I used to subscribe to a website called “Simple Truths” and they would send out emails with short videos. One of the emails I received was called “To a Child, Love is spelled T-I-M-E.” Just briefly, the message was of an older gentleman who went up in the attic looking for a special picture of his wife. And looking though a box, he found his grown son’s journal from when he was six.
As he read the entries from the journal, he was stirred by the freshness of the memories. But he couldn’t help feel that his son’s recollections must have differed from his own. So he decided to go and get his own business journal from that same period of time. As he compared entries from the same day, he read in his, “Wasted the whole day fishing with Jimmy. Didn’t catch a thing.”
He turned in his son’s journal to the same day and read. “Went fishing with my dad. Best day of my life.” And so I wish all you dads out there a very happy Father’s day. Always remember that time spent with your children or grandchildren is never wasted time! In the eyes of a child, that time is precious indeed.
It’s June, and many of us have very recently been to graduations and commencement ceremonies. School is out and the graduates all listened very carefully to the advice given them by the commencement speakers. Right?
That is sort of what’s going on in today's Gospel lesson. Jesus has been traveling around the region of Galilee and teaching. Jesus and his disciples are on an extended field trip. Just prior to this lesson, we get 10 miracle stories. Healing, exorcisms, miracles of nature – all are given as classroom examples.
Then Jesus picks out the cream of the crop – he names his special students (the top ten, or in this case 12) – probably those who have shown the most progress – and we get this little commissioning service. They are being sent out on a field exercise - student preaching, as it was… - to test the waters and to try out their new gained skills.
You know, this reminds me a little of seminary. As a general practice, they give you one year of classes, some basic Bible – overview of the Old Testament and an overview of the New Testament. They teach you a little philosophy and theology; give you a smattering of church history and a little liturgics and sacred music, and maybe a class in pastoral care.
Now at the end of the first year, they send you out to do something called ‘clinical pastoral education.’ Generally, CPE is done at a hospital, a mental health facility or a prison. By far, most students go to a hospital since that is the institution that we will eventually have the most need for understanding.
In CPE you have classes in the morning. Our classes were varied. Nurses and doctors came and talked about the challenges faced by patients and their families. Social workers came and told us more about what families and patients face especially when they go home. We observed open heart surgery and heart catheterizations . Seasoned hospital chaplains came and taught us about ministering to families and patients.
In the afternoon, we were out on the hospital floors, each in our own assigned areas. We each had two areas – one general floor and one critical care area. I did my CPE at St. Luke’s hospital and my special areas were the 17th floor which was general surgery, and I was also assigned to the St. Luke’s emergency room. And we were expected – with only one year of seminary – to go out and minister to people in the deepest pain imaginable.
Sometimes it’s really scary to walk into a hospital room, unbidden, to talk to someone who might not even want to talk to you. You go into the room and introduce yourself (you are wearing a lab coat that says “CHAPLAIN” in bold letters), and ask how they are doing and if there is anything you can do for them. You offer to pray with them, and you move on to the next room.
Sometimes the encounters are total successes, and sometimes you come out feeling like a failure. Each week we had to write up a “verbatim” on one visit from the week. That’s exactly what it sounds like, we would write up the visit word for word, and then two mornings a week we shared our verbatims with the class. They were discussed, sometimes cussed, and generally torn apart by your friendly Christian classmates.
I have any number of stories from that time, and I’ll tell you right now that I didn’t heal anyone, and I didn’t drive out any demons, but I tried as far as I could to share the good news of God’s presence. Being present and talking to and praying with people can make a real difference when their lives seem to have hit rock bottom.
I have become totally convinced that the reason they send us to CPE is to convince us that we can’t “fix things.” So many of us expressed – over and over – the desire to fix what was broken in the lives of the people we met. And over and over we found that we were helpless to do more than mediate God’s presence in any given situation.
One story from that time – it was late and I was visiting on the 17th floor and there was a new patient – I’ll call him Joe. Joe had both arms and hands bandaged, so I asked him what happened. Well, long story cut short, he had gone through the plate glass patio door at his apartment and cut his arms and hands up. He sounded embarrassed, but there was an underlying sadness there that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
As he was describing his injuries I kept looking at his bandages. It just didn’t quite add up. It sounded like his left arm injuries were minor compared to the right arm injuries, yet the bandages on the left far exceeded the ones on the right. I finally asked, “What do you do for a living?” His answer was, “Well, that’s the problem, I’m a concert violinist with the Houston Symphony.” He had cut a tendon in his left hand and he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to play well enough again to continue. He had just been offered a new position that he might not be able to accept.
We talked for a long time about what that might mean to him if he couldn’t and we prayed together. I assured him that although he was not a practicing Christian, God would and could hear his prayer.
That was on a Friday and when I came back on Monday, he was already gone. A follow up on that - 6 months later I received a personal invitation to a concert and a copy of the program listing Joe as the soloist and a note of “thanks.” It came right here to Grace – I still don’t know how he tracked me down.
Jesus sends his disciples out – cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons . . . . . . bring hope to the hopeless, do whatever you can – no matter how small it may seem – to bring a little light into the darkness that permeates some people’s lives. That is what Jesus is sending the disciples out to do.
What we seminary students found out, and what the disciples found out, is that you can make a difference in someone’s life by being yourself and by being present. You don’t have to know a lot, you don’t have to be smart – you simply listen to God and let him be your guide.
I’d like to spend a few minutes now listening and asking God to speak to each of us. Where is God calling you to be? Where is he sending you out to minister? I invite you to close your eyes and listen for God.
Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus. Speak to us as you did to those disciples 2000 years ago. Help us to enter into the silence that belongs to you so that we can hear when you call.
Silence . . . . Amen.
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