EPIPHANY 3C 2010

THIRD IN A SERIES ON PREPARING FOR DEATH..

Today we are continuing our series on preparing for death. On the way to work on this sermon – or really talk – I heard on the radio that someone was holding a workshop entitled: “Will you die if you prepare for death.”---Or something like that. Last week Pastor Liz talked about the importance of communication in facing our death and that of others. This week I want to ramble a little and talk about some of the practical issues that we face when death comes.

One of the first facts that we all have to face is that death comes in different ways.. and of course, it can come at any time. The normal course of life is that we die after we have lived for many years, but the problem for many of us is that, no matter how old we are, we still feel young, so that we are 80 or 90 and we still think we are young!!!. When my mother was dying of cancer at age 63 she said to me: “You know, the strange thing is that inside, I feel like I am 18”… and this just a week or so before cancer took her body. So we often keep thinking that we have many more years, when, in reality, death is just around the corner.

So the message we are trying to get across in this series is, that no matter what your age, this is a subject that you should face head on. And for me, the central reason really we should do this is because the Christian message does not make a lot of sense until we realize that Jesus came to save us from death. Jesus, we can say, went into battle with death and won. In my office are two icons on the wall over my desk. . One is of the normal crucifixion scene. The other has Jesus standing over the grave with Satan in the grave, bound with chains, and Adam and Eve coming out of their tombs.

I put them there to remind me of the central core of the gospel. The Christian faith, while it greatly and wonderfully helps us in our day to day lives, is not just about self help, or even about having a series which helps us better prepare to die. The church exists to proclaim to the world that Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and that through his life and death and resurrection we humans now no longer need fear death, nor anything that can happen to us in this life -----. I reminded myself of this fact as Padre Francisco was driving down the mountain roads of Honduras!!!

So facing our own death, through prayer and reading the scriptures and reading the Burial office in the prayer book helps us understand better our faith. The truth is, preparing for death is the way to prepare to live a better and healthier life.

While death can come to us in various forms, this morning I would like to talk for a few minutes about the process of dying. This of course is a personal issue, and we will all deal with it in our own way. Family systems come into play in this issue, and this reality has to be addressed. What I want to do in this talk is simply to share some of my thoughts and opinions, but my central goal is to get us to think, so that when the day comes, we are doing what we are doing with some thought and planning, and not just being tossed about by the circumstances and issues that are coming at us each day.

We are all very familiar with people who die of cancer, but there are other ways that our bodies are overtaken by disease or simply failing organs. People die in many ways, and very often it is a process.

The first thing I want to say, and this can be controversial, is that I think in light of the present realities of modern medicine and the economic realities that we face, Christians ought to face some medical decisions with their faith in mind. I don’t know what the statistics are, but it is clear that a huge amount of money is spent on the last few weeks and months of people who are dying. It is a large percentage of money that is spent on our nations medical expenses. My wife Kathy wrote a paper that was published for her Masters Degree talking about the differences between those who use hospice and those who do not in their last days. Our nation is struggling with the issue of how to pay for our present advances in medicine, and one of the issues that we are going to have to face is the spending of large amounts of money on our last few days. I don’t have any simple answers, but I think if we who are Christians have looked death in the face, and have realized that we are going to die, we may make different medical decisions that will save tons of money for the good of others.

Let me make a few comments about medicine and our last days. When I was in Sacramento, I served for many years on a Sutter Hospital committee, I think it was the Institutional Review Committee, or board. This committee reviewed all the experimental medical protocols in the Sutter system. There were many high powered doctors, and I was one of the lay people on the board. I admired these doctors greatly and learned a little about how things work from the inside. Many of the protocols were cancer related, and many of them were similar, simply mixing the doses of chemotherapy and the times, or mixing different types of chemo. As I read some of them I began realizing that many of these were being offered to people who the doctors knew were not going to live more than a few months. I began asking them what they tell the patients, and by an large, they tried to be as clear as possible. But when people are told they are going to die in a few months, and they have not prepared for it at all, they often don’t hear what is being said and hope that medicine can cure them. But often going on these protocols is very difficult physically because of the powerful drugs, and the person spends a great amount of time going back and forth to the clinic, and the drugs are not going to cure the person. I finally got the doctors to put in a sentence or two that said something like: You may choose to accept no treatment and your quality of life will be better… or something like that… They called it the Kent’s death clause.

