thy wrath did send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness, for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron; and also, in the time of king David, didst slay with the plague of Pestilence threescore and ten thousand, and yet remembering thy mercy didst save the rest; Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality; that like as thou didst then accept of an atonement, and didst command the destroying Angel to cease from punishing, so it may now please thee to withdraw from us, who humbly acknowledge our sins and truly repent us of them, this plague and grievous sickness; that being delivered we may glorify thy Name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

In 2014 the World Health Organization released a manual providing guidelines that aim to maintain cultural respect and religious reverence for the safe burial of Ebola victims, since a full 20 percent of transmissions occured in the burial process. Officials consulted with Muslim and Christian leaders to explore ways that burials could maintain the rites of religious faith while avoiding the washing of a body or the sharing of a loved one’s possessions that might be contaminated with the virus.

Despite my excellent undergraduate education preparing me for Christian ministry, despite my thoroughly-enjoyed seminary training, I don’t remember any discussions on how to provide pastoral care during outbreaks or what to preach during the plague. North America, take note: whatever your thoughts on travel regulations and disease transmission, Ebola and health care, pastors and laypeople everywhere have remembered something anew.

You are not immune.

And currently our sisters and brothers in several African nations (please brush up on your geography if you think Ebola has gripped the entire continent) are wrestling with very pragmatic issues of Christian love, urgent medical need and health and safety.

Re-read the heading of the above prayer: “In the time of any common Plague or Sickness.” What short memories we have. Plague and sickness, very present reminders of mortality abounded not long ago in our own nation. We’re a century away from the Spanish Influenza, antibiotics have been utilized for a few short decades and immunizations weren’t available when my Grandmother was a child. In a very little time, we have become shocked by cancer, appalled by heart attacks, distressed by dementia. And rightly so: they are horrible evils.

But we’ve become surprised by our own mortality.

“Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality…”

How deeply does our surprise run? Search “priest” and “plague” on the internet and you’ll find plenty of references – to video games, some of which feature “plague priests” and “plague monks.” But as our featured image shows, the relationship between priests and plagues was something that used to be commonplace.

Hopefully, the [2014 Ebola] contagion is winding down; hopefully, the outbreak will continue to abate, running itself out in containment. Hopefully, it will no longer spread to other continents – this time, anyway.

Of all people, though, Christians must be conversant in the language of mortality, fluent in the evils of death and the beauty of resurrection, articulate in tragedy and triumph. What else is the rhythm of the church year for, but to practice us in the art of living the pattern of Kingdom life, of Christ-life, of birth, death, and resurrection? We must talk of these things if we have any hope of acting on them, putting hands to ideas. We must all find our inner Mother Teresa and touch the dying – even if you choose to wear three layers of gloves.

And in a moment of strangeness and perplexity, we do actually have some resources available for those who want wisdom in an outbreak, if you’re interested in the writings of one church reformer, Martin Luther. Yes, you may picture him as the rotund, angry reformer nailing his theses to a wooden door. But in the early 1500’s it wasn’t just outrage at the Roman Catholic Church that was sweeping Europe: it was the plague. So perhaps these principles will be helpful.

Luther wrote “to the Reverend Doctor Johann Hess, pastor at Breslau, and to his fellow-servants of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” on the very interestingly titled subject, “whether one may flee from a deadly plague.”

In other words, is it alright, as a Christian, to leave an area where people may need your help?

And he answers very pastorally, if bluntly – it depends. “Since it is generally true of Christians that few are strong and many are weak, one simply cannot place the same burden upon everyone,” explaining in rather kinder terms, “it takes more than a milk faith to await a death before which most of the saints themselves have been and still are in dread.”

But Luther puts a different burden on those in leadership in both the church and the state. About clergy, he advises:

“Those who are engaged in a spiritual ministry such as preachers and pastors must likewise remain steadfast before the peril of death. For when people are dying, they most need a spiritual ministry which strengthens and comforts their consciences by word and sacrament and in faith overcomes death. However, where enough preachers are available in one locality and they agree to encourage the other clergy to leave in order not to expose themselves needlessly to danger, I do not consider such conduct sinful because spiritual services are provided for and because they would have been ready and willing to stay if it had been necessary.”

Laypeople are not neglected in the discussion, however. “In the case of children who are orphaned, guardians or close friends are under obligation either to stay with them or to arrange diligently for other nursing care for their sick friends. Yes, no one should dare leave his neighbor unless there are others who will take care of the sick in their stead and nurse them.” This is tempered when he continues that if there is enough nursing available, believers have an “equal choice either to flee or to remain.”

Of course, he is not speaking here of mandated quarantine or other 21st-century realities (though quarantine is nothing new: the city of Venice used an island as a quarantine location when it faced the plague several centuries ago). The pastoral response in current contexts must also include care for others by not exposing them frivolously or lightly to that with which one may be infected.

But in a triage situation, many of the principles are still relevant: because before the CDC arrives, or before the world takes note but after your local doctors and nurses have fallen ill with the disease themselves, then what?

