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Ministry as Nursing I Thessalonians 2:1 – 8; Matthew 22:34 – 46 The March of the Penguins has to be one of the most amazing films of the year. Not only is it a beautifully filmed production, but the pure interest and educational value is beyond compare. This movie traces the absolutely arduous yearly journey of the Emperor Penguins in Antarctica. These penguins are monogamous on a yearly basis (meaning that when they mate they stay together for the season in which they bear an offspring). The “march,” however, begins before they mate, and is an adventure in itself. Penguins from all over the continent travel miles and miles, arriving at the same place every year and approximately the same time. They choose their mate and huddle for the winter – as couples and an entire community. Immediately after the eggs have been laid, the female penguins are so sapped of their strength they have to move quickly back to the sea to eat and rebuild that strength. The male penguins take over as the egg sitters, and have the job of protecting their young yet-to-be hatched baby penguin. After the females eat and are replenished they take the walk (now the third time) back to the horde of male penguins who have been sitting atop their eggs — hopefully in time to not only feed their mates, but their little ones who have hatched by this time. Obviously there are some who do not have the timing correct, or are injured or too sick and, therefore, do not survive the marches back and forth from the sea. For the most part, however, these creatures are so in tune with their physical cycles, the seasonal situations of the earth, and the community of which they are a part that they live accordingly. Each knows what they have and how they are to give. They don’t have coaches, human nurses or outfitters to move them en masse to the right place at the right time each year! They know whom they are and how much they can live so life will continue. What a concept!? Paul wrote the letter to the church at Thessalonica to encourage them when he could not be present to do so in person. He and his colleagues had founded the church, but the congregation had been riddled with struggles — persecution and maligning. That heavy criticism had been aimed at his ministry claiming Paul’s motives were impure, deceitful and full of trickery. His letter, therefore, has an apologetic sense to it. More importantly, the image Paul uses in this small passage of the letter (that is our text for today) is one of being a nurse ‘tenderly caring for her own children’ or some translations read ‘like a nursing mother feeding her children.’ It is not only a startling and rich image — coming from Paul, who is not known to think out of his feminine side — but it is an image that can lead us new places in considering our ministry and how we are cared for by God. A nurse knows what we (as patients) need to be doing to stretch and heal. A nurse knows what today’s physical regimen should be so that tomorrow’s schedule can bring us closer to wholeness and health. A nurse can hold up the standard of health and mark our progress to meet that goal. Good nurses are strong and gentle, compassionate and strict, all knowing but determined that the patient would own their illness and their health. Ultimately, their gift is to teach us (patients) to own our bodies as fully as possible so that we may care for them in the way that God intended. Paul, writing to his beloved church, claimed that he cared for them, wanted to teach and protect them as a nurse would. A nurse is neither about deceptive behavior nor about trickery or impurity but desirous that health and wholeness be achieved. A nurse is also not interested in patients becoming dependent upon them, but actually is fostering the understanding that patients should know their own body — what that body’s capabilities are and how best to keep it as healthy as possible. Penguins know their life cycles, identify their needs, and figure out how to achieve and meet them well and collectively. Nurses are in the business to do that exact same thing for us until we claim the process for ourselves. Paul writes that is what he and his colleagues in ministry were doing for the congregation, which is what we should do as our ministry. That, indeed, is what God does for us every day. And further – an inanimate example: What can we learn from a tree?
None of us are penguins or trees and not all of us are patients needing nursing care, but we are all children of God who have been created for a specific purpose. Although that purpose may be hidden, confused, shaded some of the time it is always about life and living in the fullest and most productive way possible. And like penguins, trees and patients there is something within us that is always knowing and clamoring for the best possible way to produce and be healthy. What we have to give to this life is based on the abundance of what we have been given. First of all, we must know and appreciate — be in sync — with the seed that has been planted within us as children of God. When we realize that and add to it the ways in which we have been nourished through the years, or been led and cared for, protected and guided then we will understand that we flourish, bloom, flower, produce because of something far more powerful than anything we would have constructed ourselves. God is the nurse, holding out the standard of wholeness and health — the fullness of life that is possible for us. God is the bearer, producer, and planter of the seeds that are the kernel of our very being. God is the designer of a world that allows penguins to know when and how to move to protected space in order to continue their community and breed of life. God is the source of seeds for trees and humans and has imagined healthy, productive and beautiful life. Responding to that gift of life because we are listening to the source of all being is our responsibility. Like a patient, a penguin or a tree we have an opportunity to respond and thrive because we listen and live according to what has given us life and what will continue to give us life. Our stewardship campaign is about much more than money. It is about how we will flourish as individuals and as a community. It is about us remembering that nothing we have truly belongs to us, but that God provides and allows us to use everything in this world, so that we may be used by the world and its needs. It is about discovering how we can best produce from the seed that has been planted; be healthy because of the nursing regime; and play our part in this whole earthly creation. When we make decisions about our giving based on what we have been given, there will be an endless reservoir of possibility. When we make decisions about giving based on what we need to keep for ourselves, there will never be enough for anyone or anything else beyond ourselves. God knows our abilities. God knows what the possibilities of our lives are and have been from the beginning. God tends to us and nurses us into knowing how we may best live, what we can best produce, and how we may best give. May we listen…may we hear…may we respond. May we be a tree of life allowing ourselves to give the richness of our produce and beauty because God has tenderly cared for the seeds of life planted within us. SW |
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