03-An Understanding Heart

III. An Understanding Heart

I LIKE THE WORD “ MINISTER. “ JESUS USED IT ABOUT himself. ’’The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. “ He also used the word “shepherd.” “I am the good shepherd.” Our word “pastor” conveys the same meaning. A pastor is a ministering shepherd. He must tend all of the flock, and in every flock there are those who need tender care the sick, the troubled, the sorrowing, and the bereaved. They need the ministry of an understanding heart such as the first minister of burdened souls possessed.

It is no criticism of any seminary training to say that it does not school a minister for this phase of his service. It is not uncommon for young men about to enter their first charge to be apprehensive about their lack of preparation for ministering to the troubled. If ever there is a too confident self-assurance, it is not at this point.

Usually a young man begins his work with something of dread about his ministering to others in times of sickness, sorrow, and stress. No study could adequately prepare a man for this. What a man needs here first of all is a sympathetic, understanding heart. And his capacity for sympathy and understanding develops, not from a theoretical approach, but from actual contact with suffering, troubled, and sorrowing persons.

Sympathy and understanding come to a minister as they come to a physician. As a medical student the physician studies theory. He may be even a little calloused in his attitudes, but it all begins to mean something different as in his internship he touches people’s lives, and even more so as later a patient is entrusted entirely to his care. And more and more through the years the good doctor learns that his knowledge, skill, and technique are supplemented, and made effective, by his understanding and feeling toward patients as persons. Heart, hand, and head together make a good physician. And the minister, like the physician, will grow in sympathy and understanding as the needs of men reach out to lay hold upon his heart. A pastor’s place in the hearts of his people is greatly determined by his ministry of comfort.

There are always some into whose lives distress has come, and in faithful ministry to these over a number of years a minister reaches the larger number of his congregation at a time when, because of their sense of need, they are most receptive. The door to people’s hearts is always ajar during their times of trouble, anxiety, and sorrow, and the minister can enter in, bringing his Christ with him in a way that he cannot do at any other time. The only opportunity comparable to it is at the opposite extreme of experience. To share another’s supreme joy is to come close to his inner life too. The Book of Proverbs declares, “The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy.” But in both bitterness and joy the minister has an opportunity to get in behind the normal barriers to the human heart; and when he is no longer a stranger, there his true ministry begins. That minister is wise who remembers how largely all the effectiveness of his ministry to his people will be shaped by the touch of his own heart upon theirs at a time when they are wistfully sensitive to his sympathetic words and deeds. The Lord Jesus earned the name of the Great Physician. He was always concerned with people who were sick in body as well as those who were sick in spirit. Those who minister in his name must be interested too. Whatever pastoral functions are omitted or neglected, it should never be this one of ministering to those ill in body. People want their pastor in times of illness, suffering, and anxiety; and he touches then, not only the individual, but the family and the community of friends. Here is a task which requires delicacy of feeling and the depths of understanding and imagination.

There are three purposes of a minister’s care of the sick the expression of sympathy, spiritual counsel, and a ministry of actual healing of the body through helpfulness in mental attitudes.

These are not necessarily distinct and separate from each other. A visit in which sincere sympathy is manifest may serve all three purposes.

I am inclined to feel that just the call itself may serve these three ends without too much conscious stress on either one. In a sickroom we should above all be natural, and be calm and possessed in our bearing despite any seriousness in the situation confronted. Because the situation presents a spiritual opportunity, it does not follow that this is a time for any long spiritual diagnosis or discussion. The patient knows that you have come as his pastor. Sometimes things not said strike home more truly than any glib words. A prayer of trust and gratitude and recognition of God’s mercy, forgiveness, and tenderness of understanding will often do what direct words do not. A sense of reality about God can be manifested without being unduly serious. And lightness of mind or trivialities have no place here even if the illness is not of a critical nature. But smiles and laughter may, upon proper occasion, not be out of place either. The matter of prayer should not be forced. For a minister to say that he never makes a sick call without offering prayer may be an indication of a practice comforting to the minister’s own estimate of his duty, but not necessarily anything of helpfulness to the sick one. The emotional condition of the patient may be such that a word in parting that he will be remembered in prayer is far more helpful than a prayer spoken at Ms bedside. It is well for us to remember that our call is, or ought to be, for the purpose of helpfulness to the sick one and his family, not to carry out some unvarying practice of ministerial procedure.

Sickbed resolutions or confessions should not be overemphasized. Dr. J. R. Miller, author of many devotional writings, and who had a very conspicuous ministry to the sick in a great Philadelphia pastorate, has stated that he never knew a case of “deathbed repentance” which lasted when the patient recovered. The remark of one sick man to his long-time enemy is unfortunately all too typical. His visitor was a man with whom he had had a lifetime controversy. But at the bedside the two were reconciled and words of friendship passed between them. Then, as the visitor was leaving, his reconciled sick antagonist called out, “Remember, if I get well this don’t count.” A helpful spiritual service may be rendered through suggested reading or leaving books of inspiration with convalescing patients or those not too ill to read. Such books as Russell L.

