Interview with Tracy and Michael Balboni

What’s a common misconception about faith and illness that your book Walking Lois Home addresses? 

One of the most common misconceptions we address concerns miracles. 

It is very natural within Christian communities, when someone becomes seriously ill, to pray earnestly that God would intervene, heal the person, and restore them to health. We believe in that. We believe God does miracles, and both of us have witnessed remarkable things in caring for the sick as a physician and a pastor. 

But a miracle, by definition, is not the ordinary course of events. The expectation that God will perform a miracle in every case is neither consistent with Scripture nor with the experience of Christians throughout history. 

The difficulty comes when praying for a miracle becomes the only faithful response to serious illness. Sometimes that can mask what spiritual care and the shepherding of a person actually require. 

In our experience, fear of dying, both in the sick person and in family members, can sometimes energize an insistence on a miracle. If you then add the idea that a person must never doubt, because doubt might prevent the miracle from happening, the result can become spiritually damaging. If the person eventually dies, family members may be left wondering whether they did not have enough faith. 

We do not think that is good pastoral or spiritual care. 

So our response is not to tell people to stop praying for miracles. We pray for miracles too. But alongside that prayer, we need to help people bring their unspoken fears into the light. As you think about the future, have you been feeling any fear? How have you been coping, especially in moments that feel overwhelming? If it’s not God’s will to grant a miracle, what other ways might God help that could give you peace or a sense of readiness for what comes next? 

As those fears are addressed, something can begin to change. The urgency around getting a miracle at all costs—and pursuing aggressive but futile medical treatments—can give way to a deeper acceptance that is still full of hope. 

A person can begin to walk through the valley of the shadow of death and discover that they do not need to fear evil because God is with them. 

That does not diminish belief in a God who performs miracles. It opens us to another kind of miracle as well: that the Spirit of God can give profound hope and peace even in the presence of dying and death. We have seen that happen in people we have cared for, including Lois. 

What the Seven Last Words of Christ Teach Us About Dying 

You structure part of your book around the seven last sayings of Christ from the cross. Tell us about how these sayings should guide Christians in caring for the dying. 

Christians have turned to the seven last sayings of Jesus for centuries when facing suffering and death. There is really no one better to listen to than Jesus as he speaks from the cross on the day of his own dying. 

These sayings are remarkably profound because they touch so many dimensions of the human experience of dying. We hear about suffering, forgiveness, relationships, physical need, spiritual anguish, preparation, letting go of this life, and finally a deep and confident hope in the hands of the Father. 

We believe these words can speak powerfully into our modern medical context. 

The central part of the book takes each of Jesus’s final sayings and explores what it can teach us about walking through serious illness. We connect those sayings with the medical decisions people often face, the spiritual questions that emerge, and the possibility for spiritual growth even during illness. 

Jesus is both fully human and the Son of God, and in his dying he shows us something about how to die faithfully. As we listen to his words from the cross, even death itself can be transformed by the gospel and filled with hope. 

You describe ill persons as having their own “unique calling” in the church. Lois had something to give, not only receive. What did she give you? 

One of the common ways we think about serious illness today is that the sick person becomes passive. They lose autonomy and control. They become dependent on other people. 

There is certainly truth in that. Illness can force us onto a dangerous journey where we have to depend upon others for wisdom, hospitality, guidance, and care. 

But that is only part of the story. 

We believe the sick also have a unique vocation within God’s purposes. Jesus’ own dying on the cross shows how a dying person can be amazingly engaged with God and others in love. They are being called to learn how to live faithfully and virtuously within the extraordinary challenge of illness. And from that place, they can speak to the rest of us about what is truly important. 

In that sense, the sick sometimes have a unique pulpit. Someone approaching death can speak words about hope, love, reconciliation, faith, and what matters most with a kind of authority that the healthy often do not possess. 

There is also a mysterious way in which the suffering person is joined to the suffering Christ. Illness should not be interpreted as God’s judgment. In Christ, suffering can become a place of communion with the God who himself suffered. The sick person can therefore become, in a profound way, a representation of the suffering Christ to those willing to remain present and behold them. 

We saw something like that happen with Lois. 

Over those months, we watched God transform her. She became increasingly peaceful, hopeful, and filled with vision for other people. She showed us what it could look like for someone in what appeared to be a hopeless situation to put her hope in Christ. 

And then she began inviting other people toward Christ. She began thinking beyond herself. She developed a conviction that the church needed to recover its calling to love the sick and dying. Even as she was approaching death, she was thinking about what her life and experience might give to others. Even the impetus behind the book was Lois’s idea and wish. If others might learn from all that she learned during the final year of her life, then the meaning of her death would become far more impactful. 

Lois gave us a firsthand experience of what it looks like for God’s people to walk with someone all the way home. Because of her, we can speak about this not only from research, medicine, theology, or pastoral ministry, but from something we lived together. 

We believe that was part of what Lois wanted to give us, and through this book, what she wanted to give the church. 

What the Dying Can Give to the Church 

Tell us something about the two of you that only your friends or family would know. 

One part of our lives that most people probably do not know much about is that almost twenty-five years ago we helped start an intentional Christian community for people training and working in medicine and science. 

It began across the street from Harvard Medical School with four people who really had no idea what they were doing. We were simply trying to learn what it might look like to live together as Christians, share meals and prayer, practice hospitality, and reach out to people throughout Boston’s medical and scientific community. 

Over time, that little community grew. Today the Longwood Christian Community includes eight houses and more than fifty people living together. Over the years, more than four hundred people have been part of it. 

They have included medical students and residents, PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, nurses, public health professionals, physical and occupational therapists, pharmacists, scientists, and many others. Several families, including ours, have also raised children within the community. 

It has remained something of a hidden gem. We have never talked about it publicly very much. But one of the great privileges of our lives has been living alongside generations of remarkably talented and faithful young adults as they have tried to put Christ first while discerning their callings in medicine and science. 

Many have gone on to become physicians, professors, scientists, missionaries, and church leaders in the United States and around the world. We started by thinking we were building a community. Looking back almost twenty-five years later, we realize how much that community has formed us. 

This interview accompanies Michael and Tracy Balboni’s book Walking Lois Home: Living Out Our Christian Call to Love the Sick and Dying, published by Baker Books. Drawing on rigorous research and years of pastoral and medical experience, the book weaves together medical, theological, and pastoral wisdom—framed by Lois’s story—to equip individuals, congregations, and patients to care for the seriously ill and dying with faith, grace, and love. 

Michael Balboni is co-director of the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion at Harvard and a pastor in Boston. 

Tracy Balboni is a professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School and co-director of the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion at Harvard.