This sermon was preached on Wednesday, October 18, 2017 for the Feast of St. Luke at All Saints' Chapel, Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Texts for this sermon were: Sirach 38:1-4,6-10,12-1, 2 Timothy 4:5-13, Luke 4:14-21, and Psalm 147 or 147:1-7.
One night in the hospital I was called down to the post-operation floor, for a gentleman whose heart had stopped after surgery. I was there to stand by his son as he watched his father receive CPR, be transferred up to the ICU, and receive CPR again when his heart stopped a second time and was put on full life support, waiting for the rest of his family to arrive. Finally late into the night the son asked to spend some time with his father alone so I left the room and headed to the nearest phone to check in with the operator about another Code Blue. As I was picking up the phone, an exhausted young doctor in scrubs sitting next to the phone pulled back from the computer and put his head in his hands and said more to himself than to me, “I just feel awful.” Something about the way he said it turned the chaplain switch in my head on and I put down the phone turned and looked him in the eye and said “Tell me more.”
It turns out he had been the anesthesiologist for the surgery. I actually found out from a charge nurse later that it was probably this very, very young doctor’s first death. As he spoke he started to open up about his doubts and fears about the decisions he had made leading up to the man’s death. And underneath all this guilt and worry was another question he began to articulate to me. “How do I stay open and compassionate and empathetic in the midst of death? How do I stay emotionally vulnerable without burning out? How do I do this work becoming jaded?” As he become more and more accustomed to each new tragedy, how could he treat every death like it was his first?
As a chaplain, I didn’t have to have an answer for him. But I left the conversation confident that what will make him good doctor is the simple fact that he is asking these questions of himself. And not only that, he is brave enough to share them with someone else.
So I’ll share now, too. This question keeps coming back to me about myself, in my own career, especially as I consider what preaching this Gospel demands of me.
I’ll be honest with you, I’ve heard seven sermons on these same readings in the last three weeks—I even preached one of them. And yet, as a preacher I’m asked to read this Gospel all over again, as if for the first time. My job as a preacher is to get you to hear it again, afresh, anew, as if for the first time.
And in diving into this Gospel, what it demands of us as followers of Christ, this question is central, too. If we are, like Jesus, to preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, liberation for the oppressed, it means going out and listening, opening ourselves up to the broken-heartedness God asks us to bind up. In the midst of the healing work of God in the Church, how do we stay open to the suffering and pain of the people we encounter, or in ourselves? How do we listen to each story as if we are hearing it for the first time?
One small example. Lately, as my woman friends who have been posting on Facebook about their experiences with sexual harassment and assault, I’ve struggle to open myself to each new story and revelation as if I am hearing it for the first time. Just as I struggled with the latest mass shooting, another young unarmed black man shot and killed by police. How do we stay open to all this, as if for the first time?
But to carry out our ministry fully, to do this work of evangelism authentically, we must suffer with, we must be compassionate, all over again, afresh, anew. Seminary, this community, this church is our chance to learn how to do that. Our time to keep putting our heads in our hands and wondering out loud about all this we are trying to do. To keep admitting when you’re giving up on experiencing this all as if for the first time. Most of all, to keep turning to each other and saying, tell me more.
One night in the hospital I was called down to the post-operation floor, for a gentleman whose heart had stopped after surgery. I was there to stand by his son as he watched his father receive CPR, be transferred up to the ICU, and receive CPR again when his heart stopped a second time and was put on full life support, waiting for the rest of his family to arrive. Finally late into the night the son asked to spend some time with his father alone so I left the room and headed to the nearest phone to check in with the operator about another Code Blue. As I was picking up the phone, an exhausted young doctor in scrubs sitting next to the phone pulled back from the computer and put his head in his hands and said more to himself than to me, “I just feel awful.” Something about the way he said it turned the chaplain switch in my head on and I put down the phone turned and looked him in the eye and said “Tell me more.”
It turns out he had been the anesthesiologist for the surgery. I actually found out from a charge nurse later that it was probably this very, very young doctor’s first death. As he spoke he started to open up about his doubts and fears about the decisions he had made leading up to the man’s death. And underneath all this guilt and worry was another question he began to articulate to me. “How do I stay open and compassionate and empathetic in the midst of death? How do I stay emotionally vulnerable without burning out? How do I do this work becoming jaded?” As he become more and more accustomed to each new tragedy, how could he treat every death like it was his first?
As a chaplain, I didn’t have to have an answer for him. But I left the conversation confident that what will make him good doctor is the simple fact that he is asking these questions of himself. And not only that, he is brave enough to share them with someone else.
So I’ll share now, too. This question keeps coming back to me about myself, in my own career, especially as I consider what preaching this Gospel demands of me.
I’ll be honest with you, I’ve heard seven sermons on these same readings in the last three weeks—I even preached one of them. And yet, as a preacher I’m asked to read this Gospel all over again, as if for the first time. My job as a preacher is to get you to hear it again, afresh, anew, as if for the first time.
And in diving into this Gospel, what it demands of us as followers of Christ, this question is central, too. If we are, like Jesus, to preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, liberation for the oppressed, it means going out and listening, opening ourselves up to the broken-heartedness God asks us to bind up. In the midst of the healing work of God in the Church, how do we stay open to the suffering and pain of the people we encounter, or in ourselves? How do we listen to each story as if we are hearing it for the first time?
One small example. Lately, as my woman friends who have been posting on Facebook about their experiences with sexual harassment and assault, I’ve struggle to open myself to each new story and revelation as if I am hearing it for the first time. Just as I struggled with the latest mass shooting, another young unarmed black man shot and killed by police. How do we stay open to all this, as if for the first time?
But to carry out our ministry fully, to do this work of evangelism authentically, we must suffer with, we must be compassionate, all over again, afresh, anew. Seminary, this community, this church is our chance to learn how to do that. Our time to keep putting our heads in our hands and wondering out loud about all this we are trying to do. To keep admitting when you’re giving up on experiencing this all as if for the first time. Most of all, to keep turning to each other and saying, tell me more.
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