Sermon by Rev. Len DeRoche
Life Lines
Just over a
week ago I
married a person who was raised in this church, on
Tuesday Connor Patrick Deacon was born to two members
of this parish, on Wednesday a person very close to a
member of this church whose flowers you see were at
his funeral died, today we dedicated Kristopher.
All these transitions in our lives cause us to rely
on resources within and beyond ourselves.
These resources are lifelines. For the most part
we are not in charge of neither our beginning nor our
end. Between birth and death very little of our
lives are really a function of anything we do or
say. Even love which causes us to form
relationships is not as much our actions as those
fates which seem to act on us. The Greeks even
personified these happenings and made them the
province of the Fates, something out of our hands and
into the hands of the Fates. What is in our
hands is how we deal with these fortunes?
In my last job I was a Chaplain at a major
hospital. We chaplains were thrown at patients
and families as lifelines to help them cope with some
of those fortunes which were placed in their
lives. And in many ways we were the lines, but
we weren't the buoys. During emergencies that
came into the ER we were there to be with the patients
or their families when the medics were doing
everything they could to correct, maintain, or help in
the medical emergency. The person or family we
were with looked to us for support and yet I found we
did not have much which we could do to give anyone
anything which they didn't without us. Many
times I felt impotent, especially for many of those
physical problems which these people faced. And
my feeling of impotence was real. I quickly came
to realize I could never hope to bring any resources
in the form of hope or spiritual comfort that my
patients needed. What I found I could bring to
my patients was the knowledge that whatever they
needed had to be found within themselves, within their
own lives. Not everyone had what needed and some
seemed to have more than they could possibly
need. These are life lines.
In the
passage that Jim read Forrest church mentions for a
life line to be secure there are two things necessary,
self-acceptance and forgiveness. For
self-acceptance to be present we must accept within
our hearts that whatever resource we use we must
personal accept as an anchor. Like if we throw a
lifeline to a drowning person if we don't secure it to
the shore it is of no use. You cannot pull
yourself to security if the line is not attached to
something you personally value. It would like
throwing a line that is only loosely draped over a
rail. It is just going to pull the line into the
water when we pull on it. Likewise if we secure
a line to an object that is not very secure itself
that object will just get pulled into the water with
the rope. This could be analogous a codependent
situation where a person is using a resource of
another person who are themselves dependent on the
drowning person. Neither party is safe.
The other necessary element is forgiveness. We
are all flawed and if we dwell on our flaws or the
flaws of another neither ourselves nor another person
or organization can be of any help when we need the
support of the lifeline. Like this church it can
only be a support for us when we see its strengths and
not its weaknesses.
Two of those
incidents from my work in hospital I would like to
share with you that can substantiate this. The
first was a young man who was driving a van containing
lots of flammable containers. He was in a bad
accident on one of the freeways around Chicago.
The containers burst and the fire department had to
extract him from an inferno inside the vehicle.
I met him in the Burn Unit where he was being cared
for. His burns were extensive, over 70 percent
of his body. They had him on all kinds of life
support and he had lost both is hands and during the
two weeks he was alive he kept loosing more of his
legs. His family became my charge. He was
divorced and had a 14 year old daughter that came in
from Indiana to see him. For the past two years
she had not seen him because he was not making his
required support payments. She couldn't bring herself
to go into the Intensive Care Unit. He had
estranged himself from his daughter. I talked to
her for hours but she could not remember anything but
pain associated with her father. He had
abandoned her and she had no lifeline of positive
memories that she could fall back on. She is in pain
and could never forgive his leaving of her. It
wasn't the support that was important to her but his
betrayal of her that wouldn't leave her mind.
Now it was too late she couldn't forgive him and never
did reconcile the relationship. The man's mother
came to the hospital too and they hadn't seen each
other in years also. When he died none of his
family had reconciled themselves to his actions.
They could not forgive him and they had no lifeline in
his memory to help them through the trauma. I
felt hopeless to help any of the family with their
coming to closure with his death.
The other
incident was just as tragic. This came into the
hospital in the emergency room. A mother with a
two year old daughter and her aunt were waiting for a
bus at the bus stop on the corner of their
street. The daughter was holding on to the
aunt's wheelchair and a tractor trailer cut the corner
too sharp and pulled the wheel chaired aunt and two
year old under the back wheels. They brought the
mother and the little girl into our hospital and the
Aunt was taken to Cook County. While the girl
was being worked on in the ER. I took the mother
into a family consult room. We prayed some and I
ran back and forth to the ER. It did not look
good. Over the 45 minutes that they worked on
the little girl more and more of the friends would
show up. The family and friends did more for the
mother than I could hope to and when the doctor
finally came into the room to deliver the bad news
there must have been 15 or 20 people present.
The mother and some others were over come with
grief. The mother physically collapsed. I
stayed in the room with the group for another couple
hours before they had the little girl in a room that
we could all visit her and I conducted a small service
with the extended family. During those two hours
they friends did more ministering to the mother and
other relatives than I capable. One friend even
said that it was God's Will. This, I felt, was a
horrific thought, but it seemed to help the family.
I cannot
imagine how any parent could ever adjust to the loss
of a child, especially under such a terrible
situation, but after the service they all left the
hospital supporting each other and remembering the
wonderful things the little girl had brought to the
world. I felt I knew those four hours had
changed this family's life forever, but I felt they
had the resources to go on. It was not anything
that I brought into that room that helped. Their
community and their sense of God were lifelines that
this family fell back on. They had the
self-acceptance that their God and their community
would support them and it did.
In both these
stories both families met their darkest hours of the
Fates without having any control over the
events. It made me realize that much of want
really matters is beyond our control. And as
much as I would like to control my life I can't.
As much as I would like to avoid those traumas
associated with life; sickness, age, accidents or
death, I can't. But those things that I need to
help me cope with life I have the within my ability to
cultivate or not.
In the four
occurrences I mentioned at the beginning of this
sermon; the wedding, the birth, the death and the
dedication, there is one common thread that forms the
life line. This is community. The wedding
solemnizes the love two people have for each other in
the company of family and friends. The birth of Conner
became a more joyous event when it was shared when
Jeff and Addie put Conner's picture on their computer
and sent it out on the e-mail. The funeral of
Howard was a sharing of the tales of his life with
those he had shared his life with, his family and
friends. Christopher's parents chose to share
his dedication with this community and his family.
This is building lifelines and our greatest life lines
are each other.
In an ever
evolving and never ending world. Amen.
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