8/16/20 “What would it take to make you beg?” by Nancy E. Petty

Matthew 15:21-28

Former first lady, Michelle Obama revealed on one of her recent podcast that she has been experiencing “low-grade depression.” She shared that the lockdown, racial strife, and actions of the current administration were all factors in how she has been feeling. I think it is safe to say that she is not alone in her feelings. For those who wish for a different America, these are depressing days. Isolation, anxiety, and worries for the future – any one of these – is enough to cause one to feel depressed. Her vulnerable and courageous admission resonated with some of my own feelings as I move through my days.

As I listened to the former first lady’s podcast, I remembered the first time I felt what I would identify as a “low-grade” depression. The year was 1988, I was 25 years old. It was my last year of seminary and my little corner of the world seemed to be falling apart. 1988 was the year that the fundamentalist in Baptist life staged a coup and took over control of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary along with other Souther Baptist institutions and boards. Beloved seminary administrators and faculty were fired. Some of my professors who were not purged but knew their time was limited were grieving and worried about their futures. We would show up for class that last semester, and it felt like a pall was draped over every discussion. For the women on campus, the future looked bleak as now those in control of Baptist life didn’t support women in ministry unless it was to teach children or lead music. Not that there had been a place for out gay Christians in ministry prior to 1988, but it was certain now that the final nail had been driven into that coffin. I was also keenly aware that the church I was serving part-time would not be able to hire me full-time after graduation. And on top of all that, the relationship that I was in was uncertain. In addition to the practical questions facing me – finding a job in a Baptist church as a gay person, finding a place to live, and all the decisions that go with adulting – my mind was full of life’s most existential questions: what’s the purpose of life, does any of it really matter, can we make a difference in the world, what is the purpose of religion (this thing I had been studying for the past 7 years), the question of suffering and evil, and the meaning of a significant relationship. Life was coming at me hard and fast. I felt overwhelmed and a degree of hopelessness. Anxiety and worry clouded my every thought. I was just trying to survive that year and each day seemed to zap what energy I had to try and figure out the future, and I found myself feeling depressed most days.

I imagine that most of us have experiences of this kind of “low-grade” depression at some point in our lives. The overwhelming sadness and hopeless feelings that come with the death of a loved one, or a job, or a relationship, or the election of a president, or a lost dream or hope. As we live through this global pandemic that has us self-isolating and physical distancing, watching over and over the violence being done to black and brown bodies, and being gaslighted by the lies and deception of an American president, it is understandable to hear the former first lady say that she is experiencing  “low-grade” depression. What Michelle Obama describes, and what the year 1988 was for me, is typically called situational depression. Situational depression is different from clinical depression, but both can have significant consequences for our well-being. Our mental health is something we need to pay attention to in these days of uncertainty and worry.

I was reminded of this truth when I read again the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman in the gospel of Matthew. You might be remembering this story from Mark’s gospel. He tells the same story but in his narrative the woman is called the Syrophoenician woman. While this mother’s ethnicity has bearing on the story, what is most important in this narrative is the reality that she has a daughter who is, as Matthew describes, “tormented by a demon.” The text doesn’t elaborate on what the “demon” is that is causing such suffering in the woman’s daughter. It simply states that whatever illness she is suffering from is tormenting her. Now I want to pause here and speak to the word “demon” as I relate it to mental health issues. I do not believe that people who struggle with mental health issues are possessed by demons. Depression, anxiety, bi-polar, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, PTSD, borderline personality, along with many other psychological illnesses are all medical conditions with terms that describe what happens when the chemicals in our brains get out of balance or what happens within our psyche when we experience trauma. The people who suffer from these illnesses are not demon possessed. These are medical issues. Each of them real psychological diseases that cause great suffering for those who endure them and for those who love the ones living with these illnesses. The truth is that the Bible doesn’t address mental health as it relates to mental illness. Such stories like the Canaanite woman’s story and that of the Gerasene demonic or the thorn in Paul’s flesh are all stories from a different time and place and context and understanding that use different words to describe their reality. So we have to be careful when reading these stories how we relate our own narratives and experiences to them. And yet, these stories can be a window into understanding the intersection of our faith and mental health. And that is what I want to explore this morning. Through this interaction between the Canaanite woman and Jesus, I want to explore the intersection of faith and mental health and mental illness.

C.S. Lewis wrote that, “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken’.” We know this truth. It is easier to name cancer or a broken bone or diabetes as something we are struggling with rather than anxiety or depression or bipolar disorder. We name and pray for people who have physical illnesses but we are reluctant to name and pray for people who suffer mental illnesses. Here in the 21st century, with all the medical knowledge we have about mental illness, the stigma attached to it lingers, keeping people who are suffering with it isolated and in the shadows. Indeed, it is easier to say my tooth aches than to say my social anxiety makes it hard for me to participate in church events. I don’t know how we break this barrier but I know that we need to try. And we start by naming it. Ignoring our mental health and ignoring mental illness will not make it go away. It will only, in Lewis’ words, make it even harder to bear. Michelle Obama gave us gift when she named her mental health as an issue worthy of the light. Maybe she had read the story of the Canaanite woman and her daughter. Maybe not. Regardless, she decided, like the Canaanite woman advocating for her daughter that her suffering needed to be named. In our churches, and in our faith circles, we need to name and talk about our mental health and where we and our loved ones are suffering from mental illness.

