Rev.
Debbie Cato
Deuteronomy
30:15-20 and Luke 14: 25-33
Fairfield
Community Church
September
4, 2022
Let us pray: Holy God,
May we approach your Word today with the reverence and respect it deserves. Let
us be intentional in our listening and focused in our minds as we hear your Word
read and proclaimed today. Amen.
Choose
Life
Frederick Buechner was a beloved presbyterian pastor and celebrated
writer who recently died at the age of 96.
Us theologian types all have his books sitting on our shelves. His father died of suicide when Frederick was
only 10 years old and as you can imagine it impacted his life tremendously. In fact, Frederick would say it haunted
him. As a result, his central message in his writings included a determined
choice of life.
In his book Now
and Then, Frederick Buechner wrote: “If I were called upon
to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a
novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your
life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it no
less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the
holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key
moments, and life itself is grace.”
The Bible also urges us to choose life. The passage we read in Deuteronomy
is the conclusion of Moses’ farewell sermon
to the people of Israel and his last chance to influence them before they cross
the Jordan into the Promised Land. Moses will not go with them. After all those years of leading them out of
slavery, through the desert, and to the Promised Land,
Moses would not be allowed to enter it.
On the brink of death, Moses
appeals to his people to “choose life.” Moses’ speech takes the form of
a command that insists on the possibility of renewal for Israel. In the past,
they had strayed from God and succumbed to the temptation of idols. Now, Moses says
they have another chance. He lays out their options: “life and death, blessings
and curses.”[1]
Which will they choose? Which will we choose?
Death in the midst of life is not uncommon. In her book, The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris writes about a state of lethargy, or weariness of life, that the desert monks called, “acedia” (a Latin word from the Greek “akedia” that can be translated as “indifference”). These days it can be most accurately named “depression.” Norris knows depression well. She writes, “I had thought that I was merely tired and in need of rest at year’s end, but it drags on, becoming the death-in-life that I know all too well, when my capacity for joy shrivels up and, like drought-stricken grass, I die down to the roots to wait it out. The simplest acts demand a herculean effort, the pleasure I normally take in people and the world itself is lost to me. I am observing my life more than living it.”[2]
I’ve suffered from depression too. If you haven’t, you honestly cannot understand it. Though you may want to “snap out of it and do something”, you literally can’t. It’s like a force holding you down. Depression is like a pit of pure hopelessness, preventing you from feeling joy, experiencing happiness, just being normal. I got so depressed I couldn’t shower or take care of my hygiene needs. I had zero energy.
Perhaps you’ve experienced depression too. Maybe you are depressed right now. Life often feels overwhelming and heavy, something we’d much rather choose to escape than embrace. Yet you can’t. Depression embraces you and holds a tight grip. It’s a sort of living death.
I still remember the shock of hearing that Robin Williams had died from suicide in 2014. This quirky, funny man who made so many people laugh was so depressed that he felt the only answer was to end his life. The public had no idea he had been fighting the demons of depression for so many years; that he lived in such a lonely, isolated place of depression. That though he made others laugh for a living, he felt hopeless himself. One of Williams sayings was, “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” I guess he was talking from personal experience.
Melancholy and self-doubt plagued Buechner. He’d pray, “God, if you only knew who I am” in answer to the call to write as a ministry to others. His father’s suicide haunted him, a constant reminder of the choices that are always before us. But Buechner chose life, even when life was hard.
God understands pain that we cannot fathom. He sees and knows things we don’t. He is with us in our suffering and in our joy. Though we feel all alone, including isolated from God when we are depressed, God is with us. He has his arms wrapped around us and He is holding us tight.
Psalm 40 says:
I waited
patiently for the Lord to help me,
and He turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
and steadied me as I walked along.
3 He has given me a new song to sing,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
They will put their trust in the Lord.
