I was chatting with a member the other day and I realized that I had been in the presence of Christ the whole time. In both the “When two or more are gathered” sense as well as in the presence of one who brought Christ into the darker spaces of creation and made them light.
Their spouse was in the hospital and in some despondency. This person not only visited in the way that anyone (including myself) would do, but actually made it clear that they were present in the room, available and vulnerable to the person hooked up to the tubes and wires. This was driven home to me in the applying of lotion to the feet. Needless to say biblical images flooded my mind at the time and I couldn’t find words to intrude upon that moment (thank God) but watching one person tenderly anoint the feet of their beloved made the act of Maundy Thursday seem all the more potent to me. I cannot wait for the opportunity to feel that way again, even if only as the shadow of this very personal and true moment.
It came home again when this person missed church one morning. I saw them later and asked if everything was alright and they told me that they had been helping their spouse shower at the hospital. Nurses are available for that kind of thing, but it is so dehumanizing to have to go through it with all of the tubes and wires that the comfort of having someone who truly loves you present to help you, to hold you and to see you through what might otherwise be an embarassing moment is remarkably potent.
I didn’t say so, but I think that this person was in far closer proximity to the love of Christ than any sermon I have ever been blessed with by the Spirit could bring about.
How do you compete with those moments? How can you bring the love of God home any more than the simple acts of devoted love that one person can be to another. The simple answer is that you can’t. I’ll continue to see these moments and feel somehow less than those around me, but also feel that maybe, just maybe continuing to hear the word of life, continuing to hear the love of God made new in the promises preached from the lips of as humble a servant as myself can show that we are the body of Christ, equal in stature and righteounsess and that we have been given the power to bring Christ into whatever darkness presents itself and to trust that the light of Christ can illumine that darkness and make people into what God had intended from the beginning.
When I think it depends on me, Lord, send me an angel. Not a fiery seraph or a burning bush but flesh and bone and heart turned to love by the promises of Christ alive and abiding within them. Send us all such an angel so that we can see the promises being kept in the love of one to another in your name and that we may see freedom for what it is, freedom from the need to surpass or supplant, freedom from envy or hate, freedom from pity or condescension; and freedom for service, love and compassion in this world.
