Real Power (Part 2)

Imagine with me an adolescent kid, maybe late teens or early twenties, whose mind is so obsessed with death that he literally spends all his time wandering around the local cemetery. 

Imagine this man who, while in the care of professionals, was so volatile that he needed to be restrained with handcuffs or straight-jackets.

Imagine him so inwardly disturbed that his only method of expressing raw emotion is to emit high-pitched wails, like a groupie at a screamo rock concert.

Imagine him so devoid of self-worth, so unable to affirm his self-image, that he regularly cuts himself.

In this second part of my series on Real Power, this describes the subject of the Gospel narrative in Mark 5:1-20.  This young man, resident of a Syrian city east of the Sea of Galilee, was utterly rejected by his community and written off as hopeless.

However, this is also a description of far too many young people in our world today.  I have known and worked with teenagers like this, first in my seminary days as a shift-supervisor at a juvenile detention center, and later in professional youth ministry. 

The man in Mark 5 was labeled "demon-possessed."  So are many young people today.  They are deeply tormented, and they often express their torment in ways that offend the sensibilities of "normal" people.

This man comes into the presence of Jesus and, ironically, begs Jesus not to torment him.  A life of torment has become so normal for this man that the presence of the true Healer feels like torment.

But Jesus engages with this young man and, once again, reveals His real power.  He literally spared no expense to drive the source of the torment out of the young man: He used a whole herd of pigs (the villagers' main source of wealth) in order to destroy the demons.  When the villagers later found him, he was completely "in his right mind."  (With another twist of irony, the villagers were so often used to seeing him in his demonic state that when they found him healed, they were afraid!)

In our last post, Jesus displayed power to bring order out of chaos.  In today's lesson, we see Jesus with power to bring sanity to torment.

In the past one hundred years, our understanding of mental illness has grown exponentially.  Many human phenomena once attributed to demons are now known to have natural causes.  Without ruling out the existence of the demonic, I concur that there are so many factors that combine to create unhealthy and destructive patterns of thought and behavior in a person: body chemistry, family history, personal upbringing, childhood trauma, etc. 

Diagnosis is multifaceted, and healing is a long process.  Truly no human being can bring about the kind of instantaneous and miraculous healing Jesus did.  But we can follow Jesus' model in another way. 

Too many individuals--and especially in the Church--tend to mimic the example of the villagers.  We seek to control or exclude the mental illness, to keep it at the margins where it will not upset our carefully staged happiness, where it will not exert its disruptive effects on our much-loved status quo. 

But Jesus does not use His power to control and exclude.  He engages mental illness, even to the extent that it is allowed to disrupt other aspects of life.  He expresses unreserved value for the person, regardless of the mental torment experienced, regardless of what other secondary values might need to be sacrificed.

I, for one, am grateful that Jesus models for us a better, healthier way to explore the very rough terrain of mental illness, and that He indeed has the power to bring sanity to torment.

Real Power (Part 1)

Over the next four weeks, I will share some thoughts about a section of the Gospel of Mark that has become for me a very meaningful portion of Scripture.

In Mark's gospel, Jesus reveals His divine identity more by what He does than by what He says about Himself.  In Mark 4:35-5:43, His divinity is on full display through four acts of unique power.

The first incident is described in 4:35-41.  It is a well-known story.  One evening, Jesus convinced His disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee in their small fishing boats.  In their crossing, a great windstorm arose, bringing with it violent waves that began to fill the boats.  While the disciples immediately catastrophized, believing that they were "perishing," Jesus slept soundly on a pillow in the stern of the boat.  When the disciples woke Him to the danger, Jesus simply spoke His words, "Peace!  Be still!" and the wind and the waves were calmed.

Full disclosure: I affirm the historical veracity of the Gospel narratives, including incidents of the miraculous like this one.  But I don't think it's necessary to believe as I do in order to benefit from the narrative, and rather than picking apart the details of this story, I'd like to look at the broader principle that I believe it teaches.