First, whether you stay or go, Luther would have you pray and commend yourself to God: “if he feels bound to remain where death rages in order to serve his neighbor, let him commend himself to God and say, ‘Lord, I am in they hands; thou hast kept me here; they will be done.’ If a man is free, however, and can escape, let him commend himself and say, ‘Lord God, I am weak and fearful. Therefore I am running away from evil and am doing what I can to protect myself against it.'”

This pastoral word essentially encourages believers – whether on the front lines or seeking safety – to acknowledge first and foremost that we are submitted to things beyond our control, and that we have committed our spirits to the Lord, aware of our own frailty and mortality. Pastoral care during outbreak begins with acknowledging what is in our control and what is out of our control.

Second, he gives a word of encouragement to those facing graphic horrors of contagious illness. “When anyone is overcome by horror and repugnance in the presence of a sick person he should take courage and strength in the firm assurance that it is the devil who stirs up such fear and loathing in his heart…[he] also takes delight in making us deathly afraid, worried, and apprehensive so that we should regard dying as horrible and have no rest or peace, [making] us forget and lose Christ…”

How comfortable are you around sick people? Certainly, take sensible precautions: wash your hands, cough into your elbow, take vitamins. But can you bear to be around those who are gravely ill? Are you prepared to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with them so that they are not alone? Does your faith give you the strength to sit next to the person receiving chemo? During a time of spreading disease, everyone is forced to confront dynamics that occur every day for people with multiple sclerosis or cancer or recovering from injuries sustained in warfare or car accidents. The point is sharply made when Luther writes, “this I well know, that if it were Christ or his mother who were laid low by illness, everybody would be so solicitous and would gladly become a servant or helper.”

And about burials – which the World Health Organization would appreciate – Luther simply says, “I leave it to the doctors of medicine and others with greater experience than mine in such matters to decide whether it is dangerous to maintain cemeteries within the city limits,” though he urges caution and suggests burial out of town.

So: hear sermons from the Word on how to live and how to die (Luther recommends – though currently in winter 2020, some congregations in other countries are restricted from gathering, due to public gathering limitations to curb disease spread); prepare for death in time to confess and take the sacrament, in time for reconciling with others (he further recommends); and if you want a chaplain or pastor at the time of your death, call them while you’re still in your right mind (he wasn’t a man short on words).

Are you comfortable with mortality? Are you ready to be around the dying?

It’s worth thinking about. It doesn’t matter if one pandemic scare fades away, allowing us to be (relatively) at peace again; whether or not there is emergent disease risk, we all have to grapple with mortality, limitations, and ill people in our communities who need our presence. We all have to reconcile ourselves to the fragility of life. Sometimes it’s just on the news more than usual.

Jeff Rudy ~ Third Day Dimension

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. – I Corinthians 15:12-20

My friend Kevin is a professor of New Testament at my alma mater. He told me about the time several years ago when his father died. He recalled vividly people coming up to him to tell him not to cry, not to grieve because, “That’s not really your father. That’s just a shell.” They were well-intended words, but it was frustrating for Kevin and it came to the point he challenged their words in a most poignant way when he said in reply, “What do you mean, that’s not my father? Those are the hands that cared for me. Those are the arms that took me up and hugged me. Those are the lips that spoke to me; the eyes that searched for me; the chest on which I fell asleep, knowing I was safe in his care. Everything I have ever known of my father was through this body. Don’t tell me that’s not him.”

Now what I’m about to say might sound a little jarring at first, but hear this, and hear me out:

Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead just so you could go to heaven when you die.

That’s not the end game. The goal is something greater than just going to heaven when you die. Because if it was just about that, then what the ancient pagans and Gnostics believed about the body must be true – that our bodies are prisons, that they are merely shells for some sort of immaterial soul within that ultimately longs to be free. To be clear, that sort of picture can be a picture of salvation and of hope, but it is not the picture of Christian salvation and hope that we have in the New Testament. The picture of salvation and hope in the New Testament is very clearly based on an event that took place 2,000 years ago – the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth who had been crucified and died, was buried, and on the third day rose again.

In both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, there are two statements about the resurrection – (1) that Jesus was resurrected on the third day; and (2) the belief “in the resurrection of the body” or “resurrection of the dead” which is about the resurrection that we still await – what we call the “general resurrection.” These doctrines are not euphemisms or merely metaphors to talk about an ethereal reality or our need to “escape” our earthly tents, so to speak. No, Jesus’ body departed the tomb with its scars, though they had healed, and apparently with some new abilities that they had not yet seen. (More on that in a moment.)

In this section of 1 Corinthians, Paul is in the midst of his theological discourse about the content of Christian hope. He’s already established that there are over 500 eyewitnesses to Jesus’ bodily resurrection (verses 1-11). And he now turns to address what appears to be a faction of the Corinthians who weren’t necessarily denying that Jesus was raised (though some were perhaps teaching that), but who were at least denying that a future resurrection was still in store for the people of God.

