by Bob Massie
One day he came to New Haven (he was a trustee of Yale University) and invited me to lunch. I reviewed my ideas about going to the School of Management. He thought that going to business school was an excellent idea and that I could have a major effect over time. I beamed.
“But you know, Bob,” he said, “you are also very young. So I have a suggestion that you might want to consider.”
I looked at him with hesitation.
“You might want to defer going on to study management until you have had some practice in ministry. If you move forward with your ordination, you could join a parish and learn about how to be a minister directly. And then, after a year or two, you could go back.”
I thought about it. The school would accept deferments of up to two years.
“You would learn a lot about humanity in this role. When you are asked by people to participate in their weddings, their children’s baptisms, their slow decline, and their funerals, you come to love people even more,” he said, looking at me across the lunch table. “Listening and responding to people’s questions week in and week out will deepen your knowledge and your wisdom.” He paused. “But you should do what you feel called to do. It’s just something to consider.”
I went home and I did consider it, and I decided that he was right.
The end of my time at Yale Divinity School was marked by several momentous personal milestones. In March 1982 I became engaged to Dana Robert, a brilliant Ph.D. student in the Yale Religious Studies Department, who had grown up in Louisiana. In June I stood at the front of the local village parish of St. Barnabas in Irvington, New York, surrounded by friends and family, as Paul Moore laid his hands on me and ordained me a deacon. Following the order of service, I stood directly in front of the bishop, who looked straight into my eyes. He adopted his most formal voice and gave me my charge. My responsibility, he said, was “to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.”
As I heard these words, I hoped that somehow, in some way, I might be able to fulfill this commitment.
In August, after more than nine months of searching, I moved to New York City to begin as an assistant minister—the most junior among five—at a magnificent and thriving congregation, Grace Church in Manhattan. In November, at a ceremony in Baton Rouge, Dana and I were married. In less than twelve months I had been transformed from an unmarried and unemployed student who could have ended up anywhere in the world into a married clergyman in one of the most amazing communities in New York City.
Nestled on the line between Greenwich Village and the East Village, Grace Church was a radiant force in the middle of the city. Designed by James Renwick in 1846 and built largely of white marble, the sanctuary was decorated with extraordinary stained glass windows, including one designed by Tiffany. The spire soared skyward on the corner of Tenth Street and Broadway. A few blocks west of the church lay Washington Square Park, originally the paupers’ burial ground. To the east was the bustling East Village, filled with marvelous eateries offering everything from Italian pastries and Polish sausages to Hungarian stuffed cabbage and vegan stews. The streets were filled with students, immigrants, artists, service employees, and drug addicts. After we were married, Dana and I settled into a church-owned apartment on the top floor of Grace Church School, where I also served as the chaplain. My salary was tiny and barely covered our minimal needs, but we also had a free apartment with hardwood floors in New York City, prompting some of my visiting friends from college to ask if it was still possible for them to apply to divinity school.
Paul Moore had been right: the shift from being someone who thought about ministry in the abstract to someone who was serving a real congregation was transformative. Week after week I stood in the vast sanctuary with the great Te Deum window behind me, the long nave aisle leading to the rose window of the narthex before me. I regularly was invited by the senior staff to lead the service. On the table in front of me lay the polished silver paten and chalice given by generations now long gone, the white fair linen, the open prayer book, and the simple sacramental elements of bread and wine.
I would watch the people approach the altar rail—the young and the old, the strong and the frail, the honored and the despised, the joyful and the tortured. All would kneel; all would stretch out their hands to receive something that a material world could not give: hope, forgiveness, and deliverance. I was privileged to glimpse their eyes and see their longing assuaged, not through anything I had done but through some mysterious yet evident love that was reaching out to them.
There were many lovely aspects of serving in that community. The congregation was huge, filled with hundreds of young people in their twenties and thirties, many of whom had come to New York City to build their careers as actors, singers, writers, painters, and dancers. Their vibrant creativity pulsed through the congregation and made the services hum with energy. Among the older, more established members of the church I found a cross section of remarkable people, many of whom invited me into their homes. I met the widow of the great economist Adolph Berle, whose book on corporate governance had established the theory through which Franklin Roosevelt had created the Securities and Exchange Commission. I came to know many faculty and deans from the different colleges and universities. Other extraordinary and well-known people regularly visited the church on Sunday.
