A Visit From The Priest

Did I ever tell you about my first hospital visit in Becket, MA? I went to see Jean Claude up in Pittsfield at Berkshire Medical Center. (Jean Claude is not his real name, but he is from French – Canadian extraction).

One of my parishioners, who worked for Jean Claude, mentioned to me that the big guy had come down with Lyme disease. Trouble was that it hadn’t been diagnosed early and that Jean Claude was sick, really sick. So sick he was hospitalized. He had dropped a lot of weight, his breathing was labored, his strength had taken a vacation – the big man was sick. He was  a big man, could have been a lumberjack, as it was he was a stone mason.

Now I am all for hospital visits by pastors. Some pastors are so concerned about efficiency that they don’t do hospital visits – they delegate. What’s the deal with that? I mean, they don’t do any hospital visits. I can see spreading the responsibility for a number of reasons, but to not do any hospital visits – I don’t know about that.

Hospital visits help pastors practice the presence of God, and hospital visits and funerals, as well  as sudden tragedies, (hopefully) throw a pastor totally upon Christ in terms of “what do I do and how do I do it?” Only a pastoral fool is sure of himself in a hospital visit, or in working with a family in dealing with death, or walking with a family or community through a tragedy.

So a pastor who avoids hospital visits avoids needed doses of humility. He also avoids practicing the presence of Christ in the midst of his parishioners for their blessing. There is seldom much, if anything, you can say during a hospital visit – but you can be the Presence of God, the Presence of the Holy Trinity, in the midst of pain and uncertainty. The only thing you can really do is to pray with people, and of course love them, but beyond that you can’t perform and you can’t produce – you aren’t “on stage” like on Sunday morning – oh yes, and your audience is small. Sorry, no lights, no cameras, no folks waiting in line after the service to tell you what a great job you did (even though they can’t exactly tell you why they’re saying that if you ask them). Nope, none of that, just you in a little hospital room with one or two sick folks and maybe another visitor or two. Only God is watching you – not much of an audience I guess.

I think somewhere Christ talked about folks who visit those who are sick, feed the hungry, and visit the prisoners; I think He talks about His delight in women and men who do those things. I don’t recall Him specifically saying that He gets a charge out of preachers putting on a good show on Sunday morning. (I’m not against good preaching, don’t get me wrong, but I will say that I believe that all good congregational preaching should be born of parish ministry – but hey, that’s just me, and for all we know I’m one of the guys who might have purchased an Edsel).

So anyway, I let folks know that I’ll visit anyone in the hospital, they don’t need to be part of my congregation, they don’t need to be anything as a matter of fact, other than sick, for me to  visit them in the hospital. So when my parishioner, Dave (not his real name) told me about Jean Claude I got in the car and drove the 40 miles or so to Pittsfield, being careful when driving across the Hinsdale Flats.

Did I ever tell you about the Hinsdale Flats? Oh – I see I’ve got to go – I’ll be back…oh yeah, remind me to tell you about the Hinsdale Flats.