Dicks ’s Meditations for the Sick and E. Stanley Jones’s Christ and Human Suffering, carry a message of strength for a time of spiritual sensitiveness and need. The minister will, of course, not neglect the reading of the Word as appropriate occasions present themselves. In a ministry of sympathy and helpfulness, one must be ready to meet unusual circumstances.

Sometimes one’s presence is a sustaining strength to loved ones as they await the outcome of an operation. They may ask their pastor to be with them in such a time, or he, knowing some special circumstance, may offer to be with them then.

One cannot always foresee the way in which it is possible to be most helpful. On one occasion a friend from a former pastorate came to Louisville for a major operation upon his wife. She was a member of the church. He was reared a Catholic and remained formally in that church because one of his sisters was a nun. Both of them were close personal friends of mine. Upon my joining nim on the morning of the operation, and as his wife was being wheeled into the operating room, he. asked me if I were not going into the operating room also. Turning to him I said, “Do you mean that you want me to go into the operating room instead of waiting here with you?” He feelingly replied, “Yes.” To which I answered, “Well, I came here to help you, and if that does it I’ll go in.” And so I did.

Unusual circumstances present themselves when the minister is not alone with a patient. It may be necessary then to place himself tactfully in the position of taking charge of the situation, at least for a few moments of devotion, when that is in order. And this is not always easily done, nor does it always result in a situation very favorable to devotion. I recall visiting an elderly lady in the hospital who had as her visitor an old friend of long standing. Both of them were old enough to be living in the past, and especially the visitor, from whose reminiscences as to her family I had long suffered. She could start in the middle of her family pedigree and go in both directions at the same time. This afternoon she was engaged in her usual conversational parade of her ancestors, and I was at a loss as to how to stop her and to conclude my visit with a prayer for the sick woman before I left. After about thirty minutes I stood up by the bed waiting for an opportunity to break in with my prayer. After some minutes of a still uninterruptable flow of ancient history, the patient herself broke in with the remark, “Annie, you keep still a minute. Dr. Pleune is waiting to pray, and that will do me more good than hearing about your family.” After which I had to begin to pray! When I had concluded, the patient quietly said to her friend, “ALL right, Annie, you can go ahead now.” I do not know what my visit did for them. But it surely revived their minister.

There will be those who are ill for a long time, and those shut in on account of age and infirmity. Their burden is that they are shut off from activity and usefulness. An understanding heart will recognize how much may be brought into their lives through periodic visits of their minister, in which they may be led to feel that they are still a part of the Lord’s work and that their sustaining prayers are a bulwark to their minister’s strength. A home service of the Lord’s Supper on the afternoon of Communion Sunday always means much to those kept from their church.

There is a special inclusiveness felt if this is done on the same Sunday that the rest of the congregation has gathered about the table of the Lord. When one or more elders accompany the minister there is created both an opportunity of helpfulness on their part and an increase of the sense of church fellowship in those for whom this ministry is rendered. A minister’s understanding heart will embrace the material wants of some of his people. In a church of most comfortably situated people there will still be some who are poor and need assistance and sympathetic fellowship, and often material aid. Not only did Jesus say to the emissaries of John the Baptist who asked if he were indeed the Christ, “Go... tell John what things ye have seen and heard;... to the poor the gospel is preached,” but among the Twelve there was the bag from which the poor were served. Many churches designate the Communion Sunday offering for this special cause. The minister should instruct his people about this brotherly charity.

It is understood that few should know about the distribution of such funds. The minister should be unrestricted in his withdrawals from the fund, whether or not he actually has them in charge. This whole matter of charity is difficult because of the modern complex social structure of our community life and the care of the poor being increasingly handled by the state or the municipality. And it all requires delicate handling because some of the most needy and most worthy will be the most shrinking in making their needs known and the most embarrassed in receiving aid.

Nothing, however, so reaches a true minister’s own heart as other hearts that are broken or bowed by grief. There is sickness of heart over the wrongdoing of a loved one. Shame and pride join in a withdrawal that often makes such situations hard to reach. Often all the minister can do is to loyally stand by. Frequently there is nothing one can do or say; but there is always the voiceless sympathetic understanding that leaps from a sincere heart to another in a trouble of which neither speaks, yet each knows how deeply the other feels.

After years of service most ministers are aware of the overwhelming need of comfort among their people. John Watson, who wrote under the name of Ian Maclaren, said in his later years, “If I had my ministry to live over again I would preach more comfort.” The ministry of comfort is a great and constantly needed ministry. As Tennyson said, Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break. When death comes there is no duty whatsoever that should stand in the way of a pastor reaching, as quickly as possible, those who have been bereaved. It means much to them to feel that nothing else took precedence over their need.

It is unquestioned that our sympathy must be genuine. No method of approach can take the place of genuineness of heart. All sense of professionalism must be absent from one’s manner and from one’s heart. This ministry is never easy. And it is utterly impossible if we are not truly affected by the other’s grief. Job said, “If your soul were in my soul’s stead.” We must put ourselves in their place, as if this someone were our own.

