TLC

from my sermon on 10/23/11 from I Thes. 2:1-8





"But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children." Nurse...what do imagine when I say that word? I bet it is a female. There are a lot of male nurses, but still today in the USA, some 93% of nurses are female. Now, some people say that Paul doesn't respect women, but look at the image here. He says that he, Timothy, and Silvanus have come to be with the Thessalonians like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. Paul, a male, uses a feminine image to describe the nurturing relationship he has with this congregation. We know it is a feminine image because the word literally means a "wet nurse," a woman who is lactating, who breast feeds another person's child. How glad she is when she gets to tend her own child!





Our impressions of nurses as female come from some of our examples of nurses. A famous nurse in Great Britain was Florence Nightingale. I "goolged" her this past week. She came from a privileged background. She took care of soldiers in the Crimean War. She was called "the Lady with the Lamp."





Another example is especially dear to me because we share the same last name...Clara Barton. She followed Florence Nightingale by several years and here in the States. She began a school that grew quickly. When it came time to hire a principal for the school, the board hired a male at twice the pay they were giving Clara. Clara left and became the first woman to work for the US Patent Office. Later when the Civil War began, Clara became a nurse. She worked at 16 battlefield sites. She improved standards for care and was elevated to the head of all nurses for the Union side. She was called the "Angel of the Battlefield." After the war, she started a service to connect missing service men with their families against strong opposition, because it revealed the severity of the problem. Later, she went to Europe to find out more about the Red Cross. She pushed for it to include non-war situations. Due to her efforts, the Red Cross began addressing any disaster where life and property losses were great. She got the Red Cross started in the USA and became its first president, serving in that role for 22 years.





Today, lets pause and affirm nurses in our midst. Please stand where you are so we can recognize you. I looked up some quotes about nurses this past week. An anonymous author said, " Nurses may not be angels, but they are the next best thing." Thank you nurses.





How many of you like to do crossword puzzles like I do? If you ever see a clue that says, "name a 5 letter word for TLC," write the word "nurse." Nurses are the epitome of Tender Loving Care. A nurse writes, "bound by paperwork, short on hands, sleep, and energy, nurses are rarely short on caring."





Nurses combine TLC and professionalism. I once knew a charge nurse named Alice. She was in charge of a hospital floor, some 30 rooms, during the graveyard shift. When she first started, it was maddening. The call button was going off all the time. There was never time to do all of the paperwork. She prayed about the situation. It came to her to change the dynamic. What she started to do was this: at the beginning of each shift, she would visit every patient's room. She would say, "I am Alice. I am your charge nurse. If you need anything tonight, you just hit that call button. I want you to know that I and my staff are here for you." It would take some 2 hours to make a personal connection with each of her patients, but after a while, the calls went to practically nothing. Most people simply wanted to know that someone cared for them.





What does all of this have to do with the Confirmation Class that starts today? We are called to be their nurses, tenderly caring for them.





One of my heroes in the faith is Will Spong. For years he taught at the Episcopal Seminary here. I took a year long CPE, Clinical Pastoral Education course with him, when I first started out in ministry. Many of you have taken his courses or gone to him for counseling. One day he told us the role that he was called to fulfill as a Christian. He said, "My image is that of being a midwife." We asked, "What does that mean?" He said, "A midwife is highly trained, highly skilled, has lots of experience. She is with people in an intense period for a brief time where new life has the potential for breaking in, and she realizes she is not in control." This is a pretty good image for us as we help some young people for a short time come to potentially "new life."





One more nursing image...these confirmands need more than just their parents and mentors. They need us. Last Sunday we celebrated Children's Sabbath. Last Sunday we performed 2 baptisms of children to whom we made promises of bringing them up in the Christian faith.





One of my other heroes in the faith is Jim Wallis, who started the Sojourners ministry in Washingon, D. C., that work with the most vulnerable people there. He was listening to NPR and heard the following story:

A reporter was covering the conflict in the middle of Sarajevo in the 1990's. He saw a little girl shot by a sniper. The reporter threw down his pad and pencil, and stopped being a reporter, and became a human being. He rused to the man who was holding the child. and helped them into his car. As the reporter stepped on the accelerator, racing to the hospital, the man holding the bleeding child said, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still alive." Two minutes later, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still breathing." Then, "Hurry, my friend, my child is still warm." Finally, "Hurry. Oh, God, my child is getting cold." When they got to the hospital, the little girl was dead. As the 2 men were in the lavatory, washing the blood off, the man turned to the reporter and said, "this is a terrible task for me. Now I must go and tell her father that his child is dead. He will be heartbroken." The reporter was amazed. He looked at the grieving man, "I thought she was your child." The man looked back and said, "no, but aren't they all our children."

Aren't they all our children? Paul says that he was gentle among them, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. We are called to be nurses, to practice tender, loving care. That is the good news I have to share today.