May 1, 2005
Serving Our Seniors
By Lester Gallihue
1 John 1:9, John 10:1-10, Numbers 6:24-26
I truly appreciate the opportunity to be here. It’s really a wonderful spiritual experience and I can feel the vibes. It really helps me and I am sure it helps you. I want to read a passage which I believe showcases the whole idea of serviceability. It’s a passage about the Good Shepherd and I am reading it from John’s gospel, chapter 10, but before I read it I want to share with you an experience where you know certain passages of scripture really become graphic to you at certain points in your experience. This happened to me in Northern England, I was servicing a church up there and there were more people in the village then there were out in the country. In fact out in the country the sheep outnumbered the people by great numbers. I was from the city of Philadelphia, so I didn’t know much about sheep. But, I did know “Little Bo Peep”, that was about as far as I had gone with sheep, but I was stopped one day on the road. It was filled with sheep, just hundreds of sheep and I saw these three shepherds working the flock. In my modern mind I said, Oh! They are a team, they are working the flock as a team. But when they got the roadway empty, there were three different flocks of sheep following three different shepherds; their voices were familiar to them. I thought immediately of this passage where Jesus says I am the good shepherd, my sheep listen to my voice and they go in and out and they find good pasture.
Please listen with me now to these words from John’s gospel. Jesus said,
“I am telling you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate but climbs up in some other way is a thief and a robber. The man who goes in through the gate is a shepherd of the sheep, the gate keeper opens the gate for him, the sheep hears his voice as he calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow someone else; instead they will run away from such a person because they do not know his voice.”
Jesus told them this parable, but they did not understand what he was talking about. So Jesus said again, I am telling you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All others who came before me are thieves and robbers but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate, whoever comes in by me will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only in order to steal, to kill and to destroy, I have come in order that you might have life and have it in all of its fullness.
Let us pray …(prayer)
You know I have always tried to stay away from announcing myself as a republican or democrat. A lot of ministers don’t think that way, but I have always tried to stay kind of neutral in my politics. But I have to tell you I was raised by a strong democratic mother. She was a very strong disciple of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In fact I think maybe my middle name came from him. I was born the year he was first inaugurated. But one of his sayings was very real to my mom and she repeated it over and over again and you have heard it before, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” She said that on every occasion when we showed a little anxiety, so all four of us learned it very well. What I find, as I work in different nursing homes, and retirement community settings and I’ve worked in different settings. I’ve worked in a Masonic Home in Union City, Ca. with over 400 adults, average age 87, and there was a wedding every month. So don’t think that romance is over when you get past a certain age; it continues on. I worked in a Catholic retirement community in Stockton, O’Connor Woods, where there were many Protestants as well as Catholics. Now I work in Westminster Village which was started by Presbyterians and still has a strong connection with Presbyterian Homes Inc. but there are other faith groups there, so we are a very mixed company there.
But one of the things I noticed as I worked with older folks, (I am there too myself, I’m 74, my wife is a lot younger than I am). I noticed that how when you are younger you tend to be a risk taker, you tend to be really invincible, but as you get older you get more and more unsure, and fear begins to become a dominant thing in you. You begin to worry about your health; you begin to worry about social security; you begin to worry about your children and whether they will make the right decisions. On and on it goes. The litany of fear is very real for older people (and probably for younger ones nowadays too because we live in a rather dangerous culture). But, I think this good shepherd image really ministers to that problem or that challenge of fear that we face.
I wanted to talk with you today about three qualities that I believe can help us to be serviceable, not just to seniors although to them in particular, but everybody that we meet including ourselves, hopefully we meet ourselves every once in a while.
I like the story about the minister who counseled this man to go look in the mirror because the man was always about whether he was finding his true self. The man looked in the mirror and the minister says “What do you see?”
And the man says, “I see myself.”
He said, “Now go look out the window. What do you see?”
“I see the world,” he said.
“You need to look more at the world instead of into the mirror where you simply get a reflection of yourself.”