Most of the world in the first century didn’t believe in an eternity that was based upon the idea of the resurrection of the body. By the time Jesus was around, there was a sect within Judaism called the Sadducees who did not believe in a future resurrection. It was the Pharisees who believed that the resurrection would one day happen as the final reckoning of God’s judgment, when God would right the wrongs and vindicate the faithful by raising them from the dead to enjoy eternity in the presence of God. But the Sadducees and others like them focused their message of salvation in the “now,” which is one reason why the Sadducees frequently are seen in the Gospels in cahoots with the powers that be…to get as much power and prestige in this life as possible.

However, the teaching of the Pharisees and most other Jews was that the resurrection of the dead would mark the final day of God’s judgment: the picture of hope for God’s faithful. It’s what Jesus held to, what Paul held to, what Jesus’ friends and followers believed as well. In John 11, right before Jesus raised Lazarus, he told Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” She replied, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” And what Jesus did next for Martha, Mary and all of Lazarus’ friends was to give them a glimpse of that in resuscitating Lazarus. I say “resuscitate” rather than “resurrect” because Lazarus was raised by Jesus but would one day die again. However, the resurrection would be to life for eternity. And here, my friends, is where the resurrection of Jesus was so surprising: not because they didn’t believe it wouldn’t one day happen, but that it happened on the third day. When Jesus was raised, it wasn’t just a resuscitation, it was something more: he was raised to never die again. That’s resurrection.

And Paul’s point here, as he says elsewhere in his letters, is that what is true of Jesus the Messiah is true of us. What happened to Jesus will one day happen to us. If it won’t happen to us – if we deny that the resurrection of the body will happen – then what is the purpose of Jesus’ resurrection? Paul goes further and says that if we won’t be raised then it must be that Christ was not raised. And if that is the case, then we are still in our sins, because sin and death are intertwined in Paul’s worldview. We would still be in our sins and death would remain the victor.

But, Paul, says, Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the “first fruits” of those who have died. The language of “first fruits” is why we affirm that what happened to Jesus on the third day will happen to us on the final day: that will be the harvest from when we have been buried, planted, interred, or returned to the earth or laid to rest.

So, I say again, Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead just so you could go to heaven when you die. He was raised so that one day we, too, will be raised. God will do more than resuscitate our mortal bodies…but restore, redeem, and endow our bodies, this creation, with amazing new possibilities that will leave us eternally in awe of God’s ability to make all things new.

The resurrection is part of why we ought not treat our world like trash. The resurrection is why my family recycles. The resurrection is why we should be good stewards of our bodies. The resurrection is why we should strive to fight for the dignity and well-being of all humans on the face of the planet. The resurrection is why we seek to be Christ’s hands, feet, and voice now, getting to experience the beauty of salvation now, living for the kingdom of God in Christ now, even while we wait for the later when God will give life to these mortal bodies. And at the end of the day and the end of life, the resurrection is why we do grieve even to the point of breaking down and weeping, because of how much we love and will miss the person who has died. And the resurrection is why we don’t believe these bodies are prisons or shells but when we die, await a glorious time when God will do with our bodies what he did with Jesus’ on the third day. And what do we see Jesus doing after the third day? Well, the same sort of things we do even now: eating fish, breaking bread, walking and talking, showing the scars of our past. Only now, he could do more! As if given a new dimension, he was able to show up behind a closed, locked door; travel to Galilee in no time; and so on.

A new dimension. In geometry, a line is one-dimensional – length; when lines form to make a shape, it’s two-dimensional – length and width. But it remains two-dimensional until you add depth or height. Is that third dimension separate from the other dimensions? No. It is made up of them but adds more.

That’s one way to see the resurrection: it’s something mysterious and amazing and beyond the world as we currently know it. And yet while it is beyond and more than it, it is not so “other” that it is less than whatever truth and goodness and beauty we currently know. Believing this means that we are not to be pitied but that we live in hope.

Note from the Editor: The featured artwork is titled “Harbingers of the Resurrection” by Nikolai Ge, 1867.

Andrew C. Thompson ~ Behind the Sermon: Funerals, Balm of Gilead, and Healing

Dr. Andrew C. Thompson, Senior Pastor of First United Methodist Church of Springdale, Arkansas, discusses the famous phrase, “balm of Gilead,” the pastoral dynamics of funerals and healing in this video podcast with Pastor Todd Lovell. Follow him on Twitter here.

MJ Kirby ~ Rewriting the Story

Why do we go to the grave?

While I meticulously arranged and rearranged the flowers we had brought with us to adorn the headstone of our second born son, Jeremy, this thought swirled in my imagination. Why am I here? The reality is Jeremy is not here. I certainly don’t believe that his spirit is held captive in the casket we laid his body to rest in 2010.

My heart sunk. A wave of nauseous energy overtook me. I shuddered imagining what was actually left of his broken body now six feet under along with all the other bodies. As my eyes scanned headstone upon headstone reaching out to Hwy 90, separating the grave from the water’s edge, I was brought to my knees. With jealous rage the grave seeks to devour, yet, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” I know that I know that I know the grave cannot contain Jeremy.

