Triggers – Cutting, suicidality
This is the sermon I presented to the congregation at my Field Ed Placement this past Sunday, July the 29th. I can also upload the video when it become available. Remember, when you read this, that I am a pre-enrollment student, and that I am still learning to preach and interpret Biblical text.
Before we really start here, I feel that I must confess something real to all of you. I am not qualified to be preaching a message like this, for reasons that I will explain in a few moments. When I first read the message, which is in the lectionary for next Sunday – but I felt that I needed to preach it today – I was convicted and humbled. God has a funny way of doing that, you know? It has been a challenging week for me, full of trials and fear. It’s been one of those weeks that reminds me that I am completely and horrifically human. But through those times when we are at our weakest, God can use us for his best. With that, let’s dive into our text.
Our Ephesians text for today calls us to live lives worthy of our call, with patience, humility, and gentleness, “bearing one another in love.” What a statement that is! What a challenge, and what a reminder. First, the text reminds us that we are all called. That’s something that I had to grapple with for some time. My reaction to my own call was something similar to Moses’. “Why me, God? I am unworthy.”
One of the first tasks for an inquiring candidate for ordination in the United Methodist Church is to read and discuss the book, “the Christian as Minister” with the pastor of one’s local church. One of the stories I remember most vividly from the book was about a pastor calling a young woman in his office and telling her “I am so glad that God has called you into ministry!”
Her response, one that is quite familiar to me, was something to the tune of “No, I’m not going to ministry! I’m going into healthcare!”
The pastor responded to her by telling her that her passion is a calling from God, and a form of ministry. See, what she didn’t yet understand was that God calls all of us into ministry in some form. It’s not always pastoral ministry, often it doesn’t involve going into seminary. One of my colleagues in ministry, a fellow pre-enrollment intern at [redacted to preserve her privacy], Anna, said this in her very first sermon, which was given to over one thousand youth, “God doesn’t call the equipped, he equips the called.” It’s possible, even likely, that she was quoting someone else, but I’m not sure who.
So, here I am, standing before you today, utterly unqualified. I felt horribly ill-equipped just this past Friday as I started to prepare, just after finding out that I would be delivering the message this morning. But God is using that. I can feel him using that.
Before I leave you all for the summer, I want to take the opportunity to tell you the story of my call, which is something that excites me and terrifies me at the same time, but I feel it needs to be shared. And let me start by saying that I have not led a life worthy of a call.
I wasn’t a child that anyone thought would one day go into ministry. Out of my cousins, I was the one who got into the most trouble. In the book, A Game of Thrones, which is very much not a Christian story, but the metaphor fits anyway, the youngest of Lord Ned Stark’s daughters has gotten into a lot of trouble. She’s sitting in her room pouting when her father comes in and talks to her. He tells that one day she’s going to be a Lady, and marry a Lord, and have children that are little lords and ladies. She says, “I don’t want to be a Lady.” That was me as a child, and even more so me when I got my call. “I don’t want to go into ministry. I’m not prepared.” I told God. My call was a surprise to everyone around me, including me.
There are so many things that I could mention as part of my testimony. My parents divorced when I was seven. I struggled with bullying, depression, and self-harm, cutting myself, when I was twelve. I experienced my call at sixteen years old. The most interesting point of that is that I was not in the church when I experienced my call, and it took the call to get me to church. All these things happened when I was an immature Christian, and so much has happened since then. As our scripture lesson reminds us, “we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,” So from here, I will share more of my story with y’all.
When I started my sophomore year of college, I had no notion of the challenges that I would face in the coming year. I’d already had some challenges, my former roommate, Robyne, died in a horrible car accident during the year before. But this was a whole new challenge.
The depression started a few weeks after the year did. A friend had to convince me to go see the school counselor when I started isolating myself, and had little energy to do anything. I had so much anxiety about everything in my life. I started anti-depressants about a month into that school year, but the only thing that first medication did for me was to make me suicidal, and somewhat manic. I tried something else, things got a little better, but not much.
My horrible old habit, self-harm returned that year. A friend of mine cleared my room of all of the things I could have used to harm myself, but I found other tools. I feel that the Christian artist, Plumb, explains it best. “I may seem angry, or painfully shy, but these scars wouldn’t be so hidden if you would just look me in the eye. I feel alone here, and cold hear. No, I don’t want to die. But only anesthetic that makes me feel anything kills inside.”
That following March I was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder. It was around the time, or maybe it was at that time, that God started to change the way I view my call. In the first years after I discovered my call, when someone asked what I was going into, I would have, without a doubt, said pastoral ministry. But I started to realize that may God planned to use my diagnosis in a way that would further his kingdom.
I still struggle every day with my diagnosis, my disorder, and some days are much easier than others. I don’t tell you this, or my story, so that you will feel bad for me, but so that you can understand where I came from. I think that God uses our struggles, our stories, the places that we come from, as a part of our ministry here on Earth.
I told you at the start of this sermon that I am unqualified, and by all Earthly qualifications, that is completely true. But, God doesn’t use Earthly qualifications. God uses our stories, our struggles, and our redemption to show his power and glory, and the ways that he can shine through the cracks in our broken lives.
Ephesians tells us that Christ “gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ” – which is us – “may be built up.” Too often, when we hear these things, we imagine that this means God gave us other people. People that are wiser than us, people that have better stories than us, people who have been more successful than us. What we fail to realize, like the young woman who planned to go into health care, is that God plans to use all of our gifts. We are all called, perhaps at different times in our lives, to be those prophets, evangelists, preachers, and teachers.
So, we come back to the struggle of living lives worthy of the call. One of the questions that candidates are asked at some point during the journey to ordination is “are you going on to perfection?” This is because we believe as Methodists that we can obtain Christian perfection. The Disciple tells us that “this [is the] gracious gift of God’s power and love, the hope and expectation of the faithful, neither warranted by our efforts nor limited by our frailties.” In other words, it is only by the Grace of God that we can obtain Christian perfection. God brings us from brokenness into perfect for His glory.
On a real level, none of us our perfect. None of us constantly live lives worth of our calling as Christians, and as ministers to one another. We all fall short of the glory of God. We all fail. As I’ve said, and will say again, I am not qualified to preach this sermon. I have not in any obtained perfection. But that’s okay, because God’s mercy extends to cover my sins, and his Grace extends to me. As our communion liturgy reminds us, “Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. That proves God’s love for us.”
God’s grace extends to all of us, no matter who we are or where we are in our journey. God called me as a cutter with crippling depression. God called Paul, who was then known as Saul, while he was in route to kill Christians in the early church. Friends, God calls you out of whatever context you are in.
The thing is, though, that we cannot live out the call on our strength. We can’t pour from an empty cup. You can’t give what you don’t have. So today, allow God’s grace to flow through you just as you are. As our scripture today tells us, “we must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.”
Draw close to God today. Let his Grace fill you just as you are. Let him call you from whatever context you come from. Be teachers, preacher, evangelists. God will equip you, just as he has equipped me. Amen.
Moody Ministry 