We will never forget walking into the hospital room and seeing Charles for the first time. He gazed at the open doorway with a look at first puzzled (since he’d never met us before), but with a kind of patient hunger, as if he’d been waiting and searching for something all his life – something he hadn’t yet found. What followed were two wonderful days of sharing and seeking together about the most important tenets of church faith: repentance, confession, and forgiveness of sins. Charles said he felt that the greatest need of humankind was the need for forgiveness, and that though we spend so much time on many other things, we often miss this most important issue. Through those talks in the hospital, Charles realized his need for much greater compassion and understanding for his father, who had been in the Korean War. He also felt personal guilt for despairing of life in his most difficult moments.

In a bed only a few feet from Charles was Oleg Edelman, an avowed Russian atheist, who’d defected from the Soviet Union in the late 70s after being dropped behind the Chinese border and wounded by gunfire. Oleg’s mother had made it to the U.S. as well, but his Jewish father was held by the KGB as punishment for his defection. Oleg’s body was ravaged by the effects of alcoholism, but his spirit burned bright. Though taught from childhood on that God does not exist, and still brimming with Soviet arguments to support that premise, Oleg nonetheless listened to our conversationswith utmost respect.

During the second day with Charles we were able to call into a joint meeting of our communities over the telephone, where many members were able to greet him, and Charles could also express his thanks to God for bringing us together. Charles’ health was so poor, however, that it was almost certain he would not be able to return home to Woodcrest with us. I asked him, “Would it be a strengthening for you, Charles, if we were to baptize you before we leave, even if you are never able to travel to one of our communities?” Charles’ face lit up at the suggestion.  That afternoon, right beside Charles’ hospital bed, with Oleg looking on, we baptized Charles. We had only a plastic hospital water jug, but it sufficed. Charles was filled with gratitude and peace, undeterred by the circumstances. In the presence of the two ailing men, broken on the wheels of life, the words of Jesus came readily to heart and mind: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

The following day we celebrated the Lord’s Supper. A piece of hero bun from a Subway shop across the street and some cheap red vintage from nearby Little Armenia sufficed for the bread and wine. Oleg witnessed all this with something akin to reverence. That evening we celebrated with a “love meal,” which very much included Oleg. Though he couldn’t eat much due to raging jaundice, he nonetheless contributed much food for thought. For the first time he admitted a hidden belief in God, recalling a moment during his childhood when he was out playing in the snow near Moscow at dusk. He ended up lying on his back looking up at the stars and, he said, it was as if time stood still. He could not even hear his grandfather calling him home until he was whisked up by the scruff of his neck. But in those moments talking to the heavens, he said, he knew “someone was listening.”

Steve and Edie Johnson, another couple from our church, flew to L. A. in the weeks following our return in order to care for Charles and try to arrange for his travel to the east coast. This was a difficult task, medically and logistically, Charles was able to fly home to Woodcrest, our oldest American community, in upstate New York. He lived there until his death.

 

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