Sermon at St. Thomas by Lynn E. Cunningham

April 22, 2007, Easter 3.

Acts 9:1-19; Revelation, John 21:1-14

1.         The trouble with actually dying is that it can seriously crimp belief in eternal life.

2.         I have been trying to deal with my eldest brother, Jay’s, grave illness these past two weeks. In all this I realized just how much of a partnership exists between the interior prayer life and the supporting institutions, like hospitals and churches, in times of crisis. The Gospel lesson today confirms the Holy Spirit’s work during the kind of emotional crisis brought on by severe illness and dying. I pray my words today offer encouragement for everyone facing family illnesses and crises in this parish.

3.         This past week I spent most of my time over in Las Vegas amongst the gambling casinos, and flashy cars carrying people to card games and roulette. But no, I have not slipped over totally into the life of sin. Instead, I was visiting in the hospital with my oldest brother, Jay.

4.         Jay has had a series medical issues, and these past two weeks, his heart started giving out on him completely. Instead of entertaining myself with the electronic gambling machines at Bellagio’s casino, I was in the cardiac intensive care unit watching a very different kind of roulette play out on electronic screens, with numbers showing pulse rates, respiration rates, blood pressure, and medication drip rates. Jay is about ten years older than I am. We were with our middle brother, Robert, and Jay’s two grown daughters, Laura and Margot and their husbands. Instead of enjoying fancy perfumes, and the company of high stakes gamblers, we were smelling the antiseptic smells of hospital rooms, and engaging in the kind of high stakes gambling played by the cardiac doctors and nurses. Maybe this is a terrible metaphor, but it is safe to say that we kept trying to avoid cashing in the chips before the game was over.

5.         We were alternating between tears and grieving, between listening to the medical people give us an excruciatingly detailed course in cardiology and wondering what had really gone wrong. Jay was, and is, either going to die right away, or he might live on for many more weeks. Every solution offered by the medical people seemed a gamble with his quality of life. We were looking to the medical people to interpret all the machines and gizmo’s and numbers flashing on the screens attached to him.

6.         The medical people, on the other hand, were looking to us, the family, to find out how aggressively to treat Jay’s condition.

7.         At one point we all met with a senior physician, an experienced cardiologist, and he remarked almost in passing that in situations like this, there are really two parallel treatment processes going on. One parallel lies with the medical care-giving team, the other is the action of family around the patient. Ideally the two parallels work in harmony.

            a.         First, the doctors and nurses, and the whole hospital is doing what it can to treat the patient.

            b.         But second, the patient, the family and friends of the patient pitch in to help nurse him along, and to help the medical team make the hard decisions, the bets if you will, on what type of treatment to give and when.

8.         As each day in the hospital progressed, Jay, the family, and the medical people faced a series of decisions about what course of treatment, and what course of action to take next. Every question brought up for me the image that we were in the gambling capital of the country. Lots of things in life, it seemed, besides slot machines and poker tables can be a gamble. What or who was guiding the outcome of our bets, in this game with life and death as the stakes?

9.         Then I went to church on Sunday morning with brother Robert. I realized that hospitals are not the only settings where an institution serves to surround and support an individual’s personal work of healing. We attended Christ Episcopal Church a few blocks from the hospital, and found ourselves amidst a large, lively, and prayerful congregation, participating in a regular Rite II Eucharist. A large choir supported the worship with elaborate music, which left me a little jealous for St. Thomas and our need for a choir. The service was both alien to me, because everyone else there was a stranger, but also deeply familiar and supportive of me and my brother in our sheer grief. Las Vegas it turns out does in fact have more to offer than gambling. Unlike in casino gambling, I felt strongly that the Holy Spirit was guiding the outcome of the service. I came in knowing how the service was going to end before it even started.

10.       The words of the senior cardiologist came to me after the church service. The liturgy really involved two processes going on in parallel, similar to the two parallel processes involved at the hospital.

            a.         First, the professionalism and formalism of the worship was necessary to give me space to connect with the holy in a formal, corporate, and highly traditional way.

            b.         Second, the ritual of worship would not have worked for me and the other worshipers, if they were not engaged, as I am in my own prayer life, my own interior journey in the Spirit.

11.       Both in the medical hospital setting, and in the religious, church setting, an institution complimented and supported the informal, personal, individual work of healing. And the reverse was true. The work of the hospital and medical people, or the church could not function well unless the individuals involved were genuinely engaged in their own efforts to heal.

            a.         I just note that there is a similar connection in the world of law, where our country’s legal system is a backdrop to each person’s individual sense of what is fair, and just, and right.

12.       I got the feeling, both with the medical staff, and the church clergy, that the work of healing was not going to come about unless everybody involved was really trying to make this thing work.

            a.         The senior cardiologist said that he has met with families in the hospital coming to be with a sick family member, yet who just stood by passively and left things to the medical people to make all the tough decisions, with no input from the family.

            b.         Similarly, I have been told that professional gamblers who are really playing to win and make some money, put their most fierce attention into the game, count every card, and make only bets they know will have a good chance of winning. Professional gamblers do not just relax and play for the fun of the game.

            c.         In effect, the senior cardiologist was saying, many people come into the hospital or into church and think all they have to do is sit idly by inattentively and hope for the best. They are like gamblers playing for just the pleasure of the game.

13.       So, if I understand the distinction, a person can come into a casino, or a church, or a hospital and engage to win, or they can join in passively.

14.       What attitude have you brought with you into church this morning? I am strongly aware that my experience these past few days with my own family are much like what many are going through in St. Thomas and in Dubois right now with family and friends.

15.       Peter and the disciples were clearly playing to succeed with Jesus. They had thrown their lot in with him. They had left everything, their families, their livelihoods, their sense of security to come and follow him. I suppose in Las Vegas terms, they were high stakes rollers.

16.       Then, on Good Friday, they thought they had lost everything. Jesus was put to death. They were left to go back to their homes with nothing to show for their gamble except some fond memories.

17.       Or, so they thought.

18.       You see, I do not think God actually gambles with people’s lives. And, God does not want his children to gamble with their lives either. God has given us hospitals and churches, and other supports to help us find our way to eternal life. And it is up to us to come into the most dire, life threatening situations expecting to find eternal life, and to use these institutions actively to help us get there. Always play to win, if you will, eternal life.

19.       This morning’s gospel passage is one of the times when Jesus showed himself after the Resurrection to the disciples. The game, the gamble, was in fact not over for them as they had thought on Good Friday. They were not the big losers they thought they were.

20.       Jesus was showing them, that with the Holy One, there are to be no losers. In fact, the life of faith, the life in the spirit is not even about gambling. Standing always ready to be fed the daily bread of life is how this game is to be played. Listening for Jesus to point out where is the right place to fish for eternal life, is how the game is to be played.

21.       Can you and I walk into a hospital and see numbers spelling out death for a friend, and remember that this not fundamentally a gamble? The casinos have got it all wrong, unless you just want some pleasure. Even the closeness of physical death is just another pathway to the Lord and to eternal life. That is the message of this sermon. That is the message of this gospel. That is the message of this church today.

22.       In Jesus name. Amen