Terry’s Sermon from February 7

Terry McKinney, February 7, 2010 at PSCC

Jesus said: “I came that they might have life, and life more abundant.” (John 10:10)

I used to be put off by the Bible’s miracle stories, as if the were a kind of litmus test about whether or not we believe in Jesus. But now, I’ve come to love those stories, and I see them differently.

They aren’t about Jesus showing us his bonafides, but are about Jesus showing us what the Kingdom looks like. In most of those stories, someone who was outside the community – someone considered impossibly and permanently rejected – isn’t simply healed but restored to it. Think about the healing of the blind man, or the paralytic at the healing spring, or the hemorrhaging woman. In each of these cases, the point is that the person was able to return to their community.

It reminds me of a professor I had at Div School who used to say that the substance of sin was separation. Rupture. The actions that divide us from each other – in whatever form – is sin, he said.

If he’s right, then our passage from Luke is reconciliation, the end of what separated us from one another. The lost coin reconciled back into wholeness.

Let’s look at it again then: “So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ ”

Read that way, it seems that God cares a great deal about the return of those separated from us. And God does in fact rejoice when we go searching for our lost coins to make our body whole again.

The passage is just as much about our seeking, finding, and rejoicing, as it is about God’s. It’s about our response to the lost and marginalized. The stories of finding the lost coin and sheep are about restoration, reconciliation, and wholeness.

Jesus said: “I came that they might have life, and life more abundant.”

The work of restoration that moves me most at this point is the Mental Health and Spirituality Group at First Church in Cambridge. I want to share with you about it to let you know what you’ve made possible through your generosity in supporting me so much..

It all began with a phone call to my mother. She had told me a few months previous that the church was starting a depression support group, and I wanted to check in with her about how the group was going. She told me, “Oh it’s great. I learned something today, that depression is not of God.”

I can’t tell you how sad this made me. Didn’t we believe that God was a part of everything? Couldn’t God be found everywhere, even in the most unlikely places? Did that make depression a kind of God-less wasteland?

And I can’t tell you how angry this made me. The cure my mom was given was praying the right way, believing hard enough. It all came down to the strength of your belief. And believe me, if there’s anything the mentally ill are running low on, it’s strength. And so if your illness doesn’t go away, guess whose fault that is?

It made me more aware of the problem many mainline Protestant churches have, a sort of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to mental illness. It’s never reviled or supported, it’s just invisible. Where is seeking the lost coin or sheep in either of those scenarios?

So guess what? Depression is of God. What a strange thing to proclaim. Does this imply that God sends us mental health struggles to teach us a lesson, or in order to achieve our spiritual health and enlightenment? Certainly not. But it testifies that God might be recruiting those struggles to bring us into greater fullness of life.

And that’s really the root of the mental health ministry, that God can be found moving where we’d least expect. Isn’t that part of our Christian hope: what looks at first like death may in fact contain the seeds for newness of life?

Jesus said: “I came that they might have life, and life more abundant.”

Two years ago while I was the ministerial intern at First Church, I proposed the idea for a group to run during Lent, and it continues to meet every Sunday now. We were doing something counter-intuitive, inviting people to enter into the painful, gaping maw of their struggles, wondering where God was in there, whether God was there at all, hoping God was there, wondering whether God gave them this burden for a reason, or being just plain suspicious of a god who would let them suffer this way.

And to wonder whether what looks at first like death may in fact contain the seeds for newness of life.

When we gather, we remember and acknowledge that our struggles have an important role to play in our relationship with God. Our whole beings are part of them, causing us to ask: Do our struggles make us reach out more to others or to God? Do they cause us to draw back? To feel dejected and abandoned by God? To be angry with God? To seek comfort in God?

Clearly, what comes out of our mental health struggles aren’t an impediment to our relationship with God, but a conduit to it.

I want to read parts of psalm that capture the feelings of distant abandonment some of our group’s members express. Notice how the psalmist clings desperately to God despite the apparent abandonment:

1    O LORD, my God, my Savior, *

by day and night I cry to you.

5    Lost among the dead, *

I am in prison and cannot get free.

LORD, I have called upon you daily;

I have stretched out my hands to you.

15    LORD, why have you rejected me? *

why have you hidden your face from me?

19    My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me, *

and darkness is my only companion.

It’s a cry of utter lament. “Darkness is my only companion. “

This is scary stuff. It’s no wonder we shy away from it or pretend it’s not there.

And yet: What looks at first like death may in fact contain the seeds for newness of life.

So this is our challenge, and our mandate and call: How do we not just welcome, but go out and look for the lost coin or sheep, to bring it back home? Not just outside church but inside it as well. The coming of the Kingdom is not always easy, and sometimes it feels risky. We’ve had a few incidents in our MH&S Group that made me wonder whether we should continue. Whether everyone would be safe enough.

I want to finish by telling you something about the effect of the group on First Church itself. It’s easy to wonder about the effects of the group on its participants, but what about the church itself? In this particular part of our story, it’s First Church who’s been transformed by the group.

Two months ago, I decided to do a bit of a survey at First Church, members, lay leaders, and clergy, to find out how they’ve experienced the group. The responses moved me so much, so I want to some of them.

People wrote all these things:

• It’s about parts we’re ashamed of that play an important role in our relationship with God, for deepening that relationship with God and the church
• It’s a place to explore the suffering, anxiety, incomprehension, and sometimes anger that burden those of us who live with a mental-health issue, in the light of God’s loving meaning for us – and through us for others
• People have said there’s just comfort in know it’s there, even if they’re not going to it
• It’s helped us move from “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to a place of acceptance
• We have to acknowledge that those we help will change us
• I’ve heard others talking openly about their mental health struggles, and I know they wouldn’t have done that before the group started.

Friends, my deep hope is that this is what finding the lost coin looks like. This is just a tiny glimpse of what “thy kingdom come” looks like.

Yes, the people we help will change us. Finding the lost sheep will change us. This can look really scary, and yet Jesus reminds us that it causes rejoicing. It makes me wonder about what might have happened in our parables from Luke after the lost was round. How did the people rejoice with the shepherd and the woman? How were they all changed by being made whole again? By being restored?

What looks at first like death may in fact contain the seeds for newness of life: this is our Christian, resurrection hope.

“I came that they might have life, and life more abundant.” This is our Christian promise.