Rev. Ben Guess Keynote Address

Installation Sermon for Rev. Robert Chase
The Rev. J. Bennett Guess

February 24, 2008
New York, New York

Years ago, after finishing seminary, I worked as a hospital chaplain resident, where I first learned how awkward a pastor's role can be, especially in a medical, scientific setting.

While nurses and doctors relied on stethoscopes and blood pressure cups to give a quick mantle of authority, my job included no real equipment. I took no tests. I poked no one with needles. I manipulated no bones, no joints.

The phrase -- "Does it hurt when I touch you here?" - is not appropriately used by a clergyperson.

I found myself jealous of how everyone else seemed to have something to "use," something that oozed credibility when the patient first encountered them: the technicians with their fancy, million-dollar equipment; therapists with their toys and gadgets; orderlies and aids with their bedpans and urine-filled sample jars.

Couldn't I at least carry a clipboard?

To make matters worse, I dressed like a boring mainline Protestant - which I was. At least my Roman Catholic colleagues had religious-looking street clothes to wear - and they could bring with them the tools of their sacramental tradition - the Eucharistic elements from the daily mass ... or holy water for blessing ... or oil for anointing.

Instead, I arrived in suit and tie - often looking like someone from the hospital's business office, instead of its religious life department.

And, occasionally, I found myself babbling with patients about stuff I knew nothing about - medical stuff - instead of the other stuff I was supposed to engage.

Have you noticed? Strangely, it's easier to talk with someone about their spastic colon than it is to invite conversation about their spirits, their stresses, their fears, hopes, worries ... their prayers - things, to be sure, that every single person brings into an unfamiliar and uncertain situation like that.

My role, I am still learning to appreciate, is not to be a clip-board carrying expert, but an inviter and encourager of that scary thing we call introspection.

To invite others and to invite myself to go inside and look around, and if we're all brave enough and trustful enough, to share with others what we have seen and found and learned. So that more and more people might come to rest in the strange assurance of "me too." "Me too." "Me too."

It's possible, you know, to forget the fertile frontier that is the human soul. So that's why, I suggest, today we honor the intersection of exploration and introspection. Because one without the other does not a true cosmic intersection make.

Faith asks curious questions. Oh, I know, it meddles in human limitations, sins and shortcomings, but it also proclaims potential, capacity, possibilities.

It asks us to see WITHIN ourselves so that we might see BEYOND ourselves. And, somehow, through this curious exercise of liturgy and preaching, scripture, song, prayer, and praise, we find the common melody of our human experience. "Me too," we say. And justice is possible.

Two weeks ago, when those deadly, deadly tornadoes ripped across western Tennessee and western Kentucky - the region of my upbringing and the place where my closet relatives still live - my sister called me in the middle of that terrible stormy evening and said bluntly, "Your 10-year-old niece is asking if God controls the weather, and I said I don't know, but your Uncle Ben probably does, because he's a preacher. So here she is."

Despite my frustration with my sister at that moment and my desperation to say at least a few helpful words to niece, I somehow knew it best to speak neither of the weather nor too much of God - two subjects of which I have no emphatic certainty - but to speak the language that faith speaks best, when we look inside ourselves.

"Are you scared?" I asked, cutting to the real issue at hand.

She said yes.

"I'm afraid of storms too," I said. It was my only honest answer. "Me too," I said.

And in the solidarity of knowing the fears we held in common, only then could we press on to the incredibly complex task before us - figuring out God and the weather in one conversation.

Now, I'll admit that I secretly wished that, in good conscience, I could have poured her a nice, warm glass of fundamentalism and sent her off to bed.

But somehow, despite my reticence, "Me too" seemed to do the trick.

The more we extend and hear those words, the more we make room for the common ground of the heart, the more we open ourselves up to the truths and experiences of others, the less isolated all of the world's parts become. And intersections can occur. This is the contribution that faith makes.

According to tradition, 800 years ago on this day - February 24, 1208 - a young troubadour and poet named Francesco attended a church service and heard a sermon on the Gospel of Matthew. "The Kingdom of heaven is at hand," the preacher reportedly said. "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons. Receive without paying and give without pay."

And on this day, history says, "St. Francis of Assisi" received his call and his vocation, and began his own life of preaching the reconciliation of all creation. "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace."

A life radically changed by the speaking and hearing of mere words? Just words?

Faith says it is so.