being pastoral

We verbatim and read and discuss and study about how to be pastoral in a patient's room.  I practice and sometimes feel like everything clicked.  Sometimes I'm just so glad no one else was watching.  Today in our Pastoral Theology class, through our Living The Questions dvd, Tex Sample told us this brief story that made it seem so simple.

A long term patient was dying alone.  The hospital staff put out a call for any pastor in the hospital to come pray with him.  One pastor answered.  He didn't wish to enter the room and be exposed to sickness, so he stood in the doorway and shouted in a prayer of forgiveness for the man's sins.  Confident he had completed his task, he left. 

The hospital staff was horrified.  Again they put out a call for a pastor.  Finally a seminary student responded.  She quietly walked into the patient's room and shut the door.  She didn't come out for two hours, and then only to announce that he had passed.  "What did you do in there?" the staff asked.  "Oh, we prayed, I read scripture, we held hands...mostly I just told him how much God loved him."

“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.  The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”  Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”  Luke 10:36,37