Download a study guide for this ar- ticle (free to print/Web members) at
www.thelutheran.org (click on “study guides”).
self anymore, but he reached out his hand for the bread and wine. This was somehow wholly and holy different. After “Go in peace. Serve the Lord,” he whispered—mouthed, really—a weak “Thanks be to God.” Then he closed his weary eyes. Yes, we could have more easily stayed in the nursing home, wheel- ing him into the group room for their hymn sing and sermon. It would have been more convenient for everyone concerned, and not so hard on his frail body. Yes, it was a pain to dress him, get him in and out of the car, and in and out of church before returning to the nursing home.
All that hassle for a couple of Sun- day morning hours, a handful of hugs, handshakes and kisses, a wafer and sip of wine, and the thread of a hymn that he remembered for a moment but didn’t remember the next day. All that for a fleeting moment of dignity and meaning that dug deep into what was left of Pastor Ray, let- ting his body be part of that long-lost body. Yes, it may have been more for me than it was for him. Maybe. Or maybe not.
Losing our minds I once asked my friend Aniruddh Patel, a doctor at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, to define “the mind.” This neuroscientist who specializes in music, language and the brain answered: “The mind is the brain meets the body meets the environment.” By Patel’s definition, when a person loses his legs, his bowels, his ability to chew hard foods, he has lost part of his body, and thus part of his mind.
When he loses his spouse after 52 years—his main source of touch, conversation and reason to get up in the morning—he’s lost the most important part of his environment. By
definition, he’s lost a huge piece of his mind.
When he buries his five brothers and sisters and most of his friends, he buries a little piece of his mind with each funeral. When he loses his house, his driver’s license, his church ... you got it—he’s lost more and more of his mind.
The one thing he doesn’t have to lose as he ages is his church. If we in the church would only make the effort to grasp and clasp our elders tighter, ever tighter with each of their inevitable losses.
If we would only take the time to ask each household, each single, each family with small children, each fam- ily with teens, each young adult to every Sunday adopt every elder into an intentional surrogate faith family. If we would only see the value of placing old wrinkled hands into pudgy fresh hands and decide it’s worth going through the hassle of dragging these treasures out of the nursing home every Sunday rather than for infrequent special events. This action would not simply be a way of honoring our fathers and mothers. It would not simply be a way of giving them a moment of fleeting dignity. This would not sim- ply be a way of restoring to them the joy of their salvation. This would be a way of keeping them from losing the last shred of their minds—a shred they need not lose.
And it would be as much for us as it is for them.
Such a church would honor its elders and hold them tighter, ever tighter.
Such a church would be a wholly and holy different church. Such a church would raise a wholly and holy different kind of child, youth and young adult. Such a church would have a past and a future. For such a church would find a future in their past.
I know where to find the future of your church. Dig out the list of names you read on the last five All Saints’ Days and fiercely pursue their sur- viving spouses. Connect these folk to the list of people who have joined your membership roles in the last five years.
Call these families together and call them to gather. Give them as a gift to each other. Command and demand that no such treasures will be left to rot alone and forgotten in your church ever again. You simply won’t allow that kind of terrible stewardship among the people of God in your care.
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