So, why do we make this annual trek to mark Jeremy’s birth, death, Christmas, Easter and other special occasions? I guess somehow in the ritual of the rhythm of returning to the grave we find comfort as we remember. We seek closure. We find consistency. We seek to make sense out of a situation that otherwise makes little to no sense. We find the death of a child remains. The. death. of. a. child…have you really ever stopped to imagine the brutal life-long implications?

It’s not just the loss of the child. That’s painful enough to bear. You love that child. You delight in that child. “This is my dearly loved son, who brings me great joy.” You are that child. That child is you. Mothers carry that child for nine months. Fathers help to carry mothers as they carry that child for nine long months. That child is so intertwined to who you are it’s as if an eternal umbilical cord connects your souls. When they leave a piece of your very soul, the connective tissue holding you and that child together rips away, too.

But there’s more. Parents are the link to the past for the child. The generation upon generation the child was brought forth from. The heritage. Lineage. Pillar the child is building their life upon. Parents hold the familiar stories of old days that are told and retold to the child. In a reciprocal fashion, the child holds the parent’s future in their tiny little hand.

Oh, the dreams and plans we make in our imaginations for what are children will grow to be? Do? Achieve? We hope, plan, and prepare for them to go further than us. We willing sacrifice in order for them to have a better life than us. We long for them to grow in knowledge and stature and far exceed us. We create stories in our mind filled with us helping our children along the journey. We “see” ourselves loading them up in their car and sending them off to college as we silently weep. We envision ourselves sheltering them from heartache when their first serious relationship breaks apart. We are there when they enter the workforce, cheering them on. We see ourselves a nervous wreck as they take the hand of their loved one and vow “til death do us part. ” We sit in the waiting room, anticipating yet another generation that will be a branch in our family’s tree. And we feel the warmth of Christmas after Christmas gathered around the fireplace telling and retelling the stories of old that link us to our past, and provide a foundation that will take us into our preferred future, together.

All those carefully ordered dreams that felt like definites are suddenly, violently ripped away. A branch is torn from the tree. With the shattering of the future dreams comes the equally disturbing ripping away of the innocent, yet blissfully ignorant, sense of security, hope and promise that the future would hold uninhibited blessing. Now, you are left with your family tree missing a branch that cannot be replaced or reformed. A wound in your heart for the child you are missing in the everyday present, but also you are tasked with the daunting reality of recreating a new vision of a family future. A future, if you are completely honest with yourself, that you are not looking as forward to journeying through because someone is missing from the story. Your story. You scramble to begin to rewrite the story. You have a spouse. Other children perhaps. The story must go on…

There is nothing left to do but muster up the courage to journey on. To write new chapters. To sing new songs. Not clinging too tightly to a vision of what you think should be. Nor getting stuck in the past of what could have been. In ninja-like fashion you become keenly aware that all we have is now. Today. This moment. This breath.

So you embrace this fleeting moment. Breathe in all its complexities. Embrace the joy, as well as the pain. Be still as the winds of change blow you onward. Living in the moment, loving extravagantly, and laying your head down at night thankful for what you do have.

Reprinted with permission from www.7piecepuzzle.com.

Jeff Rudy ~ Triumphant Grace

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”

And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God and they will be my children. – Revelation 21:1-7

John Donne was an English clergyman in the 16th and 17th centuries who wrote some of the most beautiful poems in our language. One of them rings especially true to what I want to say today. He wrote this, maybe you’ve heard portions of it in other venues:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were:

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

Ernest Hemingway wrote a book and the band Metallica wrote a song with the title being what the ending of that poem says – “for whom the bell tolls.” Surprisingly, that didn’t make it into our hymnal!

Ok, seriously, when Donne wrote about the tolling of the bells he was referring to funeral bells. In saying that “it tolls for thee,” Donne was expressing one of two things, or perhaps both: that when funeral bells were heard it was a reminder that we are all nearer to our own death each day; or he may have been saying what some of us believe to be true as humans – that all people are socially and spiritually interconnected. That is, when someone dies, a part of all of us dies. It might be seemingly apparent that the bell tolls for the one who is deceased, but make no mistake that it tolls for thee.

If you will pardon a bit of morbidity as I have already begun: I’ve spent some time among cemeteries in the last couple of weeks. It wasn’t due to some fetish or fixation about zombies or that I was hoping for some reason to have nightmares. The reason I went to the cemeteries is because I was looking for some spiritual inspiration and guidance on how best to conclude this four-week series we have spent at Jackson First UMC on “Four Parts Grace.” As I’m growing up, I’m coming to appreciate more and more that line in the Apostles’ Creed that says “I believe…in the communion of saints.” We are surrounded by what the author of Hebrews calls a “great cloud of witnesses” who are encouraging us onward along the journey of faith, pointing us toward the author of our life, and our faith, and our hope, Jesus Christ. I went to the tombs, in short, to look for a message of hope.

