By Rev. Chris Jorgensen
May 6, 2018
Scripture: Matthew 11: 28-30
28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Most of you know that I went to seminary in New Jersey about five years ago, and I served a church in New York City during my time there. Well, suffice it to say that strange things happen when you hang out in New York City. Like sometimes you see famous people. Once, we saw Neil Patrick Harris in a Mexican restaurant. I am happy to report that he is both 1) very good looking in person and 2) very punctual – he was the first one of his party of four to arrive. I was impressed. Another time, Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory was filming a movie right outside of our church.
But for a church nerd like myself, the most interesting person I met in New York City was an Australian man named James (whose name is changed for privacy reasons). James struck up a conversation with me in Birch Coffee shop in West Greenwich Village – which just so happened to be next door to my church. I was having a cup of coffee and waiting for a meeting to start and reading a nerdy church book. James and I were sitting right next to each other. (Coffee shops in New York are small.) He commented that the book I was reading looked interesting. So we chatted for a bit, and I asked him if he attended a church (which seemed reasonable since he wanted to talk to me about my church book). He said, no, and that it was a long story.
Well, I had leave just then to go to my meeting, so James and I agreed to meet again another time to talk.
At that second coffee, James shared with me that he had been part of the group of people who started Hillsong Church in Australia in the 1980s. That name might not ring a bell to you unless you listen to contemporary praise music. Hillsong is very well-known for the music they produce, and tons of churches sing their songs. In fact, we sing a number of their songs here (What a Beautiful Name, Shout to the Lord). Hillsong is also sort of a mega-mega-church. They have campuses all over the world and claim that over 100,000 people worship in their churches every week. So the fact that James was involved with Hillsong when it was being formed was super interesting to me.
But I knew he wasn’t a Christian anymore, so I asked him what happened. Well, he told me that not too long after the church started really growing, he was diagnosed with depression. He was really struggling. And at his lowest point, the pastor of Hillsong asked him to step down from the leadership team and leave the church. See, they had been promoting this idea that if you gave your life to Christ, and if you have adequate faith, your life would be blessed. Your struggles would be gone. It didn’t look good to have a leader who wasn’t doing well, who was struggling with his mental health, so James was invited to quietly go away. So James left, feeling betrayed and brokenhearted that his faith community abandoned him when he needed it most. He never went to a Christian church again.
To be fair to Hillsong, this was the 1980s, and I doubt that any church was doing a really great job engaging the reality of mental illness then. Even today, mental illness is not discussed much in church. It was barely addressed during my seminary training, and it was named by Methodist pastors in our district as one of the topics they most needed education about.
When I met James, I didn’t know much about mental illness either. I didn’t know that 1 in 5 adults in America experience mental illness in any given year. I didn’t know that 1 in 25 adults live with a serious mental illness – one that interferes their day-to-day activities. (Stats https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-by-the-numbers). As I entered into ministry, I was surprised by how many people I encountered who lived with mental health conditions: from homeless folks who attended Church of the Village, to college students I worked with at Creighton and student-veterans at UNO, to your average person in the pew. I encountered people with all different kinds of mental illness: depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders.
To be totally honest, I was unprepared, even overwhelmed sometimes. But I did my best. I researched, and I learned as I encountered each person and situation. I also quickly realized that I didn’t know anything about the mental health care crisis either – the shortage of beds in in-patient facilities, and the shortage of psychiatrists and counselors (especially in rural areas). So I started to educate myself about the systemic issues that make getting care for people with mental illness even more difficult.
More than anything though, I just sought to be present and compassionate with folks no matter what. Sometimes I did better than others.
What I did not do is tell people that if they just prayed hard enough or believed well enough, their mental illness would go away. What I did not do is tell people they needed to hide or be ashamed of their mental illness. But I did try the very best I could to incarnate the presence of Christ from our reading today when Jesus says: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
This scripture is in a section of the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus is pushing back against the Pharisees. The heavy burdens that Jesus mentions in these words are likely a reference to the legalistic religious burdens that the Pharisees were putting on people. Their religious rules and ideas were making suffering people’s lives harder, not lifting their burdens.
It makes me think about my friend James, and the church that held so tightly to its notion that Christians don’t experience mental illness, that they would rather abandon him than engage reality. They would rather hold onto this idea of faith as a magical cure than actually care for the person in front of them. Instead, they laid a heavy burden on James. They burdened him by saying he wasn’t faithful enough or he wasn’t trying enough, and the mental illness was somehow his fault. They burdened him by kicking him out of his community of faith.
