Push Comes to Shove

Yesterday, I gathered with close family and friends by the bedside of a dying woman. This is a part of my job and while I can't say that I enjoy it, I do find it to be an honor to minister at such an important time. The only difference in this case was that the woman is Jewish.

What is a Christian minister's role in a situation like this? It would seem that I am to take Jesus words seriously, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me" (John 14:6). Certainly I believe those words, so what do I do?

What I did was to use the words I was given by a Rabbi friend. He gave me the confession of sin, called the Vidui, which is said by Jews each year on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) and with slightly changed words when one is near death. The prayer was this

May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, to grant perfect healing to (name in English and/or Hebrew). May she be healed of all her afflictions and return to a fullness of life. But if it is Your will that the time has come for her soul to depart, may her death be an atonement for all those times in her life when she fell short of her potential to fulfill Your will. Grant her eternal peace under the sheltering presence of Your wings, among the holy and the pure who abide with You forever. Into Your hands she entrusts her soul. God is with her, she has no fear.

Then we all prayed together in Hebrew the words of the Shema, which in English are

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

As I take my responsibility as a pastor seriously, I know I owe it to someone not to mince words, especially when death is near. Her soul would be on my hands if I did not deal with her straight. Yet I felt no need to convert a faithful Jew. Jesus was a faithful Jew in his life and in his death. And as Jesus was the embodiment and completion of the Torah (Matthew 5:17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.") then isn't following the Torah a path to God through Jesus?

What I know is this. We prayed the words meaning them deeply and God's Holy Spirit was in that room and it felt no different than when we pray the Christian words of what we sometimes call last rites. Push came to shove and I did not seek to convert, but to honor the faith of a Jewish woman who was facing death genuinely without fear, truly trusting in her God. If the Christian faith is right, then her God is my God. How could I not honor her deep and abiding faith?

I feel certain that this does not translate to many if any other circumstances. Don't expect that I am now ready to perform Wiccan or Hindu last rites. But ask yourself, what do you think you would do if push came to shove for you?

In the archives you will find the sermon God shows no partiality on the relationship of Christianity to other religions.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor + King of Peace Episcopal Church