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21st Sunday after Pentecost

GOSPEL: Luke 18:1-8

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.  2He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.  3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant me justice against my opponent.'  4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone,  5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'"  6And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says.  7And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?  8I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

+ In nomine Domini.  Amen.

neighbor.  Amen.

I remember the first day I walked into the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital in the capitol city of New Jersey. I was one of 7 student chaplains that sweltering Summer of 1969 who would spend three months of Clinical Pastoral Education, the required learning program of every seminary student. 

On the one side of things I was deeply disappointed, since I had requested from the placement director of my Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg that I would do my clinical training at the high security United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania … thinking that I would get to meet it’s most famous prisoner at that time … the infamous Jimmy Hoffa.[1]

Instead I was assigned to the facility treating persons with mental illness that was founded in the 1840’s by Dorothea Dix the pioneer in treatment of persons with mental illness.  The hospital has now 500 beds.  In 1969 it was overcrowded with well over 3,000 patients.

On June 1^st, I parked my car in the lower parking lot and walked up the tree-lined path to the front door of the hospital … all I could hear were the screams and shouts of patients, several leaning out of second and third story windows.  It was 100°F, the same temperature as the fever I was experiencing due to a bout of summer flu, and after being admitted through the front door, I made my way to the initial gathering of the 7 chaplains and our supervisor.

That same day, The Rev. Carl McIntire, fundamentalist founder of the Bible Presbyterian Church, avid critic of Princeton Seminary from which he received his degree and ardent attacker of Communism, sex education in the schools, and fluoridation of the water … announced a planned march on the State Capitol seeking “10,000 Bible Believing Christians” to gather and preach against the (in his words) heretical Upsala College in East Orange, NJ and the heretical Lutherans in general.

I have to say that my first day as a student chaplain in the State Mental Hospital did not begin well.  And it got worse.  Being the only Lutheran, our Supervisor who had once been a Lutheran pastor but then left the church despising Lutherans assigned me what were called in those days “the back wards.”  I was housed, with two other men, one a lab technician, and the other a nurse, in the former Nurses Quarters, next to the houses provided for physicians doing their residency programs.

That Summer of 1969, Neil Armstrong would be the first person to walk on the Moon, the “Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music” would take place on the farm of Max Yasgur (Woodstock), and I would spend my time visiting all the Lutheran patients living with mental illnesses … some placed there by the State, some by their parents, some because they had committed murder, some because there were unable to live without medication which for one reason or another was unavailable to them.

It was a lonely time for me.  I learned that loneliness and isolation can take place even in the midst of 3,000 people.  It was lonelier even more for those patients I came to know and respect and even love; listening to their stories, watching their anguish, seeing many of them be led to the hallway where in a line of 30 or so beds they would experience (against their wills) the device called electro-shock therapy.  I was more aligned with the patients than with the physicians, or the senior chaplain … and I have to give credit to two angel-nurses, Ann and Joann, who assigned to the back men’s ward, brought cleanliness, courage, compassion, and from time-to-time joy to the men in their charge.  They saved me as well from utter despair.

Trenton Hospital (which at it’s height had grown to an overcrowded population of 5,000 patients) was emptied in the 1970’s along with every other State Mental Facility in our country through the effort of needed and necessary legislation.  But where did they go? 

The planned residences funded by tax dollars never came into being …

… the answer for far too many persons with mental illnesses was and remains to be homeless.

I encourage you to watch the FRONTLINE program on PBS called The Released … Five years ago, Frontline told the story of the severely mentally ill in our jails and prisons. Today, nearly all have since been released … and re-arrested.  The hour-long show is an intimate look at the lives of persons with serious mental illnesses as they struggle to remain free.

Loneliness and isolation which comes as an overwhelming burden to persons living with mental illnesses … and their families … is the most dangerous thing.  It is like wearing a brand upon one’s forehead.  It means that one lives not with the comfort of others that we know as human relationship, but always with suspicious looks from the non-illness-world.

The statistics are available and well-documented …

• One in every 5 adult Americans, more than 30 million people, suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any 6 month period.
• 18 million people suffer from schizophrenia and/or a depressive disorder.
• Over 7 million children and adolescents suffer from a mental illness.
• Each year, over 35,000 Americans commit suicide, an average of one suicide every 15 minutes.
• The cost to the U.S. economy of mental illness is estimated at $50-100 billion annually. [2]

On this day, Lutheran people everywhere unite in praying for persons who have mental disorders of all kinds. We pray also for their families and other care givers.  We pray that understanding and compassion will spread throughout congregations and communities of faith as well as spreading throughout our country.

We pray that those living in loneliness and isolation even in our congregation will be embraced and held and helped by us … because we know that the Holy One intends not for any of us to be so kept away from humanity that our lives are ones of misery.

We pray with as much persistence as that widow in the parable told by Jesus who goes before an unbelieving judge pleading her case day after day, week after week, month after month, wearing him down until he finally gives in and awards her a just decision … we pray like that alongside our brothers and sisters and their families pleading for help and compassionate programs and medications and treatments so that we can all stand together and be liberated from that painful, dreadful isolation and loneliness that comes with mental illnesses.

We light candles today as we come to the Table of the Lord, the signs of flickering hope … some in memory of those who have left us taken by the illnesses which they did not create for themselves … some in solidarity with loved ones who struggle to survive … and some for ourselves … for we know that where one part of the body is ailing, the whole body is in pain.   We light the candles today in love.

Let us pray.

O God, we pray for all those with mental illness and other brain disorders and their families. Your son has told us repeatedly that it is your will to guide and protect. We pray for courage to challenge the old notions about brain disorders which created guilt and shame in so many lives. For all who cannot advocate for themselves, awaken in us a voice that will not be silenced. Your word inspires us to bring hope, healing and acceptance to those with brain disorders and their loved ones.  Amen.

Deo Gratias (+)