If I am ever in this situation, I want to ask lots of questions, and get honest answers from the doctors. They don’t like to give predictions, and they are trained to treat people, so often it is easier for them to simply have people go on some sort of treatment, even though they know there is no real hope of a cure. Not accepting treatment is not always just giving up, but simply facing reality and choosing to spend the last few months not going to the clinic and seeing doctors.

Now I want to talk for a few minutes about a related issue, and that is the program that is called hospice. I am not going to talk in detail about what hospice does, as anyone who wants can find this information out very easily. I am doing this because I am still amazed at how many people don’t know what it is and does.

I came home Thursday night from Honduras and was glancing at the local paper and there was a letter with the title: “Don’t wait too long to call hospice.”

This lady was in the hospital cafeteria with a social worker from the hospital names Mary and she writes this:

Mary explained to both of us how hospice works, the team concept and h how comfort and care helps both the patient and the caregiver. She also carefully explained that if my husband got better hospice care could be terminated and that he was entitled to up to six months care per certification.

When my husband went home from his hospital visit, he was officially enrolled in hospice care and the wonderful team of hospice care professionals began their visits, providing my husband with care that exceeded all my expectations and giving me direction as his primary caregiver…… Snowline hospice has incredible physicians, skilled nurses and nursing aides, a compassionate chaplain and bereavement staff, and a group of trained volunteers, each of whom is ready to provide your family loving care.

Many, many people say that they would rather die in their own bed at home, but since many of us have never traveled down this road, it is not all that easy to watch one we love die not knowing what is going on or what we can do. The strength of hospice is that an entire team comes into our lives and they become our guides through this process. The two basic qualifications that must be met are the patient must be terminal and there must be a person who can act as a primary care giver.

There is much more that I could say about how everyone who faces a terminal illness should consider hospice, but you can go on line, or call them, and find out all the details yourself. The one point that I would like to make about hospice is that so many people wait until the very end to get hospice involved and then everything is rushed and many of the real benefits of the program are missed. As the lady in the letter said, if a person rebounds and gets better, one simply goes off the program.

Now let us switch gears for a moment and talk about care in the last days as it relates to the church and the clergy.

When we go through a process of dying, at some point we can no longer come to church. In our church we have what we call lay Eucharistic ministers. These are volunteers who offer to bring the sacrament to people in their homes after church on Sunday mornings. The simply come to the house, offer the sacrament with a very short service and then leave. They are not supposed to stay a long time, so you can know that, when you don’t feel all that great, you don’t have to entertain. All you do is call the church office and we will set it up. Along with them we have a pastoral team and they try and do what they can to help.

If at any time you want to have a visit by the clergy, again all you have to do is call the church office and we will come. This is one of the most sensitive issues that clergy face, when and if to visit people. We have been trying to train our members to feel free to call us and let us know your needs. Many people, if they are lying in a hospital in pain, or have some sort of personal surgery, don’t want clergy sitting at their bedside in a hospital. We are all different and we all have different needs, but what we want to say loud and clear is that if you would like to talk to one of us, or have prayer, please let us know. The other practical reality that we clergy face is that members of our congregation could be in hospitals all over the area, and it is not easy, as in a smaller community, to simply drop by for short visit.

Now I want to say a few words about our role in when someone is close to death. Our prayer book has a short liturgy for people who are close to death. This is often called last rites. It can be very meaningful to the family to gather around the bedside and say prayers for one we love. And we clergy are willing to do this at any time. We also are committed to coming to your house or to the hospital immediately after death. Again we can gather together and pray and simple be there to support you. It doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is, we are more than happy to come.

As we face the process of dying, there are many, many resources available to us, both from the community and the church. We can make this whole process much, much more graceful and spirit filled and easier on everyone if, before the time comes, we have prepared ourselves. It is a gift we can give to our families and even to ourselves. AMEN