The psalmist waited for God. He
was in a pit of despair that he describes as mud and mire. Mire is a swamp. Thick, stinky mud that you get stuck in
and you can’t get out. We don’t know how
long the psalmist waited, but God did not respond right away. God was silent as it seems God is so often
when we are in a deep despair. But
finally, God answers just as God answered the psalmist.
God turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
and steadied me as I walked along.
When we are in the midst of the mud and mire, the pit of
despair. When we are stuck and nothing
is working, God will respond. Even the
deepest darkness will end. God will set
our feet on solid ground and steady us.
Those dark times change us.
We are somehow molded in the darkness and shaped into something
different. When we emerge, we have a
different understanding, different priorities, different desires, different
hopes than before we fell into the pit of darkness.
As the psalmist goes on, God will use those dark times to
give us a new song to
sing,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done
and be amazed.
I fell into my pit of despair when I was living in Tacoma
after serving my last church in Eugene. I had left my job working with the
homeless and was unemployed and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next
and I was completely hopeless. I had
been hurt by my last church and was never
going to pastor again yet I had a heart for God, and I missed
pastoring. I was applying for lots of
jobs and not getting a job and I had always gotten every job I had ever wanted
and now I could not get one. I fell
deep.
God gave me a new song!
That’s how I ended up in Spokane Valley with my daughter Jessica and her
family. And that’s how I eventually got
called to serve this church. God called
me back to be a pastor when I was never going to pastor again. Every day I wake up and thank God for blessing
me with this ministry. I am happier than
I have been in many years. I’m doing what I was created to do. Praise Be to
God!
There are many things that cause us to fall into depression. It’s not uncommon after a major surgery or during a health crisis. Post-partum depression is a serious reality for a lot of new moms. Deep depression at a time when they think they should be filled with joy at the birth of their child. Extreme regrets of life, bad decisions, failures, lost opportunities, the inability to forgive can all cause depression. Clinical depression is a physical and emotional chemical imbalance of the body that needs medication to help get the system back on track. Depression is not just sadness. It’s like walking barefoot on broken glass. Statistics say that 28 million people or one out of three people are on anti-depressants. It's not a shame to be depressed or be on medication or need help. Jesus understands. He will get us through it. Jesus said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”
We said that one of our values as a church is acceptance. I think this means we need to be a church family
that understands what people are going through.
None of us should have to pretend that everything is good with us all
the time. We are so good at asking for
prayers for our family and friends but seldom do I hear requests for yourselves.
Let’s be that church where we can be real. Where we can say without shame or regret, “I
am really struggling right now. I am in
the depths of depression or the depths of despair.” We are not meant to live life in
isolation. Let’s be that church that
will be understanding and walk alongside.
Let’s lead with the love of Christ and be Christ-centered people.
Through Moses, our God implores us to “Choose life so that you and your
descendants shall live.” There’s passion in these words. There’s love in these
words. There’s a sense of desperation in these words because God knows life can
be hard and the temptations to escape strong. The life God wants us to choose
is full of promise — a new land of opportunity just across the border of our
despair. Still, it can be hard to believe the difficult and treacherous journey
is worth it.
I want to close by repeating what Frederick Buechner said about life because I think it is so poignant. “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” Amen.
I’m going to end with a prayer that Patti Sexton sent me a few weeks
ago from Joyfully Mediocre a Sumer Blessing Series that she receives via email. It seems very appropriate.
God, I could not have imagined that this
road could be so long, so hard, so daunting.
Here I am, worn out – body and soul.
Blessed are we, the weary who must set aside
what we are carrying,
And being to feel only the weight of our own
being.
It is enough for now.
Let our should sink from around our ears,
our breath grow longer and deeper, taking a minute to notice the way our diaphragm
rises and falls without us telling it to.
Blessed are we who cannot go on ,.. not like
this, but stand and look and ask: Is
there a better path?
Blessed are we, at the point of utter stillness,
that becomes an empty space for that voice to echo and build and resound until
it becomes a place to rest and receive and be made whole.
And how blessed are we who are astonished to
find that God’s strength begins at the very point when ours runs out. Amen.
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