Dan Camp (Jackson FUMC’s Senior Pastor) and I spent a lot of time in conversation about each of these messages and one that we had the most difficulty assigning an adjective to was this one. We spoke in this series about the various ways that God’s unmerited favor, or what we call grace, comes to us and is revealed in us: in going before us and wooing us toward God’s self, or what we called prevenient grace; in pardoning us and welcoming us with open arms as we accept Christ’s saving offer, or what we called justifying grace; in changing us for the better, to make us more holy and pure like Christ, in going on to perfection, or what we called sanctifying grace. But if grace is eternal, what do we call that grace that welcomes us from the end of this life and carries us on into the next? John Wesley called this glorification, or glorifying grace. For that reason, we could simply leave it at that and just seek to unpack what that means. But we also talked about some synonyms and asked if there are other ways to describe this mode of grace – we’ve spoken of it at times as “final grace” or “dying grace.” While I always felt like those two words were somewhat close, I figured there was some better way of describing it. So, again, I went to the tombs. And on the headstones of many who now abide in the communion of saints, or what we call “The Church Triumphant,” were words that spoke of honor and mission, of fulfilled lives, and ultimately of triumphant hope…that is, that our grave is not the end, that death has not won and that its defeat is sure. That’s why I have come to call this grace that is yet to come “Triumphant Grace.”

A couple of weeks ago, on a brief visit to my family, I stopped by the place where my mother’s parents are buried in West Paducah. My granddaddy died in 1987, when I was six, 11 years before Papaw (my dad’s dad) died. My grandmother died when I was 16. They’re buried and on their tombstone, you will find these simple words – “God is Our Refuge and Strength.” I looked at others nearby and on one I found a peculiar message where another husband and wife were buried that said, “Death does not part us.”

When I got back to Jackson, I spent a couple of hours walking through Riverside Cemetery and discovered that I had parked immediately adjacent to the place where Bishop Isaac Lane was buried. He was the one after whom Lane College is named and was one of the founding members of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, what is now the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, which was founded out of this very congregation (Jackson First UMC) and resides across the street at Mother Liberty CME Church. These words are inscribed at the place where he lay – “His philanthropy knew no race, and his ministry was to all mankind.” Sounds a bit like John Wesley’s well known motto: “The world is my parish.”

Relatives of Bishop Lane had these remarkable words upon their graves – James Franklin Lane, who died in 1944: “He lives on!! Immortalized by thousands as a world benefactor;” Mary Edna Johnson Lane: “She lives on! As a symbol of Christian living, and as an inspiration to future generations.” Some other messages of hope at Riverside – Mannie Cole, who died in 1911: “She lives with her Jesus, the lover of her soul”; Dr. Alexander Jackson, who died in 1879: “We shall meet again”; Lizzie Cartmell, who died in 1899 at the age of 46: “Her mother died when she was eleven years old, but her counsel and fine example were never effaced. She was educated at Salem, N.C., and was a devoted Presbyterian, her faith never faltering under any trial, and she lived and died with such perfect trust in God that we know that when the earthly house of her tabernacle was dissolved that she found a heavenly one waiting her”; Mary Jane Cartmell, who died in 1865: “Having faithfully performed her earthly mission, her pure spirit is gone to dwell in the bosom of her redeemer. Neither can she die any more for she is equal unto the angels”; Milton Brown, who died in 1911: “Not lost, but gone before”; someone with the last name Winham: “Her life was beautiful in ardent love, to all her family and all her friends; her charity akin to that from above, which to every human need extends.”

What will be our epitaph? How will we be remembered, in our living and in our dying? In 1650 and 1651, an English clergyman named Jeremy Taylor, influenced heavily by the Latin tradition known as ars moriendi (Latin for “the art of dying”) wrote a two volume set of devotional books called, The Rules and Practices of Holy Living and Holy Dying. These writings were so influential upon the mind and heart of our movement’s founder, John Wesley. Perhaps most helpful for us to hear as we think about the triumphant grace that greets us at the end of this life and carries us onto the next are the words that John Wesley spoke upon his deathbed. Hear these words of a witness to John Wesley’s last moments:

we hoped that if he had anything of moment on his mind, which he wished to communicate, he would again try to tell us what it was, and that either Mr. Horton, or some of those who were most used to hear our dear Father’s dying voice would be able to interpret his meaning; but though he strove to speak, we were still unsuccessful. Finding we could not understand what he said, he paused a little, and then with all the remaining strength he had, cried out, “The best of all is, God is with us”; and then, as if to assert the faithfulness of our promise-keeping Jehovah and comfort the hearts of his weeping friends, lifting up his dying arm in token of victory and raising his feeble voice with a holy triumph not to be expressed, again repeated the heart-reviving, words, “The best of all is, God is with us!”

My Papaw was alone in a field building a fence around some hay bales (the very ones seen in the picture on this post) on a hot August day in 1998 when his earthly life came to an end. Twenty-one years prior he had had a massive heart-attack; thirteen years prior his and my father’s business had gone under and he broke his back as he fell from a piece of farm equipment; after that accident, he was offered a job at the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, where he worked in downtown Paducah, Kentucky until he retired in 1995.

