Mr. Alexander Lang - Sermon - June 14, 2009

Erasing the Fine Line
by Alexander Lang

For the past year and a half, before I got the call to Pine Street, I worked at a mental institution. You can be assured that in future sermons I’ll be referring to my experiences from this hospital as they’ve been very formative in my understanding of the role of pastor. To give you an idea of what it was like, if you imagine mental illness as a spectrum, we housed the worst ten percent. This particular mental institution is state run. What that means is the hospital will take anyone who cannot afford to pay for private care. Often the people who cannot afford private care are some of the most severe cases of mental illness.

Mental illness is often misunderstood and misperceived by the general population. On the one hand, mental illness fascinates us. We see movies about schizophrenics like John Nash from A Beautiful Mind and wonder in amazement at how a person could not know that the world around him is an illusion created by his own mind. On the other hand, mental illness frightens us. We think of people like Jeffery Dahmer and Ted Bundy, serial killers who have brought great harm and suffering to their victim’s and their victim’s families. This, however, is an incomplete picture of mental illness. A Harvard study suggests that an estimated thirty percent of people in this country suffer from some form of mental illness. The vast majority of the people who suffer from mental illness operate normally in society. The only difference is their lifestyles need to be managed by medication. Very few people who suffer from mental illness have psychotic breaks and even fewer need to be institutionalized. In fact, less than five percent of people who suffer from mental illness ever see the inside of a hospital like the one in which I worked. But being in that environment taught me something and this is perhaps the most important single piece of information I ever learned working in that hospital: none of us are immune to mental illness and it’s a fine line between those who need medication and those who don’t. This became apparent to me as I read the charts of patient after patient. Something clicks, something happens – a death, a job loss, a divorce – it doesn’t take much for a seemingly normal person to cross that line.

One theory that I developed while working at the hospital is that we all have some form of mental illness, some of us are just better at masking it than others. You would think in a state mental hospital the division between those who are mentally ill and those who are mentally sound should be crystal clear. Yet, when I would wander onto my unit and observe a patient speaking with the doctors, I would often think, "Who’s the patient and who’s the doctor in this scenario?" because sometimes the only way I could tell the difference was by the fact that one wore an ID tag and one did not.

The fact is, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, fine lines tend to dictate the outcome of our lives. Mental illness is just one example. There are many fine lines in our lives and the fate of one person versus another is often determined by who crosses over and who does not. For example, in working with youth, I have found that talent is not always an indicator of success and likewise, neither is hard work. The success of an individual is often anchored in that person’s ability to balance the talent he or she possesses with work ethic. Too much work ethic, the child runs the risk of becoming burnt out. Too little talent, work ethic will only get you so far. Let’s make this real with some concrete examples from my life. I possess almost no talent with math. Sometimes even simple arithmetic is hard for me. Now I can work at it and become better, but no matter how hard I work, I will never be as good as someone for whom math comes naturally. On the other hand, I am naturally very good at deconstructing religious, theological and ethical systems. When these systems become more complex, I still need to work, but it’s something at which I excel. Thankfully, there is a job that matches my skill set – it’s called pastor. Unfortunately, I still have to do a little bit of math, but that’s not the focus of my job. So success is often bound up in the fine line between doing something where we possess natural ability and yet, at the same time, work hard enough to compensate for our weaknesses.

Enter our scripture for today. God sends the prophet Samuel into Bethlehem to find Saul’s replacement for the job of king of Judah. Samuel has to find someone who is qualified, someone who will be successful. God points Samuel in the direction of a man named Jesse. Jesse has eight sons, seven of whom are present and three of whom are of military age. Samuel surveys the three boys standing in front of him. He looks them over, examining them for their natural ability as a leader, their military acumen, their size and strength – all the indications of a successful leader. Eventually, Samuel settles on Eliab saying, "Surely the Lord's anointed is now before the Lord." But God passes, not only on Eliab, but on all seven boys and Samuel is forced to ask if there are any others. The youngest son, David, is a shepherd boy out tending the flock. Jesse and his seven sons probably laughed, "Well, there’s David. But he’s just a young shepherd boy. I doubt he’s the one you’re looking for." Samuel requests that they bring David from the field and indeed, this young shepherd boy is the one who God is looking for to be the next king of Judah.

So if it’s a fine line between success and failure, what were the indicators of David’s success? Where’s the talent, the hard work? God says to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature…for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." There is something that God sees that we do not. There is something bigger at play in our lives than just hard work and talent. It’s that indefinable quality, that substance of the human spirit that can change the direction of our lives.

We all know that there are many variables that bear great influence a person’s success or failure. Variables such as having financial resources, having a family to support you, being born in a politically stable country, being the right race and ethnicity in that country, access to medical care, propensity for addiction, propensity for mental illness and the list goes on. But none of these factors play as large a role as the variable of the heart.

The heart is the genesis of the person. Like a river that finds its source in a spring, we find our source in the heart. The heart is that place that belongs only to you and is the first place God looks to discover the core of who you are. On the one hand, the heart is what holds the potential for the most good in this world. From the heart comes self-sacrifice, empathy, generosity, kindness and most importantly, love. On the other hand, the heart is also the well-spring of evil in our lives. Jesus says, "For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness…" and the list goes on. David is a good example of the heart’s dichotomy. Early in David’s life, he is described in the scriptures as a man after God’s own heart. That description is marred many years later when David commits adultery with a woman named, Bathsheba, impregnates her and tries to cover it up by murdering her husband. David exemplifies to us how every person, even a man after God’s own heart, is capable of great evil, and yet, God chose him anyway.

So why did God choose David? What was it about David’s heart that God chose him out of everyone else? We often walk away from David’s story believing that he’s one of a kind. That God chose him because there was something so unique about David’s heart that no one else in world could be like him. But later we find out that he’s just like us, he’s just another human being who makes mistakes. I think the only difference between David and us is the fact that David didn’t guard his heart from God. David allowed his heart to be open. He allowed God to rule his heart and that took his life in directions he never dreamed possible. If our success and failure are dictated by fine lines, then the heart is that element in our lives that can erase those fine lines.

I have met patients in the mental hospital who have long crossed that fine line between sanity and insanity with no reasonable expectation of return and yet their hearts give them the strength to believe that tomorrow can be a better day. I have watched people who have lost everything rebuild their lives simply because something deep within their hearts keeps them going. This is the place where God likes to reside – a place where anything is possible; a place where the rules of the world don’t apply; a place where you can be more than the hand that life has dealt you. God lives within our hearts because the heart is malleable. The heart is vulnerable to change. I used to think that God would avoid the heart because the heart is capable of such great evil.

I used to believe that God wanted nothing to do with me because I was not a good person. But then I read the gospel and realized that the heart is exactly where God wants to be. Jesus came to this world to show us that God is not distant and far away from us, shunning us when we do wrong. No, Jesus showed us that God wants to be in middle of all the mess, all the sin, all the horribleness in the world. In fact, God’s Spirit is so enmeshed in the darkness of this world that God dwells at the root of where sin finds life. God lives in the heart where the worst part of you resides, so that the best part of you can find life. All God asks of you is that you open your heart so that God has some room to work.

If you are willing to be vulnerable, if you are willing to let your guard down and allow God to transform your heart, then like David, your life can become so much more fulfilling than you ever thought it could be. No matter what you’ve done, no matter the hurt and pain you’ve experienced, this is the promise that Christ makes to his followers: if you are willing to allow God’s Spirit into your life, then the fine lines of the past will disappear and the future will be as open as the depths of your heart.