A friend died recently after a long-extended illness. He was a very private person and kept mostly to himself. He was not a believer, which made it difficult to share my faith or to pray. I tried to show Christian kindness simply by being a friend. I knew nothing of his family and didn’t even know of his niece until she showed up at the hospital. He chose to ignore organized religion and to live basically a self-absorbed life and to do what he wanted to, when he wanted to, in the way he wanted to. In the end, he was very much alone except for his niece and me.
He was straight, but so many GLBT people also have abandoned organized religion because of their feelings of discrimination and thus are devoid of faith in times of crisis. The so-called gay lifestyle is more a symptom of desperation that occurs when one lives without any faith or hope and struggles to find love in the most superficial ways.
Shortly after his death I attended a conference on long-term care issues, including end-of-life care and hospice. It’s called palliative care and is intended to ease the physical pain, but even as a Stephen Minister I wasn’t able really to ease his emotional and spiritual pain because we couldn’t pray together. He wasn’t afraid of death; in fact he welcomed it as a relief from his physical pain. I don’t think he was concerned about the hereafter or even believed in it. I never tried to force my beliefs on him, but I wondered if his passing would have been much easier if we had been able to pray together.
As United Methodists we are called upon to witness our faith in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, but it is difficult at times to put that into words to share with people who do not have the same beliefs. How are we to act? I think it is show kindness and walk humbly with our God and to demonstrate love even to those who do not believe as we do. And that includes people who believe that GLBT people are sinners who are beyond redemption and are headed straight to hell. It is hard to love someone who hates you, but that is exactly what Jesus has called us to do. I don’t think that means that we are not supposed to physically defend ourselves or are immune to the hurt of rejection, but we are not to strike back in anger. We can demonstrate and caucus, but we are not to be mean or degrading to those with whom we differ on issues of faith or belief.
Our culture and society seem obsessed with sex and afraid of death and dying, which are the natural conclusion to life. We won’t even talk about it, much less try to plan to deal with it in a rationale way. It is an important part of our Christian belief that there is more to life than just today and the here-and-now. We are to live in the fullness and joy of the moment but to prepare for what is to come. No one has seen or knows what that may be, and our feeble efforts to describe that often only confuse others. But I know that the pain of death is much easier for Christians to bear, and sometimes all we are called upon to do is just to be there.