"Surely God is in this Place."
Romans 8:26-39; Genesis 28:10-19
Rev. Laura J. Collins
July 21, 2002
In the past month, two of our Takoma Park neighbors have committed suicide. Both were parents with children still at home. Both were professionals. Both succumbed to the darkness in their minds and left behind grieving and confused families and friends.
In each case, we found ourselves here in church praying for them, for their families, for all who suffer from depression. So it seems fitting for me today to come out to you as a person who lives with depression. Since my early teens I have struggled off and on with episodes of major depression, being treated with therapy or medication or both. It is a dark demon I would never wish on my worst enemy and very hard to describe to anyone who hasn't descended to the depths. I have known depression from both sides, as the one behind the veil of darkness and as the distanced loved one standing on the other side. I come from a long line of depressed people – including my grandmother, whose chronic depression affected her entire family and my father – whose mid-life depression was well treated and overcome.
I know depression as an illness, a chemical imbalance in the brain's neurotransmitters, and I know it as a spiritual struggle, a place where one feels abandoned by God, by one's own body, by life itself. Depression is a cloud not easily penetrated by the love of friends and there is perhaps nothing more maddening than being told by non-depressed people to pray harder or to trust God more deeply. Prayer is, in the midst of depression, if not impossible, then the next closest thing to it.
My worst bout with depression came in 1992, almost two years after my ordination to the ministry. I was, by all accounts, successful, having landed a plum position out of seminary and now doing the life work to which I felt called and suited. I had met Ric and was engaged to be married. Why then, would I be depressed? Well, I suppose I could summarize some months of therapy for you with the reasons, but the truth is, there is no real reason for depression. It just is.
As with any illness, there are many contributing factors, but none of them add up to the sum of the disease.
During this particular bout of depression, I needed to take several weeks off from work. I was seeing a therapist, I was receiving medication, but it was all I could do from one day to the next to force myself out of my bed and across the hall to the kitchen to get something to eat, just to sustain my body. On one long night, I lay in the darkness of my room fervently wishing that I just would not wake up the next day.
Suddenly, out of the sullen, silent night I became aware of a presence. Not a person or a voice or anything as recognizable as a ladder to heaven with angels going up and down. But here's the best way I can describe it. My room was filled with energy – sparkling points of energy like tiny stars that floated all around me for one timeless moment. And what I knew in that instant, though nobody spoke to me to explain the experience, is that I was surrounded by every prayer that had ever been prayed on my behalf. The years of daily prayers by my parents, prayers of Sunday School teachers and friends and church elders and church ladies – all of them were still there, still active, still energized, still available.
I made it through that night and after months more treatment, I emerged from that particular turn with the illness. There was no miraculous cure or no guarantees that I'd never have another such night. But what I knew then and what I still know today, is that through it all we are held.
The story of Jacob's ladder is the story of a man in a dark night. Jacob is running for his life from his brother Esau, who is so angry that Jacob stole his inheritance that he is planning to murder him. It looks as if Jacob's deeds have come home to roost, that he will either be killed by his brother or be resigned to a life in exile, far from home and loved ones, destined never to return.
It is as an outcast that he lies down to sleep, in "a certain place," we are told – a no-name, no-place, if you will. A place between what has been left and what may yet lie ahead. And when he lies down and is falling into sleep – in that sort of no-time between waking and sleeping – between conscious and unconscious – he has a dream.
The vision of the dream is familiar. We are climbing Jacob's ladder, we have sung in Sunday School or maybe at a folk festival with Pete Seeger. A ladder to heaven, that is, to the realm of God, with messengers of God going up and coming down. It is a place of two-way traffic: messages being brought and messages being sent. The ladder is a visual note that earth has not been left alone and that God is not remote or unapproachable – there is a path to be traveled between the two and the traffic goes both ways.
In case Jacob doesn't get the visual message he also hears a voice: "I am the Lord ... Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go ..."
Jacob receives the vision not in a moment of spiritual strength, but in a time of great vulnerability. He receives it not because he is deserving – he is certainly not that! He has betrayed his brother and deceived his father, stealing what was theirs. But he receives it nonetheless. God's faithfulness is not dependent on our worthiness. God is faithful because faithfulness is the nature of God.
I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. What Jacob hears in his night of fear is the heart of our faith: I am your God. I am with you. The fight between Jacob and his brother is not miraculously ended. Jacob still retreats into exile for many years. But on the journey, in spite of everything, Jacob is sustained. In the midst of his fear, his vulnerability, his loneliness, God is with him. Even when Jacob could not hold on to God, God held on to Jacob.
When my father was depressed he used to repeat to himself over and over as his mantra, the verse we heard today from Romans: "For I am convinced that nothing in life or in death ... can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Nothing can separate us. God is with us. We are sustained.
If you have been depressed or know someone who has, perhaps you know that some of the feelings associated with the illness are deep guilt, a terrible sense of failure, a belief that nothing can get better, that there is no help. 20th Century theologian Paul Tillich wrote, "the courage to be is the courage to accept our self as accepted in spite of being unacceptable." This courage, this acceptance, he notes, "is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt." (The Courage To Be)
When God has disappeared in our anxiety, God appears. That is what Jacob experienced. Jacob was a child of the covenant, a descendant of Abraham. But he was lost and far from his religious roots when God appeared.
The apostle Paul poses the question, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" But he has already answered it before he asks, noting only verses earlier that even when we don't know how to pray, God's spirit prays in us, "with sighs too deep for words." Even when we are experiencing terror or distress, Paul reminds us that God can bring good out of any situation. God is with us. We are sustained.
When Jacob woke from his dream, he exclaimed, "Surely God is in this place and I didn't know it." How often has that been our cry as well? We have gone about our lives, suffering our hardships, facing our exiles, remembering our faults, fearing for our futures, when all along God has been beside us, sustaining us, upholding us, leading us. "Behold, I am with you."
I'd like to close today with a prayer written by Thomas Merton, the famous monk and peace activist, which has become one of my personal favorites. Let us pray:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that
I think that I am following your will does not
mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please
you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right
road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death. I will not fear,
for you are ever with me and you will never
leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.
(Thoughts in Solitude)
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