For many years now, I confess that I have harbored an irrational fear of the month of January. Bad things always seems to happen in this month. I won’t list all of those things that I associate with January, but I admit I was not surprised when January 5th was the day David and I were involved in the automobile accident. Fortunately, I can turn that crazy thinking around with the recognition of how fortunate we are to have survived the accident, to have been able to walk away from the totaled vehicle. In the rescue squad, on the way to the emergency room, my only prayer was “Thank you, Lord.”
Last Monday, January 22nd, was the 25th anniversary of my father’s suicide. It is hard for me to believe he has been gone that long. Wade Haney was larger than life, and I was most certainly Daddy’s girl. He remains very much alive in my remembrance of him, and I am grateful to keep him with me. I understood at the time why my Dad did what he did, and I am confident the Lord was with him in his final moments and remains with him still.
Today’s lesson from Mark provides one of the many occasions when we see Jesus interacting with, healing, a person whose behavior is irrational. Jesus recognizes the humanity of the man whose behavior has placed him outside social norms. We live in a world where such social norms still create barriers for people who are different; what would Jesus have us do?
Even though we live in an age when most of us understand that people who appear to be unbalanced or to behave irrationally may have a mental illness, we may not be any more comfortable dealing with them than the people of Jesus’s time, who described such people as “having unclean spirits” or being “possessed by demons.” Even though in our lifetimes many of us may suffer through a depression or some other common form of mental imbalance, even if we have loved ones who are suffering with a type of mental illness, we do not always know how to speak about such things. Even though many Americans are successfully being treated with anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medications, such issues are not freely discussed.
In today’s lesson from Mark, we see how Jesus chooses to deal with a man who is clearly mentally unbalanced. While he is teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus awes those who hear him speak, impressed by his confident authority. Suddenly a man in their midst, described as having “an unclean spirit,” cries out, “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.” Several things could have happened next. Ushers might have grabbed the man and forced him outside. One of the synagogue’s leaders might have taken Jesus by the arm and led him aside, apologizing, “Please pay no attention to that guy. He is a nutcase!” Jesus might have decided it was simply time for him to leave and slipped out the door. But those things do not happen. Jesus chooses to engage with the man. Jesus recognizes the man’s humanity and his illness, and he heals him, saying to the voices of madness, “Be silent, and come out of him!” Then, the man is at peace, and those who witnessed this healing are even more impressed by Jesus, saying, “What is this? A new teaching, with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”
We might ourselves ask, “What is this?” Several details beg for closer examination. This man is not the only mentally ill person Jesus encounters in the gospels, and as in this case, he empathizes with their suffering and he heals them. Oddly, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniac in Luke 8, these apparently mad men speak a truth those around them do not recognize: they call Jesus “the Holy One of God,” or “Son of the Most High God.” Is insanity the diagnosis for people who are willing to speak a truth others care not to accept? Whether they are truly insane or simply marginalized by their society, the mentally ill people Jesus encounters receive his compassion. They are not castaways from his kingdom.
Who are the castaways among us? Though I would like to believe such a thing could not be possible, not here in Madison County, I recall children in my elementary school who were treated as outcasts, pariahs. There always seemed to be at least one such child, friendless, isolated, the butt of cruel name calling. Even if I did not actively participate in the cruelty, I stood by and allowed it to happen. My guess is that we all share similar childhood or adolescent memories, of unloved and bullied peers. Nowadays, as in this last week in Kentucky, an ostracized student may bring a gun to school in retaliation. More than twenty years ago, when I was teaching at Albemarle High School, a female student was found to be carrying a gun. She was a good, quiet student, but she had brought the gun to school with her because she feared the other girls who bullied her. It’s lucky the gun was never used, but it was still a tragedy for that young woman, who was expelled.
We can be sure, though, that the vast majority of bullied children— of bullied adults, for that matter—remain isolated and invisible. Unless and until someone intervenes on their behalf, they believe themselves to be powerless to change their situations. Our Lord Jesus repeatedly chooses to assist people who are marginalized in his society, and I believe he expects us to follow his lead.
In the time of Jesus, leprosy was both common and greatly feared since the disease is very contagious, and leper colonies contained entire families. In one encounter, Jesus heals ten lepers at once, a great act of mercy, freeing them from the forced isolation and doom of the leper colony. He made it possible for them to once again be part of the larger community.
Jesus makes very strong connections with members of another marginalized segment of his society’s population—women. In those times, women were not supposed to speak to any man other than a family member, and they had no rights at all, yet Jesus counted many women among his disciples and friends. In their experience of his compassion for them, women trusted him. Once, when Jesus and the disciples are on the road, they pass a funeral procession. Jesus makes two significant observations, and then acts on what he has observed with great compassion. First, he notices that the deceased person is a young man. Then he sees that the young man’s principal mourner is his mother, a widow. Knowing that without a man in her family to support her, the widow will be doomed, Jesus tells her, “Do not weep.” Then he approaches the procession and touches the young man’s bier. The procession halts, and Jesus says, “Young man, I say to you, rise.” The dead man sits up and begins to speak, and Jesus presents him to his mother.
Jesus also demonstrates compassionate regard for ethnic minority groups, such as the Samaritans who were considered unclean by the Jews of his day. Our Lord responds to human need of any kind and offers special compassion to those that mainstream society rejects. As our nation grapples with how to address the needs of all who reside here, it would be wise for us to remember how much Jesus loved those who were unloved and unwanted. When he was installed as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in January of 1986, Edmond Browning laid down a defining line for the way the church should measure its mission to our larger society. His words simply summed up the behavior of Jesus that we are called to emulate. In his sermon that day, Father Browning stated, “There will be no outcasts in this church.”
Whether it is the driver of the car that crashes into you or the co-worker who seems mentally unstable or the child being bullied at school or the woman harassed by her boss or the undocumented immigrant, any person who needs our compassion deserves it. When we reach out in love to them, we will discover Jesus is already there, waiting for us to pitch in.
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