This week I’m not going to be much of a Pastor.
In the wee hours of this Monday morning my wife got a phone call from a Hospice nurse, telling her that her dad died overnight.
We had not really anticipated this phone call last night, although we knew it was probably coming. My wife’s elderly father’s health had been declining over the last several years, and for almost two years he was in a Hospice program. So we should have known this phone call was coming, but still . . .
One of my wife’s vocations was as a Registered Nurse, so she had many years of experience making these kinds of phone calls to other families, or at least observing them. She was familiar with the Hospice ministry, and with their usual protocols; we had worked through them several years ago when her mom died. When the nurse called yesterday morning to tell her that maybe Dad was in the so-called “transition” period that would ultimately lead to the “actively dying” time, nobody expected that these periods would be so quick and so close together. My wife spent the afternoon with her sister in their dad’s room, and left making plans for coming back to see him again today – but that didn’t happen.
Instead, she and I spent a couple hours this morning trying to wrap our heads around the fact that he has actually died, and trying to figure out what needs to be done next – and then next – and then next. We both realize that it will be a chaotic week for everyone in the family. Eventually, she settled in to a morning of phone calls and monthly bill paying (so that wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle) while I headed to the church office to get as much done as possible this morning so I wouldn’t have it hanging over my head later in the week.
I should tell you that my father-in-law was living in a facility less than an hour from us, so my wife has seen him weekly as much as possible as the COVID pandemic has seemed to wane; but although she had his “medical power of attorney” she did not go there in her vocation as a nurse, but as his daughter. And that’s her vocation today, and the days to come.
And today, when I’m through at the church office, when I turn off the lights and lock the door behind me, I will leave my vocation of pastor behind for several days and take up the vocations of husband, and son-in-law, and brother-in-law, and father and grandfather. I will help wherever I can, with whomever I can; but I won’t do the funeral service (and I probably won’t even “get up and say a few words” about my father-in-law). Because that’s the way it’s always been for me. I didn’t do the funeral services when my mother-in-law died, or when either my mother or my father died, just like I didn’t do the wedding services when each of our children were married – for them, I was “the dad,” not the pastor; for the funerals, I’ve been “the son” or “the son-in-law” or “the brother” not the pastor.
And it wasn’t that I couldn’t do the job well – I think I could. And it wasn’t that I was afraid I’d choke up during the service – I’ve choked up doing services for other people. There were other reasons, and still are:
First, my parents and in-laws were all wonderful, faithful, long-time members of their own churches, not the one I serve. To put it another way, I never was their pastor. They all knew several good pastors over the years of their involvement with their congregations, and when each of my parents died those pastors performed those funerals admirably. In fact, my dad died the week after a new pastor was installed at his church, and that pastor conducted dad’s funeral along with another pastor who had ministered to Dad in his last year of life – Dad wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, because he had waited for almost two years for that new pastor to come to their church! When my mother-in-law died some years ago, I told my wife that I didn’t want to do her funeral; so the family asked my wife’s cousin, another fine pastor, to do it instead, and he was terrific!
This week I’m thinking that this pattern may be an unexpressed trusting of the Holy Spirit on my part. We Christians believe and teach and confess that it’s the Holy Spirit who calls and gathers the whole Christian church on earth, and each group of Christians in their congregations. We believe that it’s the Holy Spirit who calls each pastor to serve these congregations. Since that’s the case, and since I know that the Holy Spirit has called me to serve as pastor to the specific congregation and location where I’m serving, I also believe that He has NOT currently called me to serve as the pastor somewhere else, at the same time. That doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally preach and lead worship services somewhere else, but that’s always by invitation from the people involved. My vocation as a Christian son or son-in-law at the time of a parent’s death has been to trust that the man who has done their funerals has been the one the Holy Spirit has called to be their pastor, whether he’s known them for a decade or for a week.
But there’s one more thing. I also have a vocation to be the husband of my wife. We were married for five years before I became a pastor, but for more than thirty years she’s been a single woman in the pews in church. Sunday after Sunday she’s sat in worship services without her husband next to her, because I’ve been in the pulpit. She’s even one of those “single church-moms” that got the kids up every Sunday morning by herself, got them fed and dressed by herself, marched them to church by herself, and wrangled them in the pew from the time they were infants until they went off to college, all by herself, while I’ve been in the pulpit. Sometimes there’s been some tension about that, and sometimes she’s been okay with it all. But in a week like this week what she needs from me is not a pastor, but a husband. Other people are around to pray for us, minister to us, conduct the funeral for us; but today, this week, I’m the one who is the “helper suitable for her,” just as she is “suitable for me.”
So when I’m done writing this, I’ll post it and then move on to something else I need to do while I’m still in the office, so that this afternoon I can go and be the husband, leaving the pastor behind for another day.
God bless us everyone.
The Basin and Towel 