With Jesus in the City of Nain
I was moved when the film Oscars were announced for Ron Howard’s film, A Beautiful Mind. It won Oscars for best film, best director and best supporting actor. It tells an inspiring story based upon the life of a brilliant American, John Forbes Nash. He won the Nobel Prize in 1994 for his mathematical analytical tool known as the “Nash Equilibrium” which he developed at Princeton University in the 1940’s. This theory changed the financial markets of Wall Street and the way we understand mathematics. John Forbes Nash won international fame in spite of a severe struggle with schizophrenia.
Although by no means a Christian story, the film illustrates many Christian principles. A Beautiful Mind captures the madness of schizophrenia vividly. Nash’s life was a long, arduous, but ultimately triumphant battle against his mental affliction. The movie credits much of his recovery to the power of true love. His marriage weathers the tempests of Nash’s mental illness. Nash, with his wife Alicia, attended the Academy Awards. Many portrayals of his life are, unfortunately, not true. But it is only a movie. His real struggles with schizophrenia had him believing not that he was a patriot working for the CIA but far more outrageous things: aliens had contacted him and told him he was to go to Europe and declare himself “the Prince of Peace.”
Russell Crowe plays Nash magnificently. Oscars are becoming a contest of impersonating the mentally and physically challenged. Daniel Day Lewis won for his portrayal of a man born with cerebral palsy in My Left Foot. Dustin Hoffman won for struggling with autism in Rain Man. Tom Hanks for portraying simpleton Forrest Gump. Geoffrey Rush for portraying bi-polar manic-depressive David Helfgott in Shine. Anthony Hopkins for the psychotic Dr Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs.
The accurate portrayal of the mentally ill can help more of us understand mental illness. Dr Courtenay M. Harding, director of the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston, wrote, “What most Americans and even many psychiatrists do not realize is that many people with schizophrenia – perhaps more than half – do significantly improve or recover. That is, they can function socially, work, relate well to others and live in the larger community. Many can be symptom-free without medication. Many recover because of sheer persistence at fighting to get better, combined with family or community support. Though some shake off the illness in two to five years, others improve much more slowly. Yet people have recovered even after 30 or 40 years with schizophrenia.”
Wesley Mission Sydney, during my twenty-seven years as Superintendent, had two University medical professors, and over seventy psychiatrists and doctors who, with our nursing and therapy staff of Wesley Hospital, Wandine Hospital and Wesley Mayo Clinic, specialized in helping people with schizophrenia and other mental disorders. This team collaborated with patients in a comprehensive and flexible program of psychosocial rehabilitation.
The hospital staff help patients develop social and work skills, cope with daily living and regain confidence. Many of the patients who haven’t responded to medication alone now become well enough to go back to their communities.
Can all patients make the improvement of John Nash? No. Schizophrenia is not one disease with one cause and one treatment. But many mentally ill people have the capacity to lead productive lives in full citizenship. In Australia, 1.5% of the population will have an episode of schizophrenia during their lifetime. This represents about 285,000 Australians. This will lead to well over a million Australians (including family and friends) being directly involved. Schizophrenia occurs in all societies at about the same rate, regardless of class, colour, religion, culture or intelligence.
The majority of people will develop schizophrenia between the ages of 15 and 25 years. Its onset is often associated with the smoking of marijuana. Marijuana is often associated with young people who lack meaning in life, and who are seeking an experience of vitality beyond their mere existence. About 10% of people diagnosed with schizophrenia will end their own lives. This means that approximately 18,000 Australians alive today may also suicide as a result of their schizophrenia. All of these people desperately need the acceptance and love that can bring vitality to their lives.
Jesus Christ said the purpose of His coming was to give people life, and life that was full of vitality. “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10 Throughout his ministry Jesus cared for the physically disabled, the intellectually handicapped and the psychiatrically ill. He became known as the healer. History attests that here was a man who helped the blind see, the lame walk and the deaf hear. He also helped those who were suffering mental disorders, including one poor man whose behaviour had forced his community to expel him outside their village. He lived in the cemetery, running about naked, screaming at people and cutting his own body with sharp stones. People had chained him up but he broke the chains. He evidenced all the signs, according to one of my psychiatrist friends, of the “manic stage of psychotic schizophrenia.” Mark 5:1-20
I have worked for forty years with people who lack vital, real life. The sickness in society leads many people into emptiness, despair and death. The city streets tell of people whose lives are wasted and defeated. To be successfully living in our city, means we must follow the Nain Principle – reach out to young people to help them find vital life.
Particularly this is tragic if the life lost is young. This week, a tradesman doing some work at our house told me his 18-year-old son died just recently after being dumped by a wave while surfing. Since that time, two of his classmates died when their speeding car crashed into a light pole just near our home. They had been speeding, were drunk, and had been disqualified from driving. As the same time a “P” plate driver skidded in the wet at our round about and her passenger, another teenage girl was killed. Middle-aged parents expect that their own parents will one day die, but they do not expect to bury their teenage children.
The funeral of every teenager is always a tragedy. Almost adulthood. Unrealised potential. Sheer waste. Yet that is the group that through drug and alcohol abuse, stupid driving, dangerous living and suicide, waste their lives.
