I had not been at my current parish for more than a month or two when one evening I received an alert on my phone. A man was ringing our alley doorbell and asking to come in. I responded through the video doorbell and told him the church offices were closed for the evening, and that we would be back in the office on Monday.
The man, clearly not sober or thinking clearly, told me that he was going to grab a cinderblock and bust open our window. I recommended that he not make that choice, but my effort was not convincing. I called 911 to say that someone was attempting to break into the parish hall. On my cameras I could see the officers on our property about a minute later.
I watched and listened as they interacted with the man—gently, kindly, and with great patience. They called me soon after and informed me that they knew the man and he was profoundly mentally ill. They asked if I’d like to press charges, but their recommendation was to take him to our community mental health facility to receive help. I chose the latter.
On Monday I called the police department and asked for the chief. I wanted to thank his officers for their professionalism and the gentle way they handled the situation. Near the end of our call, he asked if I would be interested in being a chaplain for the department. I said I would, and after a few months of interviews and instruction, I received my badge and city ID.
My first call was for an infant death, an accident caused by apparent negligence. My wife was 8 months pregnant with our son at the time. I prayed for the soul of the dead child, spent time with the family, and played with the other children to keep them distracted. When I left the scene, sometime after the medical examiner had done her work, I was in a state of emotional shock. Not grief, not even anger, just flat. I went home, sat in my chair, and didn’t dare tell my pregnant wife what happened.
I worry for our police who see far more than I do and often lack the faith and structure to hold it in perspective. It is no wonder that the divorce and suicide rate is so high in their profession. Our veterans fight and see horrors in strange lands while our police offers see horrors a few streets from where their children live. It’s a complicated profession.
After almost two years of this ministry, I struggle with my feelings about it. They were two years of dead children, of suicides, of sudden deaths. If the chaplain is called by the department, the news is never good. I feel like the angel of death sometimes, all in black with my gold badge flashing, bag filled with a stole and prayer book. I’ve found that I struggle with anger over what I see: injustice, foolishness, negligence, and addiction, culminating all too often in death.
In the parish, priests see their share of tragedy, but so often it is a different sort of tragedy, such as the long-faithful parishioner who dies in the hospital surrounded by loving children and grandchildren. A sad scene, but in a sweet sort of way, a good kind of death. Of course, true tragedy will rear its head from time to time, but so often what a parish priest sees is the “good kind of death,” the kind for which many of us pray. More than that, the tragedy of parish life is balanced by joy. We baptize and solemnize marriages. The end of life that we see is buttressed by being there at the beginning. We have the unique and blessed perspective of seeing the beginning and the end.
In police chaplaincy one only ever sees the end, the period (or the exclamation point) at the end. In this ministry, one deals with the worst of death. While I have no doubt of Christ’s defeat and humiliation of death, it often looks suspiciously like death has won out. The death by overdose, the child’s death, the suicide, all smell of death in a way that the good death does not. It looks and feels so plainly against what God intended for us that anger flashes in my heart. I’m not angry with the dead, not angry with anyone, just angry at this postlapsarian scene, angry at sin.
This is perhaps why the primary job of the police chaplain is to serve the officers, to be a pastor to them. Their off-duty pastors can do their work, but this pastor sees it with them, grapples with the blood and the death with them. This pastor stands with them in the cold Wisconsin night to deal with the suicide. This pastor is there when the child is put in the body bag. This pastor has borne witness along with them and has struggled with it as the officers have, and knows the feelings and damage that come with that witness.
It is then no wonder that some police departments have struggled with officers’ callousness or violence. We offer these young men and women as a sacrificial anode, to absorb the worst of our community so that the rest of us don’t have to see it. Our communities sacrifice their marriages and their sanity and their gentleness, and these officers have willingly offered themselves for this purpose. Their necessity is tragic and their commitment is incredible.
It also means they need to know Jesus, they need to see the beginning as well as the end—put differently, they need to know the true ending of the story.
Our hope is both present and eschatological. The view of the Christian is meant to transcend time, seeing what Christ has done, what Christ is doing now, and what he will do in the future. This is, in a sense, what a priest does every Sunday. The opening to the Eucharistic Prayer is a remembrance of God’s mighty acts in history, and asking him to do something similar now. The Christian should know the story. We can read the end, and that is what we offer amid violence and wasted life. We offer the presence of one who has a reasonable and holy hope. We offer the presence of a Christian.
The chaplain stands amid death as one convinced of life, in the midst of tragedy as one convinced of victory, in the midst of senselessness as one convinced of a divine order. We of course offer our prayers. We offer sacraments when needed, but it is really a ministry of presence, in an incarnational and sacramental sense. I’m not there to just pat backs and discuss funeral arrangements. I’m there to stand as one who anticipates the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
That is the witness of the Christian. We stand amid people who have only seen the burial, yet we know that in three days there will be resurrection. That is the ministry of death: to turn the eyes to the stone that has been rolled away.
The Rev. Samuel Cripps is the rector of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist in Wausau, Wisconsin.
