Edith Whitney at 102
My grandmother died almost two weeks ago now at 102, and I now have the bittersweet task of officiating at her memorial service. My grandmother didn’t have an easy life. As a polio survivor, her reaction time was slow and her sense of balance was unreliable. She lived with a lot of pain at various points in her life. But her faith kept her going.
Sometimes as a pastor, I find myself trying to package the good news of the gospel in ways that people can hear it. So many words we use have been co-opted or redefined in ways that turn them into bad news. But the truth can be so very simple. My grandmother made it simple. In a journal my sister gave her there was a place to fill in “something I would like you to know about me.” Here’s what she led with:
I found Jesus. Without Him, life would have no meaning. Someday He will come for me and I will go to my real home. Don’t grieve for me, but rejoice for I will now be happy. No more pain, tears nor handicaps.
It was so simple for her. She never doubted that she would step out of this life and into the waiting arms of the Lord when her day came. Now it has come. We will shed our tears because there is a hole now in the place she held in our lives. But she is now free. Her pain is gone. Her tears have been wiped away. I can be happy for her and miss her terribly at the same time.
Please pray for me as I lead the memorial service this Saturday. It is an honor but also a difficult task.
The word pastor comes from our job as shepherds. Of course, Jesus is the real shepherd, but we pastors try our best to represent him well as we seek to care for his flock. Jesus taught us that he’s the kind of shepherd who cares if a single sheep goes astray and wanders into danger, away from the flock (Luke 15:3-7). But it turns out that being that kind of shepherd hurts a lot.
Right now in our church, we have people hurting, someone dying, people grieving (including me and my family for the loss of my grandma), people struggling to make it financially, people in difficult relationships, people with ongoing health problems and pain… Lots of stuff. And I’m finding it harder to handle than it ws five years ago. The thing is that these aren’t just “people I know.” They’re friends and part of my church family. When your family is suffering, you hurt too.
Now the trick to dealing with all of this is to realize that I am not really the shepherd. I can reach out, but I can’t heal people’s pain. Only the real shepherd, Jesus himself, can do that. I try to offer my hurting friends and family to Jesus for his care. But he hasn’t made me of stone so it hurts along the way.
Even Jesus himself cried, so I know that I’m not doing it wrong. People teach “detachment” and “strong boundaries,” but if they keep us from loving and connecting with people, they’re not from God. Still, even Jesus had to face situations in which people he loved wouldn’t receive him (e.g., Mark 10:17-22)
I’m hurting right now, but only because I’ve allowed myself to care about people. I do not believe that a life free of pain because it’s free of caring is worthy of a Christian – particularly a pastor. Pain comes with the job and so does joy, in its season.
Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of my first day as pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church. I can still clearly remember talking to the pastor nominating committee at my face-to-face interview with them back in 2003. After they asked me their questions, I asked them a few, including what would you to see happen in the next 5 to 10 years. Now that’s a pretty safe sandbox to play in, right? Five to 10 years is a long way out. You can really dream. And they did.
They started with some basic, practical ideas. We’d like to have some younger people in the church. We’d like to be able to meet our current budget. (They church was a long way from that back in 2003 and was using a bequest to make up the shortfall.) We need a new generation of leaders. Then the big dreams started – we’d like to have an associate pastor. We need a new church building – but let’s keep the existing one too.
Everyone was excited about those ideas then. But it hadn’t occurred to me that part of the reason dreaming is fun is that the dream is not going to become real. You don’t have to deal with the details, the scary parts, or what you might lose if the dream came true…
What’s happened at our church is that it looks like we will actually need a larger space in the not-so-distant future. What will we do? Dreams are a lot of fun. Solving real space, staffing, and budget problems is real work! Our church leadership will have to be very careful to bring along the whole congregation as we work toward being the church we’re called to be!
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