In the ancient world, the sea was the symbol of chaos.  Unlike the firmness and stability of land, the sea was often unpredictable, temperamental, and turbulent.  At night, many people believed the sea was haunted by ghosts and demons hovering just above the surface. 

In the midst of the windstorm, surely the disciples' fear was exacerbated by their belief that demons and ghosts might be lingering about their ship, waiting to steal them away to the underworld.  And even though these guys were professional fishermen who knew how to navigate in the sea, the chaos of the moment caused them to doubt their own skills and their own judgment.

We should have empathy with them.  I'm sure each of us can remember a time when we allowed our own irrational beliefs--our own false narratives--to create additional stress, to bring greater turmoil to our lives?  I'm sure we all can remember a time when the unexpected chaos of life caused us to doubt our own abilities and our own judgment?

Yet there was Jesus, utterly calm in the midst of the chaos, to the point that He was able to sleep through it.  He had no fear of demonic forces haunting the waters.  He was unshaken by the turbid sea and the ferocious winds.  And to calm the fears of His friends, He exhibited His power to transform chaos into order.  That is indeed real power.

On a smaller (but no less real) scale, I believe we human beings possess that same power to transform chaos into order.  We can bring peace into situations of discord and disharmony.  But we can do it only when we, like Jesus, do two things:

We must first challenge all the irrational beliefs that immobilize us.

And we must learn to stand in the chaos of life without being shaken. 

I'm still learning this.  And I won't have it mastered this side of heaven.  But I am grateful that occasionally I am graced to be able to speak those words with authentic conviction:  "Peace!  Be still!"

"Enjoy the Silence"

After nearly three years of inaction on this blog, I've decided it's time once again for me to engage my creative self and my passion for writing, and hopefully bless a few people in the process.  Ironically, after these three years of "silence" in the blogosphere, my first post is about the significance of not saying anything.

Yesterday, the topic of the need for silence came up in three separate conversations: with my spiritual director, with a friend, and with my colleague.  In all three conversations, I was reminded of just how counterintuitive it is for me simply to be still--especially when others are present--and allow for silence to exist.

I'm sure part of this is due to the current state of our culture, in which chaos and noise rule.  Never mind radio, TV, and computers.  Smart phones (or I-phones) bring the constant distraction, the constant engagement with a cacophony of media, right to our fingertips. 

But I shouldn't blame our culture.  The reality is that when my life becomes overwhelmed with emotional triggers and internal noise, I feel a compulsive (or perhaps defensive) desire to speak when I really should be silent.  In those moments, what comes out of my mouth is rarely grace-filled and almost never edifying to others.  I wish I had a dollar for every time I should have bit my tongue...

Even when my own internal life is not turbulent and overwhelmed, I wonder if I give full credence to the role that silence plays in forming us as human beings.  Silence can bring amazing healing not only to our emotional lives but to our physical lives as well.  It can lower our heart rates, calm our nervous system, and ease tension in our muscles.  It can, if we allow it, bring a holistic sense of well-being that is absolutely essential for genuine human flourishing.

Years ago, Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel wrote a penetrating spiritual work entitled The Sabbath.  He highlights the fact that after six days of creation, Scripture tells us that "God rested on the seventh day." 

However, Heschel follows many ancient rabbis who maintain that God's rest does not mean that He was inactive on the seventh day.  He still created, and what he created was menuha -- a rich Hebrew word that means tranquility, peace, rest, and silence. 

What this profound thought says to me is that silence does not merely happen.  

Silence is something that must be created intentionally. 

Silence is not simply the absence of noise, chaos, and work. 

It is the presence of peace and tranquility.

In fact, I would go further and state that silence is Presence itself.  It is simply and solely the acknowledgement that you are who you are, and that you are receptive to whatever the world (and even Someone beyond the world) might offer to you. 

May we all have the wisdom to follow God's example and create menuha in our lives.  And as Depeche Mode once intoned, "Enjoy the silence..."