Rev. Kathleen Ennis-Durstine on lived theologies

Doing Theology When Nothing Else Will Do

Years ago I thought that theology was an intellectual, philosophic endeavor. I thought that with good exegesis and excellent argument we could identify, explain, and defend all of the relevant aspects of God and of God’s relationship with humanity.

Today, with years of work as a pediatric chaplain, I know powerfully that theology is anything but academic. Theology is about meeting God face to face in the lives and experiences of child patients and their families.

How has their faith shaped, informed their sense of themselves, their world, their God? What will they teach me, share with me, that we can – together – hold and that will aid me in supporting them through this hospitalization, all it may bring to them, do to them?

I have had incredible teachers this past year!

One afternoon I met a mother in my office. She asked to see her child who had died and had already been autopsied. I went to the morgue and brought the little one to his Mom. She cradled her child and talked, sang, and prayed for over forty minutes. When she was ready to have me take the baby back to the morgue she said, “It was important that I give God this opportunity to give my child life – even now. God is able.” This tiny person – now with no internal organs, no breath, no pulse. . . . This mother, with trust in her God who could enliven the dry bones. . . . This chaplain, wondering, just a little bit, if my presence, my reality, my theology, might possibly have prevented God an opportunity.

A two-year old with a PNET tumor and his parents were also teachers. For months we sat together and prayed together. There was surgery and chemotherapy, and little by little healing.

There was a going home – and a coming back. In just over a month this child had gone from cancer-free to metastases throughout his body. The physicians said that there was nothing at all that could be done – except to comfort him. Mom and Dad said – you will do everything possible to sustain our child’s life – and God will make a miracle!

Theology is what we do when there is nothing else we can do.

The next weeks were awful and “awe full.” Staff got tired of the miracle talk. They wanted me to fix it, to convince Mom and Dad that miracles, though a nice idea, weren’t realistic.

I’ve had these conversations hundreds of times. “Perhaps the miracle we want will not be the miracle God gives.” “We know what we so dearly want, but what perhaps may your child and God have decided in the holiness of their private relationship?”

Mom and Dad were able to see the severity of their child’s condition, but their belief was that God could redeem their child at the very moment of death with a complete cure.

Their belief carried an imprimatur: God expects them to do everything humanly possible to save their child’s life. Then and only then could God act in miraculous ways. Anything less than everything would bar God’s intervention.

The God described above is not the God I have experienced – or expect. But these words about God are the lived theologies of these families. They made me realize, once again, how complex my role as a theologian is – how challenging, painful, and wonderful my job as a pediatric chaplain is.

Theology is what we do when nothing else will do. And only the God we know and trust and love will do.

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