The 2nd Sunday after Pentecost
June 6, 2010

Sermon by; Thomas Graf

I must admit that as I reflected on the readings for today…right up until yesterday morning…I wasn’t getting “GOOD FEELINGS”… There just seemed to be this TREMENDOUS PREOCCUPATION with DEATH/DYING------with Paul’s Conversion SANDWICHED in between…

So………….I went swimming……..I am now swimming laps in the pool…..Maybe it was the DIVING IN…or maybe the RYTHMATIC BACK AND FORTH that washed over me…..But…..YES!!!....DEATH and DYING THAT IS IT!!!!! There was no getting away from the reality that that this was indeed what I needed to center on for my reflections.

AFTER ALL:
-Isn’t that what we all begin to do right after we are born?
-Everyone one of us!!!
-No one can escape it!
-Even those in today’s readings who were miraculously brought back from the dead… had to EVENTUALLY face their own death….the only one not----JESUS!

WHAT IS OUR PROBLEM WITH DEATH/DYING?
WITH OUR EXPERIENCE OF LOSS?

As I continued with my RYTHMATIC back and forth and the water continued to wash over me…I had flashbacks to my earliest experiences of death…

--My best friend Steven Gemel---in the first grade. His father owned the German Delicatessen in front of our apartment building in the Bronx. Oh what delicious German Potato Salad, Weiner schnitzel, apple streusel, etc. Steven and I were BEST FRIENDS… we did everything together. One day we were playing ball, and the ball rolled under a truck. Steven went under and all of a sudden the truck began to roll back..next thing I knew an ambulance was there, and Steven was taken to the hospital…and he never came back.

--A year later my GRANDPA got real sick (I would learn later that he had TUBERCULOSIS—and years later still, what that meant.) all I knew was that he too was taken to the hospital…and never came back.

--Several years later…I was then old enough to be an altar server…my Uncle Joe got real sick…he too was taken to a hospital, and never came back…

As time went on…I couldn’t seem to understand why I had this fear of hospitals…DUH?
When I entered the seminary..our first year we had to do BASIC MINISTRY PRACTICUM. I decided that it was time to deal with this fear, and I picked a hospital… Little Company of Mary in Chicago. In addition to this, I picked the ONCOLOGY FLOOR—I guess I was a glutton for punishment. Actually, I picked that floor because of the supervisor—Sr. Peg Schneider-who would later become my spiritual director. The program was very intense, and we had peer group meetings to discuss our experiences. What I came to acknowledge was that…

KEY PEOPLE I LOVED were taken to hospitals and NEVER CAME BACK…

I had to get over this fear of hospitals by facing my fears and moving forward---PROCESSING!

PROCESSING IS KEY!!

I recently represented our Hospice Program at a conference on HOSPICE & PALLIATIVE CARE. The KEYNOTE SPEAKER was the son of ELIZABETH KUBLER ROSS. The person who wrote the book on DEATH & DYING.

She was famous for her development of the theory of how people process such experiences:
--DENIAL—“I feel fine” “This can’t be happening to me”
--ANGER--- “Why me” It’s not fair” “Who is to blame”
--BARGAINING—“Just let me live until--------“
--DEPRESSION—The certainty of death begins to sink in.
--ACCEPTANCE—Begins to come to terms with immortality.

Originally Kubler Ross applied these stages to people suffering from terminal illness. LATER---to ANY FORM OF PERSONAL LOSS: job, income, freedom
Maybe to also include SIGNIFICANT LIFE EVENTS: death of a loved one, divorce, addictions, chronic illness, infertility, tragedies, disasters (WHAT ABOUT THE GULF?—are we PROCESSING these stages?)

DYING is something human beings do continuously…not just at the end of our physical lives here on earth. HOW DO WE PROCESS????

OUR READINGS TODAY:
1 Kings: While certainly a WONDERFUL miracle story… there is much more to it. We have to remember that Elijah was a PROHPET to a particular people at a specific time period. ISRAEL had been EXILED…and was returning. That the Lord’s word can bring life from death was a message of immediate and hopeful relevance for the Exilic period.
BUT…..they would have to PROCESS!!!

Psalm 30: THANKSGIVING… PSALM of gratitude for a sudden, perhaps miraculous cure of a sick person. We need this Psalm in order to DISCOVER Prayer and God’s presence in the midst of our QUESTIONS and COMPLAINTS… HOW DO WE PROCESS??

GALATIANS: Paul’s CONVERSION---whatever the way in which Christ BROKE THROUGH to him, it is quite clear that the INWARD EFFECT worked in PAUL was both PERSONALLY WRENCHING and DISORIENTING---He had to PROCESS!!!
Usually CONVERSION is from BAD TO GOOD, from ONE RELIGION/DENOMINATION to another. PAUL was not BAD---good Jewish leader.
Also, Christians at that time in history were still seen as members of the Jewish Community

Yet, Paul’s EXPERIENCE can properly be called a CONVERSION only in the DEEPER SENSE of a PSYCHIC or SPIRITUAL CONVERSION. It was a STARTLING change of perspective which required tearing down the whole value system he had previously built up and CONSTRUCTING a new set of VALUES & SOCIAL PATTERNS based on his NEW CONVICTION that Jesus of Nazareth is INDEED CHRIST THE LORD.

PROCESS IS INTEGRAL!!!

KUBLER ROSS was a PIONEER in the field of studying/understanding/being with people in the PROCESS of DEATH/DYING.

She is quoted as saying:
According to my parents I was supposed to have been a nice-church going Swiss housewife. Instead I ended up an OPINIATED Psychiatrist, author and lecturer in the American Southwest, who communicates with spirits from a world that I believe is far more loving and glorious than our own. I think modern medicine has become a like a prophet offering a life free of pain. It is nonsense. The only thing I know that truly heals people is UNCONDITIONAL LOVE!!!

After a series of strokes that left her completely dependent upon others:

“the only benefit to making such a slow approach to life’s final passage has been the time it offers for contemplation. I suppose it is appropriate that after counseling so many dying patients I should have time to reflect on death now that the one I face is my own. There is poetry to it, a slight tension, like the pause in a courtroom drama where the defendant is given the chance to confess. Fortunately, I have nothing new to admit. My death will come to me like a warm embrace. As I have always said, life in the form of a physical body is a very short span of one’s total existence.”

Life can be WONDERFUL/GLORIOIUS, yet…we know of the reality of SUFFERING, LOSS and DEATH.

From the point of BIRTH…immediately after our eyes open and we take that first breath….we experience SUFFERING…WE CRY… (Some LOUDER than others) and we BEGIN the PROCESS…..THE JOURNEY….(Oh how WONDERFUL might it be to SLIP back into that SAFE…SECURE…UNCOMPLICATED WORLD—Before Birth… (Maybe that’s why I enjoy swimming so much???)

Yet, we have that Security/Safety at our fingertips….but…we need people to show us..
--As did Elizabeth Kubler Ross
--As did the Prophets, Apostles, etc.
--As KEY PEOPLE have done…who have touched our lives.
--As we see these LOVING/CARING individuals before us today (The Daughters of the King)
--Most Important…Jesus the Christ!!!

Shortly we will sing that WONDERFUL hymn---LIFT HIGH THE CROSS—
I as you to LISTEN now to the words of this hymn---words that can assist us with the PROCESS…………….

(Read Lift High the Cross)