By Andrew Gerns
As I write this, I am finishing up my annual Advent & Christmas trip around boundaries of the parish. Like many priests and deacons in all kinds of places, I have been going around bringing communion to the home-bound members of the parish. The Sunday after Christmas, lay people will fan out across this same parish taking with them the poinsettias that at the moment adorn our chancel.
There is a strange dance that happens in preparation for this trek: some people eagerly welcome my arrival, some resist; some are glad, some are hesitant. I have been here long enough to know which person will welcome my call, who will be polite, and who will call the ‘morning of’ and tell me that they cannot receive me and that they will call me when they can.
Here is the funny part: they will gladly accept the flower and, like the disciples that Jesus sent out in pairs, the people who bring them will come back chattering excitedly at having been received and how appreciated the flowers were and what a wonderful conversation they had. It is a strange dance. I will accept the plant but not the sacrament. I will welcome a mom and her daughter bearing a poinsettia but not the priest, deacon or lay Eucharistic minister bringing the sacrament.
As the Orthodox might say: It is a Great Holy Mystery!
It’s a mystery I’ve contemplated my whole ordained ministry both in parishes and as a chaplain. In the hospital world, it was a constant battle to get admissions registrars to routinely ask patients for the “religious preference” of patients. (This always struck me as a strange way to phrase it. All I can think is ‘Well right now I am mad at the Episcopal Church so today I prefer….Buddhist…or some profitable cult.’ Why not simply ask “Do you go to a church, synagogue or mosque? Would you like us to call them?”) When they did ask ‘the question’, usually about 33% of patients would offer “no preference” or if they had one would not permit us to tell their pastors that they were in the hospital. And yet….when we chaplains would visit these same people, we found that not only was there an often rich spiritual story and that very many of them were, at least tangentially, connected to a community of faith. Often they would tell us that just didn’t want to “bother” the pastor.
The mystery, my dear Watson, is this: why is there such a disconnect between the initial question and ultimate response? The answer is elemental but not simple.
I am not sure how, but I think that this pattern is connected to another pattern that we chaplains could nearly always count on: that the really good conversations rarely began until after the “closing” prayer has been said. Sometimes this occurred because of the need of the patient and chaplain to clear away the religious agenda. That having been done, real relationship can happen.
More often, though, I have come to believe that prayer is a more effective opening of the heart than mere conversation. The pastors, clergy, lay visitors and chaplains who come in solely to dispense a sacrament or a ritual or a scripted word of comfort and then leave as soon as their token is confected are missing out on something: that the strange combination of silence, listening and symbols have power to unlock a person’s soul. One only needs to be quiet and wait.
People are protective of their souls. And well they should be. There are thousands of reasons why a person may not want to open, or even be conscious of, what’s going on in there. It may feel like something rolling and sloshing inside us that we can barely contain. If we open up that space, even for a second, then who knows what may come out?
It is not good to pester people even in the guise of being pastoral. I believe that pastoral caregivers should respect a person’s choice to receive or not receive pastoral care, and that is true both in the parish as well as in the hospital. I also don’t believe that we should paint ourselves into corners.
My personal inclination to take people at their word when they say “not now.” But then the task becomes listening around the edges for the other ways they communicate their concern. Like the other day, a person going through a particularly rough out-patient course of treatment is pretty evasive when I want to initiate a visit, but she always manages to “drop in” at the office on some kind of errand and just happens to mention to the parish secretary what is going on in her treatment. And when that happens, I have learned to smile, nod and then about 24 hours later make a phone call that sounds like a check in but is subtitled “Roger, tower, message received.” The trick is not to get anxious about either their choices or the possibility of my inaccurate perception. Checking in every now and then may be all that’s required.
It may be that the initial hesitation may be nothing more than a bushel covering a light. Here’s the challenge: it is usually not for me to rip away the bushel because in my impatience I might snuff out the candle. Maybe it is enough that the person tips back their own bushel just enough to let me see the light leak out just for a second. Not all of us are ready to turn those bushels into lamp-stands.
Which brings me back to the Great Holy Mystery. Why is it that the average person, the average believer, doesn’t tell the admissions clerk about their faith community? Why do some shut-ins and sick parishioners hide their ailments from their priests and deacons? Why do parishes search committees insist on calling “pastoral” priests, as long as they are “pastoral” with someone else? I believe it is because they are, on some non-verbal level, deeply aware of what’s going on—and are terrified to go there. It is all we can do to manage this physical ailment, the personal problem or whatever it is that’s pre-occupying us right now. Let’s not complicate things, okay?
So why persist? Why bother calling a person to ask them if they would like my visit and Christmas (or Easter or just “plain old”) Communion when I know they will say “let me call you when I am ready” and seem never to be ready? Well, for one thing, the request itself is holy. It is a small, momentary reminder that God and God’s people have not forgotten this person and even if the request doesn’t go anywhere, it is good to be remembered. And that’s why it’s okay that people might take the plant and not the priest, because something holy is happening there, too.
Maybe they want to just see me and not my communion kit. Maybe just checking in is enough.
Besides, you never know, they might say “yes.” Something might cause them to break through their functional fear and put aside their hesitation. If they do accept the invitation and if everything goes right and if God shows up (and God always does) then maybe something good will happen. Something mysterious. Something holy.
The Rev. Canon Andrew T. Gerns is Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, Pennsylvania, chair of the Evangelism Commission of the Diocese of Bethlehem, and keeper of the blog “AndrewPlus: Fun ‘n’ Games in the Kingdom of God.”