The Good Fight

The Good Fight October 30, 2011
All Saints Sunday. The Dover Church

With just six weeks of seminary education under my belt, I was called to be the part-time Associate Minister at the Second Congregation Church of Cohasset. The Cohasset church was much like The Dover Church, a beautiful, clapboard New England church in the center of a beautiful New England town. As a novice minister dropped in the midst of hundreds of people, I sort of skated across the surface of the church for some time, trying to learn names, getting the hang of preaching and public praying, learning the ropes as it were, watching how the much beloved, successful and long serving senior minister did things.
The skating ended eight months later when Gary, the senior, went away for the summer on sabbatical. I suddenly found myself alone for three months with God and all these people. Well, not quite alone. I had DeeDee, our secretary, who was really the second minister in that church, having lived in town forever, knowing everyone and their back stories, where they were in relation to the church, as well as how to make a church run. Whenever I had a question, which was quite a lot in those days, DeeDee had a good answer.
One day, the phone rang and I could hear DeeDee speaking to someone from down the hall. The next thing I knew, the light on my phone blinked and it rang. I picked up and heard a woman's voice saying, "This is Roberta McKinnell. My husband Scotty and I were wondering if you might come by for a visit this Friday at 1." "Yes, I'd be delighted," I said. "See you then." There were some other pleasantries, but that was our conversation in a nutshell.
After putting down the receiver and marking the visit in my pocket planner, I walked down to DeeDee's office to find out what I needed to know. "So who are the McKinnell's, DeeDee? I can't place them. And what do you think this is all about?" As I said, DeeDee knew what was what in the Cohasset church. She took out the latest directory and showed me a picture which prompted my memory. A very elegant, dashing couple in their 70s who drove a sharp sports car and whom, I had heard, did a lot of traveling, which explained my lack of name recognition. I remembered them from around Christmas, he in a blazer and McKinnell tartan vest, her in a stunning coat. As to what this was about, all DeeDee could say was, "I heard a rumor that he was sick."
So, on Friday at 12:50, I got in my car, checked a map of the town and drove over. Arriving at 12:57, I waited down the street. Mrs. McKinnell had said 1, so I waited for the church bell in town to strike the hour before walking up and knocking on the door, which was opened by the very same elegant woman from the directory picture. She welcomed me graciously and invited me in to the screen porch where Scotty was sitting. He got up from his chair to welcome me when I came in, but he had changed. Before me was not the ruddy faced, blue eyed, burly, firm handshaking, smiling Scotsman I remembered from Christmas. He had thinned out substantially and looked jaundiced, quite yellow in fact.
After some small talk and the pouring of some lemonade, Scotty got right down to brass tacks in the best Scottish tradition. "I have pancreatic cancer," he said. Being still wet behind the ears at this sort of thing, I had no idea what that meant. So I asked, "is that bad?" Without missing a beat, Scotty said. "Yes. It is. My doctor tells me that I have between 3 and 6 months to live." "Oh," I said. "That is bad. I am so very sorry."
Years before, when my best boyhood friend was just starting out in ministry, I had asked him out of curiosity how he handled difficult pastoral visits, tragedy, death, deep pain. "What do you say in situations like this?" "I don't say anything. I listen and let them tell me what they want to do." I thank God for my friend’s wisdom, because that's just what I did. I listened as they told me about Scotty's cancer. I kept on listening as they began to tell me about themselves. Suddenly it seemed, a clock chimed somewhere in the house and it was 2 o'clock. They thanked me for coming. I asked if we might pray before I left. They said yes, that they would like that. Then I got bold. I reached out and took their hands and we prayed. There were some tears. As Roberta was seeing me to the door, I asked, "may I come again?" "Yes, that would be nice. Will next Friday at 1 work for you?" she asked. "Yes. See you then."
And just like that, I began to become a minister, visiting with Scotty and Roberta every Friday at 1, sitting in the screen porch when it was warm and in the parlor during the winter. Every Friday, an update on Scotty's cancer, followed by a long listen to the story of their life. They literally wove together the beautiful and wonderful tapestry of their more than 50 years of love as I sat there and listened. We talked about recollections from the past, present concerns, and hopes for the future. Every now and then we shifted gears with a God conversation, questions like why? And what's next? We always ended with a prayer holding hands. Scotty lost a lot of weight, as much as 80 pounds and stayed very jaundiced. He also got cold easily and spent a lot of our visits wrapped in a blanket. Roberta was always beautiful, looking like she could go downtown to dinner and dancing on a moment's notice.
