Proper 7C
You know, sometimes the Holy Spirit gives you Auntie Mame, as she did on Pentecost Sunday, and you’re inspired to laugh and sing and celebrate with joy. And sometimes she gives you a story about a crazy man and a herd of swine being driven off a cliff and says, “put that in your pipe and smoke it!” That’s how she rolls. But I promise, even in today’s strange and disturbing Gospel story, I think I found some good news.
What spoke to me this week was the torment of the poor demoniac in that story. Most of you know that at William Temple House, where I work, we offer some of the only free or low-cost mental health counseling in the greater Portland area. Of course we don’t look at mental illness in the same way today as in Jesus’s time; we now understand it as related to imbalances in certain chemicals or neurotransmitters in the brain. So when someone comes to us in torment, like our poor demoniac, our Counseling group doesn’t call me and say, “can you perform an exorcism? The demons are back.”
But I know this: when certain types of mental illness are at play, it can feel like demons. I’ve heard it described to me, and it is something like the agony that man described to Jesus: voices and destructive urges that seem to come from somewhere else and just won’t go away. So, as much as things have changed, I don’t see our Gospel story as rooted in a context so different from our own that it has nothing to say to us in the here and now.
I thought about what would have happened to this man if he hung out at 3rd and Burnside in Portland. Like our demoniac, his clothes are not clean, and neither is his body. He is homeless, for he is too disordered to live with his family, and too disturbed to earn money for his own housing. There’s a good chance he has been a victim of violence; a smaller chance that he himself is violent. He likely self-medicates, and suffers from terrible addictions. So chances are at some point, someone has called the police; and he has been taken to jail if he has committed a crime—or, if he’s lucky, to a hospital. He might stay there for a while, and get his meds stabilized; detox; and get some group sessions. A while later he will be discharged in a more stable condition—“in his right mind,” as our Gospel says. The hospital would be eager to discharge him--they are equipped to respond only to crises, and they never have enough beds. And I can picture the discharge meeting. Someone expresses concern about whether there are support systems around him to keep him stable. And the doctors say, “that’s not our business: we’ve done our part.”
Sadly, like the demoniac, many people with untreated mental illness are in chains. Jails and prisons are the new asylums. Outdated treatment laws and the prolonged failure by states to fund their mental health systems has delivered too many over to the criminal justice and corrections systems, rather than into community-based public health systems where they belong.
It’s a depressing picture. But it points to a particular truth in our Gospel reading: community matters. For Jesus “treats” the demoniac—he heals him, but the question looms: What’s next for him? The man wants to stay with Jesus. Jesus says, essentially, “No. You belong to your community. You need to stay here, and be a light to them.”
But they don’t really want him back, and they want Jesus to leave them too. He has made them anxious. Jesus wants the healed demoniac to live in a changed relationship with his people. He wants him to reflect to them the grace of God’s healing power and for them to find in him the one he was created to be: their brother, their neighbor, their selves.
It’s the message we find in Galatians—God’s love extends to people the world shuns, the lesser ones along with the privileged. For there is nowhere—even the farthest side of the lake, where Gentiles live, a tribe of people who will even eat pork--that Jesus will not go. And there is no one—not even a naked, man, living in chains in a tomb and ranting and raving—that Jesus does not see, and does not love, and cannot heal—sometimes with our help. Jesus’s healings always have the quality of restoring people to their community. He is not interested in just the body; not just the mind: but body, mind, and spirit.
One out of every five families today experiences mental illness. They are our brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, and parents. They are our neighbors—even our fellow congregants--as are those who wrestle with the challenges of caring for them: who worry about them; who agonize when they are not able to help them. And so Jesus calls us to address this together, as a community. We are part of his healing team.
Many of you know that Rod MacDow has been active in our parish’s connection to NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which helps families and communities who are affected by it. He regularly visits the adult psychiatric unit at St Vincent’s, and asks patients what they are going to need to re-enter the world. What he hears most often from them is, “I feel isolated. I want friends. I want a social life.” Rod told me, “People who are mentally ill suffer from isolation and loneliness as much as anything in their lives. They would love to connect, and be just another person in the room.”
