Keeping Things More or Less Normal

        I went to the dentist this week.  I hate going to the dentist.  It is uncomfortable, and it takes a long time and I always feel like I have failed somehow in the care of my God given mouth.

This time, I needed a root canal to take care of some decay in one of my back teeth.  To do this, my dentist needed to remove my bridge, do the root canal and then make a temporary bridge which will be there for two weeks, when I will have to go back to the dentist so that he can continue with this work.  I spent last night worrying  about all of this, but today, with the first part of it mercifully over, I have relaxed and I think I see a light at the end of this particular dental tunnel.  I’m going to get my teeth back and things will be more or less normal.  That is a very good thing for me.  I need things to be more or less normal.

All of this sets my mind to thinking about healing and the way that we approach the darkness of illness.  I have been through a number of threatening crises.  My brain tumor a few years ago was a very scary time.  The small orange sized mesothelioma was on my left frontal lobe and had depressed it in what amounted to a natural lobotomy.  I had no passion for anything, no anger, no fear, no humor.  I was mildly depressed and I think that I was not much fun to live with.  The tumor was removed, I spent a year and a half recovering from the surgery and I am now back to more or less normal.  I know that my wife is pleased and I am overjoyed at the result that the skilled medical people were able to produce in me  She was a wonderful source of hope for me in that time.

That isn’t always how things go.  Sometimes the diagnoses are much more difficult and the outcome is not very good.  I have spent a lot of time with people and families who have had terrible medical outcomes, even though their prayers and our prayers rose to our God on their behalf.  I don’t understand why things work out the way that they do, but I know that the love of community does a great deal to heal the hurt that illness and death brings.   In the experience of my tumor,  I also had a lot of help from my church and from our children.  

I think that one of the prime reasons that we have parish churches is to be gathered together in community to care for each other.  I love the time in our liturgy when we offer prayers on behalf of those in our congregation who are sick, who have died or are bereaved.  I think that these moments bring us all together in community in a particular way.

We have had a number of funerals since we got  back to Pittsburgh.  Good friends, some from Christ Church and some blessed clergy have died and we have mourned.  I am always filled with hope at funerals.  There is certainly a life beyond this one and I know that these people whom we love but see no longer have found their way into the light and are embraced by the God whom we love.

In Mark’s gospel, in the first chapter, Jesus goes into the house of Peter and Andrew.  They find Peter’s mother-in-law in some distress because of her illness, and Jesus when he is told about it takes her hand, heals her and the Gospel says that she began to serve them.  That evening, the whole town brought their sick and infirm to Jesus so that they could be healed.  He did this and cast out many demons, although the Gospel says that he wouldn’t let the demons speak because they knew who he was.  That is amazing to me.  It is the demons who recognize Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God who had dominion over them.  The rest of us simply watch him work and keep wondering who he might be.  The demons know.

The next day, after prayer in a lonely place, Jesus takes his disciples into the other towns and healed and cast out demons.  This is what he said that he was sent to us to do.

  Our hope is that God will “swallow up death forever” as the prayer book so eloquently prays, but we also know that our mortal death is as certain as our life.  We will be mourned as we have mourned and our family and friends will be comforted by the hope presented in our parish communities.  Sometimes we don’t take our churches very seriously, but in the end, they are our sustenance, our life, and for keeping things more or less normal.  Gather in them eagerly  in the blessed hope of everlasting life and nourish each other each week in the hope and certainty of the resurrection.