Clergy Health in an Age of Spilled Drinks

I was reading the other day that clergy health is at an all time low. Clergy rank higher in almost every risk factor than do peers in other professions. We are at higher risk for heart attack, stroke, hypertension and depression than most professionals.

I wondered why this was, until I read a letter to the editor of my local paper. There is a gentlemen here locally, posturing himself on the shoulders of tragedy and taking aim at the faith community for not manning school crosswalks when the city failed to provide them.

How much absorption can you really demand from saturated sponges? As clergy, we are bombarded with needs every day. No one ever bombards us with resources. We work late, we work early, we can't just punch a time clock, or take the phone off the hook.

It seems to me that we live in a society demanding more saturation from our sponges, in spite of the fact that we collectively keep spilling our drinks. And yet, when the church asks us to hold our glasses a bit tighter, they get labeled as being judgmental.

Since when did ministry turn into a public feeding trough? I am reminded of something Jesus said in his first sermon to his home town crowd. They had been hearing about how he healed the sick and relieved the afflicted. They wanted him to do the same for them.

Jesus said this, "There were many lepers in the time of Elisha, but God healed none of them, except for Naaman, the Syrian."

In other words, there was a land full of need, but God didn't flail around trying to meet them all. He moved with purpose.

The next line of the story is the most amazing:

"This enraged the crowd."

The idea that just maybe God isn't going to be our personal Santa Claus does throw us into a fit of rage sometimes. I'm not so sure, the same isn't true of clergy. We want them when we need them, but not too much beyond that. We can set up a food pantry, but we're viewed as religious zealots if we dare offer them a spiritual truth in conjunction with the bread.

We live in an age of saturated sponges, and we'd rather demand more from them than to take a look at how we are holding our drinks.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!