I’m proud St Gabriel supports NAMI. They are truly doing the Lord’s work. Still, it’s hard to ignore that the mental health problem is worsening, and a recent study found that our own state of Oregon is the worst in the country in terms of treatment options. So where do we find inspiration?
I found it in a town called Geel.
Geel is a Belgian town of about 40,000 souls, in whose center is a medieval church dedicated to Dymphna, a saint believed to have the power to cure mental disorders. For more than 700 years, it has been a shrine where pilgrims suffering from mental illness come for healing. In the 14th century, nuns opened a guest house to care for pilgrims who could not be cured. Once the guest house filled up, the town itself was inspired to accept people with mental disorders into their homes and care for them. And they’ve been doing it ever since.
They are not mental health professionals, but they receive training, and a small government stipend, and they have support from a local hospital if they need it. A psychiatrist examines each person before placing them in a home. One couple has taken in six boarders over the years, each of them different. One was too affectionate with the wife in the family; one would lock them out of the bathroom and wash his hands furiously; another had terrifying visions of lions coming out of the wall. The hosts have adjusted to them. Acceptance of mental differences is natural there, and the residents have come up with creative ways to manage the disruptive or eccentric behaviors that may come with their guests. They found a female companion for the overly affectionate one. When the other boarder would cry out about the lions, they would pretend to chase them away. “It worked every time,” they said.
As large insane asylums came on the scene, and then went, the ancient Geel model persisted. Over time, boarders became such a part of the normal life of the village that the distinctions between them and the nonboarders blurred. “When we see people with mental illness,” said one host, “we know how to react. So do the shopkeepers, bartenders, and bus drivers. No one really notices them, at least not in a negative way.” As one local tour guide says, “There’s an expression: instead of saying you’re crazy, you can say you belong to Geel.”
I think Geel is a little closer to the kingdom of heaven. I wish that demoniac had lived in Geel. I wish the man on 3rd and Burnside did!!
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| A Geel boarder |
It’s fitting to me that the Geel concept – a 700-year-old idea that is now recognized as cutting edge—came as a response to a call from God. And there is no doubt that the citizens of Geel prayed over this very Gospel reading and looked for the lessons Jesus taught, and put them into action. So why can’t we?
I think Jesus is telling us to let go of our fears, to learn about mental illness, and to find resources around us. And Jesus is telling us to work together. To hold up the humanity of people who are mentally ill. To advocate to our governments--local, state, and federal--for better mental health treatment options. To consider how we can accommodate their difference, and to liberate them; to fight systems that merely criminalize them or lock them away. To stand with and offer help and support to those who bear the burden of care for them.
Our lesson also is a call for us to take care of our own mental health, to pay attention to our own body, mind, and spirit. And so I pray that we, all of us, rid ourselves of any shame we feel about our struggles; to care for ourselves and seek counseling when we need it. It has helped me immeasurably. And I pray that we resist stigmatizing those around us who struggle with depression or anxiety or despair, and to consider how we can accommodate ourselves to those whose difference is their mental illness. For we cannot be a healing presence to others if we are not ourselves whole.
The gift Jesus gives to those with mental illness is to say, “You matter. Even when you are disordered, you belong to me.” And then Jesus turns to us and says, “they belong to you, too.”
So let us pray:
God of wholeness, we pray for light in the darkness. We pray that those who suffer with mental illness will find hope and help among followers of Christ who will love them and point them toward what they need, while letting them live with that need. We ask for the courage to seek help for our own souls when we are in darkness. We pray for acceptance and grace–the amazing grace you offer so freely to all. And we pray for hearts to embrace the opportunity for the messy and sometimes thankless ministry among those who suffer, in the name of the one whose love knows no margins, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Preached on June 23, 2019 at St Gabriel Episcopal Church, Portland OR
Lectionary: Isaiah 65:1-9; Psalm 22:19-28; Galations 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39
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