So back to the story at hand. The Canaanite woman starts shouting to Jesus and his entourage that her daughter is suffering. Specifically, she asks for mercy, and she is graphic in sharing that her daughter is tormented – she is looking for relief for her daughter who is in pain. Nevertheless, she gets no love from the disciplines, who tell Jesus to send her away. And Jesus himself justifies turning away from her – that’s not my job, lady. I was sent for my own people, and I have work to do! Can’t you see what a mess the house of Israel is in?! I don’t have time to save folks who aren’t even in my tribe! Yes, that was Jesus’ response.

But before we pass judgment on Jesus and his disciples, the reality is that we most often respond to people who are suffering with mental illness the way Jesus and his disciples responded to the Canaanite woman’s cries for help for her daughter and herself. We ignore the cries. We send them away. We want them out of our sight. We say to ourselves we have more important things to attend to. We act out of that place of believing there is not enough within us to respond because we have to take care of our own. We live into our own version of, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Like Jesus, our attention is on making sure our child is in a good virtual learning pod, that our home bubble is safe, that our church is healthy and surviving during a pandemic, that our people are well housed and fed. We are all stretched thin. We can’t handle the horror going on in someone else’s house – the day terrors and nightmares, the gripping anxiety that never lets up, the cutting, the suicidal ideations that are relentless, the cries of mental pain that mushroom into new manifestations by day and more often, by night. Like Jesus, we fall into the fairness trap – it’s not fair to ask that I sacrifice something for my child, my family, my people to take care of your child, your family member, your people who are suffering and tormented. 

But our Canaanite woman is determined, or more likely, she is desperate. If you have never spent days and nights with someone who is in agony, you may not be able to relate to her next act – despite the clear brush off, she drops to her knees and says, “Lord, help me.” When is the last time you dropped to your knees? Have you ever knelt before someone who holds power and begged for assistance? Can you imagine it? What would it take to make you beg like this woman does? Can you taste in your mouth and feel in the pit of your stomach the raw need that would lead to such a moment? Can you imagine doing it on behalf of a child? A grandchild? A spouse? 

And here is where the bottom falls out of this story. Jesus is faced with a woman on her knees, humbling herself before his authority, and asking for help. And Jesus compares her to a dog. Jesus shames the woman. He others her. He takes away even her humanity. Yes, it was Jesus who spoke those words, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

It is tempting to try and defend Jesus. To say, oh he was having a bad day. He was on retreat and didn’t want to be bothered. Or even to dismiss this story as one of those questionable texts where we say, “Well this really doesn’t sound like Jesus. It is out of character for him to respond this way. Maybe he really didn’t say that.” But I’m not interested in defending Jesus. If anything, I think he illustrates in his response the plight of mental illness. He highlights the truth that for people suffering with mental illness there is little refuge because our society refuses to deal with it. No, I don’t want to defend Jesus, nor do I need to make him out to be the bad guy. The stress of mental illness is real. It is exhausting for those suffering and for those who love them. And it is taxing on society as a whole because we are unwilling or unable to design sustainable solutions, so mental illness seeps like water into crevices, behind walls, and under the house, rotting the foundation while we willfully look away. 

And then, this remarkable Canaanite woman does a surprising thing. She kneels in the sorrow of his shaming, she accepts his dehumanizing metaphor, and she calls Jesus to live out of his higher self. “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” There is no ego here, only humanity. She is powerless, desperate, and humiliated. But she is not there for her dignity. She is there to do whatever it takes to comfort her daughter. And she is not leaving anything on the field. This woman reminds Jesus of who he is and what he is about, and the energy of the story shifts completely.

The next line here is charged. “’Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish!’ And her daughter was healed.” If you’ve ever prayed for someone suffering, and they weren’t or aren’t miraculously delivered from that suffering, you have to feel that line as a gut punch. Is it me? Am I not faithful enough? If I believed more would the pain end? The only thing worse than being powerless is believing your inadequacy caused your powerlessness.

So let’s deal with it. What is this faith Jesus speaks of? I do not believe it is “right belief” as we so often define it in religion. I do not believe it is believing more, believing better, or believing differently. And yet, I cannot tell you exactly what it is. In this story, I sense faith as more a kind of prophetic presence – the willingness to bear reality, cruelty, and rejection, and still fall to your knees in the expectation of mercy. The woman’s faith was in the truth of her experience – that her daughter needed help, that she would do anything to help her, and that Jesus had the power to heal. Her faith was not that she believed more than others that Jesus was a healer. Her faith was in her willingness to stay in the moment and to bear it all, to not turn away, to not hang her head, to bear witness, on behalf of her daughter, of her suffering. 

I know that’s not a satisfying answer. I can’t explain why Jesus healed this one and not that one. I can’t explain why Jesus can’t just heal us all, especially the ones we love who hurt all the time. But I can tell you that the model we are given here by this Canaanite mother is to bear witness. To name the demons that haunt us and our loved ones. And to ignore the shaming and the othering and the name calling.

I can’t tell you why but when I reflected on the experience of the Canaanite woman I thought of a song that has carried me through many days of struggle and questioning. It is a song by Martina McBride. The name of the song is Build it Anyway. Sometimes all we can do is beg for mercy and let go of the outcome. I have asked Greg Moore and Kevin O’Barr to sing it for us this morning. It reminds us, as does the Canaanite woman, that while the outcome is always tentative we have to keep loving and building and dreaming and doing and crying for mercy for those who are suffering because that is what people of faith do.