Homily for the Six Sunday of the Year- February 14, 2010

In the new book “The Soul of a Doctor: Harvard Medical Students Face Life and Death” a medical student recounts an incident he witnessed during his training:
An oncologist and palliative care doctor entered the room of the mother of two children who was being treated for cancer. With her was her husband, a Marine Corps officer. After quick introductions, the oncologist began the explanation that she had given much thought and time to prepare, but still sounded so inadequate as she spoke. The husband focused his laser-beam stare at the two doctors as the oncologist explained that his wife’s kidneys were functioning at less than 25 percent and that chemotherapy was no longer a viable option.
The husband’s silent anxiety then materialized into vocal anger. “How could this have happened? Why had no one in the hospital noted my wife’s kidney status before it became too late? Wasn’t this hospital supposedly one of the best in the country? Why could they not cure her?”
The doctors responded the best they could. Looking directly at the Marine, the doctor explained how they had done their best to monitor his wife’s kidneys but that sometimes the unexpected happens with cancer. The most they could do now was to lay out the options so they could make the best informed and most appropriate decisions about how to spend the time she had left.
The patient herself then spoke. With an eerie calm she said that she could not possibly be terminally ill because her husband was about to be deployed to Afghanistan. Someone had to be home to take care of the children. She had to get better. That was the only option.
That’s when her Marine Corps husband broke down. Unable to contain his shock, distraught at his wife’s complete denial, agonizing over the care of his children, he cried like a lost child. The two doctors quietly stood by with him; one found some tissues for him. When he had composed himself, he politely told the doctors he needed some time to speak to his wife alone.
Then this same husband, who minutes earlier had been consumed with rage and distraught with grief, thanked the doctors for doing their jobs well and for explaining his wife’s prognosis in a humane and honest way. He was grateful for their clarity and compassion. Giving bad news was one of the most difficult tasks he could imagine, and the doctors had done it well.
The doctors thanked the Marine for his own kindness, moved by such profound gratitude form a man about to go to war in Afghanistan while facing the terminal illness of his beloved wife, the mother of his children.
Both the doctors and husband displayed the spirit of “blessedness” of today’s Gospel. Moved by compassion, the doctors put aside their own need to justify their prognosis to let the poor man assault them with questions; when he breaks down, they provide a safe place and time for him to grieve. The Marine then puts aside his own anger and hurt to recognize how hard this situation is for the doctors and expresses his gratitude for the compassion and support they had extended to him and his wife and would continue to provide. To be the among the blessed envisioned by Jesus means to put aside our own poverty and hunger in order to extend the care and compassion of Jesus to another; to provide, regardless of cost, havens for the lost to return, for the grieving to mourn, for the wounded to heal. Only in imitating the servanthood of Christ do we experience the true depth of our own faith; only in embracing his compassion and humility in our lives, do we enable the Spirit of God to renew and transform our world in God’s life and love.
Dr. Bill Davis is a young doctor with an old-fashioned country approach to medicine: for one thing, he likes making house calls. Carrying his battered, black medical bag, he often rides his son’s bike along the back roads in the rural towns of California where his patients live, spending an hour or so sitting at the bed or kitchen table trying to get to the bottom of what’s ailing them.
His approach has put him at odds with the HMO who paid his salary. The HMO felt his one-on-one style wasn’t good business, insisting that he see as many as six patients an hour. After six years of frustration and fighting, the 47 year-old physician, calling himself a “conscientious objector” to managed health care, quit his job last summer.
“I got tired of watching patients having to wait for oxygen or pain relief” because of HMO requirements and paperwork. “I became a thorn in their side because their big-city brand of medicine wasn’t doing justice to people in this town.”
Doctor Davis was prepared to leave medicine all together- save for what his patients did next. On the day he quit, dozens of his patients lined up outside his old office to cheer him on. Then they banded together for a nonprofit health-care foundation that would allow Doctor Davis to practice medicine as he saw fit. Volunteers refurbished an office in the heart of town in what residents proudly referred to as an old fashioned barn-raising. The new health care clinic will mainly treat poor Medicaid patients, charging on a sliding scale what patients can afford.
The new practice is not without risk to Doctor Davis and his family. He will forgo a salary for the first year, making money tight for his family. But his wife and sons agree that is worth the gamble.
“We’ll live out of a van if we have to,” said his wife, Wendy. “It’s so liberating to do what you believe in. Now Bill’s eyes light up when he talks about his patients. He’s become a real doctor again.
In Luke’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenges everything our consumer-driven, me-first, bottom-line oriented society holds dear: Wealth and power are not the stuff of the reign of God, but humility, selflessness, and compassion are the treasures of the city of God. Today’s Gospel challenges us to embrace a new vision, a new attitude in approaching life: to seek the common good before our own needs and interests; to bring compassion and forgiveness to others despite our own anger, hurts, and unease; to free ourselves from the pursuit of things of this world in order to seek the lasting things of God.