Page 1 of 9

Today is the last Sunday of Lenten sermon series called Prayer and Righteous Action. This has been a fun series. Ive enjoyed preaching about prayerhelping us taking the next steps in our prayer life. It was wonderful watching folks last Sunday talk to another person about their prayer life. Were starting a prayer partner ministry. And Ive enjoyed looking at some important community issues. Weve explored school violence and Love and Logic parenting. I hope that every parent at Chain of Lakes will make a commitment to being a Love and Logic parent Today were looking at the issue of Mental Illness. Todays sermon is about healing. As a congregation were called to be an agent of healing. When a person comes to Chain of Lakes my hope is that we can help them become the person God desires for them to be. When you talk to people about our new congregation tell them that we want them to become the person God desires for them to be. To live into Gods desires sometimes means we need healing. We need to be healed of past psychological wounds, physical wounds, and relational wounds. Jesus is our ultimate example of healing. This week in the devotion you have the opportunity to enjoy some of his stories of healing. Let me encourage you to get out this brochure that is in the bulletin. Chapters of eight & nine in Matthew are full of stories of Jesus healing people. This week you have the opportunity to read these stories in the devotion. I encourage you to use this devotion this week. In this brochure you have a place to take notes. I believe God might say something to you through this sermon that youll want to write down. And you have a listing of our congregations prayer requests. My own thinking about Mental Illness has been shaped by encounters I had in seminary. The first happened in my first year. I lived in an apartment with two other guys. The three of us

Page 2 of 9

got to know a woman by the name of Linda. She was a second career student who had come to seminary with her two children. My two roommates and I got to know Linda and her two kids pretty well. We shared some meals together and spent a lot of time together. Towards the end of the first term Linda suffered a psychotic episode. It was very serious. Her children went somewhere else to stay. Linda needed another adult to stay with her during the night. My two roommates and I each took a night to stay in her apartment. On my night I slept on the couch in the common area of her apartment. At about dawn Linda came out and woke me up. She had a big smile on her face. She was so happy. They are here, she said. Who is here? I asked. The angels, she said. The angels? I said. Yes, they are flying around in this room. They are so happy, and Im so happy. I didnt say anything. You have to remember something. I grew up in Worthington, Minnesota. I didnt grow up knowing about a mental illness. I never had an experience of someone telling me with a smile on their face that they saw angels flying around the room. After she got better and we talked about that incident Linda told me that I had looked confused. And she was right. I was confused. As I sat there I thought that I was way out of my league in my ability to help. I didnt know what to do. I didnt know, of course, that Linda was suffering from schizophrenia and that people with schizophrenia frequently have visions. Its not infrequent for these visions to be of angels. I didnt know that some scientists believe that schizophrenia is caused when a certain gene that makes important brain chemicals malfunctions. I didnt know that this illness can be treated successfully with medication and therapy. I didnt know that people who suffer from schizophrenia can live very productive lives, but they need treatment.

Page 3 of 9

The second story happened the last year of seminary. It was towards the end of the fall term. One of my floormates Elizabeth was going through a difficult time. It wasnt unusual for people to go through difficult times during the end of the semester. But this difficult time that Elizabeth was experiencing seemed a bit more pronounced. We all lived in separate rooms on a locked floor. I kept my room unlocked at night. One morning as I was waking up Elizabeth walked into my room. She came into my bed. I was still waking up in the bed. AgainI had never had the experience of someone walking into my room at the crack of dawn and coming into my bed while I was in the bed. Elizabeth was very scared. And she wanted to be held by someone. I didnt know until later that E was suffering from bi-polar disorderits a form of manic-depression. This is a disease where she would experience extreme highs. This was the mania part of the disorder. E would stay up all night and experience a tremendous burst of creativity and productivity. When E was going through her manic phase she would cook in the middle of the night and write papers and experience a extreme high. When the mania part stopped she would crash. That morning when she walked into my room she had crashed. She was scared. She needed someone to be with her. I found out later that bi-polar disorder can be treated with the drug lithium and treated through counseling. I found out that her episode of bi-polar had happened because of an adjustment to the lithium that she had taken. With proper treatment both Elizabeth and Linda can function well. E went on to be ordained as a Presbyterian pastor. Ive lost track of Linda, but it wouldnt surprise me if Linda

Page 4 of 9

became ordained too. But without treatment both of them would have had a very difficult time of functioning. They suffer from a mental illness. Theres no doubt in my mind that if Jesus was alive today he would go out of his way to treat and heal E and L. J cared deeply about people who were suffering from illness. As youll read this week Jesus frequently healed people. His reputation as the Messiah developed and grew because he would heal people. Jesus often healed people who were described in the Scriptures as having a demon. I want to talk about this phrase, having a demon. Because its important to be clear about what the Scriptures. In Jesus day people believed that demons came from the spiritual realm. They believed that in this realm a struggle existed between good and evil. The demons represented evil. Sometimes this struggle would break out in the earth. Whats important to know is that in many stories the demons recognized Jesus as representing good AND that the demons were afraid of Jesus AND the demons recognized that Jesus had power over them. In one of the stories we heard today the demon said to Jesus SLIDE What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. The demon recognized Jesus as the Holy One of God. This is important because we neednt be afraid of demons. I believe that a there is a realm where good and evil fight each other and sometimes this struggle breaks out in the physical reality called earth. Demons can scare us, but we know that GodFather, Son and Holy Spirit, or Creater, Christ and Holy spirit have power over the demons. This is one way to understand demonsthat they represent evil in a spiritual realm. Another way to understand demons in the Bible is to see them as a description of someone who

