Sometimes, pastors don't have a choice

The pastor or the faith group leader will often be called upon to play one of two roles, either priest or prophet.

A biblical example of the latter role is Nathan, who discovered that King David slept with a married woman and then had the woman's husband killed. Davy figured he'd pulled a fast one until Nate appeared complaining about a local rancher who stole a poor farmer's lamb and had it slaughtered for a party.

Dave demanded to know the thief's identity so that he could be executed.

In one of the most famous of biblical comebacks, the prophet Nathaniel equates the theft of a wife to the theft of a sheep and says to Dave, "Thou art the man!"

This is the I-told-you-so moment most clergy secretly cherish when we get to stick our finger down a man's throat and say, "You're the dude, and you gotta pay!"

The other side, the priestly role, is much harder to practice, as I discovered years ago when a father brought his 3-year-old, blond-haired boy to our Houston hospital. The dad told us that he had been "horsing around" with his son when the boy suddenly began vomiting. A few minutes after their arrival, doctors pronounced the boy dead.

The police came and the questions followed. Dad and mom were in the same profession — stripping. While she'd been dancing at the club, dad says he gave his son a playful stomach punch.

In the midst of that, I was his chaplain; the guy who sat with a tearful dad when mom bolted through our automatic door, echoing my thoughts with her words: "You son of a b----! What have you done?"

Over the next few hours, I escorted each of the family members into the room where the little boy lay. They don't get much cuter than this kid, and I supported the grandparents as they grieved over the loss of a grandson and the mom over the loss of her child.

But when the dad straightened his grief-bent frame and asked me to take him to his son, I had to ask myself how in God's name could I support an animal that did this to his own son? What was he grieving?
I took him anyway. As he stood at the gurney, confronted with the results of his "play," he wept. He was sorry in his own depraved way — sorry he didn't have a son anymore, sorry he ruined so many lives, and no doubt, sorry he was going to prison.

He needed a chaplain at that moment. And while I definitely did not feel like being that chaplain, God didn't ask me how I felt about it.

Neither did God ask Edwin Zeiders, pastor of St. Paul's Methodist Church at State College, Pa., when he sat in court this month with his parishioner of 30 years, former Penn State assistant football coach and accused child molester, Jerry Sandusky.

Zeiders put words to his role last week when he appeared before reporters to say, "We continue to define the local congregation as a people of love and restoration, while giving witness and an endless stream of mercy from our Lord and the forgiveness that opens the doorway to new life."

There's a time to rage against injustice, but there's also a moment when God calls us to see all the victims. Both the father I met in the hospital and Sandusky blame their predicament on harmless horseplay, which tells me that they are victims of their own self-deception. These men need a pastor, and their victims need our prayers.

Norris Burkes is a syndicated columnist, national speaker and author of "No Small Miracles." He also serves as an Air National Guard chaplain and is board certified in the Association of Professional Chaplains. You can call him at (321) 549-2500, Email him at ask@thechaplain.net, visit his website at www.thechaplain.net or write him at P.O. Box 247, Elk Grove, CA 95759

Daughter update

Readers,

By your replies, I see that not all of you were kept up to date, so I thought I'd begin by sending you the column I wrote about my youngest daughter, Nicole.

Also, I forgot to mention that my web site has been updated and you can see all my past columns on the site. www.thechaplain.net There are also new videos to watch on the site.

Blessings,

Norris

Chaplain Norris improves his Vocabulary

This week, after nearly losing my youngest daughter, I had some time to ponder some alternative meanings of the word: non sequitur. According to wiki.answers.com, a non sequitur is "the attempted connection of two things in a sentence that have nothing to do with each other." Translated from the Latin, not sequitur means, "does not follow" and it is where we get the word "sequence."

Specifically, her safe return from a holiday visit on the East Coast "did not follow" her arrival there. I know it may not sound like a non sequitur, but I think it does, because apparently the purchase of a round trip ticket had nothing to do with insuring the return leg of the trip.

A week before Thanksgiving, I got a call from a small town clinic telling me that my daughter had an average looking virus. "And by the way," says my daughter asks "Can you send cash for the prescriptions?" The improvement that followed the granting of the request was very much in the sequence I expected.

Two days later she walks in for a follow up visit, not completely recovered, but upright and ambulatory. Again, it is kind of a non sequitur because her decent appearance has no relation to the poor numbers that come back from the lab. The visit brings a second call informing me that she has been transferred to Medical University South Carolina in Charleston with liver and kidney failure.

Using the refund from her "non-refundable" airline ticket, my wife and I flew to South Carolina. Sometimes the purchase of an airline ticket has no relation to caring attitude, but not so at Southwest Airline. (Shout outs to "Sam," employee #87199, and her supervisor for the exceptions made to get mom and dad to the hospital.)

Twenty-four sleepless hours later, we were standing at my daughter's bedside on the tenth floor of the medical/surgical unit talking non sequitur again. The doctor said that it doesn't logically follow that a twenty-year-old girl, negative for rare diseases or narcotics, would lose the functions of her kidneys and liver.

And as of the moment I write this column, her kidneys are still completely shut down, but her liver function has returned to normal levels. The doctors have put a catheter in her neck where she is receiving dialysis. Dialysis is expected to be temporary, but doctors aren't sure. They still don't know what caused the multiple organ failure or whether it will reoccur.

I'm always telling people that they shouldn't accept medical advice from a chaplain, but this I do know: liver failure means death without a transplant. My little girl, the one we moved three thousand miles to adopt when she was 3-years-old, the one I taught to ride a bike, the one I drove to her first dance, was closer to heaven than I like to see any loved one get without me.

As this year comes to a close, it's easy for me to number the difficulties that our family has encountered. My wife lost a mother and I lost a stepfather. I've been deployed and my wife was displaced in her job. Some would say that to continue walking in faith after all that makes no sense; that it is a non sequitur. But I know in all my shortcomings and that in all my failures, God has not given up on me. Nor will he. And at the end of the day, that is the most amazing non sequitur of all!

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UPDATE: Several of you emailed asking me about my youngest daughter who had been visiting her sister in South Carolina when she was stricken with inexplicable liver and kidney failure. I'm glad to report that she has been discharged from the Charleston hospital and will no longer require kidney dialysis. Doctors said the incident was likely the "perfect storm" of an infection, dehydration, and a few too many Tylenol products. Her liver has also recovered and she is now back home in Sacramento looking for employment.


Norris Burkes is a syndicated columnist, national speaker and author of No Small Miracles. He also serves as an Air National Guard chaplain and is board certified in the Association of Professional Chaplains. You can call him at (321) 549-2500, E-mail him at ask@thechaplain.net, visit his website at www.thechaplain.net or write him at P.O. Box 247, Elk Grove, CA 95759.

A quick note

Hey everyone,

This is just a quick note to let you know that I've been a little behind in sending out my columns and I'll try to do better next year. I've been busy with my daughter's health and my school this year.

Look for columns by email soon.

Finally, if you'd like to be removed from my list, you can do that simply by clicking on this link http://www.thechaplain.net/list.aspx There you can type your email address and click "unsubscribe."

Blessings,

Chaplain Norris