Forgiveness Part 3: "through the valley of the shadow"

                                                                "Aspens" by Ansel Adams

Shalom Mennonite Church

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Don't Forgive Too Soon – Part 4: Depression

Texts: Psalm 23 and John 5:1-9

Eric Massanari

"through the valley of the shadow"

This passage in John bears some of the markings

of a more typical gospel healing story:

Jesus heals someone,

it happens on the Sabbath,

it upsets some of the religious leaders,

it inspires faith for some

and rouses animosity for others.

However, there's strangeness here, too:

the ailing man at the pool never asks to be healed,

he doesn't recognize Jesus as teacher or healer—least of all a Messiah,

and Jesus is the initiator from start to finish.

Do you want to be made well?

This is how Jesus greets the man

lying on his mat next to the healing waters

of the Pool of Bethsaida in Jerusalem.

I wonder what this question sounds like

to someone who has been ailing for thirty-eight years?

Do you want to be made well?

What do you mean, 'Do I want to be made well?!'

I'm here by the pool, aren't I?

I'm lying here paralyzed, aren't I?

I've been like this for thirty-eight years!

And let me tell you, this world isn't

a nice place for the likes of me.

I wait here for the Spirit to stir the water of the pool

so I can get in and maybe be healed,

but I never make it in time.

And you'd better believe that no one pauses to help me!

Does he want to be made well?

What do you hear in his response?

Notice how the man answers Jesus with blame,

blaming his condition and his situation on others.

I imagine his tone being one of bitterness and resentment.

After thirty-eight years he has

grown angry, fearful and hopeless.

Perhaps he can no longer imagine himself

as being anything but broken and sick.

Perhaps he can't afford to hope for anything more than this.

Perhaps he realizes that his bitterness

and anger have only deepened his hurt,

but he doesn't know how to let them go any more.

He is paralyzed.

To borrow more contemporary language,

he is depressed.

I want to offer this man by the pool of Bethsaida

as an image for a particular kind of

depression that many of us know from time to time.

Depression takes many different forms,

and depression is widely experienced

by people of all ages in our North American society.

More than 1 in 10 U.S. citizens are

currently taking a prescribed antidepressant.

That figure includes some who may be

taking those medications for some reasons

other than depression, but it does not

include many, many more who suffer

recurring bouts of debilitating depression.

This morning, when I speak of depression,

I am not intending to speak of the deep

and persistent depression that is sometimes

called “clinical depression” because of its more acute nature.

Such debilitating depression can arise

for many different reasons and sometimes

it lays hold of life for no apparent reason at all.

It can be life-threatening, and it often requires

immediate medical and therapeutic intervention

before one can afford to step back and reflect

on its possible root causes.  

This morning, I want to speak more about

the sort of depression that will inevitably arise

in our lives at one time or another

simply because we are human,

and we live in relationships with other humans,

and we care about those relationships.

When we experience hurt in our relationships

we experience pain and suffering.

Often it isn't a simple matter of one

person in the relationship being to blame;

much of the time the pain cuts both ways.

Sometimes we take the pain and hurt

we suffer in relationships and turn it inward.

Our wound, our pain, our anger

gets turned around and directed

at our own selves, and sometimes

we begin to blame ourselves for our hurt.

We harbor our pain as guilt and shame.

As we peer within we may not be 

terribly pleased with what we find there.

Sometimes, upon inner reflection

we realize that we bear some amount of

responsibility for our own hurt,

and we may see how we have

taken out our pain on others,

or welcomed them into our own suffering.

This week I was reading descriptions of varieties of depression

in a very large and weighty book that sits on my office shelf:

The Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling.

I came across a particular description of

depression that felt uncomfortably familiar

to me for the way depression takes shape in my own life:

In many people there is a strong connection between anger and depression. While depressed, they seldom show direct hostility or others...[However] one can notice passive aggression in sulking, forgetting, and self-isolation, for instance, insofar as these behaviors seem calculated to make sure other persons are affected by their suffering. Because of fear, the depressed person may not be able to express his or her anger toward the source of frustration but instead turns it toward the self, engaging in minor or serious self-destructive acts. These persons may not be convinced that anger is a normal part of life, including religious life. 

