A Fourth Church Sermon by Alice M. Trowbridge

May 4, 2008 | 6:30 p.m. Vespers
Candlelight Vespers for Mental Illness Recovery and Understanding

Lift Up a Song

Alice M. Trowbridge
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 68:1–10, 32–35
1 Peter 4:12–14, 5:6–11

“Cast all your anxiety on him,
because he cares for you.”

1 Peter 5:7 (NRSV)

The reading tonight is about suffering. And who among us has been spared suffering? The Bible tells us over and over that there will be many a fiery ordeal, many a chapter that will test our faith, our endurance, our trust. In fact, tonight this letter of Peter captures for us a certain claim in the Christian life—that through our suffering we might feel the comfort of the suffering Christ with us. Like a roaring lion, the adversary, the devil, prowls around, looking for someone to devour. And tonight’s reading says, “Resist him,” that lion, that adversary. Resist him. And know that our brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. After we have suffered a while, the God of grace, who has called us to eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will restore us, support us, strengthen us, and establish us.

When we talk about the adversary prowling around, I remember the book of Job. A man blameless and upright, who fears God and turns away from evil, loses his property, his land and animals, the oxen, the donkeys, the sheep, the camels, his servants, and his own sons and daughters. He is utterly destroyed. Then Job himself has a health crisis: he is inflicted with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And we see him there on a mound outside of town, on a heap of ash, with a potsherd, scraping himself in misery, in agony, suffering beyond measure.

Suffering in the Bible: the Gospel of Mark tells about a man who lives among the tombs, unable to be restrained; not even shackles or chains could keep him from thrashing about, so out of his own mind was he, suffering from demons that had laid claim to his spirit and were devouring his soul. No one had the strength to subdue this writhing man. Night and day among the tombs on the mountains he was howling and bruising himself with stones. Suffering.

And the woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years, who had endured much under many physicians, and who had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather even worse.

Now we can imagine in these three stories from scripture great pain, the anguish of the human soul. And tonight, as we think about mental illness and as we come together in community to live into the fullness of God’s hope for us, we see in Job and in the man suffering from demons and the women who was hemorrhaging evidence of the darkness of the mind, the suffering of the body, the anguish of the soul, the ravages of life beating down upon good people, bringing them to their knees.

The Bible does not tell us we will not suffer. The Bible does not tell us we will be spared illness or disease. The Bible does not tell us we are innocent or that our good works can be enough to dodge the dark night of the soul. No, in fact we know there are storms in life; there are long, dark nights. We cry, we call out, we fall down. We grow weak and weary and become worn.

What the Bible does tell us in every instance—in every heartache, every illness, every dark night, every agony of the soul—is that we are loved. And it is not a conditional love. It is not a pitying love. It is not a love that says, “I will love you only in this time or that time”; it is not a love that says, “I will love you if you do x, y, z.” It is very simply God’s love for you and for me. Period. There is a characteristic of God, beginning with Genesis and ending in Revelation, that God seeks relationship with God’s creation, and God enters in to our lives, our darkness, our toils and snares.

What does God’s entering into human suffering look like? Well, in the case of Job, God is silent for a long, long time. Job clings to his faith, and then, finally, questions God, saying, “Where are you? How much longer must I endure this suffering?

In the man suffering from demons, Jesus enters into the suffering man by standing with him and directing the unclean spirits to leave.

In the woman hemorrhaging for twelve years, she is in a crowd and knows that if she but reaches for the hem of Jesus’ garment, she will be made well. And without knowing it, her reaching for Jesus sets forth in her the healing she waited for for all those years.

God’s silence can be misperceived as absence, even abandonment, Henri Nouwen tells us.

