Today’s Word from Sandra Moore…
I was fortunate to make a trip to Italy with a TLC group a few years ago. The day before we reached Rome, we stopped at one of the medieval hilltop towns called San Gimignano. Tuscany is breathtakingly beautiful. The walled town with its tall towers made breathtakingly beautiful go up a notch. It was a small place, very easy to walk from end to end in one day. Jim led us to the far end of San Gimignano to a small stone church, high above the winding valleys and green rolling hills. The priest allowed us to have a private service within as pilgrims on our way to Rome. It was a small and humble church. The priest told us that during the dreadful plague years hundreds of years ago that this church was used as a hospital. I had no trouble imagining those suffering taking refuge there in a time of great uncertainty.
During the recent TLC course led by Deacon Amy, we read the book By Heart: Conversations with Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. In the last paragraph in the introductory chapter we read the following sentence: “And most importantly, how can we stay true to Luther’s witness to the gospel and his vision to embed the Christian catechism into all hearts and minds, so that, in the hospital we call the church, people may discover the sickness of sin, hear the good news about God’s medicine of grace, and call on God for help in all of our need?” The church we visited in San Gimignano came to my mind and stayed there. I had never before heard the church called a hospital and it intrigued me. I had to look up the etymology of the word. Google told me it came from the Latin word hospitale, which means “lodging for travelers.” Anglo-French borrowed the word to first mean a charitable institution for the needy and later a place for educating young people. It was first used as an institution for the sick or wounded in the 16th century. Our word hospital is related to words like hostel, hotel, host, hospitality, and hospice.
Would thinking about the church as a hospital, our sanctuary for example, bring us closer to God? Maybe not if someone has had a bad experience in a hospital or if one fears hospitals. While I would not personally choose to work in a hospital, when I hear the word I think of a quiet, good place with patients mostly trying to be considerate of all the other patients who are waiting to hear good or bad news from the experts. I think of all the personnel in a hospital who treat patients with gentle kindness day after day. What if we came to church each Sunday as if we were entering a hospital? How would that change the way we interact with each other in the pews before, during, and after the service? TLC’s hallmark is hospitality. Are we attentive, empathetic, and responsive to those sitting around us? Do we behave at church as we would behave in a hospital or hospice with a loved one? How do we support and nurture our caregivers at church?
We live in troubled times. We come to church each Sunday with wounds, scars, and debilitating pain—both physical and spiritual—that are masked by our smiles. We come seeking comfort and hope, the same way people come to hospitals. We, fellow patients and hospital staff, offer kindness to each other in the spirit of hospitality. We are the hospice care givers to each other.
Every hospital has a prayer chapel. You might remember spending time in one or more of them. They are peaceful places of rest in times when we feel most uncertain and vulnerable. There is a synagogue in the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. There are twelve stained glass windows, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, designed by Marc Chagall. On a sunny day the bright colors are reflected down into the prayer room. In our sanctuary there is a square tower leading up to the cross on the roof outside. We have stained glass windows on either side. In a similar way, there is a box shaped tower in the synagogue of the Hadassah Hospital with three tribes on each of the four sides.
Hospitals offer our physical bodies hope, answers, no answers, mending; they are places of respite or urgent care in the journey of life in all of its stages. Church offers us the same but for our souls. Together, in our church community, let us be both givers and receivers of hope each Sunday in our hospital sanctuary.