But there are three things that I believe are important to us as we try to be serviceable to seniors. One is empathy. Harry Stack Sullivan said that empathy is something that we are probably born with, but through nurture it gets stronger and stronger. Every time you read an article in the paper about somebody who has done some dastardly thing, you get the background from the reporter, the journalist gives you a lot of background and you see that there was a life fraught with many kinds of harshness, many sources of harshness in their background. They were not truly nurtured in the spirit of the Good Shepherd. At least that is what I see occasionally.
Empathy is something that is different from sympathy, by the way. Sympathy means to feel sorry for someone, but empathy is going a step beyond that. It’s walking in their shoes; it’s entering into their experience.
I remember a book on psychology I read about a man who had served in a Kibbutz in Israel. A man by the name of Benjamin, and he told a story about how the children would gather every morning in front of the schoolhouse and how they were calmed by the fact there was a very friendly and gentle donkey in the pasture next door. But one morning the donkey was gone and the children were very disturbed. So much so that they got permission from the principal to go out and look for this donkey. They looked long and hard; a couple came back, no sign of the donkey. And then they saw this older man coming up the street with the donkey, leading the donkey. They were so excited, really happy, to see this friendly donkey and they said to the man “How did you find him?” And the man said “Well, I just put myself in the place of a donkey and wondered where I would go on such a nice day as this and I went there and I found the donkey.” Now that’s empathy, that’s empathy for an animal. You can find empathy for yourself; maybe you have read John Quincy Adams biography and heard the story where he took a constitutional walk every day on the Boston commons. He was a very good walker, even in his 80’s, and he meet this lady. The lady asked how he was and he gave her a most impassive answer. He said the roof is thinning, the plumbing is leaking, the legs are shaking. I am about to move out of this house, but meanwhile I am very well thank you.
Ruth and I had the chance to live with an elderly lady in Berkeley, CA where we went to graduate school. We exchanged care for her - doing the meals and taking care of the yard - and she gave hospitality while we were in school out there. Myrtle Miller had lived through the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and she told the story of that earthquake as if it were yesterday. It was just amazing, and I was inspired to invite her to come and speak to a group of kids that I had in Sunday school. Ruth and I co-taught a group of 12 children who were 8 years old, third graders. I wanted them to interview her and talk to her about what it’s like to grow old. During her talk one of the little girls reached up and touch a wrinkle on her face, and asked, “Does that hurt?” Myrtle jokingly said, “No, not as much as my knees and my back.” This little girl was like one of these little girls - eight years old going on thirty-eight. Have you met that type of little girl? Anyway she continued, she followed up with this question, “Well, what does it come from, where do they come from?” Myrtle gave her, I believe, one of the best answers I have every heard, she said, “Well those are my loving lines.” She said, “When you love God, when you love yourself, when you love the world it’s work, it’s labor. It’s the labor of love and it leaves lines, lines that are a tribute to your loving.”
The second thing that I think we need to look at in terms of ministering to the seniors amongst us is discernment, what I call discernment. I thought that was an interesting story about Pope Benedict XVI how when he became aware of the fact that he might be elected to be the next pontiff, he became really frightened. He was quite fearful, then he received an anonymous note from one of his brother cardinals and the note said, “Be not afraid the Lord is our shepherd. He will never lead you into the wrong pathway”. He said that that note really calmed him, that really helped him to accept whatever was going to come his way.
I think that I received some discernment from a pastor who was writing to me when I was in the Korean War. I was on a submarine off the coast of Korea, up and down the coast of Siberia into the Bering Sea. We were trying to see if the Russians were helping the North Koreans, and we found out that they were. That was our job at the time. I stood sonar watch on the submarine and while I was on watch, I was very much occupied. I really enjoyed my work, but when I was off duty I was bored to tears. I didn’t know what to do with myself. We were out to sea for 8 or 10 weeks at a time so I began writing letters. I wrote to my pastor back in Bryn Mawr, PA. My pastor began to write back to me. He began to quiz me and talk with me about my vocational identity. He said, “You said that you wanted to be helpful in your work when you find yourself, find your career.” He said, “Maybe you’ve thought of social work, maybe you’ve thought of teaching or maybe you’ve thought of pastoral ministry; perhaps that would be the direction for you.”
