Preached on the Second Sunday in Lent (Year B), February 25, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Kevin Montgomery.
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38
Psalm 22:22-30
Believe it or not, speaking from this pulpit is a vulnerable task. Heck, getting up in front of people is vulnerable, period. Everyone’s looking at me. Am I going to mess up? Am I going to make a fool out of myself? Am I in the procession with the back of the tunicle tucked up behind me? Yes, that has happened. (No, not here.) Most of you know me to some extent and have seen me up here or downstairs at coffee hour or elsewhere. Some of you might even think I’ve got my stuff together. Well, one thing you might not know about me is that I have struggled with chronic depression for many years. As I’m sure you know, depression is more than just feeling sad. It encompasses the whole self – physically, emotionally, spiritually. Imagine feeling both pain and numbness at the same time. You want nothing more than to be somewhere else even though both your mind and your body seem to be swimming in molasses. Simply getting out of bed can be an achievement. There were times when I would wrestle up just enough energy to get an arm off the mattress, then maybe a leg, and eventually my whole self. Sure, I’d now be lying on the floor, but at least I was out of bed. And there’s much more incentive to get up off a cold floor than out of a warm bed. Emotionally, I’d feel like a crushing weight was resting on my heart. Sadness, failure, shame. “Why can’t I get over this?. . . Maybe you deserve it. . . . I don’t want to feel like this. . . . But can you really expect better? . . .”
I’m lucky, however. My mom had a cousin who had bipolar disorder. The message I always got from my family was that it wasn’t something to be ashamed of. Cousin Dot simply had a medical condition. If she stayed on her medication, she was mostly fine. If she didn’t, well, not so fine. When I was diagnosed while in college, I already knew that it was something that could be treated. Thank God for mental health professionals, pharmaceuticals, and supportive family and friends. Before we go on, I have responded pretty well to medication, and I have the stability of a good job, a good church, and loving family. Nevertheless, I still sometimes have episodes, and I always carry with me the experience.
One of the worst parts of depression is the feeling of being utterly alone. Even with the support I had, during the lowest periods, I would feel cut off from everyone, from myself, sometimes even from God. Today we sang part of Psalm 22, the cheerier part. “Praise the Lord, you that fear him. . . . For he does not despise nor abhor the poor in their poverty; neither does he hide his face from them; but when they cry to him he hears them.” But who can recite that psalm without thinking about the beginning of it. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?” Can there be any other verse in scripture that describes so well the reality of depression? “O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer; by night as well, but I find no rest.” I’m almost certain that I’m not the only one here who has experienced that desolation. Actually, now that I think about it, I am certain I’m not the only one.
In Mark and Matthew, on the cross there is the cry of abandonment that flies from Jesus’s parched lips, a broken body giving up what seemed like a broken spirit. I was never ashamed of having depression, but it did break my conception of myself. Someone logical in thought and planning, in control at all times. But then I found myself being controlled by the emotions that arose within me. Well, the emotions were always there, always strong, but now I was the one being held in a box. I was always the scholar, the A-student, someone always hearing about people’s “high hopes,” being told that I’d go far. Yet the depression played a major, albeit not sole, reason in my burning out of a doctoral program. I was supposed to achieve great things in a field that I loved. Instead, I collapsed under the weight of misery and the shame of failure. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This wasn’t the plan. “Told you you couldn’t do it.” Oh, what I would have given to be able to say in response, “Get behind me, Satan.”
Even though in some of the worst episodes I felt totally abandoned by God, at other times I would feel the closest to him. Like being so bereft of my own strength that I had no other choice but to rely on Christ’s. Maybe I was stripped so bare that I couldn’t help but feel the warmth of his love on my skin. “Yet you are he who took me out of the womb, and kept me safe upon my mother's breast.” Even in Jesus’s cry of abandonment and his Father’s response of sheer silence, God was not torn asunder. God was not divorced from humanity but descended into the abode of the dead. Psalm 139, “Where can I go then from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.” I’m not saying that God sent this to me to teach me a lesson or some nonsense like that. Nor do I believe that suffering by itself is redemptive. Rather, God is present wherever we find ourselves. And wherever Christ is, there too is the Cross on which hung the world’s salvation.
When he says to take up the cross, we shouldn’t mistake it for some sort of work we have to do. He’s not saying, “Come to me you who are lightly laden, and I will give you chores. My yoke is hard, and the burden is heavy.” Nor is he telling us to press a cross upon others, especially if we do nothing to help. He calls us to follow him. It was a path that led him to the cross and the tomb, and it very well might lead us there as well. We take up our cross and lay aside what keeps us safe. Some might already be carrying some sort of cross. But since we are all one in Christ, no one bears the cross alone. Deny yourself? Deny what the world says you should be, whether it’s high or it’s low, whether you’re supposed to be better than everyone else or to be worse. Deny the power the world bestows upon you and embrace humility and weakness. Deny the powerlessness the world imposes on you and hold fast to the strength of Christ. The cross was meant to be an instrument of excruciating torture and burning shame, but through the power of the Spirit’s refining flames, it becomes a crucible of transformation. For even in the deepest darkness, the light of the Resurrection shines through. As we say in our funeral liturgy:
“As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.
After my awaking, he will raise me up;
and in my body I shall see God.
I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him
who is my friend and not a stranger.”