During probably the third visit, I finally asked Scotty, "so how are you with all this Scotty?" He looked me right in the eye and said, "to be perfectly frank with you, Max, I'm damned angry. This cancer makes me feel awful and I don't want anyone to see me looking like this. But that's not what has me angry. It's not even the prospect of dying. It's the immediacy of it. It's that it's now. I don't want to complain. I've had a great life. I married the only girl I ever loved and I love her every bit as much now as I did the first time I saw her at Bates College after the war. I love my kids and grandkids. I had a great career. I have a lovely home and all the toys I ever wanted, a sail boat and the sport car. I don't want you to think I am selfish or whining, but the truth is that I want more time to go on loving my life. I want more time with my Roberta. It's too good not to want more of." "There's nothing selfish or whiney about that, Scotty," I said. "God created us for love and surrounded us with goodness."
Every Friday from 1 to 2, Scotty and Roberta would tell me about the goodness and love they lived. There was the grand adventure and honor of being a naval officer aboard the U.S.S. Nashville in the Second World War. There was the passion of courtship and marriage. There was Bates and MIT, the challenge of starting out in business, working together through adversity and being able to turn his firm over to his son as a partner. There were the joys and struggles of raising three kids and watching them celebrate and struggle as they grew up, fell in and out and in love again, and raised kids of their own who were now going to proms, making mistakes, winning championships, not doing so well, going off to college, and dipping their own toes into the sea of life. There was skiing in Maine, travel, a deep pride in his Scottish ancestry.
It was beautiful. I listened for an hour a week, became friends, and prayed, prayed that all would be well, that we would have hope and courage, that we might draw closer to God in this struggle. And the astounding thing to me was that God seemed to be answering our prayers. I certainly saw God all over this, but more miraculously three months passed, then six, and then nine. And every Friday I would go over and Scotty would look the same and Roberta would be beautiful and we would sit and talk, and pray. Not wanting to call the Almighty's cards, I never shared my astonishment at and growing confidence in the power of prayer with the McKinnell's. They weren't born yesterday. They could count the months as well as me.
Then, one Tuesday in October, Roberta called. "Can you come over this afternoon, Max?" she asked in the same gracious voice. "Yes I can. The usual time?" "No. That's not important. Whenever works for you." I came over at 12:05 and found Scotty comatose, dying in bed. He had never been able to let go of his anger about having his life cut short and I felt like I had failed him and Roberta. There was nothing else for it now, so I took his hand, held Roberta's hand, and prayed. When I got to the Lord's Prayer, Scotty's breathing changed, his face seemed to relax, I felt pressure from his hand, and his lips moved. After the Amen, I bent down and kissed his forehead, wishing him the peace of Christ. I said goodbye and saw myself out. Roberta called me around suppertime to tell me that Scotty had just died.
When we laid D. James McKinnell, my friend Scotty, to rest, I was deeply sad but swelling with blessing of the fullness of life. To be invited to be part of such richness of life, to hear people's sacred stories, to see God active and moving powerfully in love in so many lives, to help people see the meaning and significance in the details of their everyday lives, was beyond description to me. I had known how precious life was in a sort of intellectual way before Scotty and Roberta, but the experience of walking towards death together made it visceral for me. Everything they had told me was so very ordinary, but it wasn't. It was extraordinary because it was the specialness of their particular life. I suddenly knew why God had become a human being in Jesus, to show us just how holy the ordinary truly is if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. Whatever blessingI might have been to the McKinnell’s, they had blessed me with this gift.
A few days after the funeral, I stopped by to see how Roberta was doing. Beautiful as always and ever gracious, we had a drink and there were tears. In the midst of our small talk, she took my hand, looked at me searchingly and said, "Your faith is so strong and your hope for your prayers so earnest that I didn't want to tell you, but the last six months we had been giving Scotty shots which we were smuggling from Canada. I didn't want you to think less of us, that we didn't have faith." I guess such a confession must have tickled her, because she started chuckling through her tears and went on, "we finally gave up last week when the shots became too painful and difficult for me to administer, and Scotty died." I found myself laughing with her as I returned the grasp of her hand, saying, "Roberta, such a strong will to live and love... If that's not God, then I don't know what is." Amen.