Violence and some terrible reactions to it.

       I'm going to say some things that may not be very popular, and I am saying them from a place of anger, so beware: if you are uncomfortable hearing a different opinion than your own, or if you are uneasy with my anger, you might want to stop reading right now.

       In response to the recent mass shooting, I read some very disturbing posts on Facebook.  One blamed the kids for not reporting that the shooter seemed to be having a hard time, and blamed their parents for not encouraging profiling. There is no other way to put this.  It put people in boxes and told us we should all do the same to prevent violence, never mind that this shooter was a white, heterosexual male. This rant stated that the shooter should have been reported and then locked up before he did anything because he was clearly having a hard time and the solution to people having a hard time is to throw them in prison, which would have prevented the shootings.  It went on to blame liberals who don't want to indiscriminately lock people up, as being the problem and said that if someone at school names another person as having an issue, that kid should be imprisoned.  Another comment I read on Facebook indicated with joy that one community did imprison a student who appeared to be struggling with mental illness, thereby preventing him from shooting anybody.
        I think I was almost as disturbed by the suggestions in these posts as I was by the shootings themselves for several reasons.  First of all, if we set up situations where, when a kid doesn't like someone else, they can just "report" that child as being disturbed with the reaction that the child reported will then be imprisoned, we are inviting a whole different kind of very serious bullying.  What happened to innocent until proven guilty?  Are we now saying it is okay to imprison someone on the chance that they MIGHT hurt someone else?  Forget proving guilt, this is even suggesting arresting someone before they have done anything wrong!  And again, what an invitation to bullies.  I can see it now.  Bully says, "If you don't give me your money or do exactly what I tell you to do then I will report you as seeming 'off' and they will throw you in prison!"  Bully says, "I don't like you - I'm going to get you thrown into prison just because I can!"
       Second, and more importantly, if we start dealing with people who have problems, are disturbed, and are struggling by throwing them into a prison where undoubtedly their problems will be exacerbated and emphasized, we are creating the very villains we are hoping to prevent.  What happens when they are released, then, from prison?  Or are we thinking we just lock them up for life because they are mentally ill or are struggling?  And if we expect them to eventually be released, are we thinking that because of their time in hell (no exaggeration here... I've visited enough prisons and talked with enough inmates to know that American prisons are hell, despite what certain media may tell us), they will be calmer, better able to handle the stressors in life, better qualified to deal with their anger and less likely to go on a shooting rampage?!  We would have to be insane to believe this.  Prison creates and hardens criminals, it increases rage, it cements hatred, and it gives people no skills for dealing with those feelings, make no mistake about that.  When a child is struggling with mental illness, anger, depression, rage, and other problems they need help.  Our prisons do not help people.
        There are so many aspects of our society and culture that must be addressed here; so very many, starting with how we help one another, how we care for one another, and how we learn to love one another.  People who are struggling should not be put into a box we call "other" or "bad" and then simply locked away.  They are us: they are our family, they are our siblings and our parents and our children and they need us to help them. I write this from the personal experience of having kids who are "different".  Yes, I admit it, my kids are different. They don't fit in in the same way many other kids do, they've gone through some hard things, they struggle at times, and they are sometimes bullied. I deal with this with counseling, love, resources, and as a result they are doing well in school, doing well at home, they are balanced and healthy, they have skills for dealing with their anger and pain, though they undoubtedly will always be a little "different".  But many kids do not have those resources.  And I can see it being all too easy for those kids without those resources to be thrown into prison for their pain.  We have to stop separating ourselves into "us" and "them".  We have to be willing to love people who are different from ourselves and to recognize that for a society to be truly healthy, everyone in it must be healthy.  We have a responsibility to create the opportunities for care, opportunities for growth and learning.  We have a responsibility to care for one another, and to heal ourselves in the healing of each other.
      We also need to address our justice system and move into a more restorative justice model where both victims and offenders are recognized as needing help and healing, and are given the help to change and to heal. Societies that use restorative justice models have an extremely small recidivism rate: people learn how to be better, how to do better, which lowers crime in those places substantially.  The victims also truly achieve healing, unlike our current system where they are often re-traumatized by the court processes.  The revenge-punishment model we have for our prisons does NOT work to deter crime, to lessen crime or to help the victims.
       Mental health care needs to be funded and seen as a priority.  Again, we do this for all of us: when we create a society where people with mental health issues cannot afford or obtain help, we create societies where violence is inevitable.  We also need to teach how to deal with anger and rage.  That too is a mental health and emotional health issue that as a society we need to begin to address.
       Gun control also must be addressed: yes, it must.  But I will allow others who are more knowledgeable and articulate to speak on that at this point: there are so many who do so much better than I ever could.  I will only say that from a Christian perspective, I see absolutely no justification for our turning towards violence as a solution.  Jesus was clear that killing was never acceptable.  He was clear about turning the other cheek.  Our arming ourselves with weapons whose only purpose is destruction of another is antithetical to everything he taught about seeing the other, even our enemies, as people we are called to love.  Period.  And our responding to violence with more violence escalates the problems.  It does not bring peace.
       Perhaps more than anything else, these tragedies call us to show who we really are.  Are we people who take seriously the call to love one another, even those we consider "enemies"?  Or are we fear based people who want to destroy, put away, and get rid of anyone who is different than ourselves?  It is truly worth thinking over.