As I came to know the community and I was invited month after month to speak to the congregation from the pulpit, I found my voice. The school, which taught children from kindergarten through eighth grade, asked me to talk once a week to them about Bible stories. I quickly discovered that if I read the stories, the students immediately lost interest, but if I told them or we acted them out, they found them electrifying. And so I learned to narrate, without notes, the stories of Abraham and Sarah; Isaac and Rebekah; Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. I could talk about the life of Moses and the deliverance of the Hebrew people from bondage in Egypt. I could repeat the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Workers in the Vineyard. Eventually I brought this newfound skill into my sermons for adults, who reacted just as powerfully.
And, in a pattern that was now well established in my life, once I had settled in the community, I began to look more closely at the structure of the institution and to ask questions about its values. The early 1980s were the period when President Reagan and Congress were cutting funding for the housing and care of people with mental illness, and the trend was toward moving people away from large facilities and back into communities, which often meant out onto the streets. The United States economy was also in a recession. I watched with a growing feeling of outrage as the number of homeless people increased all around me. I noticed and worried about the wretched and filthy men and women who would sneak into the church garden for a place to sleep. When the rector of the church, a remote and difficult man, decided to evict them every night, I boiled with frustration.
One day the superintendent of the church posted a prominent sign on the grass that said “PRIVATE GARDEN.” The notion that a church ostensibly committed to the poor was kicking people out of our manicured space infuriated me. I protested to my superiors and was overruled. So, in a rather juvenile act, I stole the sign late at night. A few days later the sign reappeared, this time bolted directly to the stone wall of the church. The next night I took a crowbar and started to pry it off again. In the middle of my act of vandalism, the number-two minister in the church, my friend and mentor Ken Swanson, heard the cracking noises and came rushing down with a baseball bat to scare away the crook. When he discovered me, he was both furious and amused. He scolded me but kept my secret.
As I entered my second year, the contradictions between the life of joy and ebullient generosity of the congregation and the misery of the people who rubbed up against our exterior walls bothered me more and more. Eventually my dismay focused on two questions: our refusal to tackle the problem of homelessness and the church leadership’s unwillingness to examine the serious co
ntradictions in our investment policies. I started to agitate about both.
To find out more about the problem of homelessness, I visited shelters and human service agencies around the city. One day I dressed in my most ragged clothes, put on an old down jacket, and pulled a wool cap tightly over my head, trying to approximate the standard outfit of a homeless man. The outfit did the trick; as I wandered the streets from morning until late at night, I was completely ignored by everyone. People refused to look at me. Fast-walking commuters steered a wide path around me. Vendors watched me with suspicion when I loitered in their shops. In the evening I lined up with hundreds of other men to have dinner at one of the city’s biggest shelters. I could sense the dank and edgy depression that engulfed many of them. After dinner I waited on a dirty chair to be told by a social worker where I could spend the night. While I sat there, a fight erupted in the hallway. When I stepped out to see what was happening, two policemen were punching an unshaven man and throwing him up against a wall, shouting at him to stop doing something. When a small trickle of blood appeared from his nose, they backed off. I felt powerless and frightened. When I was finally called in and told that the only place for me that night meant taking a bus and then a ferry in the dark with hundreds of other men to sleep in a warehouse outside the prison on Riker’s Island, I declined. I returned to my safe, quiet apartment and to my own bed, deeply shaken.
Every day I witnessed more human pain. I could not stop thinking about a particular woman who sought refuge every day at the church. She used to sit, curled up in a ball, in an alcove just to the left of the front steps. The smell of urine and the clouds of flies were overpowering. Even when the temperature reached ninety degrees, she crouched down in a filthy overcoat. She never touched the small cups of water and juice I would take to her. At night or in a rainstorm she would disappear, but she always returned in the morning.
I tried to speak to her, but she never responded to anyone. Eventually I called social services and a New York City medical team arrived. Then her mouth opened. She cursed them violently and insisted she was fine and just wanted to be left alone. Later I saw her mumbling to herself and banging her fist lightly on the ground. For the next few days she sat there, and I continued to take her water, and one day she disappeared, never to be seen again.
During this period one of the readings in our cycle was the story of the rich man and Lazarus, from the Gospel of Luke:
There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores …
The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried.
The rich man, who is never given a name, discovers that he has been sent to a place of suffering where he can see Lazarus far in the distance, sitting at ease next to the patriarch Abraham. The rich man calls out, asking for help.
But Abraham replied, “Remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.”
As the words rang out, I kept thinking about the people huddled outside our church. Everyone in the building was concerned about them. But none of us knew what to do.
