February 7: Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13]
Psalm 138
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11
My work as a Rehab hospital chaplain is exhausting work. Like Simon in the gospel reading for today, I often feel like I put my net down, so to speak, and come up with nothing. In other words, I seldom have any idea if the work I am doing yields results in the people to whom I minister.
And there is so much need. Everywhere I turn in the small 50-60 bed hospital where I work, there is enormous need. I see people whose spinal cords are broken in devastating accidents and may never walk again. I see people with traumatic brain injuries who are confused and combative, with anxious families. I see people who have suffered strokes and, for the time being, can’t walk and can’t talk. My heart fills with compassion for all of them and so often, so very often, I think, “There is not enough of me to go around.” So many days I go home, thinking not of the people whose lives I may have briefly touched, but the ones I didn’t get a chance to see, the ones whose needs will have to wait another day.
But lest I become filled with despair at the overwhelming distress that confronts me every day, I have to remind myself that the work is not about me. I am very, very aware that there is no way that one person can meet the spiritual and emotional needs of all 50 or 60 patients, many with catastrophic injuries, and their families in this Rehab hospital. What I do as a hospital chaplain in a place like this barely touches the tip of the iceberg of the need of the patients there.
Yet Jesus continually says to me, “Put down your nets.” Get up and try again another day, Jesus says, and this time, be mindful that you need to listen to me, you need to steep yourself in my Word, in order to yield a good catch. It’s not about you.
So when I do that, when I listen to Jesus, when I immerse myself in his presence, when I allow his teaching to be the guiding force that leads me in my work with the Rehab patients, I do not come up empty handed. In other words, I am not quite so mindful of what is lacking in me, but more aware that I am being led to deep waters, to places I do not understand, in my ministry to these people. My heart is continually being stretched as I offer myself to them as their chaplain.
“Do not be afraid,” Jesus says to Simon, to me, to all of us. It is hard, sometimes, not to be. Life is demanding and often difficult, and often we feel ill-equipped to meet our daily challenges. But as Paul came to realize in this letter to the Corinthians regarding his ministerial work, “Is was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
My work as a chaplain is not about me. It is about the grace of God that is with me (1 Cor. 15:10), and with the patients and their families. Together we are amazed at what God yields as God calls us forth and brings healing. In my work at the Rehab hospital, I do not need to focus on my lacks, I need to focus on the God who “increased my strength within me” (Psalm 138: 4).
“We are being utterly and warmly held and falling helplessly into the scarey mystery all at the same time, caught between desire and the question:’Where is this going to take me?'”(R Rohr) You are absolutely on-target: “It’s not about me!” Underwhelming & Overwhelming!