I was talking recently with two women who lead a grief recovery group. They told me that their primary challenge is persuading Christians to attend their group. They know several Christians who are experiencing great grief, who need a grief group, and yet who pause at participating. At the same time, non Christians from the community flock to this group. It seems, these women affirmed, that there is a stigma among Christians when it comes to grief. Christians are afraid to let other Christians know that they are struggling with grief and desire the support of a group.
This stigma isn’t a symptom in just this one church. It infects most churches. Amy Simpson is the author of Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission. She explores the unhealthy posture the church takes toward mental health (19):
The church allows people to suffer because we don’t understand what they need and how to help them. We have … ignored, marginalized and laughed at the mentally ill or simply sent them to the professionals and washed our hands of them.
Many churches ignore or marginalize or ridicule people with grief or other forms of distress. And this creates a stigma that keeps Christians from finding the relief they require.
Churches, Simpson argues, have heeded physical illness and have hurried to heal people of them. But they have not done the same when it comes to mental and emotional illnesses (33, 36-37). Consider these physical illnesses:
- cancer strikes about 1% of the U. S. population;
- nearly 4% of the U.S. is living with AIDS;
- about 8% of the population is affected with diabetes;
- and heart disease affects about 12% of the U. S.
Churches have been increasingly mentioning these challenges and ministering to those who suffer from them. But we have remained unwilling or unable to mention mental and emotional challenges and minister to those who struggle with them. Simpson writes this:
We visit [the physically sick] in the hospital, raise money to fight their diseases and pay their bills. We bring them meals, drive them to appointments and babysit their kids. We pray for them in our services, ask them how they’re feeling and accommodate them with special foods at our potlucks. And as we’re busy enthusiastically delivering meals to suffering people, we are largely ignoring the afflictions of 25 percent of our population [who suffer forms of mental illness]. That’s about equal to the total percentage of people diagnosed with cancer each year, living with heart disease, infected with HIV and AIDS or diabetes–combined.
Mental health has become stigmatized in the church.
And this makes Jesus’ cry from the cross all the more relevant:
I thirst (Jn. 19:28)
There’s a lot going on in this pocket-sized phrase. It illuminates many theological and spiritual complexities. But it also illuminates Jesus’ basic humanity. James Martin in his book Seven Sayings writes this:
Quite a few people have a difficult time accepting Jesus’s humanity. Some of us focus almost exclusively on stories that seem to highlight his divine nature – the Son of God who went around healing the sick, raising people from the dead, stilling storms, all the kinds of miracles that people tend to associate with his divine power … [But Jesus] entered the world as helpless as any newborn and just as dependent on his parents. He needed to be nursed, held, fed, burped, and changed. Jesus had a body. We know that Jesus got tired from time to time. In one Gospel passage he falls asleep in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus pulled muscles, got headaches, felt sick to his stomach, came down with the flu and maybe even sprained an ankle or two. Like all of us, Jesus sweated and sneezed and scratched. Everything proper to the human body, he experienced – except sin.
Jesus had a body.
Therefore, in the midst of the most grueling torture a body could receive, Jesus thirsted. Blood loss, exertion and exposure dehydrated his body. As a result, Jesus thirsted.
This cry from the cross is Jesus pronouncing his pain. He is announcing his affliction. He is saying to any who might hear, “I hurt! I have needs!” The one who came to mitigate our misery is now declaring his own deprivation.
“I thirst.”
And notice this: Jesus has no reluctance. Jesus has no shame. There is no stigma attached to his statement. In his greatest moment of suffering, Jesus voices his distress and his desire: “I thirst.”
Covid-19 has brought unimaginable wounds to our world. One of the ways we endure these trials is to voice our pain — to God and to each other and to ourselves. Don’t dismiss your despair. Don’t minimize your misery. Don’t be ashamed to admit your affliction. Take some time today and this week and give yourself permission to say, “I thirst,”: “I hurt,” “I am depressed,” “I am anxious,” “I am confused,” “I am afraid.” Say it to yourself. Say it to some safe people. Say it to God. And invite those around you to proclaim their pain as well. The first step toward satisfying your thirst is acknowledging that you thirst in the first place.
