EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2017 I began a new venture as a synodically authorized minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. The ride over the past 2.5 years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on Oct. 21, 2018.
Last night, Shelley and I attended a play called “The Laramie Project” at the Fargo Moorhead Community Theater.
For those who are unfamiliar with “The Laramie Project,” the play tells the story of 21-year-old Matthew Sheppard, a young man who in 1998 was beaten, tied to a fence, tortured and left for dead on the outskirts of Laramie by two other young Wyoming men. … And they did this heinous crime because Matthew was gay.
I’m sure that many of you will remember the case, as it shock the world. … And that is no understatement.
The play tells the story, from the events leading up to the murder … to the trial after the murder … from the vantage points of about two dozen people who lived in Laramie at the time of the killing. Locals, police officials, pastors, friends of both the victim and the killers, and many more. … It’s a gut-wrenching performance to watch.
And right at the pinnacle of the drama last night, my phone starts buzzing in my pocket.
Not just buzzing, but blowing up, which I believe is the popular term nowadays. … It would not stop vibrating, which means I was receiving many messages of some kind.
Some of you may think, well that’s silly, why didn’t you just turn it off before the show. … Well, circumstances being what they are in our crazy life right now, I can’t just shut off my phone off because when it goes off 1.) It could be one of our kids. 2.) It could be a call related to the church. 3.) It could be a message from the hospital … or 4.) It could be from the newspaper, where it’s not uncommon to receive messages at night when things go wrong.
Anyway, so I quietly sneaked the phone out of my pocket and took a quick peek at what was happening. As it turned out, it was none of those things I normally worry about. … But I’ll explain more later.
For now, I’d like to step back one week earlier to last Sunday night, during another of my CPE shifts at the new Sanford Hospital. … As you know, on Sundays, after church, I head to Sanford to work one of my two clinical shifts a week as an on-duty chaplain.
And, I probably don’t have to tell you that in the course of chaplain work, you get called into some of the most tragic and heartbreaking moments of people’s lives.
And last Sunday night was one of those nights.
It all started in the early afternoon. … I received a page from a nurse on the fifth floor who informed me that there were some folks who were asking for me to help arrange a visit by a priest to perform an anointing of the sick on their loved one. … For those not very familiar with the Catholic faith, this is the ritual that priest performs when a person is likely dying.
This family was in the early stages of having to decide whether to remove the comfort cares that were most likely keeping their loved one alive. And to be sure that they were right with their loved one’s faith, they wanted the priest to come anoint her while they still had the chance. But in those cases, we on-duty chaplains still work with the families until the priests get there.
But it just so happened that not 30 minutes later, I received another page from another nurse on the same floor regarding another family who was struggling with the same issue: Their loved one was also dying, and the family was having to decide whether to remove the comfort cares likely keeping their loved one alive, as well.
Now, what both of these cases had in common is that neither of the patients had completed an advanced care plan -- or a living will as some call it. It’s a document that tells loved ones and medical staff what kind of medical care a person wants in case they can no longer speak for themselves.
And so, in each of these cases, loved ones were left to struggle with a literal life and death decision to make. … And that was why I was called in. … Nurses had called me in to both situations to help the families cope with the decisions they had to make.
And that is how I spent the rest of that Sunday evening. Essentially for about 5 hours I went from one of those rooms to the other, listening to family members agonize over the decisions they had to make.
And just as the family in one room would exhaust themselves from talking and need some space, I would head over to the other room and repeat the entire process again. … And this went on until 9 p.m.
It was gut-wrenching work, and I was just the one listening. I can’t imagine having been in the families’ shoes. … But as the evening wore on, the events took their toll on me. … As you can imagine, there is an emotional price to pay when you listen to family members whose hearts are being broken for hours at a time.
And so that was the context to the night. … Back and forth. … Counsel and console. … Grieve and support. … Two rooms. Two families. Two very difficult decisions of whether to remove loved ones from the machines that were keeping them alive. … By about 8:30 p.m., my mind was numb.
And it was in that state that I rounded the corner of the hallway one more time, to head back to the other rooms, when it happened.
Out of the blue, a baby’s lullaby came through the hospital’s speakers over head. … You see, it is Sanford’s tradition that when a baby is born, they play the lullaby over the loudspeakers so that everyone in the hospital knows that another new life has entered the world.
Now, on many days when the lullaby plays, it’s simply background noise to me. … But not on this night. I was mid-stride when the lullaby started playing, and it immediately stopped me in my tracks. … Honestly. … I stopped right there in the middle of the hospital corridor and listened to the entirety of the song. I felt compelled to.
And there couldn’t have been a more beautiful song to hear that night. … In fact, any of the world’s most beautiful songs would have fallen short of the lullaby that night. … To me, that lullaby signaled that even though I was helping two families through one of the most difficult periods of their lives, that there were still things in this life to be hopeful about.
Yes, there were two families who were struggling that night with having to make terrible decisions. But on another floor of the hospital, at that very moment, God also was bringing new life into the world. … And he used that song to reinvigorate my spirit at a time when two families critically needed me.
As I stood there for those brief seconds, waiting for the song to pass, the most crucial lesson that I’ve taken away from the past two months of clinicals came back to me. And that lesson is: That there is always hope. … That even in the midst of the most soul-crushing experiences, we must look to find the hope. … And if we are willing to look, God will show it to us.
I know that that likely sounds rather elementary coming from a Lutheran pastor, right? … Because, after all, isn’t hope the central defining character of the Christian faith?
Yes, it most certainly is. … But in the moments when you are bouncing back and forth between two rooms where two families are having to make awful decisions, there is always the temptation to lose hope … even as a chaplain.
But in that surprise moment, as I stood there in that hospital hallway, listening to the tune that told me that God was bringing another child into this often broken and messy -- but beautiful -- world, my hope was restored. … And so was my spirit, and I found myself moving toward that next room with a renewed faith that I could be of some service to these folks.
It took that beautiful little lullaby and just the right moment to remind me what the previous eight weeks of clinicals had been teaching me: That in the moments where people are experiencing their worst, help them find the hope. … Help them find the light in a world that can be so absolutely dark. … Always look for the hope. … The hope of Christ’s renewal. ... The hope that Christ’s resurrection brings us as Christians.
Oh, and yeah … I almost forgot. … Those text messages that were blowing up my phone last night? … The texts that were arriving just as the play was portraying the confession of Matthew Sheppard’s killer, and a scene about a pastor on the courthouse lawn condemning Matthew for being gay and essentially declaring that he deserved to be killed.
Two brutal scenes back-to-back that were crushing my soul, and making me wonder about the depths of our human darkness. … Remember it’s been a long couple of weeks.
Right in the midst of that darkness, came another lullaby. … Those text messages coming in on my phone were notifications that my oldest and dearest and closest friend had just become a father for the first time. … At age 44, and after years of trying, he and his wife were celebrating the birth of their first child, and he was sharing the good news with me. … Hope in the midst of devastation. … Light in midst of darkness. … A lullaby like no other.
This is what my CPE experience is reinforcing for me. … We are a people formed in hope, and even in the darkest times God promises to be the light.
And this is the Good News for this Sunday. … Amen.
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