But retirement wasn’t really in Papaw’s vocabulary. His heart was in his faith in Christ and devotion to living that faith out; his hands knew not of prolonged rest. He found fulfillment in close proximity to working in the dirt, the earth, and the care of his livestock. That August day, he was alone in the field, and by appearances knew his time had come: he took off his glasses, put them in his shirt pocket, grabbed his hammer in one hand and a fence post in the other, and lay down and breathed his last. That was his legacy – a legacy that proclaims: “Until the kingdom comes in fullness that we read about in the closing chapters of Revelation…until that day, I will work for that glorious day.”

And here is where the good news of triumphant grace meets us this day – in the promise and hope of a new heaven and new earth as John describes for us in Revelation 21. This hope is not a mere wish, but a confident assurance that death has lost its sting and victory belongs to life. It is based on nothing else than the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, which foretells our own resurrection.

If we can say confidently with the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” – if we can say that, it is only because of the victory that Christ had over death and the grave in his resurrection.

Last year as I was reading Matthew’s account of the resurrection in chapter 28 of his gospel, something struck me that I hadn’t ever noticed in all the times I’d read the account before about the stone being rolled away. Think about this: for whom is the stone rolling away?

It might seem apparent just from thinking about it, that the stone rolling away is how Jesus could escape the tomb. It’s the opening of the door so he could get out, we tend to think, right? In fact if you read the account in Mark, Luke, and John, you might think that were true. But Matthew tells us something that the others don’t – Matthew tells us that the women who went to visit the grave actually saw the stone rolled away themselves. Matthew tells us, then, that the stone rolls not for Jesus, but for Mary Magdalene, for the other Mary, and then…for you and for me. The stone rolls, church, for us, that we can see that death does not have the final word, that death has lost its sting, that death cannot contain Life; that we may see that Jesus is alive once again and forevermore!

The bells that tolled, according to John Donne, were a sign to those who heard that we are all mortal and meet the same end known as death; that when one dies a part of all of us dies. The stone that rolled, according to Matthew, was a sign to those who witness it that the end known as death is not, in fact, the end; but that when this One is made alive again, a part of all of us becomes alive again, and that all who believe and trust this Resurrected Lord will know of the same resurrection that Jesus himself experienced nearly 2,000 years ago! Church that is good news! That is Easter!

And therefore, it is okay to send for whom the stone rolls. It rolls for thee! The stone rolls for us! And when we hear the sound of the stone rolling, it rings in our ears that the main thing that draws nearer to us is not death, but resurrection! Triumphant grace! Grace that declares death doesn’t have the final word. But that one day there will be no more crying, no more death. As Mumford and Sons sing beautifully in “After the Storm”: “There will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears; and love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears; get over your hill and see what you find there; with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.”

John Wesley was right: “The best of all is, God is with us.” Now and forever! In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Pastoral Care and Contagion

“O ALMIGHTY God, who in thy wrath did send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness, for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron; and also, in the time of king David, didst slay with the plague of Pestilence threescore and ten thousand, and yet remembering thy mercy didst save the rest; Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality; that like as thou didst then accept of an atonement, and didst command the destroying Angel to cease from punishing, so it may now please thee to withdraw from us, who humbly acknowledge our sins and truly repent us of them, this plague and grievous sickness; that being delivered we may glorify thy Name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

So reads a plea from “The Proposed Book of Common Prayer” of 1689, under the blunt heading, “In the time of any common Plague or Sickness.”

Recently the World Health Organization released a manual providing guidelines that aim to maintain cultural respect and religious reverence for the safe burial of Ebola victims, since a full 20 percent of transmissions occur in the burial process. Officials consulted with Muslim and Christian leaders to explore ways that burials could maintain the rites of religious faith while avoiding the washing of a body or the sharing of a loved one’s possessions that might be contaminated with the virus.

Despite my excellent undergraduate education preparing me for Christian ministry, despite my thoroughly-enjoyed seminary training, I don’t remember any discussions on how to provide pastoral care during a plague. North America, take note: whatever your thoughts on travel regulations and disease transmission, Ebola and health care, pastors and laypeople everywhere have remembered something anew.

You are not immune.

Re-read the heading of the above prayer: “In the time of any common Plague or Sickness.” What short memories we have. Plague and sickness, very present reminders of mortality abounded not long ago in our own nation. We’re less than a century away from the Spanish Influenza, antibiotics have been utilized for a few short decades and immunizations weren’t available when my Grandmother was a child. In a very little time, we have become shocked by cancer, appalled by heart attacks, distressed by dementia. And rightly so: they are horrible evils.

But we’ve become surprised by our own mortality.

“Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality…”

Hopefully, the current contagion is winding down; hopefully, the outbreak will continue to abate, running itself out in containment. Hopefully, it will no longer spread to other continents – this time, anyway.

So whether you’re staring blankly at a Liberian sunset exhausted from attempting to help recently-made Ebola orphans or whether you’ve got your feet propped up in a recliner with a football game on mute in the background, perhaps these principles will be helpful to you at some point.

In other words, is it alright, as a Christian, to leave an area where people may need your help?