Those born in the 1970’s and 1980’s are an important generation. They are interested only in their own chosen career, read little in newspapers but much in a few magazines. They are not motivated by politics, nor switched on by classic rock music. They are interested in finding the meaning behind relationships, about acquiring the right dress and body shape. They often eat in the lounge room, have their evening meal delivered in a cardboard box, go to the service station to buy food and get their money from an ATM. They drink coffee sitting outside the restaurant. They are not into denominationalism but into spirituality, especially New Age type mysticism. Jesus is in, but the Church is out.
This is “Generation M3” the people who are going to spend most of their lives in the third millennium! Think of it: if you are going to spend most of your life, God willing, in the third millennium, we want to salute you. Most people in church belong to Generation M2. We have already lived most of our lives. We lived, and continue to live, differently. We eat in the kitchen or dining room. We use knives and forks. We think eating with fingers rather primitive. We go to the service station to buy petrol not food. We get money from a bank not a wall. We cook meals. We never drink cappuccinos on the footpath.
Some of us 20th century people are not coping with change well. If you have already lived over half your life expectancy note the Generation M3 people. They are going to support older believers. They are the ones whose taxes will pay what pensions and government superannuation will be left for the oldies. They will pay our health care and social security. But more, they will be the members who will be running the church we have loved. They have different ideas about how things will be done and a different value system. But they have a real commitment to Jesus Christ.
Yet around 38% of young people indicate their top ranking concern is boredom: there is nothing to do. Why do we have so many young people suffering from boredom? They claim there is nothing to do, yet never have a generation had so much with which to amuse themselves. Every shopping complex has its Intencity or Timezone or virtual reality electronic machinery, Pizza Hut, McDonalds and theatre complex screening M3 Generation oriented films.
We do young people a disservice when we sponsor bigger and better activities. The root cause of boredom is not a lack of activities; it is a lack of meaning. The Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl wrote that a society which has lost its meaning is marked by rampant libido and an insatiable urge to own things. The M3 Generation has to find its own sense of meaning. The M3 Generation says, “You are what you do, what you earn, what you own and how you look”. Jesus says that life does not consist of owning the latest mobile phone.
The church is one of the few places left where significance can be affirmed and experienced. It is the only place where young adults can find an understanding of why they are significant. It is the only place where people can grow in faith. Yet many young adults by-pass the church doors. They have not discovered that true, not ‘virtual’, reality can be found in there. They have not yet discovered that meaning and purpose is found not in McDonald’s but in church.
Yet thousands of the M3 Generation will die over the next decade. Wasted lives. Wasted potential. How tragic. The sickness of society leads people into emptiness, despair and death. The city streets tell of people whose lives are wasted and defeated.
Once Jesus met a crowd carrying the body of a young boy down a winding road to the cemetery of Nain. This was the first of three occasions when Jesus raised a person from death, including the little daughter of Jairus, and His friend in Bethany, Lazarus. It was a small town on the northern slope of lesser Mt Hermon, not far from Capernaum and from the village of Cana.
The city of Nain lies to the north of Jerusalem and 30 kms south east of Nazareth. This town is mentioned in Scripture only in connection with the visit of Jesus and the miracle of raising the widow’s son from the dead (Luke 7:11). There are many ancient remains, proving that the place was once a city of considerable size. It was entered by “the gate,” probably the opening between the houses by which the road entered the town. The ancient town perhaps stood somewhat higher on the hill than the present village. In the rocks are many tombs of antiquity. The site commands a beautiful and extensive view across the plain to Carmel, over the Nazareth hills, and to where the white peak of Hermon glistens in the sun. To the South are the heights of Samaria.
Jesus and His friends were heading into the city. They met this procession carrying a bier on which the body of a dead young man lay. They were heading for the cemetery. His widowed mother followed surrounded by neighbours who were wailing loudly. The pathos of the situation was met by the compassion of Jesus. Her only child had died, her only family member, her only means of support. Jesus stopped the procession, assessed the situation, prayed for the widow, and called to the young man to rise from the bier. The crowd shrank back in fear, then gasped in amazement as the young man slowly rose from the platform carried by the funeral bearers. They quickly lowered it to the ground. The young man recovered and greeted his mother and friends. Instantly, the news spread in the whole region concerning the power of Jesus.
The incident is rich with meaning: two processions moving in opposite direction come face to face. One was mournful, moving out of the city towards the cemetery. Death dominated their thinking. The other procession was joyful, moving into the city, and leading it was Jesus who has the power to bring life and laughter to people. Jesus was the source of life and the answer to death. He was raised from death in order that we too might be raised to life. His power gives back loved ones who have died, to their grieving friends. So many need the power of the Risen Christ. Many are like that mentally ill man living among the tombs of Gadara. Others are young people like that young man at Nain.
