...for God, all things are possible.

A reflection on Psalm 22:1-15; Job 23:1-9,16-17; Mark 10:17-31; Hebrews 4:12-16

I’m sure that many of you have, at some time, listened to the Radio 4 programme ‘Any Questions’. Indeed, this discussion programme on topical affairs has been broadcast

nationally since September 1949. I used to listen to Any Questions quite regularly back in the 1960s and 70s, when the presenter in the chair was David Jacobs. There is just one specific comment from the programme back then that I still recall. I can’t remember what the question was, or who made this comment, but it went something like this: “What we remember, in particular, with affection about people we knew, who may now have ‘passed on’, is not their great achievements, or what they were especially good at – it’s there idiosyncrasies and foibles – the things that made them ‘human’!”

When you think about it – how true that is! For example, I had an uncle who was a lovely man. He was also of a rather ‘anxious’ disposition and, to be honest, a bit of a ‘hypochondriac’. If you asked him ‘how he was’, he wouldn’t say ‘fine’, but always said ‘he was a bit chesty’, or something similar. I remember him once saying that he’d bumped into an acquaintance, who he hadn’t seen for years, who said to him “Hello, are you still enjoying ill health?!” I always smile when I think of that.

None of us are perfect, and we never shall be in this life. So how can we become ‘fit for heaven’. As the disciples asked Jesus in today’s gospel reading, “Then who can be saved?” The answer that Jesus gave is, I think, the most important sentence in all of the readings we’ve heard this morning. Jesus said: “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” This conversation occurs in the context of monetary wealth acting as a hurdle to entering heaven. But clearly, there are much broader connotations in terms of the things that distance us from God. And it’s some of these other things that I want us to think about now.

What struck me particularly about our two Old Testament readings today is that they speak of the depths of depression and despair – the feeling of being abandoned and completely without hope – the feeling that even God doesn’t care.

From Psalm 22:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.

From Job, in his misery:

If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.

Nearly everyone feels anxious, stressed, depressed, or frantic, at some point or other. But for many people, these feelings are always there – they are a way of life, usually through no fault of their own.

Mental health issues affect about one in four people at some point in their lives. Depression is most common, followed by anxiety spectrum disorders, then schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Then there are developmental disorders, the most widely known being autism; and there are neuro-degenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Clearly, this list isn’t exhaustive.

For some people, in some circumstances, their compromised mental health may not only lead them to feel abandoned by God, but may lead them actively to reject God, or deny His existence. So what might this mean in terms of their ultimate relationship with God?

In grappling with this, I feel it’s best to repeat that verse from Mark’s gospel: ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’

Let’s look at the case of St Paul and his well-known ‘thorn in the flesh’. He refers to this in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians as follows: ‘a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me.....’

What was this ‘thorn in the flesh’? Well, of course, there have been numerous theories on this, including the possibility of various physical ailments. But perhaps, however, it was a psychological ailment. Indeed, from some of the things Paul says in his letters, it’s reasonable to speculate that he may have had obsessive compulsive disorder! There’s not time to go into the details to support this proposition now, but having OCD would certainly count as something ‘to torment him’, and ‘to stop him from being too elated’. I can vouch for that myself as someone who’s been affected by OCD all my life – as are about one million people in the UK.

So what response did Paul get when he asked God three times that this torment would leave him? God replied: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Is this saying that God is insensitive to our sufferings – that our frailties are just a way of accentuating His own power? Absolutely not! Firstly, God in Jesus shares fully in our suffering – including mental anguish. For example, it won’t have escaped your attention that the first sentence of the Psalm we heard today was some of Jesus’ final words on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Secondly, there’s that marvellous assurance that was given to Paul (and to us all): “My grace is sufficient”. Grace, just to remind you, means ‘the free and unmerited favour of God’.

Both of these themes – the Son of God sharing in, and understanding, human anguish; and consequently the grace of God shown in His unmerited, but freely given, mercy and love, are taken up in the reading we heard from the letter to the Hebrews:

“Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

So, I believe the bottom line is that God understands us, our frailties and our mental struggles much better, even, than we do ourselves. And therefore, to put it colloquially, God is always prepared to ‘cut us some slack’! At times of mental struggle, which for some of us is occasional but for others is constant, when we feel abandoned by God or actively reject God – God, for his part, never stops loving us. His grace and mercy over-rides our mental frailty. That’s God’s nature.

As Paul says in his second letter to Timothy:

“if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.”