This sermon was preached for All Saints' Sunday, October 29, 2023. The readings for this sermon were: Revelation 7:9-17, Psalm 34:1-10, 22, 1 John 3:1-3, and Matthew 5:1-12.
So I listened to an episode from my one of my favorite theologians, Dr. Kate Bowler. She was interviewing an expert on teenage mental health on her podcast, Everything Happens. And I’ve been mulling over what they talked about ever since. It may seem quite unrelated to gifts, and saints, and puzzle pieces to start, but bear with me.
In the episode and in her book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, Dr. Lisa Damour offers a definition of mental health that’s a bit different than mainstream cultural discourse she often hears, but a whole lot closer to what mental health professionals and academics mean when they talk about wellness. Mental health is 1) having feelings that fit the situation, even if they’re not pleasant feelings and 2) managing those feelings effectively, that is coping in a way that brings relief and does no harm. She believes this is “a vastly more reassuring definition of mental health because it does not hinge on the idea that you could get to a place of feeling good and stay there. That is never been on the menu. It doesn’t need to be on the menu. It is much more about how we handle the vicissitudes of life.”
Emotional distress - anxiety, sadness, and anger - is actually a sign of mental well-being if you are living through something scary, saddening, and unjust - if those feelings fit the moment and circumstance you are facing. The real work is building up the resilience to be fully in all that rage and grief and hurt, and come out the other side still whole. Dr. Damour wisely notes that the skills involved in this perseverance often actually don’t mean intensely turning inward, focusing on ourselves, our needs, our feelings. Or as Kate Bowler puts in cheekily, self-care that’s really just “bubble baths forever.” Dr. Damour says,“If we want to feel better, often it’s actually about thinking about what other people need and caring for others and making oneself of use.”
Caring for others and making oneself of use.
I think the reason this stuck with me is that this is contemporary mental health language for a much more ancient teaching. One we know well, but definitely benefit from being reminded of often. Spiritual wholeness is not about pleasant feelings nor wealth nor accolades nor any sort of earthly success. On this All Saints’ Day, we remember how the lives of the saints teach us our true goal: that at the end of our lives, we can authentically say we lived a life imbued with faith, hope, and love, in service to God and others. “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Jesus teaches: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you who mourn, for you will be comforted. Honored are you who are humble, who don’t seek to have power over others. Honored are you who long for a better world, who are honest and true in your convictions, who risk it all for peace and for justice. Blessed are you who are in it, right now, living it.
When we read the stories of the saints closely, we see how they went unrecognized, unvalued, and without honor while they were alive. They were deliberately poor, staunchly unpopular, and took controversial stances. The traditional saints - including all of the apostles - met terrible ends at the hands of those in power. They were celebrated and canonized only in death. Your reward is great in heaven, Jesus promises. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed, John reassures.
Yet even in all their suffering and persecution, the saints are illumined with an unparalleled clarity of purpose. Their lives are defined by caring for others and making themselves of use. They were all about doing good, not feeling good. Getting to a point of feeling good and staying there is not what walking in the way of the cross has ever been about. Not on the menu.
Mental health is a deeply important topic right now, in the wake of COVID isolation, in the aftershocks of mass shooting after mass shooting, in the face of a climate and environmental despair. I am not a mental health expert, nor should I pretend to be. I am the first to say turn to a mental health professional to get the medication and help you need. At the same time I am paying close attention to how much of the very real mental health crisis in this country also overlaps with a spiritual crisis. It is so important in the wake of something like the shooting in Lewiston, Maine to say that mental illness does not cause violence. That millions of Americans suffer from mental illness but would never in a million years hurt someone with a gun, hurt someone at all. What we have here is a spiritual crisis. What we have here is when the framework of violence and subjugation, the way we teach powerfulness, becomes a spiritual unwellness.
When we see around that hopelessness and loneliness, and hatred of self or others are harming us, I also see a spiritual crisis. So many Americans are dying deaths of despair and loneliness, and at the hands of those who dehumanize them. Those deaths speak to a profound sense of powerlessness and disconnection. How do we find our way to lives imbued with faith, hope, and love?
We start by remembering that strong negative emotions can be signs of mental and spiritual health. That some unpleasant feelings can actually lead us toward faith, hope, and love.
Your capacity for grief is directly related to your capacity for love. It is your capacity for love. And your capacity for love - your willingness to reach out for connection again - is your way through to wholeness once more.
The depth of your anger is directly related to your hope for justice and peace. It is your hope for justice and peace. And your hope for justice and peace - your courage to fight for the world as it should be - is your way, our way, to a healed world.
The intensity of your fear is directly related to your ability to care about outcomes. It can become your ability to hold on and have faith - if you let go, not of the caring, but of the control.
We start by caring for others and making ourselves of use. We connect our gifts to others’ needs. We offer ourselves back to God. Caring for others and making ourselves of use aren’t how we prove we are worthy of love - it’s how we remember and remind one another.
Here’s where the puzzle pieces come in. All this month, we’ve been reflecting on the gifts God has given us to give away - our skills, abilities, passions, talents, and resources. Today is about connecting those gifts to opportunities here at St. Mark’s and our local communities. In the booklet, you’ll find ways to care for others, to be useful, and perhaps even to find a clarity of purpose that will steady you in difficult or turbulent times. In a moment, you’re invited to think and pray about how you’d like to commit your gifts to God’s service at St. Mark’s this next year. It’s quite possible you are already extremely connected in and doing all you can - and in that case - name and claim those ways on your puzzle piece!
Fill out your puzzle piece now. Put your name so that heads of the ministries can reach back out to you to help you figure out how to live out your commitments. At the end of the service, we’ll put the puzzle pieces together. We’ll see, quite colorfully, how the giving of our gifts connects us, one to each other, to our neighbor, and to God.
The puzzle will be incomplete - but that’s intentional. This project of creating connection and finding our purpose is itself a profoundly needed gift we have to offer a lonely, despairing, and hurting world.
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