“When sorrow comes, the soul, or the family of souls, is ready for a spiritual pilgrimage. They may not be aware of it. They may seem even to be rebellious. Some stricken ones feel that they have been singled out for misfortune. Some through their tears demand an answer to their insistent, Why? Why? What an opportunity then comes to the preacher! People never forget what you do then. And the strangest part of it is that the best thing is not to try to do too much. The first time a young minister meets this situation he is apt to ask himself, “What shall I say? What shall I say?” Bless you, my brother, don’t ever try to say very much, and most of the time say nothing at all. The curse of our ministry of comfort is words. Jesus, about to call Lazarus from the grave, did not talk about it. “Jesus wept.” A handclasp may speak volumes. Every minister has learned this surely: that when someone, after a service, comes with a flood of words about what a wonderful sermon it was, it often leaves him cold. (Or are you still susceptible to that 1?) Then someone else just takes you by the hand and presses it a bit as he looks you in the face, but says not a word, and you feel a glow of heart that perhaps in your message you did truly help someone that day.

We do not have to say much. Often the best thing we can do is to listen. Shakespeare says, Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.

Most people find comfort in speaking of an absent loved one to another sympathetic heart. And the minister ought to be that one. I learned that one day long ago when, under circumstances that were terrible, a young husband in my church was massacred in San Domingo. The details were horrible. The young wife was left with a baby born just before her husband left on his engineering job. His body was burned under vicious circumstances in that distant land after a brutality of torture beyond description. What could I say to that young mother? I went to her. She was all alone in her home. I do not recall how we began to talk, but I had known them both quite well, and had visited them just before he had left on this ill-fated journey! So she began to talk about Mm. And I stayed all afternoon as she spoke of Trim and their life together, sometimes pausing to take care of the baby his child in her crib. I said very little, and left feeling that I had ministered to her not at all. Bnt the next day her sister came to me to report, with glistening eyes, that the stricken mother had said what a wonderful comfort I had been to her because, said she, “He had sense enough to let me talk.” Well, it wasn’t a conscious sense on my part that afternoon, but I have always tried to be that sensible since.

We cannot hope to explain the ways of God.

Sorrow and suffering are not always punitive. And it is cruel ever to even hint that this sorrow may have come to save from some worse sorrow or pain in the future. They are facing a present burden of grief, not some imaginary one of the future. Theology has its place, but rarely in any circumstance of grief. And idle explanations of the mysteries of God have no part at all. It is more comforting by far, with your own tears answering theirs, to say, “I do not know why.” If we are to say anything at all by way of explanation, it may be by way of the fatherhood of God, drawing an analogy from our own parenthood with its love and its care for our own children. Our children too ask questions. We tell them that someday they will understand. They must often be bewildered also by our dealing with them.

Sometimes we have to say “No,” sometimes restrain and rebuke them. We cannot do otherwise, for they have, as yet, so little experience with life.

We know that it is hard for them; still the passionate desire of our hearts as human parents is that, if our children do not understand, they will yet trust us and will feel that we love them beyond all telling. Well, we are all God’s little children asking “Why?” in our utterly inadequate experience of all of life in God’s great outreaching world. The Eternal Father can no more make all his dealings with us clear to us than we can with our children. And, assuredly, what he passionately wants from us is the same trust and awareness of his fatherly love and care that we want in the hearts of our children. What God wants is that we love and trust him still. He understands our tears, our sense of bewilderment, even our demanding “Why?” All that he asks of us, as his children, is what we want from our own. No ministry of comfort can end with a formal funeral service. The emptiness and loneliness come heaviest when the formalities of grief are ended. Let a minister seek out the sorrowing ones in the days that follow. Sometimes the practice of calling a week after the funeral, on the very day, may be followed. That is a hard day. That you remembered it means much. The first Christmas season, with the home so different, and other homes all bright and glad, is always difficult. Your remembrance of them with a Christmas message of sympathy and recognition will be a blessing of comfort. “Whatever one does by way of special remembrance will, of course, bind sorrowing hearts to you in enduring bonds of friendship and appreciation; but, what is more, it will also help to bind them to the Lord of all comfort, as they come to know that it is not just your warm, kindly personality expressing itself, but that you are representing him without whom all hearts are empty. An understanding heart! That is the glory of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as given to us in the gospel story. How thoughtful and understanding and considerate Jesus was! How little his words would mean apart from his great understanding, sympathetic actions!

Here is a little prayer that might be said by all of us who seek to minister in his name. It is from the pen of “Dick” (H. K. L.) Sheppard, in his book Some of My Religion.

Give me grace today not to pass by suffering without some understanding and desire to help. Guard my lips from the clumsy speech that does not comprehend, and give me more wisdom, more understanding, more strong tenderness, and the power to help. 1 1 Harper & Bros, 1936, p. 72.