The church grounds contained several buildings, including a brownstone on Eleventh Street, and it occurred to me one day that perhaps the congregation would be willing to establish a small homeless shelter somewhere on the property. I raised this idea tentatively with the rector of the church and he showed no interest. I talked to Ken Swanson, and he responded with a mixture of openness and caution. I dropped the idea into conversations with the members of the vestry—the board of directors of the church—and they were largely indifferent. I quickly realized that to create a shelter I would have to back up a few steps. Members of the congregation would need to think about the problem, and then decide that they needed to find a solution, and then identify the solution as a shelter at the church, and finally implement it successfully.
To begin this process, I approached the younger members of the congregation and asked for their opinions. When they expressed the same frustration and sadness, we talked about what to do. Eventually several members of the congregation decided that this was important, and they began to meet and formulate a proposal. Ken decided to champion the idea with the rector and the vestry, who continued to express reservations. The biggest objection came from the parents of the schoolchildren, who worried that having homeless men in a building near the school might represent a threat to the children as they came and left. There were many other questions: Who would welcome the homeless men every evening? Who would remain with them overnight? What legal or medical responsibilities might we have? What training would volunteers need? All of these problems had to be voiced and addressed. I kept an informal list of important decision-makers and kept tabs on their evolving views. Slowly, through the leadership of a growing number of people, the mood of the church tipped from resistance to acceptance. During my second year there, we finally opened the shelter for twelve men, whom we always referred to as “guests.” People throughout the congregation signed up as volunteers for different nights of the week. The nights that I spent there were long and sometimes less than pleasant—light came through the storefront window, the men snored and grumbled in their sleep, their odors could be disturbing, and the actual work of setting up beds, pillows, and blankets night after night proved taxing. But as I lay there listening to them breathing, I thought, For this one night they are here, and they are warm, and they have found shelter. For a few moments at least, Lazarus had been brought inside the safety of the gate.
In early 1984 I was nearing the end of my two-year tenure at Grace Church. On a beautiful spring day I traveled uptown for my annual visit to New York Hospital to review my blood tests and general health. For nearly three years people around the country had been dying of a terrible new illness, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, and doctors had recently developed the first test to see whether people had been exposed to the virus, known as HIV, that caused it. My concern about this had been tempered by the reality that I had already been exposed to many illnesses, including hepatitis A and B, through blood transfusions and I still seemed to be in strong health.
I entered the same building on the East River where I had been born and made my way to the sunlit offices of Dr. Margaret Hilgartner, the director of the hemophilia and medical oncology program. She was a tall, stately woman who had been my physician since I was five. Even though she was sometimes gruff, I liked her because she always answered my questions seriously. Once, while riding in a car with her, I inquired about her life. “Why did you become a doctor?” I asked. “In order to help people like you,” she said quietly, and then looked out the window.
I was now sitting in her office. She carefully reviewed my test results and clinic notes.
“Your liver functions are slightly elevated, but that has been true for a long time,” she said. “In general your joints are doing well.” Then she paused. “Bob, as I think you know, we now have the capacity to test for the HIV antibody,” she said quietly, “and we have your results. Would you like to know what they are? ”
“Yes,” I said.
She turned around and picked one great ledger book from a shelf behind her and dropped it on her desk. She then reached for a second massive book and put it beside the first. I had the feeling that I was looking across at the Book of Life and the Book of Death.
She opened the first book and ran her finger down a list of names until she found my coded number. She then opened the second, looking to match my number with my test results. She peered at it carefully. Then she looked up at me.
“The results show that you are positive,” she said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet. It is worrisome. We will be watching your T-cell count and other blood numbers very closely to see if they drop.”
“And if they do?” I asked.
“If they drop below a certain level, your immune system will be severely compromised and you will be considered to have AIDS. That would be very serious. We have no treatment right now. Until then, we will just watch and wait.”
And then Margaret wished me well and I walked out. Later such a diagnosis was considered so frightening that it was delivered only in a highly controlled setting, with offers of support and counseling. But it was still early in the epidemic, and I was by myself, on a busy sidewalk in Manhattan, tentatively probing my feelings.
Thinking back on the thousands of transfusions and injections that had never led to any clinical impact, I decided that I would accept her advice. We would watch it carefully. I remember exactly where I was standing on First Avenue when I made a decision. I would not start acting as though I were terminally ill until the numbers started to show that I was terminally ill. Until then, I would live my life as fully as I had up until that point. I returned to our apartment and spoke to Dana. She did not seem to react, though I realized much later that the news set off a depth charge far below the surface.
