We Can Be Healers:
Your 2001, 02 Student Minister Checks In at First Parish
a sermon by Rev. Nathan Detering
given on Sunday, March 12, 2006
At The First Parish in Lincoln
Our first reading this morning is from one of my favorite religious writers, Frederick Buechner,
Whom one of my other favorite writers, Annie Dillard, has called “one of the finest writing today.”
This selection comes from a wonderful little book of his called “Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC’s” in which Buechner offers definitions for religious words that begin with letters from the entire alphabet.
Knowing that this morning I was coming back to the place, the congregation,
Where I truly learned to be a minister, not just how to minister, but be a minister,
This week I looked up under the “M” section to see what Buechner had to say
On that word, “Minister.”
Here is what he said,
Which I invite you to consider this morning and weigh against your own perspective:
“Minister: There are three basic views:
Ministers are Nice People. They’ll take a drink if you offer them one,
And when it comes to racy stories, they can tell a few right along with the best
Of them.
They preach good sermons, but they’re not like those religious fanatics
Who think they’ve got to say a prayer every time they pay a call.
They have bridged the generation gap by introducing things like a rock group
At the 11 o’clock service and what they call “rap sessions”
On subjects like drugs and sex instead of Sunday School.
At the same time they admit privately that though the kids have a lot going for them,
They wish they’d cut their hair properly.
They’re big on things like civil rights, peace, and the environment.
They make people feel comfortable in their presence by showing them
They’ve got their feet on the ground like everybody else.
They reassure them that religion is something you should take seriously
But not go overboard with.
Ministers Have Their Head in the Clouds, which is just where you should have it
When your mind is on higher things. Their morals are unimpeachable,
And if you should ever happen to use bad language in their presence,
You apologize.
They have a pretty good sense of humor and get a kick out of it every time
You ask if they can’t do something about all this rainy weather we’ve been having.
They keep things like sex, politics, and race out of their sermons.
Their specialty is religion, and they’re wise enough to leave other
Matters to people who know what they’re talking about.
Ministers are as anachronistic as alchemists or chimney sweeps.
Like Tiffany glass or the Queen of England, their function
Is primarily decorative. And sometimes their perspective is so biased
You’re prepared to share their view on things.
[Note to the reader: Watch out for this kind!]
Second Reading:
In our first reading we heard in Buechner’s wise, and wise-cracking words that there are three basic views of ministers.
For our second reading I want to offer us a fourth.
It comes from a book I re-discovered
On my book shelf this year
Called “The Wounded Healer” by the Catholic Priest Henri Nouwen.
In this simple little book,
Nouwen strives to inspire those of us who want to be of service in our communities
To go beyond our professional roles and leave ourselves open as fellow human beings
With the same wounds and suffering as those we serve.
“In our woundedness,” writes Nouwen on the first page of the book,
“we can become a source of life for others.”
Let’s listen to him here share this story from the Talmud and then his reflection on it.
First the story:
“Rabbi Yoshua ben Levi came upon Elijah the prophet while he was standing
At the entrance of a cave.
He asked Elijah: “When will the Messiah come?”
And Elijah replied,
“Go and ask him yourself.”
“Where is he?” the Rabbi asked.
“Sitting at the gates of the city.” Elijah said.
“How shall I know him?”
And Elijah said: “He is sitting among the poor covered with wounds.
The others unbind all their wounds at the same time and then bind them up again.
But the Messiah unbinds one at a time and binds it up again,
Saying to himself, ‘Perhaps I shall be needed: if so I must always be ready
So as not to delay for a moment.’”
And here is Nouwen’s reflection on the story:
“The Messiah, the story tells us, is sitting among the poor, binding his wounds
One at a time, waiting for the moment he will be needed.
So it is too with us.
Since it is one of our tasks as compassionate, caring people to make visible the first vestiges of liberation and healing for others,
We must bind our own wounds carefully in anticipation of the moment when we will
Be needed.
We are called to be wounded healers, ones who must look after our own wounds
But at the same time be prepared to heal the wounds of others.
We are both wounded people and healing people, and we cannot be one without the other.
On Friday morning,
When I sat down to put these thoughts together –
I knew I was at risk.
And not just at risk of not having my thoughts come together for the sermon,
Which is something I’ve grown somewhat accustomed to shouldering
Ever since you ordained me almost four years ago and ushered me into parish ministry (sometimes I do blame you).
No, the risk I felt, actually,
Was the risk of being overcome with sentiment, of becoming sentimental,
As I imagined myself standing here -
Standing in the same place where I gave some of my first sermons,
Standing in the same place where the fourth sermon I ever gave in my life was the Sunday two weeks after September 11th
And then later in that year, in the winter of 2002, standing here,
Standing in the place where I was called to do one of the most gentle, healing, meaningful things a minister can ever do when I was asked to lead my first memorial service,
“A Celebration Of Life” I learned to call it, for George and Nancy Wood, who were longtime members here.
And then, my sentiment getting the best of me Friday morning,
I imagined myself standing here again,
standing in the room where on my ordination morning
more than 200 hundred of you gave me your blessing and ordained me as a “minister,”
and then you gave me this robe, which I have worn every Sunday since,
and which I have tried to honor by extending my own blessing, my own healing, to others.
I said I was at risk of getting sentimental as I imagined standing here this morning.
Actually, I’m pretty much already there. I can’t help it.
Ever since I left I’ve nurtured a fondness and a love for this congregation, for Roger, and for the year I spent here.
I admit to a bit of romanticism, of rose-colored glasses, but not much.
So when I sat down on Friday to put these thoughts together,
The sentiment duly acknowledged now and admitted,
The image that occurred to me was of a returning, of sorts,
Of a coming back and a checking in, as my sermon title suggests,
About what I’ve come to believe in the four years
Since I last stood here with you.
And before this sermon gets away from me, in my nostalgic mood,
Let me take us to the sermon title I brought with me this morning:
“We Can Be Healers: Your 2001,02 Student Minister Checks In at First Parish.”
It strikes me now, as I hear it out loud, that it has a confident, rallying,
“let the preacher tell you how it is” kind of tone, doesn’t it?
We preachers can get pretty good at putting on airs, I’ve come to learn.
But actually, the opening I want to create for us into that title, ‘We Can Be Healers,’
Which is really less a title for me and more like a belief I’ve found, a mantra,
Is an opening created by something I wasn’t quite prepared for when
You sent me out into the world, into a beautiful but hurting world,
As a minister.
I wasn’t quite prepared, frankly, for how hard it is be a minister
In this time – in this year, for example, of apocalyptic natural disasters,
In this era of religiously motivated violence,
in this age of a mobilized religious right and a marginalized religious left.
You didn’t warn me, Roger, you didn’t warn me, or maybe I just didn’t listen,
That when folks learn you’re a minister
You’re often asked to explain things,
in particular you’re often asked to explain why bad things happen,
you’re often asked to give reasons, you’re often asked to make excuses for God.
And I must admit: I wasn’t quite prepared, frankly,
That when, over these last four years, I have answered
That I don’t believe in God who causes disasters, disease, or destruction;
That I don’t believe there are reasons for suffering or reasons why bad things happen;
That my understanding of religion pushes me less to argue from the pulpit about whose beliefs are right and more about how we can lead a better life,
I wasn’t quite prepared for the response I often get, which is:
“What kind of minister are you, anyway?”
“Who ordained you?”
And, goes the response, and if you can’t explain why bad things happen,
Or help people find reasons for their suffering,
Or even, failing that, be willing to say why your beliefs are better than others,
Are you, goes the response, are you sure what you have here is a real religion?
Are you sure your approach to the religious life is up to the task,
Up to healing task in these difficult times?
Well, after four years away I stand here this morning and tell you that I believe it is,
And in coming back to you today, for a morning, for a check-in,
I want to lift up a vision of our liberal religion and ministry
That promises to be a strengthening, supporting resource for us and a world that is hurting.
And I want to do that by offering a vision of religion and ministry
That promises not perfect salvation, nor a clean soul, nor an unworried life,
Or even answers to some of our biggest questions,
But promises rather what I’ve come to find as the most supreme form of human love and God’s love,
Which is the simple, but not so simply practiced act of being present with our fellow human beings.
And by present I don’t just mean showing up.
I mean present in a way that means seeing one’s own pain
And suffering from the depth of the human condition we all share,
And then using that awareness to make, I think, the greatest religious promise of all:
A promise that says you and I do not walk alone.
Whoever we are we have wounds, I have come to find.
Whoever we are we have the power to heal, I have come to find.
In our woundedness, as Nouwen says, we can be a healing presence for others.
This is the vision I want to open us to this morning;
This is the vision of ministry I’ve come to identify so strongly with
And thus want extend back to each of you.
And when I thought about how I would extend this vision
I found myself thinking of a story, a story from my life to your life,
That takes place while I was still in seminary years ago,
But has taken me all these years to fully appreciate the meaning of.
So go with back into my very green days, my evergreen days, as young seminary student
At Boston University.
As part of my seminary training
One of the requirements we had to fill
Was a three-month summer tour at a local hospital
Where along with other seminary students we served
As chaplains.
