The Joy of Appendicitis

A fellow pastor emailed that her Dad was fond of saying, “The human body can only take so much.” And she would reply, “Aw, Dad, it can take more than that.” In the email she pointed out, “Turns out the old boy was right, after all.”

I received the email because I had let me appendix rupture and then spent a few days before getting around to doctors and surgery. I have been asked since if I was in pain. Oh yes, I was in pain. But I was also busy.

My appendix ruptured on an elevator ride in Columbus, Ohio my last night of ten at The General Convention of the Episcopal Church. The once every three years meeting offered organized religion at its best—worship services that were truly wonderful and a chance to gather with fellow Christians—and worst—politics and religion mixed.

I saw some of my brothers and sisters in Christ play political games to reach an end. The end they had in mind was division of the church. It was painful to watch and to take part in a process. Intended to be primarily spiritual, it was subverted into the merely political by those who voted against their conscience in order to create a controversial outcome.

To be fair, I also experienced hundreds of people praying faithfully for God’s will and trying to make decisions accordingly. This, in fact, describes the majority of participants. And yet the night of the rupture I was stressed and I also had to eat fast and then literally run to make a meeting in time. So, stomach pains were not surprising.

I had reasons why I wasn’t paying attention to my body’s warnings. They were not valid reasons, of course. They were excuses and I had to pay for them.

After the Tuesday evening rupture, Wednesday flying home, and Thursday getting things caught up and then ready for Sunday, I did make it to Camden Medical Center on Friday by lunchtime. There I found a capable staff who diagnosed the problem and arranged for the surgery, who were also fun to be around. I have nothing but praise for the compassionate personnel in the Emergency Room, Radiology Department and Operating Room who cared for me.

In the midst of all of the above, the scripture that circled around in my mind was of Jesus calming the storm with the words “Peace, Be Still!” This is not because I am some holier than thou guy, but because I am a preacher and that was the text for the coming Sunday.

In the reading, Jesus is asleep in a boat on the storm-tossed sea. The disciples, many of whom were storm-hardened fishermen, grew frightened as the boat was being swamped and they woke him saying, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus then wakes up, rebukes the wind and says to the sea, “Peace, Be still!”

This passage of scripture has long been moved from its setting on an actual sea with real wind and waves to apply to our storm-tossed lives. Augustine of Hippo in the 400s A.D. gave a sermon in which he compared the wind and rain of the Gospel account to our own lives in which we are buffeted by problems.

He then preached, “Christ is asleep in you. What do I mean? I mean you have forgotten his presence. Rouse him, then; remember him, let him keep watch within you, pay heed to him.”

Augustine teaches that Christ is present within us even when we don’t feel it. We just have to revive that sense of Jesus within us. The trick is to do this in the midst of the storm.

So this was the joy of appendicitis. Within it I was forced to stop. I clearly couldn’t be still otherwise. Even after my appendix ruptured I kept going. But my body did get the message through to my brain and when I stopped I could perceive more than problems and pain.

Once I roused Christ within me, I could see that Jesus had been fully present at The General Convention. It wasn’t easy but when I looked with the eyes of faith, I saw no enemies of either me or the Gospel. Instead I see Jesus standing in a storm-tossed boat saying “Peace, Be still!”

And as I waited in the emergency room for tests results to come back, Jesus calming the storm was present to me once again. And my Lord was saying, “Peace. Be Still.”

In the 10 days that have so far followed the surgery, I have been more still than usual. Some things I needed to do had to go undone. Life has continued unchanged for almost everyone on the planet. I know this will not surprise you, but it did me—I had never been in charge anyway. I couldn’t control the storm and didn’t need to do so.

So as for problems within my denomination, I will have to trust God to heal God’s church as I trusted the physicians and nurses to heal my body. In the midst of that or any storm, I need to rouse my own awareness of God’s presence and turn the trouble over to God’s care.

But all of this is about me, while the message of “Peace, Be still!” is all for you. I don’t know what winds are buffeting you or what waves are tossing you about. I don’t know if it is your marriage, your children, you parents, your job, money problems or something else. But I do know that Christ is with you in the midst of the storm.

The problem is not the lack of Jesus’ presence, but that you can forget He is there if you ever knew it. Seek to control the storm on your own and you will sink. Be still and know that He is God and whether the storm passes or rages, you will be safe. The key is to turn control of the storm over to God.

Oh, and one more thing I learned in these past two weeks: When you have blinding pain coming from a spot on your right side halfway between your belly button and your hip bone, go see a doctor—right away.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)

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