Page 5 of 9

is suffering from mental illness. In the second story a man had a son who shrieked and went into convulsions. He foamed at the mouth and hurt himself. Its quite likely that this boy was suffering from the illness of epilepsy. Epilepsy isnt a mental illness, but it has characteristics of a mental illness because it involves malfunctioning brain chemistry. IN Jesus day people didnt have the medical knowledge that you and I have. Seeing a person going through an epileptic fit was very scary. Because people in Jesus day didnt know what was happening they described the activity as someone who had a demon. In some cases not every casebut some cases to say a person had a demon was another way to say a person suffered from a mental illness. Jesus loved people who suffered from demons. He didnt walk away from their pain or their stress. He entered right into their story and healed them. He helped them become the people that God desired for them to be. If Jesus healed people, then you and Iwho are part of the body of Christare called to be agents of healing too. An important step in healing is to be knowledgeable about mental illness. Let me share some information with you. Im just sharing a small amount of information about mental illness. If you want more I encourage you to go to the web site of the National Association of Mental Illness or NAMI. What is a Mental Illness? SLIDE Mental illnesses are medical conditions that disrupt a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. Just as diabetes is a disorder of the pancreas, mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life.

Page 6 of 9

Some people use the term Mental Disorder instead of Mental Illness to describe what is taking place. What are the types of Mental Illness? The following information is taken from the NAMI web site SLIDE Mood disorders Major depression Bi-polar disorder Schizophrenia Anxiety disorders Panic disorders Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) Post-traumatic stress disorder General Anxiety Phobias Social phobia Agora phobia SLIDE Eating disorders ADHD Autism Personality disorder Anti-social personality Avoidant personality disorder Borderline personality disorder Mental Illness is common. According to NAMI about one in four adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. Thats almost 58 million people. Ive had many people come into my office to tell me they are feeling blue. They wonder if they are suffering from a mental illness. There is a difference between feeling blue and suffering from depression. Just as there is a difference between having an idea that might seem strange and hearing from angels.

Page 7 of 9

This is the difference. A mental illness causes us to have a difficult time functioning over a period of time. We might feel blue, but that doesnt mean we suffer from a mental illness. When we have a mental illness we cant function for a long period of time. A Mental Illness is a medical condition where the brain chemistry is not working as well as it could. If you take anything away from this sermon take away the point that a Mental illness is a physical illness. A mental illness is not different than cancer. If I have lung cancer a cell has mutated in the wrong way causing a tumor to grow in my lungs. If I have a mental illness some cells in my brain are not working properly causing me to have problems with daily functioning. A mental illness is a physical disease. Because its a physical disease no amount of willpower can help a person overcome it. I grew up in an agricultural area and when a person was going through a tough time people in my town would frequently say get over it. Come on, pull yourselves up by your boot straps. Get going. I grew up being taught that a persons will could affect a persons feelings. We can tell a person suffering from a mental illness as much as we want to get over it. But its not going to help. When my friend Linda was seeing angels in her apartment those angels were as real to her as I was. There was no way I could tell her to get over it or to tell her that she wasnt really seeing an angel. Her altered brain chemistry had caused it. Suffering from a mental illness is not a sign of a lack of will, or a lack of purpose, or poor family situation or a character defect. A mental illness is a sign that the cells in the brain arent working properly. Its a physical disease. A wonderful gift that we can give to people is to share with people that a Mental Illness is a physical disease. If everyone in the world understood that a Mental Illness is a physical disease the stigma of mental illness would end.

Page 8 of 9

This stigma plays out in a number of different ways. When I served in Plainview we had a young woman in our church who suffered from Cystic Fibrosis. Her name is Alyssa. Shes now in her early 30s. Put most simply Cystic Fibrosis is a disease where the body produces a mucas in the lungs which harms breathing. Our congregation and the wider community cared a lot about Alyssa. We had deep compassion for her. We threw a fundraiser for her at a local restaurant to help her pay for her medical bills. We had a community run where we raised money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. I headed up the run for a few years. Some people in the church ran a garage sale every year to raise money. We loved Alyssa and wanted to help her. But its rare for a community to treat someone with mental illness in that way. We usually dont have fundraisers for people who suffer from schizophrenia. We often dont put a person who is going through a agoraphobia episode on the prayer chain. Whats the difference between having a disease of the lungs versus having a disease of the brain. We would never stigmatize someone who suffers from cancer, just as we should never stigmatize someone who suffers from a Mental Illness. Local congregations can do a lot. Cathy is going to share some more about that. Primarily were called to share the heart of Jesus with people who suffer. In the reading we heard today a man with a demon interrupted Jesus when Jesus was teaching, Jesus didnt chide the man for his interruption. He didnt aggressively confront the man. He responded with compassion. He healed him. A little later in Luke we can read the story of a man who lived among the tombs because he wasnt well enough to live in a village. The people of village were afraid of the man and

Page 9 of 9

shunned him. Not only did Jesus not shun him, he engaged the man. He responded with compassion. He healed him. When a man came to Jesus and told him the story of his son who would suddenly shriek and go into convulsions, Jesus didnt blame the boy for his illness which was probably epilepsy. He healed the boy. He gave the boy a chance to have a new life. Jesus said himself that he used the finger of God to heal these people. He wasnt afraid of their behavior, he didnt ignore what was happening. His heart leaped out to them. We dont have the physical ability fo heal folks who suffer from altered brain chemistry. But we can offer them our hearts. We can share compassion. We can stand up for them when their own communities ridicule them. We can let them know they are children of God and we will love and bless them with all of our hearts.