In a world with competing faiths and many different voices each proclaiming the way, people facing loneliness, frustration, emptiness, despair, death, need life that is vital! That is the Nain Principle! Many young men need a voice that brings life. Grieving widows need comfort in anxiety. The crowd from the city need an answer for the future. The mentally sick need acceptance and hope. Jesus says: “I am telling you the truth: The time is coming – and has already come – when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will come to life.” John 5:25
“The dead…” those living defeated, empty, despairing lives; “will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will come to life.” That’s the promise Jesus offers: vital life! Those early Christians confounded the rest of the world by the quality of their lives. They had something that caused their enemies to envy them, and to say with tears of rage in their eyes: “These Christians have turned the world upside down!” It was that they possessed the life of Jesus within them. They said: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
This vibrant, thrilling life Jesus gives made all the difference. The Roman courts frequently passed the cruellest sentence that could be passed upon those who believed in Christ: “Damnatus ad Metalla”, condemned to the mines. They had to row the slave galleys to North Africa, then were marched through the scorching heat of the Sahara desert, in chains under the lash, to the mines in the mountains of Numidia in present day Algeria. There they had one eye gouged out, were branded by a red-hot iron on the head: ‘F’ – for “fugitivus” meaning ‘runaway slave’ if they ever tried to escape. Then for the rest of their lives had to work in the mines.
Note the people mentioned in the text:
1. The Young Man
We know nothing about him. He was just another statistic from the city. Christian street workers care for homeless youth from the streets of Sydney. Some have died while in care. They always have difficulty tracing families after death. Their death makes no newspaper. Few people care. Just another wasted life.
The counsellors every night talk with kids who ask about the point of living. They have lived life to its extremities and found nothing but emptiness. Like the Prodigal Son, they came to the city, wasted their money on a good time, and ended alone in a pigpen. The daily papers in Sydney reveal stories of young people who are assaulted, shot at, held up with knives, bashed by gangs of other youth, deal in drugs in the streets of Kings Cross and Cabramatta, who smash hundreds of train windows after a league match, who are shot in drive-by shootings, who hold up garage attendants with machetes.
These are not our typical youth. Our typical Generation M3 youth are in school, college, TAFE institute or University. They are learning or working. But this other group is heading to the cemetery! Drugs, suicide, alcohol abuse or reckless driving will get them, and then surrounded by wailing friends and grieving parents, they are taken on their last ride to the cemetery or crematorium. They thought they were having a ball. That’s life! That’s not life, that’s death! Such young people are not living; they only exist waiting to die. They are the walking dead.
2. The Grieving Widow
She had a double grief: her only son was dead, and she was a widow. Her only child; her only companion; her only means of support; her only family member. Now she had no one. Life is a struggle with such meaninglessness. We see those people every day. In Morris West’s book, “The Shoes Of The Fisherman”, Ruth Lewin is depressed. She has been to her psychiatrist about her marriage break up. Under analysis she discovers anguished truth about herself:
“Each step brings you closer to the moment of truth where you must face once and for all the thing from which you have been fleeing. Slowly the nature of my hidden fear became clearer to me. I had reached the core of myself, and I knew that I would find it empty.”
Many people are heading to the cemetery with empty and lonely hearts, life lost in living.
3. The Wailing City
The Bible declares that “a large crowd from the city” was in that funeral procession. How graphic. A wailing crowd, going from the city to the cemetery. But that is exactly where millions of people in Sydney are now heading. They have no other destiny or future more certain than a puff of smoke from a crematorium. That pathetic, purple-haired Englishman, Quentin Crisp, used to say, “Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.” He was right. So many people in our cities exist, but they lack life that is abundant, free and eternal.
They can look at all they have acquired in life in a pile, and realize the futility of it. As Jesus said, “Life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions.”
4. The Powerful Saviour
In a world with competing faiths and many different voices each proclaiming the way, people facing loneliness, frustration, emptiness, despair, death, people turn in many directions on their way to the cemetery. Some turn to the scholar, feeling that education will answer needs, only to find that increasing knowledge increases problems. Some turn to the statesman hoping that legislation will make life easy, only to find that our politicians are also weak.
Some turn to the scientist hoping that some new discovery will answer our existential plight, only to discover scientists have not made personal meaning. Some turn to the sociologist trusting that in an understanding of our social environment, we can find a way, but although sociologists can condemn our pigpen but they cannot change our desires to live like pigs. Our writers, artists, and philosophers can describe our condition, but they cannot prescribe our cure. The young man who is dead needs a voice that brings life. The grieving widow needs a comfort in her anxiety. The lonely crowd from the city need an answer for the future.
Jesus says, “I am telling you the truth: The time is coming and has already come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will come to life.” John 5:25 “The dead…” those living defeated, empty, despairing lives; “will hear the voice of the Son of God…” Whose voice? Not the scholar. Not the statesman. Not the scientist. Not the sociologist, but “the voice of the Son of God.” The answer lies not in education, nor legislation, not in illumination, not in conservation. The answer lies in regeneration being born again!
The Son of God who made you brings new life to you. “and those who hear it will come to life.” That’s His promise: life! Abundant life! Eternal life! Life in Christ! Jesus brought life to that young man, to that grieving widow, and to that wailing community! No wonder they cried: “A great prophet has arisen among us. God has visited His people.” Can you claim that life? Will you claim Jesus as Lord? Only Christ gives to the widow, the young and the city, life that is meaningful and eternal.
Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC
