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| Early in my ministry I went
to visit a person who was totally deaf. I wanted to convey my pastoral
concern and to offer help if, in the future, my help became useful. Also
present was a close relative of the deaf person, a man who knew sign
language and helped me get my message across. After I was there a while, I
found the deaf person could read lips and so I allowed myself to drift
into a halting exchange of pleasantries. Then, there was a sudden, but
short, uncomfortable silence. I felt I had strained everyone's attention
too much. I began to search for something more important to say than I had
been saying when the man who could hear said kindly, "It has all been
said, hasn't it?" With a strange sense of relief, I agreed and thanked
them for their time, wished them well, and left.
As I walked away, I realized that an act of ministry had occurred; but it wasn't the one I had intended. As I walked away I realized that the interpreter had helped me not flounder on to everyone's discomfort. He had ministered to me. The tables had been turned and the minister had become the ministee. This sort of thing happens to me from time to time. It is one of the main reasons I keep liking my job. I go to places to do things for people but, unexpectedly, something is done for me. I don't think I solicit these acts of simple kindness; but they happen. They happen because the people who do them have a caring feeling for others; and, although they may be in difficulty or discomfort themselves, they are sensitive to the discomforts of others and want to ameliorate them. They are as ready to minister as to be ministered to. What do such people have that others don’t? How can they make something positive and glowing out of situations when the rest of us feel ourselves at a loss? They have something that fills in blanks that stymie others. You know, people are gregarious; but they seek out religious communities or other similar groups for more than just to be around other people. That's part of the purpose, of course, but, on another level, they are there to get help for themselves when they are troubled or weary or hurting. Many people, especially us religious liberals, don't bother even to look for a religious community until we are troubled, weary, or hurting. Being strong, self-reliant types, we may tell ourselves that we only go to our church because its teachings are the same as our beliefs or because it is an effective vehicle for our social concern or our self -expression. However, if we are honest with ourselves, we know that an underlying reason (and, sometimes, the most important reason) is because we expect people there to help us when we need help. When it looks like the group doesn’t give us expected support or kindness, we find it easy to want to withdraw -- like a guy named George I heard of sometime back. It was Sunday morning, the time for the 11 o’clock service was fast approaching, and George was still in bed. His mother called to him, “George, get up. You’ve got to get ready to go to church." George only grumbled, "I don't want to go," and turned over in bed. "Come on, George. You've got to get up. The service starts in half an hour." Again, George grumbled and didn't get up. Exasperated, his mother asked, "Why don't you want to go to church?" George sat upright and complained, "They don't like me there and I don't like them. Besides, the music stinks, the hymns are like dirges, and the sermons are boring. Give me one good reason why I should go." His mother replied, "I'll give you three. They pay your salary. If you don't go, there won't be a sermon. You're the minister." Even ministers sometimes join congregations because of what they want out of it rather than for more mutually confirming reasons. After all, this is what we all have been taught to do. Historically, this has been expected of the church, the temple, or the synagogue. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we come here seeking healing and support. This congregation, like most other religious communities, has a ministry to offer and we expect that ministry, in some way, to benefit us. It is the glory and the strength of both that offer and our expectation that, from time to time, this congregation’s ministry does benefit us -- although not always, and, I suspect, not for everybody, which is why I want to talk about ministry today. To begin to get an idea of what “ministry” implies, let’s look at what we usually mean when we use the word “minister.” When you "minister," the usual thought is that you attend to the wants or comforts or needs of someone else. You serve. This is what we, usually, mean when we speak of ministry: service. Religious groups have roles and offices set up to assure that ministering ("serving") gets done. I fill such an office here. You fill such a role or office whenever you take on responsibilities that have you doing things for one another -- such as planning programs, providing decorations or refreshments for meetings, or visiting the sick or homebound, or working on boards or committees. In a more spontaneous and informal way, we all fill such a serving/ministerial role when we make a point to visit with one another during coffee hour or to reach out to comfort someone who is suffering or depressed. However, for this really to work, so much depends on attitude. We may use altruistic language, suggesting that our religious group is here to serve others, but, too often, the tag (the hook) on the end is that we, ultimately, want the group (the "ministry") to exist to fill our own needs. Unless we remember something basic, the whole project moves from "serving" others to meet their needs to "serving" them so that there will be someone there to meet our needs. This attitude looks altruistic on the outside, but, actually, it is a "self-serving" attitude that can make the whole project spiritless and empty. This is not an unexpected phenomenon. When we start a religious community, or when we join one that is already functioning, it is only human to try to devise a way to satisfy our own wants and to stop there. This is why religious communities often are compared to the drive-through lane at McDonald's. People drive up, get what they want, pay a fee, and go on their way. But, the usualness of the self-serving attitude aside, this is not the way most of us really want it to be. Deep down, not only do we want to be ministered to ourselves but also we really do want other people to be helped when they need help. So, what does it take to make sure that full ministry occurs and is not slanted toward our own self-servingness? The answer sounds simple enough, but it isn't. The answer is to move from serving and being served to intending one another's welfare. This expands the concept of ministry from one of serving to one of sharing. Actually, this doesn't add anything new to the original meaning of the verb "to minister"; but it goes back to the fundamental condition in which serving is possible. Truly to serve is not possible unless we share -- share what we have with someone who needs it. It is taking something from me (my food, my attention, my resources, my effort) and giving it to you. It is you giving such things to me. Fundamentally, that's what ministry is. We may call it service, but, fundamentally, it is sharing. To view ministering to one another as the sharing of mutual resources truly acknowledges that we, each, are members of a larger whole created by our common resolve to care enough for one another that we share with one another what we have -- and are. Such an attitude breathes real spirit and power into the community we compose. This is easy to say but it is not easy to do. Not being able to go beyond serving to sharing is most of what's wrong with our world. It is simple to say "share"; it is quite difficult to do. There is too much suspicion and antipathy in the world for it to be easy. Too many people are like George. If others don't give them what they want, they cease to feel concern for others. The question becomes: Do we have enough faith in people to risk ourselves by sharing our resources (emotional and otherwise) and our effort with them in their need? Do we trust others enough actually to invest our own self in their welfare? If we can't do this for them, how can we expect them to trust and help us? You see why it is easy to say that we can breathe the spirit back into our practice of ministry by going beyond serving to sharing, but it is not easy to do. And yet, that is what we take on ourselves when we set out on a collective religious existence. When we take on the responsibility of creating a religious community, we also take on a difficult kind of reciprocity: the reciprocity that calls for the person being helped also to help the helper. It calls on us not only to serve one another's needs but to intend one another's welfare. Intending one another's welfare goes beyond doing nice things for others so that someone will do nice things for us. It is a very strong and demanding thing to require of us; but it is a bedrock necessity if religious community and ministry are to have integrity. This is what happened for me in that little incident I told you about: when the interpreter made things easier for me. When such reciprocity occurs, a mutual trust and a mutual intending of one another's welfare begins to grow right there! And, as it grows, a bond is established that opens us to a spiritual dynamic that makes us all one body -- members of a larger organism of sympathy and compassion that enables us to be who we are as we help one another. At root this bond enables us to be a healing community that helps us all do a number of things. It provides a safe and supportive place of fellowship that helps us better deal with crises in our lives. It proffers comfort and healing when we encounter the griefs and deaths that inevitably afflict us. It endows us with the opportunity to grow in perspective and integrity by bringing us together as understanding friends. Such mutuality and trust as comes with the reciprocity of which I speak empowers us to meet challenges that we, alone in our singularity, can not even imagine. The challenge facing us is the challenge to give actual flesh to the ideal of sharing ourselves with people so that such a bond -- so that such mutual caring -- will grow. That ideal, like all ideals, probably, is not totally attainable, but its pursuit makes the balance of life tilt toward more of love and the good than toward hostility and evil. If the truth be known, the reason we want to minister to one another is the same reason we want to live, for what is life, after all, but the process of sharing our being with the world and the world sharing its being with us? One of the great pluses I have found about this congregation, in the short time that I have been here, is that there, already, are many people who understand and practice what I have said this morning. To many people here, I am only preaching to the choir because such trust and sharing already exist. Before I close I want to say a few words about this congregation’s Pastoral Care Committee. I have been working closely with this committee these three months that I have been here and have found that they truly do understand that to minister means to share themselves with others. The frequent meetings that I have had with this committee have been some of the most "pastorally productive" meetings I have had in any of the congregations I have served. Here, I have encountered almost innumerable ways in which people share with and help one another. Just to name a few ways, I have found people who prepare meals for others in difficulty, do grocery shopping with and for them, telephone and visit homebound persons, provide in-house companionship for caregivers, provide transportation for others to their doctor appointments and on and on. I hope many of you will be present next Wednesday night when this committee will speak more specifically to its purpose and activities, as well as to what members here do for one another. Also, it may give you some notions about things that are happening here in pastoral care that will come to fruition in the coming months and years. The shift of this congregation from a pastoral to a program congregation necessitates some refining of pastoral activities that should make those activities even more beneficial and effective than ever. Besides, considering the public trauma of the General Election, wouldn’t it be a good idea to get to know persons who want to comfort you so that you can comfort them in return? Actually, the Pastoral Care Committee is only one instance of how many in this congregation care enough to want to share with others. Many persons here are deeply involved out in the local and the world community in activities and projects that seek to heal and to help those in need. One specific activity has been mentioned in the announcements today: the Women’s Resource Center Toy Shopping and Wrapping project in which this congregation collects money for children and parents to provide toys for children and gifts for their mothers this Christmas. Please stop by the display next to the coffee and look into this project more fully before you leave. And now, finally, to conclude. The punch line this morning is: if we would make this religious enterprise mean the most to us, we will all be ministers to one another. We will intend one another's welfare. We will share what we can. Then, our mutual bond of being shall grow. We know in our hearts that we are here to be members -- helping members -- of one another. May this goal be ever stronger in our minds and hearts that it will become ever more real in our acts. |