But Luther puts a different burden on those in leadership in both the church and the state. About clergy, he advises:

“Those who are engaged in a spiritual ministry such as preachers and pastors must likewise remain steadfast before the peril of death. For when people are dying, they most need a spiritual ministry which strengthens and comforts their consciences by word and sacrament and in faith overcomes death. However, where enough preachers are available in one locality and they agree to encourage the other clergy to leave in order not to expose themselves needlessly to danger, I do not consider such conduct sinful because spiritual services are provided for and because they would have been ready and willing to stay if it had been necessary.”

Of course, he is not speaking here of mandated quarantine or other 21st-century realities (though quarantine is nothing new: the city of Venice used an island as a quarantine location when it faced the plague several centuries ago). The pastoral response in current contexts must also include care for others by not exposing them frivolously or lightly to that with which one may be infected.

How comfortable are you around sick people? Certainly, take sensible precautions: wash your hands, cough into your elbow, take vitamins. But can you bear to be around those who are gravely ill? Are you prepared to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with them so that they are not alone? Does your faith give you the strength to sit next to the person receiving chemo? The point is sharply made when Luther writes, “this I well know, that if it were Christ or his mother who were laid low by illness, everybody would be so solicitous and would gladly become a servant or helper.”

So: attend church and hear sermons from the Word on how to live and how to die (he recommends); prepare for death in time to confess and take the sacrament, reconciling with others (he further recommends); and if you want a chaplain or pastor at the time of your death, call them while you’re still in your right mind (he wasn’t a man short on words).

Are you comfortable with mortality? Are you ready to be around the dying?

It’s worth thinking about.

Matt Sigler ~ Reclaiming a Vision of the Communion of Saints in Worship

Confession: I’ve always had a bit of a morbid vein in my personality. Not like, Sylvia Plath morbid—I’ve just always been very aware of the passing of time and the fragility of life. As a Christian my hope is anchored in the sure and certain return of Christ, the final resurrection, and a God who is making all things new. While these truths have sustained me in my moments of deepest despair, I often wonder if my evangelical upbringing would have benefited from a more robust appreciation for the Communion of Saints as I wrestled in thinking about time, separation from those departed, and the hope that is ours in Christ. For certain, concerns about if we “pray to” or “with” the saints are worth consideration (I’m not going to try to tackle them in this post). What I do want to suggest is that we would do well to consider a richer understanding of the relationship between the Church triumphant (in heaven) and the Church militant (on earth) in our worship.

From very early on Christians buried their dead near their places of worship. Where others placed their dead outside of cities and avoided such sites, Christians often celebrated the anniversaries of the death of their martyrs with the Lord’s Supper. Oftentimes this celebration was held at the place where the martyr was buried. Soon, many churches included the bones of the martyrs within the church building. Since death was not the final word about our bodily existence, it didn’t need to be something fearful. Moreover, Christians understood that to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord and there was no place where the Lord was more present than in the community gathered for worship. The understanding was that in Christ all—including the Church triumphant—are one. This is the belief conveyed in the lyrics of the hymn “For All the Saints”:

O blest communion,
Fellowship divine! We feebly struggle,
They in glory shine;
All are one in Thee,
For all are Thine. Alleluia, Alleluia!

Before we’re tempted to think this understanding of the Church triumphant and Church militant present in worship is something foreign to the Wesleyan tradition, consider this hymn written by Charles:

Come let us join our friends above
That have obtained the prize,
And on the eagle-wings of love
To joy celestial rise;
Let all the saints terrestrial sing
With those to glory gone,
For all the servants of our King
In earth and heaven are one.

Charles Wesley makes clear that when the Church gathers for worship we on earth join our song “with those to glory gone” in praise to the Lamb on his throne.

Admittedly, this all seemed rather speculative and esoteric to me until I experienced the loss of beloved family members. While I grew up believing that angels somehow joined with us when we gathered for worship, I never considered that the “cloud of witnesses” might also be singing too. In fact, it’s actually the other way around: the Church on earth is invited to join in the eternal worship when we gather together. This has become for me one of the most marvelous visions of what it means to worship together.

Embracing the full presence of the Church, triumphant and militant, in worship is much more than a coping mechanism. Neither is it some sci-fi fantasy (like Anakin Skywalker’s ghost at the end of Return of the Jedi) played out in our imagination. It actually is a concept that enriches our worship. If, indeed, Christian worship is the place where the Church triumphant and the Church militant meet; where we get a taste of the glorious hope that is ours in Christ; where we join in the song of heaven with all the saints, the martyrs, and the hosts of heaven, how should that perspective shape the way we worship when we gather together?

Featured image courtesy Robert Thomas on Unsplash.

Bishop Bill McAlilly ~ Searching for Easter…

This is a portion of the sermon preached on December 27, 2013, at the funeral service for Bishop McAlilly’s nephew Gale Stauffer, who was killed in the line of duty December 23, serving on the Police Force of the city of Tupelo, Mississippi.

…little did we know that on this day of days, we would find ourselves moving so quickly from the expectation of the joy of the Birth of the Christ Child at Christmas to the suffering, abandonment and pain of the Cross.

How could we have seen that on the last Friday in 2013, we would be hunkered down and huddled up like the disciples in the Upper Room after Jesus was crucified? Like the disciples, we are afraid. But the darkness we have experienced has stirred in us other emotions. What do you bring today?

