But that was enough for the rural congregation's council. "If that's the way they feel about it, then let them have Pastor Kyle. He's never around here, anyway. We'll go it on our own." So the council with the help of the synod, found a part-time pastor who lived thirty miles away to take the call.
But when the nursing home called Judy at work to let her know that her father's breathing was increasingly labored; that he was about to die, she just knew the new pastor wouldn't do anything about it. "Has a pastor been to visit?"
"Yes, earlier today. He left a note."
Before she left for the nursing home, Judy called the church and left word for the new pastor that her father was dying. Then she called Pastor Kyle who answered right away. "Oh, Judy, I'll be right there."
"But you're not the pastor anymore ... and I hate to bother you with doing someone else's job ..."
"It's okay, Judy. He's probably on his way back to the city now. We can't very well expect him to drive all the way back out here, can we? I'll meet you there in fifteen minutes."
And so he did. Pastor Kyle read, "The Lord is my shepherd ..." and not long after, Judy's father died.
The next day, Judy gave her husband the task of calling the new pastor to request that the Pastor Kyle be allowed to do the sermon at her father's funeral. "Pastor Kyle knows Judy's dad so much better; it'll mean so much to Judy to have the old pastor say a few words. He was right there when her dad died, you know."
What could the new pastor say? He honored the request. At the funeral, he had a few words with the Pastor Kyle to make it clear that first of all if he had received a call that Judy's father was dying, he most certainly would have come back to the nursing home to be with them. Second, it was synod policy never to do any kind of pastoral care in your former parish, and that if anything like this were ever to happen again the only right thing to do was simply call him. The new pastor did his best to remain calm and polite, and to all appearances, Pastor Kyle agreed with the policy and said that he was just trying to help and that he was sorry for any problems he may have caused. Then he left.
"Where's Pastor Kyle?" Judy badgered the new pastor after he said the table prayer for the funeral dinner.
"He said he had another commitment."
"I bet you told him off," said Judy angrily, "all because of some stupid synod rule. I can't believe you! I never heard of such a thing!" and she burst into tears and hurried off to the restroom. After the burial, she walked right by the new pastor to her car, vowing to herself that she would never return to church again as long as the new pastor was there. "I've had it with all of them," is what she told her husband.
A few months later, a rare form of pneumonia had taken root deep in Judy's lungs, and young as she was, she was suddenly a step or two from death's door. The doctors put Judy on a ventilator, had to feed her intravenously, and had to put her into a coma because in her delirium, she had constantly attempted to rip out the breathing tube and the IVs that were keeping her alive. There was very little anyone could do for several weeks, except wait -- wait for the medications to work. Judy's husband's job kept him away from her bedside, except for a few hours each day. Judy's daughter was only able to stay while her children were in school. The new pastor visited every other day and read Judy the word of God and prayed. He kept in touch with Judy's husband as best as he could, and Judy's husband appreciated the calls, the prayers, and the friendly words on his answering machine when he arrived home alone late at night.
After almost a month, the doctors felt encouraged enough about the progress of the medication that they began weaning Judy off the ventilator and bringing her back from the coma they had induced. Though the new pastor had kept up the every-other-day visitation, he had no inkling about what the doctors were doing and was shocked and unprepared one day when he found that the ventilator had been removed and that as he approached her bedside, Judy seemed to be trying to open her eyes. Oh, my goodness, the pastor was thinking, I'm the last one she wants to see! She'll have a heart attack! I'll end up killing her, yet!
Her eyes were wide open. He could see that she was conscious, and that she knew just who it was visiting her.
The division between the new pastor and Judy was as irreconcilable, unbridgeable as that between the descendants of the people of Israel and the rest of the world whom they called the Gentiles. Many of the religious leaders of the people of Israel felt there was no way people of such different religious, moral, and cultural persuasions could be one people, much less God's people. The laws of Moses and various kinds of religious rules and customs based upon them kept the people of Israel apart from the rest of the world, and they often viewed anyone who did not observe such laws as barbaric at best. Not long after the apostle Paul's letter to the Romans was written, this point of view had hardened so much among some of the people of Israel that it drove them to attempt to revolt against Roman rule, a revolt to which Rome responded by obliterating Jerusalem.
The apostle Paul calls this divide between the people of Israel and the rest of the world, the divide between "the Greeks and the Jews." There are some similarities between this divide and the divide between Judy and the new pastor and the divide between Judy and the congregational leaders who had called him and the divide between Judy and those who had designed the policy that kept her beloved old pastor from ever ministering to her again. These divisions among Christians are not based upon any form of the laws of Moses, but they are based upon laws nonetheless: It was a "law" for Judy that she just had to have her old pastor conduct her father's funeral, yet a synodical "law" prohibited just that. Even the old pastor was obeying an unspoken law that Judy and her father were better off because he was there to read the word, rather than Judy simply reading it herself. If we think a bit about it, there are hundreds of laws over which Christians are locked in divisive disputes, disputes that divide us into factions suspicious of each other, factions busy with the business of trying to make those distinctions clear and irrevocable.
In today's lesson, the apostle Paul proclaims that these distinctions are at an end:
There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.
-- Romans 10:12There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.
-- Romans 10:12
If the Lord looked generously upon Judy and her new pastor at that moment when they met again, why should they not share the Lord's generous assessment for both of them with each other? This is what Judy's husband had tried to explain to Judy the evening she first regained consciousness, the evening just before the new pastor found her suddenly awakened.
"Has he been here?" Judy asked.
"Who?"
"The new pastor."
"Yes."
"Like once?"
"Like every other day."
"Really?"
"And he called me, or he'd leave messages, saying he prayed for me." At this point, Judy's husband's exhaustion overwhelmed him, brought him to tears. "I was so afraid," he sobbed, "of losing you."
So it was that Judy's eyes also filled with tears when she awoke to see the new pastor standing there, looking as if he wanted to bolt. The word was on her lips and she spoke it with her mouth, "Thank you for being there for my husband ... and for me."
"You are welcome," said the new pastor quietly.
It was in this way that the good news, the gospel, effective in the simple words of Judy's husband, of Judy, and of their new pastor had obliterated the distinctions, the hostilities held between them and made them one.
As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
-- Romans 10:15As it is written, Howbeautifularethefeetofthosewhobringgoodnews!
-- Romans 10:15
For a while, the cleaning staff had another view of Judy's husband who came to visit directly from work. While he kneeled at Judy's bedside, the treads of his soles separated, dumping mud or stones or drying dirt on the floor that the law demanded the cleaning staff keep sterile. But when they saw the big man in the sweaty T-shirt kneeling there at the bedside of his wife, holding her little white hand as if it were the hand of his dying daughter, they dropped their hostilities for him, forgave him, doubled their efforts to keep his wife's room as clean as a holy place -- which is what it had become. Amen.