Sunday's Sermon - Continuing Matthew 25: visiting the sick

John 9:1-7

Luke 9:1-6

Matthew 25:31-46

Today we continue our study of Matthew 25, focusing on caring for or visiting the sick.  We, as a community, are very good at this. Through our Deacons and through others do a wonderful job of visiting the sick.  Others in our congregation are constant care-givers for family, for friends.  Others volunteer and work in care-giving professions.  We visit people at home, we visit people in the hospital, we visit people going through rehab.  And we do more than visit.  We pray with people, we care for people, we spend time with them, we give them rides, we listen.  We genuinely care about our people who are struggling, and we offer our presence and anything else we know how to offer.  As much as if not more than any of the other things on Matthew’s list, we do this caring for the sick and we do it well.  That is something you should feel really proud of.  Even if you can’t or don’t do this as an individual, as a community we are amazing in our care for others. 

But we know that others don’t always do this well: I’ve shared this story before, but think it is especially relevant for today: At one of the churches where I served, the congregants were intimately involved with a program that served the homeless.  Through our work and through our time with the homeless people in our community, we developed a very close relationship with one homeless man in particular.  This man was very loving, very giving, very caring.  He began attending our church and when he did so, he offered to run our sound system, he helped with the gardening, and he was always on hand to help us in any way.  He was not unintelligent, but he was a severe alcoholic who could not seem to get through the disease to a place where he could give up drinking.  He would give it up for a week or two and then something would happen and he would be drinking again.  We saw him fight for his life against this disease and we saw him losing the battle.  At one point in our relationship with George, his drinking led him to fall and to hit his head very seriously on the street.  The police found him hours later and took him to the local hospital.  His injuries, especially to his brain, were very serious and he was admitted for long term hospitalization and rehabilitation.  However, when the nurses and doctors at the hospital came to understand that he was a homeless, income-less, resource-less man, they gave up caring for him.  He remained at the hospital for quite a while, because he was unable to walk a straight line, he could not speak clearly and had very little control over his movements.  But in large part he was at the hospital for so long because they would not provide the care to get him to a place where they could discharge him.  The only time that George really received any attention – the only time he would be brought his meals even – was when one of us was there to insist on it.  This was a “Christian” hospital, and the doctors and nurses who were hired to work there were, we were told, people of faith.  But they did not see the contradiction in their faith when they served their charges according to their resources, rather than according to their needs. 

This is NOT how Jesus acted.  And it is not what Jesus calls us to do.  Despite the reaction of those around him, including his disciples, Jesus found time to be present with “the least of these” every time.  He gave of his healing, of his energy, of his attention, even to those who didn’t somehow “rank” or “deserve” it. 

We brought George food.  We sat with him.  We fought for him with the medical personnel.  We cared for him.   Five years ago I learned that he had died.  He was in his 50s, and while he remained a homeless man struggling with alcohol addiction until the end, his funeral was well attended by those of that congregation who had loved him, visited him, provided care for him.  And again, while he did not heal from his struggle with alcoholism, we were helped in our service towards him.

I think the hardest sick people to visit with, using this understanding of “sickness” as simply people who are hurting, broken, injured in body, spirit, mind or soul, are those who are struggling with mental illness or with any other kind of emotional pain.  When people are in emotional pain, we often try to fix it and if we can’t, we struggle to be around it. We don’t know what to say to people in emotional pain.  We want it to go away.  I hope this is improving, but I remember all too well going to the memorial service for a friend whose husband had just died and having another friend say to me, “Well, we need to just tell her to get over it.  Maybe we should ignore it and try to set her up with someone else right away.”  This not only showed a total lack of understanding about grief, I think more importantly, it showed the speaker’s discomfort with another person’s pain when he couldn’t fix it. 

I’m reminded of a Joan of Arcadia episode in which a young man who had been paralyzed through a car accident was being protected by his parents from having to discuss what he had been through.  They kept shielding him from ever needing to talk about it.  At one point he came in on them in a heated discussion about the accident.  They immediately grew quiet and said, ““Kevin, you shouldn’t have to go through this again.”