Remember Jesus’ own words from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We are never alone. God’s silence is not God’s absence. Perhaps the presence of God is so much beyond the human experience of being near to another that it is quite easily misperceived as absence. When Jesus echoed those words from the cross, total aloneness and full acceptance touched each other. Where God’s absence was most loudly expressed, God’s presence was most profoundly revealed. (Henri Nouwen, Spiritual Direction)

We see that in the story of Job, the man suffering with demons, and the woman who was hemorrhaging.

Those who suffer from mental illness are many among us. One in four of us experience a mental health disorder in a given year. One in five families has someone in their immediate family that has a mental health disorder. And yet we are reluctant to get treatment. Is it that suffering is so inseparable from daily life that we think we have to bear it on our own? Fewer than one-third of adults and half of children with a diagnosable mental disorder receive mental health services. So that leaves the vast majority of those affected by mental illness to sit in lonely silence.

There are many who suffer from mental illness among us, and likewise, there are those who care for loved ones with mental illness, who again are many among us. A friend of mine recently went through a very difficult time, anguish of the soul. There was depression, there was grieving, there was pain and suffering. And throughout her time of fiery ordeal, she came upon some words of Henri Nouwen, who reminds the caregivers among us—those who support a person in a time of darkness—he offers us a word about that sacred companionship.

He writes,

When we honestly ask which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness . . . makes it clear that whatever happens in the external world, being present to each other is what really matters.

How powerful can our feeling of powerlessness be. How all consuming can our suffering become. And for mental illness, there is treatment, there is recovery. And there is human love, binding together in spirit and standing with another person, being the holy presence of God for someone who is suffering.

Let me tell you about our God, and about our faith community. There is nowhere we can go where Christ has not already been. So when we feel shame or when we are reluctant to say, “I need help,” we are separating ourselves from God’s love. We are turning away from the ground that our Lord walked. We are closing ourselves off from the God who, time and again, enters into the dark places and holds onto us and takes us by the hand and loves us still.

Ours is a God who does not let us suffer alone. Wherever we are, Jesus can find us. We can ascend to the heights of heaven, and Jesus is there. We can make our bed in hell, and Jesus is there. We can take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, and God’s hand shall lead us and hold us fast. The darkness can cover us completely, so that all around us is night, but even the darkness is not dark to God.

Ours is a God who shepherds us, who leads us from behind, and when one of us falls into trouble and loses our way, like a lost sheep, God will leave the pack, and pursue us until we are found. And when we turn toward God, the good shepherd does not punish us, does not keep a ledger, but rather raises us upon his shoulders and carries us back.

Ours is a God who is like a mother who will not forsake a nursing child; like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home. From the porch, God meets us where we are—in shame, in regret, in the dark places of the soul—and runs toward us, only to embrace us and honor us and put us in the finest robe—and puts rings on our fingers and sandals on our feet and orders a grand celebration, because we have returned home.

Here in this community of faith, we proclaim that we belong to the God of compassion, the great shepherd of our souls, and we also claim that we belong to one another, that when one of us suffers, we all suffer. And we are called to meet each person with dignity and respect, knowing that just as God has loved us and given us goodness, God has loved every living being in the same way: relentlessly, persistently, tirelessly, indefatigably, steadily, patiently, loving us and pursuing us—to the end of the age.

And so for those who feel alone tonight, who live in fear, for those who are weary on the road of life, for spirits dampened by defeat or failure, for anyone who is lost and needs to be found, here is the good news: God loves you; God knows what you need; and God enters into your darkness, takes your hand, and will never let you go. You are not alone. God goes before you to guide you and behind you to encourage you. God lives within you since it was God who fashioned your being, and it is the hand of Christ that keeps you from falling, and it is the Holy Spirit in whose name you can do all things.

We remember that in the face of Jesus, we see the traces of God our creator, sustainer, and redeemer; that in his life, death, and resurrection, we experience grace and see ourselves not just as brief flickers in this swift life, but as sons and daughters of the Almighty, given the gift of eternity and held securely in the hollow of God’s hand. And for that good news alone, we lift up a song. Amen.