Maybe you come with:

Deep sadness.
Confusion.
Numbness.
Rage.
Pain.
Anger.
Inadequacy.

Over the last few days, I have felt every one of these emotions. I wonder if this is true for you as well. What do you bring today? Whatever you bring, let this be your offering to God today. Place these things in God’s good hands. Whatever you bring, bring to the foot of the cross of the crucified Christ. Do not hold on to that which you bring, but rather, give it to the Christ. For us today, the light of Christmas has been extinguished.

The light of Easter has yet to dawn. We sit in the darkness of the cross. We hunker down in the midst of darkness. We do so knowing that the darkness is great. And yet we know that we stand in a tradition that is bold to proclaim that the light cannot be overcome by the darkness.

We gather to claim the promise that the light came into the world on that first Christmas. That light shines here even in the midst of the darkness around us. Indeed, what we do know is that the light and love of Christ has come into the world. We gather to claim the promise that the light and love of Christ overcomes the darkness. The light of Christ overcomes even death. No matter how dark this day is, the darkness has not overcome the light, nor us, nor this world.

What we do know is that the order of creation has been disrupted.

I heard my mother say, “you don’t expect to outlive your children—but you certainly do not expect to outlive your grandchildren.” Indeed, when an elder dies, they take with them the past, all that has been. When a young man at age 38 with two small children and a wife who adores him dies, the future has been taken away. This is what makes this mountain of grief so incredibly difficult, so dark, so senseless and so seemingly unending.

What we do know is this:

Because the light of Christ has come into the world, Gale’s tragic death is not God’s will. It is not God’s will that a 38 year old husband and father of two beautiful children should have his life snuffed out like a candle on a dark night two days before Christmas to teach us some lesson we have not learned.

We do know that God’s heart breaks every time evil oversteps a boundary of good and right and truth. We do know that this day, the God we love with an everlasting love, the God who teaches us the way of love and life, is weeping and wanting to wipe from our eyes every tear we cry.

What we do know is that our tendency this day is to believe that hate begets hate and our real temptation today is to allow the hate we feel for the perpetrator to get the best of us. If those of us who loved Gale the most are not careful, we will allow that anger to rage within us in such a way that it clouds our ability to see clearly the light of Christ and see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

So, how do we respond to this? Where do we go from here? Hunkered as we are, how do we release ourselves from this mountain of grief into the hands of God? If we are not full of care for ourselves, for each other, for the community, we will lose sight of one of the last commandments Christ gave us: to love. If we are not full of care, if we do not carefully attend to our grief in the days to come, we will not bare fruit that will last.

What we are to do is simply this: Hold on to one another. Hold on to the gift that Gale is and has been to us. Hold on to the good memories that are ours. Hold on to the grace that, in God’s good time, will hold us because we cannot hold ourselves. Hold on to each other. Hold on to the eternal light of Christ.

The light that has come is the promise of Easter; even though this very Friday, we cannot yet see our way to the dawn of Easter light. As baptized Christians, we trust that the light of Easter will come.

So we pray, come Lord Jesus, come. Come heal us, Come and soften our hearts. Break our hearts of stone that we may again rise from this place with love that reigns in us. Come save us; save us from ourselves and our sinning.

Last night as friends came and gathered around our family and gave us the strength we did not have in and of ourselves, I saw so many who have walked this way before. Those who have stood where we now stand and who have grieved the unbearable grief of the loss of a child or a spouse. In this, the longest week of our lives, I am reminded of something William Slone Coffin, the former esteemed pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, said a few days after his 24 year old son was killed tragically in an automobile accident:

Among the healing flood of letters that followed his death was one carrying this wonderful quote from the end of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: “The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places.”

Our deepest prayer this day is that our own hearts will mend. That they will mend to the degree that we remember that love begets love, in the begetting, it transmits strength. (Coffin)

What strengthens us is You. Your unwavering friendship and love. As we walk this lonesome valley, the real temptation is for us to walk bravely alone; we simply cannot. As headstrong and strong-willed as this family can be, we are not strong enough to do this new way of walking alone.

…More than once these last days, we have felt the absence of the presence of God. But, in that overwhelming feeling that turns us upside down and breaks us in two, we find ourselves with Jesus on the cross, out of control and crying – “My God, My God why hast thou forsaken us,” quoting Psalm 22.

Our tendency is to overlook the fact that the Psalm doesn’t end there. The Psalmist expresses the deep feelings, pain and agony of abandonment…but the last turn of the Psalm is a turn to the future…trusting that the Goodness of God will be enough.

The grief we feel today, the grief we have felt since Monday, seems unbearable. In time, it will turn to a bearable sorrow.

Not soon. Not today. But one day. One day, we will wake up and we will discover that the sorrow we feel is more bearable. Somehow, we will find ways to bear the sorrow that has come, uninvited, into our midst. Then, what we will know is that “the goodness of the Lord dwells in the land of the living…”

And we will rise up from this unbearable sorrow and proclaim:

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it!”

Amen and Amen