It was a wonderful process of discernment that he went through with me and I believe this is something we can do with people. We can help people to discern their calling at this particular point in their lives. I remember one gentleman in the Masonic home for adults in Union City who was 100 years of age. He and I began to talk with each other about what he might do in his retirement years,(in his retirement years for sure at 100 years of age, now there’s a senior citizen!) He had worked for the FBI all of his life and he was a handwriting analyst. I said, “Why don’t you write a book on handwriting analysis? And he began to write this book. He spent a couple of hours on it every day, and by George, his book was published and became a manual for the new recruits who were studying to be FBI agents.
I had another interesting experience with a fellow who had a nervous breakdown, you might say, or a mental breakdown, in the midst of the worship service up in New Haven, CT where I was serving as a pastor. We will call him Richard just for the sake of discussion. (God forbid, Richard, your people are sharp). Richard had to go to a behavioral health center. Sorry to say his wife and two daughters did not want to go and see him, they were very frightened about this. So I would go and visit Richard and I would listen to him. I must say I did not understand anything he was saying at first, but as I listened more carefully, I began to observe that he was on a trip, that he was traveling through space. He was visiting different planets, and I said to him at one point after hearing about this travel, “I know you are having a good time Richard and I’d like to be with you, but we miss you very much back here in Connecticut. Your wife misses you, your children miss you, we hope and pray that you will come back soon.” You know that didn’t make any difference right then but three days later I heard from his psychiatrist. He called me and he said, “I don’t know what you said to Richard, but Richard is coming back. Richard is returning to reality.” I believe that’s the kind of discernment that comes from the Holy Spirit. If we are truly believing in God’s Spirit then God will give us insight; God will give us openings. God will give us reframing to help people in their process of discernment.
Finally, there is the value of grace, the free gift of love that comes to us not by anything we earn, or any favor that we are given in a special way for who we are, but simply because someone wants to give it to us. I remember an associate minister I had one time, Nancy, a very bright young women, a real feminist. She wouldn’t even let me hold her coat for her, so I asked if she would like to hold my coat. She was very liberated, but she was bright and a very capable preacher among other talents that she had. She gave a children’s sermon one Sunday which I never forgot. She had on the communion table, three piles of gifts. She had coloring books, coloring pencils and candy bars. She invited the children up and she told them that they could help themselves to these articles; they could take one from each pile. She had to be specific about that. So they did and they were very happy and then Nancy said, “Well now you are each holding about 5 – 8 dollars worth of goods in your hands. And the kids got very anxious, they had no money with them. Were they going to be asked to pay for these things? Nancy said, “No, you are not going to have to pay for them, they are a free gift. They are a gift to you from me!” She was making the point that grace is available and it is free to those who receive it and to those who will give it.
I had an experience of grace myself when I was about 45 years old. I was visiting people in the hospital and I was overcome with pain, so much so that I actually admitted myself to the hospital. As I was waiting for my surgery, I had tumors that had to be removed, I was anxious, but my anxiety continued after the surgery too because I was now speaking in a whisper. I made my living by speaking, so I was worried. I was anxious and a nurse referred me to the chaplain. The chaplain came. He was an older man of a different tradition than myself, and he listened to me and he talked with me and asked if I would like to be anointed with the oils of anointing. I had never experienced this before, it was not part of my background, but I accepted it. Not that night but the next day I felt this cloud of anxiety lifted. Somehow I had the feeling that I was going to be all right, that I was going to come through this and to continue my ministry. These are things that I think are very basic to each one of us who follows Jesus the Good Shepherd. We can exercise empathy and it can make the world of difference in relations to people. We can exercise discernment with them and we can be gracious.
Jesus kind of summarized this in one of his analogies - the analogy of the vine. I would like to close with that. In the analogy of the vine he speaks of the soil of empathy, and how out of that soil the seed is nourished, and the seed germinates and the seed pushes up shoots and branches that can be pruned by discernment. With good pruning, season by season, there is a harvest, harvest of the fruits of the spirit, love, joy peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, kindness and self-control. I bless you for your ministries, I think it is a wonderful congregation and the ministries that you have and I hope that you consider ministries to the seniors, that some of the words I have spoken to you and some of your own ideas will fall into place and make that a good ministry for your church as well. God bless you and thank you.