Again, I don’t tell you these things to judge Hillsong church. I hope and pray that they would respond very differently now. But I lift up this story to help us think about how we as Christians and as a Christian community are called to respond to mental illness.
As you know, the church is sometimes referred to as the body of Christ. We are the ones who are called to incarnate the presence, to be the presence, of Christ for the world. And I believe, that as Christ’s body on earth, the church is called to be a place of welcome and rest for the weary and burdened – and that includes people who experience mental illness.
So how can we do that? How can we be the presence of Christ for all people – especially people with mental illness?
Well, we’ve already done the first thing. By speaking and hearing about mental illness, we are helping to get rid of stigma. We are helping reduce the shame and blame that sometimes happens to people who experience mental illness. Like our children’s video told us, mental illness is an illness. Just like we wouldn’t tell someone with cancer that they should just try harder to get over it, we won’t tell people with mental illness that.
Secondly, we can encourage folks to seek treatment. We can see the healing that comes from medications and psychiatrists and counselors as gifts from God. God has given us medicine and people to care for and guide us, and we can encourage folks to use all of God’s gifts.
Personally, I have worked with a counselor, have been in therapy, for probably a total of four years of my life. It has been critical to getting me and keeping me in a mentally healthy place. Counseling has helped me adjust to being a mother, helped me with my marriage, and it has helped me manage the stress of pastoring. More than anything, it has helped me become more aware of the lies I had been telling myself about where my value comes from. I can honestly say that without counseling, I would not be in this pulpit today. Counseling freed me to be open to God’s presence and God’s call on my life. Without it, I would not have had the courage to follow that call.
So we can encourage each other to seek professional help when necessary. We can also be cheerleaders for each other’s self-care. We can ask one another how we are doing – how we are really doing. Especially when we know folks are struggling, we can check in with them. And we can try our hardest not to give advice but just to listen as a caring friend, and then respond if someone asks us for help.
Finally, we can be a community together. We can be a community of people of all mental health statuses. I learned through my relationships with people who experience mental illness that it’s not a one-way street. I’m not some hero taking care of people. I am being blessed by the people that I am in relationship with. We are all in the same boat here. We are all seeking the same salvation in Christ, and sometimes we hold other people up, and sometimes they hold us up.
I want to tell you a story that Gabe has given me permission to tell. As some of you know, Gabe is our good family friend who sits with Matt and Ruby each week. He was also Ruby’s confirmation sponsor. He’s very special to me – to us. Well, the winter of 2016-2017 was a rough one for Gabe. He had been hospitalized because of mental illness a number of times that January and February. I had spent a lot of time visiting him and checking up on him. I was glad to do it because I love him.
But what was the most moving thing to me, the most important thing that I learned journeying alongside Gabe, was that this Christian life of caring for one another is always a two-way street. In the midst of that difficult time, I was interviewing to see if I would be ordained or not. As you can imagine, it is stressful and a big deal.
And it meant so much to me that the week I was being interviewed, Gabe would text me and remind me that he was thinking about me and praying for me. He supported me through my difficult time, just like I supported him. It helped me see that we are all in this together. We all embody the presence of Christ for one another.
In fact, I am so proud that Gabe is leading a new group here at the church. It’s called Gathering Hope: A Mental Wellness Gardening Group. It is a chance for people to experience wellness by working the dirt and seeing things grow. It is an opportunity for those who are weary and burdened to find rest – in the activity of gardening and in the company of each other. It is the church being the presence of Christ right here and right now.
Jesus said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
May we offer Christ’s rest here. May we receive Christ’s rest here.
Rest in acceptance, rest in encouragement, rest in speaking and in listening, rest in community, rest in a garden.
May it be so.
Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR CONVERSATION / REFLECTION
1) In your experience, how acceptable is it for people to talk about mental illness? Is it something that your family of origin ever discussed? Is it something you ever discuss with friends or family now?
2) Why do you think people sometimes avoid talking about mental illness?
3) Have you or would you ever seek counseling for a problem you are having? If you have, share as much as you feel comfortable about that experience.
4) What is your experience with mental illness? Have you ever personally experienced mental illness? Does mental illness affect someone you love? Share as much as you feel comfortable.