On the incarnational nature of chaplaincy

A.Kumm-Hanson, Iceland 2016

My work as a chaplaincy is intensely incarnational.  By this, I mean I continually encounter God in the flesh.

"Incarnate" has latin origins, "in" mean into and "caro/carn-" meaning flesh.  It has theological connotations in the Christian belief system, but we usually only speak about a God incarnate around the time of Christmas, with Jesus as a newborn baby. It is uncomfortable to think about God as a human body. A body that sweats and eliminates and requires food and water.

As a hospital chaplain, I am never removed from humanity in all its bodily manifestations.  I see what the body is capable of doing to repair itself, and all the ways that it can fail. I smell the sharp metallic smell of fresh blood. I smell bodily odors of every kind.  I smell the earthy smell of birth and the earthy smell of death. I hold the hands of patients who are swollen with IV fluids, with a gentle touch so that I do not exacerbate their edema. I stroke the foreheads of newborn babies, with skin so soft they don't yet seem made for this world. I use my brain, certainly, but chaplaincy is primarily the use of my body.

Walking into a room and meeting another person wherever they are. To show up and shut up and be present. To move through the human desire to say something to make it all okay and just be. To be a reflection of God-in-flesh to those who are suffering.

Also, my patients reflect God to me. People who are dying share visions of angels and whispered messages from the hereafter. Patients who are undergoing intensive rehab therapies after a stroke speak of wrestling with God in the dark hours like Jacob and emerging with a limp, but having touched God.

Chaplaincy is not a cerebral ministry of long hours spent in a pastor's study in preparation for preaching. It is holding hands through bed rails and wearing isolation gowns and being willing to literally stand in suffering with God's beloveds. It is not about translating Hebrew or Greek from ancient texts, but about translating scripture into something now that matters to the mother who is delivering her stillborn child or the son losing his father to cancer.

The theology of the cross is particularly apparent to me in my hospital work. This theology holds that God's love for all of creation is most clearly seen in the act of dying on the cross.  That God did the most human thing of all, which is to die. The theological conviction that shapes my ministry as a chaplain is that God knows what it is to suffer and to die, and there is no place that God is unwilling to go, even death. This is good news for all of us who feel immersed in suffering, our own or that of others.

Because to be human is to be made in God's image and to carry God's likeness.  We are the incarnate God to one another.

Vigil with the Word: Year C, Second Sunday after Epiphany

The texts for the Second Sunday after Epiphany are:

John 2:1-11
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 36:5-10

My commentary on these texts focuses on the Psalm and on the Epistle.

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

This is the first miracle attributed to Jesus in John’s Gospel. I think a lot about miracles. Patients ask me to pray for miracles.  Sometimes I bear witness to miracles. But a lot of the time, I bear witness to unfulfilled prayers for miracles. And sometimes, I wish I could order up a miracle.

I care for pediatric patients in one of the hospitals where I work.  I got to know a patient who will likely not make it into the double digits. It seems so miraculously unfair. This vibrant soul, who is precocious and hilarious and gentle, needs a miracle. But this little patient will most likely not see a miracle.

And this hurts. I wish I could order up a miracle like Jesus ordered up wine for this wedding. There’s very little comfort in saying, “God is with you.” I wrestle with faith and what God is up to in so much pain. But in all my frantic grasping, one of the few things I can hold onto is, “God does stuff.”  God makes something out of nothing. I don’t know how it works, but God does stuff. In the form of water into wine and in the form of joy in ICUs, despite all evidence to the contrary.  God does stuff.

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Let Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.

 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

I spend a lot of time working with patients experiencing cognitive decline.  Who flicker in and out of awareness.  Whose spirits are still whole, but whose minds are fragmented into memories of now, then, and never.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Every once in awhile, I see a flicker of vibrant spirit and of the beautiful soul that exists behind the wall of the dementia. The gifts bestowed by the Holy Spirit that are still there. I visited a patient recently who was a pianist. Who was in the grip of dementia, frantically pacing the halls searching for the world, and would sit down at the piano and play a perfectly executed minuet or sonata in between laps. The river of music trickling down the hall of the memory care unit, bringing beauty into such a dark place.