                                    from The Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, p.1105 

"These persons may not be convinced

that anger is a normal part of life, including religious life.”

Such depression can be particularly evident

among good religious people,

especially when the religion in question

emphasizes guilt and shame,

and amplifies those feelings that

we can never quite become the people

we would like to be,

the people we think we should be.

This should sound familiar to some of us at least,

because Christianity, in many of its expressions,

has emphasized guilt and shame,

and a sense of fundamental unworthiness.

Alongside great proclamations of God's goodness,

we have made fundamental assumptions of human unworthiness.

This fuels guilt, and fuels our anger

that has been turned inward,

and sometimes our anger at the world.

Sometimes what passes for “good religion”

has often become very bad medicine for the soul.

The man at the pool of Bethsaida

is a good religious man.

He is there in Jerusalem,

at the pool near the temple,

holding the belief that it is

the very Spirit of God who stirs

the waters of the pool and imparts

a healing energy to the water.

He is a “believer” you might say.

He believes in a healing God.

However, it appears that he also believes,

after 38 years, that he will no longer

come to know that healing.

He can no longer say that he wants to be made well.

Perhaps he assumes that

he doesn't even deserve it.

He assumes the world is a mean place,

full of uncaring people.

He believes he is his illness;

he is his bitterness, his anger.

He believes people are the jerks they seem to be,

day after day after interminable day.

He is paralyzed by his beliefs.

Do you want to be made well?

Jesus' question suggests that

the desire for wellness is important.

It is a sign of a living hope within us.

Our deep longing for wholeness

for well-being, for transformation,

is an expression of the image of God

we bear in our very being.

Our desire for healing in the midst

of the wounds of human relationship

is an impulse of God's own Spirit—

a stirring of the waters of our soul.

Our anger-turned-inward,

our depression that comes alongside our hurt,

does have something to teach us.

It can reveal how we may have

taken part in and bear some responsibility for

the pain that has been inflicted.

It may reveal to us the truth that

we, too, are capable of hurting others

and drawing them into our unresolved

pain and suffering.

It can direct our attention to our

own separation from love—our sin.

But, here's the important qualifier:

not sin as a fundamental state of being,

but sin as something we have capacity for,

and can also heal from.

Carl Menninger, the renowned 20^th century

psychologist once described “sinner” this way:

A sinner is one who can accept responsibility

for unloving actions, and who can work toward change,

with the belief and faith that change is possible

for the simple fact that our sin does not define us.

It is the living God who gives

the most basic definition to our being.

We are never unworthy or undeserving of God's love.

In fact, it is sometimes at the heart of our brokenness,
in that gap of realization when we come to terms
with our own capacity to inflict and amplify
pain and suffering in this world,
where we are better able to recognize
the steadfast flow of Love, and Life, and Mercy.     

At the end of the gospel story,

Jesus heals this man by the pool,

even though the man has reached

a depth of pain where he can no

longer articulate his desire for wellness.

Jesus sees this man for who he truly is.

He loves this man.

He heals this man.

“Rise, pick up your mat, and walk,”

Jesus tells him.

And he does.

He walks away carrying the mat

that has been his home

for 38 years.

Notice that he still carries it.

He still carries this sign of what

he has been asked to let go of,

and let die so that he might live

and be made well.

And, funny thing, as the story goes on,

the man runs into some of the good religious leaders

there in the great holy city of Jerusalem,

and they see him carrying his mat,

and they say to him, “Hey, what are you doing?

You're not supposed to carry your mat on the Sabbath!”

What are you doing? Get back on your mat!

We are left to wonder, as the man disappears,

will he keep walking?

Will he stay up off his mat?

Will he want to be made well?