His response though was wise, brilliant and insightful for all of us.  He said, “But I have to.  Don’t take this away from me.” 

Going through healing is necessary for all of us, whether we are struggling with physical problems, with emotional issues, with a crisis, with whatever it is that we face.  Standing with others going through those experiences, visiting those who are sick or struggling or in pain, just being with others in their hard times… these do not only bring healing for the ones we stand with, these actions bring us healing as well.

This morning I found myself reflecting on a conversation I had had with a member of my previous congregation.  It was over the question of whether or not God ever gives us more than we can handle.  I don’t think God hands us the tragedies and traumas of life.  And I do think that LIFE does sometimes give us more than we can handle.  We know this by the rate of suicides in this country.  But also, we’ve all meant shell people – people who are so bitter, so worn down by life that there is no compassion left within them.  These are the people we are most called to care for, to try to be God’s hands and feet, moving them through and beyond their pain.  But in this particular conversation, I said, “wounds always heal with scars.” To which my parishioner responded, “yes, but scar sites are much stronger than the flesh around them”.  Okay, if healing is done well this is true.  Bones heal much stronger, scars on our skin are made of tougher material.  But when they don’t heal correctly, when scabs are picked at and allowed to fester, healing does not happen.  Again, we have a call to help one another through those times of bad injuries to our body, to our soul.  But we are also called to remember that it is we who are healed through the process of caring for one another.

But today I want to take this a little bit deeper:

Frederick Buechner says this about healing:

The Gospels depict Jesus as having spent a surprising amount of time healing people.  Although, like the author of Job before him, he specifically rejected the theory that sickness was God’s way of getting even with sinners, he nonetheless seems to have suggested a connection between sickness and sin, almost to have seen sin as a kind of sickness.  Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” he said.  “I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” … It is significant also that the Greek verb sozo was used in Jesus’ day to mean both to save and to heal, and soter could signify either savior or physician.”

So I want to take a slightly different look at it and instead spend some time focusing on the truth that the sick we care for, when we care for the sick, are, once again, ourselves.  We are the ones in need of healing, we are the ones in need of growth and healing, all of us, and the prescription that we are given for those challenges, for our scars and scabs that won’t heal on their own, for our human illness is to follow Jesus. 

               We see this clearly in today’s passage, but perhaps we see it even more clearly in other passages.  The passage we read from John that talks about Jesus healing the blind man ends with the following chastisement of the Pharisees:  Jesus said, “I have come into the world to exercise judgment so that those who don’t see can see and those who see will become blind.”  Some Pharisees who were with him heard what he said and asked, “Surely we aren’t blind, are we?”  Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you wouldn’t have any sin, but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

               A similar thing happens with the man Jesus heals who is deaf and mute.  In the book of Mark, Jesus cures this man and those around him prove themselves instead to be the ones who fail to really hear and fail to speak truth or wisdom.  We all know of people who won’t or can’t see.  Of course, they probably accuse us of the same thing.  And the reality is that because there are always layers and layers of truth, and because we always understand, interpret and see truth from our own perspectives, not one of us has the whole picture.  Not one.  All of us have areas of blindness, areas of deafness.  We all do.  Together we have a much better picture of the truth, but even then, people lie, people hide things.  There will always be areas of blindness.  But the problem is, those areas of blindness create illness within us, as a people, as well as as individuals.  We lose understanding and compassion for the other when we cannot see their perspective.  We lose unity and our ability to grow and work together when we cannot see from their point of view. It creates in our culture, in our world, illness, dis-ease.  But I would say that is true within us as individuals too.  When we are angry, it is we ourselves we are harming (remember – anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other to die).  We are injured and made ill by our refusal or inability to see or hear.

Who are the sick?  Who are the blind?  Who are the deaf?  It is shown again and again through scripture that the blind are often those who will not see.  The deaf are those who refuse to hear.  Our scriptures show us in these passages and others that the sick are often those who physically appear the healthiest, but who live lives that are not godly.  The passage from Matthew, as we read it today, gives us the cure, invites us into the health that Jesus offers.  We find that health by doing what Jesus asks – by caring for one another, by understanding at the deepest level that we are all connected, all one, all so intimately united by God’s love that we literally are healing ourselves and feeding ourselves and caring for ourselves when we care for others.  When we come to understand another person’s point of view, our blindness is listened.  When we can hear other people’s fears, hopes, thoughts and feelings, our deafness is lessened.  As a country we need to hear each other better and see each other more fully.  But this starts with individuals.  Can we hear and see one another?  Can we work on our own healing, by visiting others who are just as blind but who need to be heard, who need to be loved, through that blindness? 

