"He Has Gone Out of His Mind"

Sermon Preached by John C. Hall on March 14, 2010

Texts — Mark 1:21-27 and Mark 3:19b-21

In Mark, chapter 3, Jesus has appointed the twelve apostles to go out, proclaim the gospel, and he has explicitly given them the authority to cast out demons. I’m going to read only the end of verse 19 and then 20-21, but the point is that the scribes have accused Jesus himself of having a demon.  This is a very important detail in light of today’s topic.

What it was about Jesus that made them say he was possessed?  And perhaps more intriguing, what might have made the charge plausible?  At least Jesus’ own family found it plausible that Jesus had a demon, and this may be related to what happens later in the chapter when Jesus refuses to recognize his own family as his family.

Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’

Demon possession was how ancient people understood mental illness, and you can see why.  It’s as if some spirit or force that is different from your true nature enters your mind from the outside and takes over. In ancient times, this was how all illness was explained, not just mental illness, but even a fever.  A person’s body was possessed by an outside force, a demon, or unclean spirit, and that caused the sick feeling. And that isn’t so far off, actually.  They called it a demon. We call it a germ, or a virus.

Incidentally, the ancient Greeks used the “demon theory” to explain inspiration too.  For them, a “daimon” was an energy force from God that brought poetry or music or special insight into a person’s head. And we still experience inspiration that way. A spirit goes in.

But back to the subject of mental illness — this carried a very negative social stigma in Jesus’ time, probably even more than it does today. I have a particular interest in mental illness because my own mother suffered from some periods of very deep depression during the last half of her life. 

I remember when I was in 6^th grade, she couldn’t get out of bed in the morning; she couldn’t make breakfast in the morning, couldn’t join us for dinner at night, and couldn’t take any interest in our lives. Fortunately, I was old enough to be able to separate these symptoms from who my mother really was.  I could understand that this was an illness, and I remember feeling a certain kind of relief when she was hospitalized because that meant that it was in fact an illness.  It was easier to say that my mother was in the hospital than it was to say “she can’t come to phone” or she’s in bed at 4 p.m. From all of this, I feel anxious about the slightest sign of depression in myself, and so I medicate myself against depression with heavy doses of exercise.

What must it be like for a person whose thoughts and feelings aren’t working right, or out of control, to the point where that person can’t function the way they usually do? Imagine hearing voices in your head (as we all do) but imagine that those voices won’t stop, and you can’t shut them down or ignore them. Then imagine, on top of that, having to deal not only with the voices, or the disturbing thoughts, or with a severe mood disorder, but having to deal also with the burden of feeling you need to hide that illness as something to be embarrassed about, or ashamed of. And of course, that stigma has the effect of keeping people away from getting the help and support they need.

For the purpose of this sermon, I define mental illness as having thoughts or feelings that you can’t control, disturbing thoughts and painful feelings that keep you from functioning at your usual level.  How many of us have experienced that?  I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands, but here are some questions.

Have you ever had a reoccurring thought or feeling that you wished you didn’t have?

Have you ever talked to yourself, even silently, or heard another voice in your head saying: You’re no good; you’re useless; you’ll never make it; no one likes you, you’re unattractive, you’re a failure; you’re stupid; you’re incompetent?

Have you ever kept eating when you were already full? Have you every kept talking when you knew you should shut up?  Have you ever said something even when you knew it was the wrong thing to say?

Have you ever spent money on something you didn’t need when you were already in debt for buying other things you didn’t need?

Have you ever lost your cool? Have you ever had a panic attack from being in a high place, or a close confined place, or a wide open space?

Have you ever obsessed about something you wish you could let go of but you couldn’t let go of it?  Have you ever avoiding thinking about something you needed to pay attention to?

Have you ever done something, or said something, or thought something, or dreamed something, and then, later, said to yourself,  “That wasn’t me.  That wasn’t the real me.  I was out of my mind”?

If you can’t identify with anything like that, then you are either in deep denial, or very self-unaware, or you’re Apollo or Athena, a god or a goddess, although I’m not sure even they have a perfect record on impulse control.

We have all had thoughts or feelings we wished we didn’t have. We’ve all been emotionally out of control, to the point that we couldn’t function as well as we usually function. This comes with being human. We’ve all been “out of our minds” at one time or another.

We understand mental illness and the function of our brain differently than ancient people did. We think of it more in terms of either brain biochemistry or thought patterns we develop in response to trauma or as a way of coping. But our ministry, our role as a church, toward people who experience mental illness is the same as Jesus’ ministry.

Our society as a whole isn’t very compassionate, you might have noticed.  But we’re the compassion department. Someone’s got to do it. Our role, our place in the world, is to be a sanctuary, not just a place of tolerance but of genuine welcome, and understanding, and acceptance — a place, maybe the only place, where having troubling thoughts and feelings doesn’t disqualify anyone from belonging and being honored as a child of God.

We’ve all been out of our minds. That recognition should help us grow in our willingness to cut each other some slack in this area.

Maybe 15 years ago here in downtown Middletown, Advocacy Unlimited ran a program to help downtown businesses understand and feel equipped to deal with people in stores or on the sidewalk who were manifesting symptoms of mental illness, perhaps talking to themselves. The primary message was: You don’t need to kick the person out of the store. This doesn’t mean that anything goes and anyone should be exempt from the rules of common courtesy.  But in the vast majority of cases, you don’t need to call the police. You don’t need to freak out yourself, just because someone is acting a little unusual, or talking to himself or herself. Today, with mobile phones and almost invisible microphones, you can’t tell the difference anymore between someone talking to him or herself or someone talking on the phone, so this problem has disappeared into the culture to a large extent.

During our 2^nd Hour program today, we’re going to do a mini-version of what Advocacy Unlimited did.  We’re going to have a conversation about how to be a more welcoming and comfortable place for everyone.  Some of our members who are professionals in the mental health field will be there to help us figure out how to do that.  Some of us have experienced episodes of acute mental illness and you can tell us what it was like for you. Some of you have wondered how to deal with someone else who appears to have a “thought disorder.” This does happen in church sometimes.

It seems that Jesus was accused of being possessed by a demon, in part, because he dealt with demons.  He talked to demons.  He must have one. I can sympathize with that, because I’ve had Middletown politicians say to me, “Why do you want people with mental illness in your church. Are you crazy?”