For many of us this experience was the first time in our education
That we were asked to actually practice ministry,
So it goes without saying that we came into these programs
Full of academic theory, full of well thought out theologies,
Full of delusions about our own grandeur,
And absolutely no clue about what we were doing.
In the summer of 2000 I began my three-month tour as Student Chaplain
At the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston,
A place my wife and I had come to a know earlier that spring
Because it was where we planned to have our first child,
Who was due that July, right in the middle of my tour.
After only a few days on the job I quickly learned that while the Brigham
Was highly sought after by seminary students,
It was also greatly feared because it was the only program
That required us to spend overnights and weekends alone at the hospital,
So that we could serve as the chaplain of first resort to the patients.
This requirement meant that any swagger or excitement we brought with us into
Those early days at the Brigham quickly dissipated,
And I remember many of us, including me, began to actively hope
That we would be viewed as “decorative” kind of minister that Buechner speaks so bitingly about in our first reading, just so no one would call on us.
But called on we were.
One day at the end of July my wife Karen called me at the hospital
And said it was time – Time with a capital “T.”
So I rushed home, picked her up, brought her back to the hospital,
And eighteen hours later became the father of a beautiful and perfect baby boy.
Two days later, no rest for the weary,
It was my turn to go back to the hospital and be the chaplain of first resort
For the Friday night shift.
One hour into my shift the pager buzzed,
Telling me that I was needed in the very maternity ward
I had been in only two days earlier for the birth of my own child.
A baby boy had died unexpectedly at birth, the nurse told me.
The family would like you to say a prayer and offer a blessing, she said.
Not two doors away from the room that had brought Karen and me such happiness,
I was ushered into a quiet room where 10 people stood in a half-circle
Around a young woman and a young man,
both of whom were cradling the little boy,
swaddled in the same hospital blanket and cap that the nurses had
swaddled my own child in.
Instantly I thought:
This could have been my son, this could have been my family circled here,
This could have been me.
And in the sudden awareness that I had no understanding for why I could be so blessed,
And two days later, two doors down, another couple could be so hurt, so wounded,
I realized then that I had no answers, no explanations, no words, really, to give to this family.
All I had to offer was the presence and tenderness I felt for them and for their child,
A tenderness I knew because it was what I felt for my son.
Later I put my hand on the baby’s brow and I blessed him with that tenderness,
As if he were mine, and then I took a place in the half-circle with the family,
And I stayed.
In our own woundedness, in our fragility, in our own vulnerability,
We can be a healing source for others.
It is sometimes all too easy, too tempting, to doubt a promise like that,
I have come to find in the years since I left First Parish.
When the pressure to explain and justify and answer for the unanswerable is heaped
Upon us, expected by others and ourselves.
It has taken me years to honor appropriately the time
I was asked to minister to a family I simply had no answers for,
To whom all I could give was my belief in an ever-present God and
My fragile self…which was enough.
I offer this promise to you this morning because I think it carves an
Important and needed middle path between those who
Say it is religion’s task, or a minister’s task, to give reasons
For people’s suffering,
And those who say that religion is merely decorative, an anachronism,
And not worth much in a world where good and bad things happen all the time,
Often without explanation.
And I think, standing here feeling the sentiment of standing here again,
I think that all of us are poised this morning
In this sacred middle place of being a healing source for others.
Poised because in a moment we’re going to sing “Be that guide whom love sustains”
Which includes the line “lift on high the good you find. Help to heal the hurts of life.”
And then after those words are sung, poised still in this sacred middle,
we’re going to say those words from your Call to Ministry,
the ones that say “We go forth from the worship of God,”
The God not of judgment or cool omnipotent distance,
But the God of the Psalms who promises
That “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil for thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”
And then, poised still in this sacred middle, we’ll promise to be faithful to the vision of Jesus,
Not the Jesus on the billboards separating the saved from the unsaved, inviting easy salvation,
But the Jesus who promises, in that great commission from Matthew’s gospel,
That “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
And then,
Having given and received these promises of presence from God and to one another,
a reciprocity of tender presence which is healing, I believe,
We will go out into the world, you and I,
into a beautiful but hurting world
That needs something of what we have found here,
And find here Sunday after Sunday.
Friends, I call us to be healers for those among us, for the world among us.
Let us not be tempted to heal from a place of answering or explaining,
Justifying or even advising.
Let us instead heal with our tenderness, from the soft and fragile source within us,
The place that hurts, feels, and loves.
All of us have wounds, I have come to find.
All of us have the power to heal, I have come to find.
And in our own woundedness we can be a healing source for others.
We can be healers.
Amen.