Our challenge, then, is this: to remember we all have areas of blindness, we all are in need of healing.  Not one of us sees or hears with completeness.  Not one of us therefore are completely well.  And so when we care for each other, even those who may not appear to need our care, but need it just as much, we are also doing it for Jesus. 

My prayer for all of you is that as you care and love others, you feel God’s healing hand caring for you as well.  That you experience God’s touch on your heart as you touch the hands and minds of those who are sick.  That you know Jesus love for you, as a person struggling with the human illness, even as you offer love to those who struggle with human diseases around you.  In the name of the one who loves you into being and into wholeness and into healing we pray.  Amen.

The strength of those dealing with chronic depression

       I just saw a post on Facebook about a pastor who has committed suicide.  I didn't know the man personally and I don't know if his struggle was a long term struggle with depression or if something had happened that led to this decision.  But I know that depression is much more common than we acknowledge, as is other mental illness.  More, the stigma around mental illnesses is so great that it is difficult for people, especially people in high profile and leadership positions, to share their struggles with it.  They fear the judgments, they fear being discounted, they fear being misunderstood.  And the reality is that all three of those are likely to happen to people who struggle with depression.  But again, the particular misconception I want to focus on today has to do with the belief that those who struggle with depression are somehow weak.
        Let me be very clear: I think that people who struggle with mental illness are often some of the strongest people I have ever met.
       Imagine a life in which you struggle daily with chronic pain.  By chronic pain, I mean the kind that makes it difficult to walk, difficult to get up, difficult to breathe.  It weighs on you, is present in every cell of your body.  There is no cure, no help for it.  And you don't just struggle with this once in awhile, but every day, every hour, every minute.  Now imagine that accompanying that pain is a constant voice following you around telling you you are no good, that you are worthless, that you are wrong about everything. Still, with that pain, and with this loud voice (that voice of depression) in your ear, you are expected to "be normal", "snap out of it", "be positive", to work, care for others, especially your children and your family.  You are expected to put a smile on your face, to be positive and upbeat, to interact in a meaningful way with those around you.  You are expected to behave as if nothing is wrong and to have ears to hear the pain and struggles of others, while that voice continually tells you you are unlovable and not worth the air you breathe, while the chronic pain eats at your cells and your mind.
       That is a glimpse of what it can be like for people suffering from chronic depression.  Every day that they get up, every day that they go to work, feed their kids, interact with others, offer a smile or an ear - every day that they do this, they are acting with an amazing strength, the kind of strength that people with chronic depression often show every single day.  It is not a sign of weakness that some commit suicide.  It is a sign of unimagined strength that more don't.
       I have done quite a bit of pastoral care and counseling for people with depression.  But there is one person's story I want to share in particular who is a very dear friend who struggles deeply with depression.  It is incurable in her case, and not really even treatable, so she struggles.  The fact that those around her knows she struggles with depression but have always seen it as a sign of weakness has only increased her sense of pain, isolation and alienation. My friend went through a huge family crisis, very different from my own, but of a similar magnitude.  And those around her kept saying how strong she seemed, how amazing she was that she kept going.  But her private response to me?  "If I could get up every day with the kind of pain that I feel with the depression, then getting up every day during a crisis like this was not the challenge that many imagined it to be.  It was just one more place of pain, like all the others, that had to be lived through, walked through, survived.  I had to do it for my family.  There wasn't a choice.  People do what they have to do when they love their kids."  Yes, she is a woman of amazing strength.  But not just because of what she has survived, but because of how she lives every single day of her life.
        Because the truth is that sometimes people can't do what is best for their families.  And again, I don't see that as weakness. Sometimes that voice inside tells those with depression that the kids and family would be better off without them. Sometimes, no matter how much we think they should know better, they can become convinced by the voices of depression, by the strength of their own pain, by the chronic struggle every day that suicide is the only option, that the world really would be better off without them and/or that they simply cannot continue another moment with that kind of pain.  When that happens we lose someone to suicide or addiction or in some other way.  It is tragic.
      But that tragedy would much more easily be avoided if people were not so judgmental about depression, if they realized it is not something someone can "snap out of", and it is not a choice that a person makes, if they realized the strength that it takes for folk with depression to live each day, and if they honored the experiences of those people for what they really are.
       I will say again what I said at the beginning of this post.  Many of the strongest people I know are those who live with depression and who carry on.  They are among us, often hidden, often unseen.  And they live, despite what our culture says, despite the misunderstandings and despite the battle they have to wage each and every day within themselves.  If we want to be part of preventing more suicides like the pastor I read about this morning, we have to start by educating ourselves about the disease depression. We have to find compassion and understanding.  And we have to understand that it is strength not weakness that enables people to walk through their lives despite the depression.