All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Our elders with dementia, tucked away in euphemistically named “gardens” and “villas” and “neighborhoods” for their own protection and the protection of our sensibilities, have abundant gifts of the Spirit.  The mystery of what the Holy Spirit is up to never ceases to amaze me. And sometimes inspires me to sit down at the piano and play a minuet myself.

Psalm 36:5-10

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. 
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
 your judgments are like the great deep;
   you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.


How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. 
They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights. 
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.


O continue your steadfast love to those who know you,
and your salvation to the upright of heart!

I get the honor of seeing steadfast love in action all the time.  Of adult children who care for their aging parents in living rooms. Of nurses and aides who wipe foreheads and offer water tenderly. Of elderly parents who sit at the bedsides of their middle aged children. Of people who show up day after day in love.

Human love is imperfect, but it is beautiful. And I think it is God’s steadfast love that helps us love one another. This psalm is one of praise, but I think it is also one of pleading with God to continue to show up. Of begging in the dark of night, “Continue your steadfast love!” Because caretaking is love all jumbled up with pain.

A son asks me, “Does it mean I love him less if I resent him sometimes?”

A daughter weeps, “I wish sometimes she would just die in her sleep, and then I don’t have to worry about her anymore.”

In your light we see light. All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

I pray a lot for deep peace and rest. For families and patients to know the deep comfort that can only be found in the divine, because comfort on this side of heaven can be so fleeting. 

Lord, shelter your beloved under your wings. Help them take refuge from the burden of loving.  Love them steadfastly.

Vigil with the Word: Year C, Baptism of Our Lord

The texts for Baptism of Our Lord Sunday are:

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17

My commentary for this first sunday after Epiphany focuses on the Gospel text and the reading from the book of Isaiah.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

                                                                   ~~~~

The baptism of Jesus has always been one of my favorite Gospel texts. It appears nearly verbatim in all four Gospels, with the words of God, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” It’s also one of the very few Gospel texts that mention the Holy Spirit. But I think I love it most because it’s evidence of an active God who descends from an opened-up heaven into this world.

My work leads me into places where I NEED to know that God is not far away. In bloody trauma rooms and at interminable bedside vigils and in chilly morgues, I need to know that God has already shown up and has gone before me. I need to hear that God continues to break open the clouds and descend upon this broken world with the grace of a dove. Baptism is not a baby blessing or a welcoming party to the Christian community, it’s a defiant declaration that death does not have the final word and that God walks among us and lives in us. 

We are all beloved, no matter how wretched our lives may be, and with us, God is well pleased.

Isaiah 43:1-7 

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. 
Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you,
I give people in return for you,
nations in exchange for your life. 
Do not fear, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you; 
I will say to the north, ‘Give them up’,
and to the south, ‘Do not withhold;
bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth— everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.’

Do not fear…for I have redeemed you.  I have called you by name; you are mine. 

One of the most powerful tasks of my role as chaplain is to bless and commend the dying to the care of God. To name the beloved and entrust them to the care of God. It is a bookend of sorts to baptism, where we name God’s child and entrust their keeping to the Body of Christ on earth. To proclaim, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Go in peace.”

Yesterday, I knelt next to a woman who was in her last hours. Her awareness was flickering and her eyes only opened when I spoke her name aloud and said, “As you complete your baptismal journey, rest deeply in the arms of God who calls you by name.” A small smile passed over her face and she drifted back into her liminal sleep.

In baptism, we are named and claimed, and in our death, we are also named and claimed by the one who created us. Saying, “Do not fear” is easier said than done. With death comes fear of pain, fear of the unknown, fear of how we will cope without our mother or spouse or child. But in this naming and claiming, we hear a more powerful message, “You are mine.”  This is not a guarantee that we will never experience suffering, but rather, that we are not alone in that suffering.