Mental Health Sunday

I am grateful Suntree UMC has designated this coming Sunday, Nov 14, as Mental Health Sunday. As the father of a son who has courageously lived with a serious mental illness since 1977, and as a man of faith who has struggled with grief and other personal challenges, I am proud to be a member of a congregation that sees mental health as a key mission initiative. Mental Health Sunday will be a day devoted to increasing our awareness, as people of faith, about mental health conditions and the mental health needs of our community. It is a day in which Suntree UMC will call attention to the need to talk about mental health in kind and loving ways, and we will seek to break the stigma and shatter the shame that often prevents these much-needed conversations.

Mental Health Sunday is a day when we will have the opportunity to reflect together on Jesus’ relationship to persons with disabilities. Jesus lived in a time when all disabilities, blindness, lameness, those with skin diseases, epilepsy, and what we today call psychoses, were all stigmatized by the religious leaders and ostracized by everyone. But when Jesus came on the scene, his relationship with people with disabilities was not one of avoidance, discrimination, condemnation, or fear. It was, in a word, ‘compassion.’ As followers of Jesus, he is our Exemplar, he is our Model, and we seek to follow “in his steps.”

Mental Health Sunday will also be a day when we explore together the spiritual wisdom of faith traditions for achieving and maintaining mental health wellness. Everyone is invited to register and attend our Interfaith Webinar on Spiritual Wisdom for Mental Health Wellness from 2-4:30pm in the afternoon.

While twenty percent of Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental health condition, a hundred percent of us face mental health challenges as we seek to negotiate the problems of everyday living. Who among us has not experienced profound anxiety as we have struggled through the last two years of the COVID pandemic? Who among us has not felt depressed about some difficulty over which we have no control? Who among us has not longed to return to a place of confidence, serenity, and equilibrium after a loss or a personal trauma. Everyone has mental health problems.

The good news is that there is ancient wisdom in the great faiths of the world for achieving and maintaining mental health wellness. I have found myself reflecting a lot these days on the wisdom of Scripture for our Mental Health. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the major therapeutic methods in our time. I have come to believe the Biblical writers also understood the basic principles of this kind of therapy. The presupposition of CBT is – “Thinking precedes behavior.” In other words, in order to cope with our living situations better, we sometimes need to change the subjects in our minds. The Psalmists, for example, often begin with a lament of some kind, even a complaint to God, but then they changed the subject to one of praise to God for God’s amazing works. In a similar way, the Apostle Paul says in Philippians 4, “Be anxious for nothing.” He then goes on to counsel Christians to think positive thoughts (true, beautiful, etc.). In other words, when we are ruminating over our anxieties, it is good for us to change the subject in our minds.

I hope you will join us on Sunday for worship and for our Interfaith Webinar. Don’t you think we could all use a little spiritual wisdom these days to help us cope with and adapt to our personal and shared challenges of living?

Rev. Dr. John Baggett
Chair: SUMC Mental Health Task Force

All Saints Sunday

In May of 2019, we hosted an Abide Conference for women at our church. It was my first Abide at Suntree UMC and a wonderful opportunity to share with other women about our faith. Towards the end of the conference, I received the news that Rachel Held Evans, prolific Christian writer and 37-year-old mother, had passed away from a sudden and severe illness. I was devastated. On a day filled with wonderful women’s ministry, I lost a saint in my journey of womanhood and faith. Rachel Held Evans had been a companion to me through many faith questions and my call to ministry. My friends and I frequently sent texts back and forth in college saying, “Did you read Rachel’s newest blog?” I felt like we were on a first-name basis. Her death was a gut punch.

This week, Rachel’s final work of writing was released to the public. Compiled and edited by her friend Jeff Chu, the book of essays entitled Wholehearted Faith feels like Rachel’s voice reaching back through time and out of the grave to speak to us again.

I began reading Wholehearted Faith on Tuesday, the day after All Saints Day. I can’t recommend it yet (because I haven’t finished it) but I laughed out loud when I read the following quote in the middle of preparation for this week’s All Saints Sunday. Rachel still found a way to speak and help me ask and answer questions of my faith:

“For better or for worse, there are seasons when we hold our faith, and then there are seasons when our faith holds us. In those latter instances, I am more thankful than ever for all the saints, past and present, who said yes and whose faith sustains mine. They believe for me when I’m not sure I believe. They hold on to hope for me when I’ve run out of hope. They are the old lady next to me in the pew and the little kid behind me who recites the entirety of the Apostles’ Creed on my behalf on those Sundays when I cannot bring myself to say all those ancient words wholeheartedly--- Is this what I really believe? They pray for me when the only words I have to say to God are words that I refuse to allow to be printed on this page, because they would make even my most foulmouthed friend blush.” - Wholehearted Faith, pg. 3

Rachel Held Evans was certainly a saint to me. She was ordinary, sometimes foul-mouthed, and honest. I am grateful for her words as I doubted my faith. She helped my faith hold me when I could not hold it. But Rachel and Christian “celebrities” like her are not the only saints in our lives. Rachel’s words certainly apply to the saints in our church, like the ones that we will celebrate on Sunday. They also apply to your loved ones.

The thing is, I felt like I knew Rachel on a first name basis, but I didn’t. Reading her husband Dan’s words, and her friends as they write about this book, I know that the Saint Rachel that I knew is only part of her sainthood and her personhood. She was a mother, wife, daughter, and friend. The saints in my life as a part of this and other churches are your husbands, wives, children, friends. You know maybe better than others that they are not saints; certainly, they were imperfect! Yet in their faithfulness, they have left legacies of faith that we are blessings to all of us.

This Sunday in worship, we will read John 11:17-37 and see Jesus’s human grief alongside the powerful reality of the resurrection. We will honor all of the saints who have passed on in the past year (don’t forget your bell!) and consider the legacy we can leave together too.

We may not be authors, formally-sainted people, and those we love and miss may not be either. But Rachel’s words ring true. Our faith is held and encouraged by the saints, and we, too, have the opportunity to be that saint to other people.

Thanks be to God for this opportunity and this legacy.

See you Sunday,
Pastor Allee