Unclean Spirits, Mental Health and Safe Space: Sermon, January 31, 2021

I am grateful to my friend Tom Reynolds of Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto, and the writing of New Testament scholars like Colleen Grant, for shaping my thinking on how to approach the healing narratives in the Gospels from the standpoint of disability.

Jesus and his followers went into Capernaum. Immediately on the Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and started teaching. The people were amazed by his teaching, for he was teaching them with authority, not like the legal experts. Suddenly, there in the synagogue, a person with an evil spirit screamed, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are. You are the holy one from God.”

“Silence!” Jesus said, speaking harshly to the demon. “Come out of him!” The unclean spirit shook him and screamed, then it came out.

Everyone was shaken and questioned among themselves, “What’s this? A new teaching with authority! He even commands unclean spirits and they obey him!” Right away the news about him spread throughout the entire region of Galilee.
- Mark 1:21-28, Common English Bible

We are in the beginning of Mark’s Gospel and Jesus is beginning his ministry by preaching in Galilee that the kingdom of God is near, calling his first disciples, and arriving in the town of Capernaum, teaching in the synagogue, and healing a man with a spirit. The Greek word used to describe this spirit can be translated as unclean, impure, evil. And the spirit cries out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” These words can be translated as “leave us alone” or “mind your own business!” And Jesus tells the spirit to come out, and the people are amazed, that he teaches with authority, not like one of their religious leaders; he even commands evil spirits and they obey him.

This is one of the healing stories in the Gospels, which are really meant to be stories about who Jesus is – the writer wants us to concentrate on Jesus and the authority he demonstrates rather than the person being healed. But modern people miss this point and get embarrassed by these stories, because who these days believes in a person being possessed by a spirit that the Greek word describes as "unclean," "impure," "evil"? Evil spirits, demons, are only in movies now. A lot of preachers are grappling with this, and their own embarrassment, this morning.

But in the ancient world people didn’t have any other way to think of what we call mental illness. We don’t depict mental illness in terms of evil spirits these days, but you can see how this would make sense. We are going to sing a hymn in a few minutes, Silence, Frenzied, Unclean Spirit, that puts this story in modern terms, saying that demons are still thriving in the gray cells of the mind, tyrant voices, twisted thoughts, doubts that stir panic, fears distorting reason, guilt, frightening visions. I was reading a story by a woman who had attempted suicide, how for years loud voices in her head told her that she was a bad person, a failure, better off dead. She cut herself in secret and didn’t tell anyone about her thoughts.

We heard a lot about mental illness on Thursday, January 28, which was Bell Let’s Talk Day, and you couldn’t miss it if you watch a TV channel like CTV or TSN or listen to a radio station Bell owns. And this is important, to raise awareness of how vital it is for our mental health for us to talk to others and be available to talk, to listen, to be kind. It would be nice if media covered this other than on one day, but on Let’s Talk Day well-known people from sports and entertainment came forward to admit that they themselves have days when they are not OK, and they need someone to listen, and we all have to get away from stereotypes and stigmas about “crazy people” so that the courage to talk can be found and diagnosis and treatment sought out. This is even more important these days. The Globe and Mail yesterday spoke of a “surge in mental distress during the pandemic.” Isolation and loneliness are damaging. They affect mental health and the ability to seek out that listening ear and can make depression, anxiety, addiction, suicide more prevalent. Did you know that suicide is one of the leading causes of death in Canada, particularly among men? Or that Canada has one of the highest rates of youth suicide in the world? And yet we have this idea that if we never mention suicide, no one will think about it.

But talking, and listening, and fighting stigma, as essential as they are, aren’t enough. Mental health care needs to be accessible – in financial terms, in logistical terms – just getting there – in cultural terms. We need mental health care to be compassionate, and effective, because for too many Canadians, it’s not. The wait time for intensive mental health management in Eastern Ontario is three years. And almost half of people who have suffered from depression or anxiety have never seen a doctor about it. Only one in five children who need mental health services are able to get them. We also need to admit that housing is a mental health issue, ending poverty is a mental health issue, access to food, sick leave for workers, harm reduction programs for addiction are all mental health issues.

The way we react to persons with a mental illness is part of the way we react to disabled people in general. Jesus shows us in these healing stories that disability, illness, are not due to a lack of faith or some shortcoming on the part of the person with the disability. We need to stop thinking in these terms and pushing people with diagnosed mental illnesses onto the margins of society. As today’s scripture makes clear, as Jesus shows, it is the mental illness that seems demonic, not the person.

These healing stories focus not just on the elimination of mental or physical illness, not only on returning people to what society considers to be “normal,” but on the personal and social transformation that takes place in the presence of Jesus. Healing, driving out the impure spirits, in the Gospels restores community, removes barriers to belonging, embodies the radical hospitality of Jesus who has already recognized the man with the unclean spirit and other disabled people as part of God’s people, even though society excludes them and treats them as problems. This is how these stories reveal Jesus to be the Christ, the Anointed One of God, the one with authority. The way he heals and overcomes isolation and builds community reveals the kingdom of God he proclaims.

All of us are on a spectrum of mental health. It isn’t that there are mentally ill people who are way over at one end and the majority of us are way over at the opposite end. Here are some numbers from the Mental Health Commission of Canada:

In any given year, 1 in 5 Canadians will personally experience a mental health issue of illness.

About half of Canada’s population will have or have had a mental illness by the time they reach 40 years of age.

10 to 20 percent of Canadian youth are affected by a mental illness or disorder.

8 percent of adults will experience major depression at some time in their lives.

Numbers like that prove that mental health is not an issue just for other people. And so our churches must intentionally be safe spaces: for these conversations about mental health, for candour and listening and support and education and removing stigma. We have spoken in the United Church about congregations welcoming and fostering belonging - see the Theologies of Disabilities report I worked on, for example - and this is a perfect example of what we should be doing, as we said in that report: what Jesus did when he refocused community away from the centre toward the margins, ushered in the outcast as the honoured guest, and pointed toward people who are shunned by society because of illness and disability as treasured members of the new community of God. When we sing in just a few seconds about the power of Christ’s healing, we are not singing only about the person being healed, but also the community being made faithful, true and whole.