The Sanest Person on the Psych Ward

“So, I hired some gypsies to fix the garage,” my mom told me one day on the phone.

I paused.  My mom rarely had normal social interactions with people, so I tried to figure out what she was talking about.  “Like real gypsies?” I asked her.  “Like Romanian gypsies?  Like the kind that curse you in Stephen King books or Scooby-Doo cartoons?  Or are you just calling them gypsies because they’re homeless?”

“No real gypsies,” she said.

And I believed her.  If you knew my mom, then you knew that she attracted all things that were strange and weird and crazy because she, herself, was strange and weird and crazy.

Just the other night, I remembered how once, when I was a teenager, we were lost in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but country and cows.  I think she may have been looking for a yard sale that was way, way, way outside of town … but regardless of the reason, we wound up in nowhere and when my mom decided, finally, to turn us around, she backed us right into a ditch.

And now we had a problem, because the car was sloped at an angle and the gas wasn’t reaching the engine.  This was long before cellphones.  We were good and stuck.

But then, the craziest thing happened.  We happened to be really close to this old farmhouse and the next thing we knew, the front door opened and seemingly every extra from the TV show The Waltons just poured out of the house, all these burly young men, heading right for us.

We were a little scared.

But you know what they did?  They got down in that ditch and they lifted the backend of the car and set us right again.

It was absolutely insane and I’m telling you things like that happened with my mom all the time.

Her boyfriends ranged from a schizophrenic Vietnam Vet who was missing most of his intestines due to cancer from Agent Orange, to an alcoholic school bus driver who claimed to have a metal plate in his head, to a Nigerian soccer player—actually she never went on a date with the Nigerian soccer player, I think because when he called her to set up the date, she mistook him for her grandfather who had been dead for several years.

Even my mom’s best friend was wacky enough that she and my mom referred to themselves as Thelma and Louise.  I told my mom I wasn’t comfortable with that comparison.  That movie didn’t end well or begin well or have anything go well for them at any point in their lives.

But my mom’s life routinely put her in the path of people that the rest of society often turns a blind eye to.  My mom couldn’t turn a blind eye to anything or anyone.  She noticed everyone.

When my mom gave a few dollars to the homeless man who knocked on her front door ever so often, the man she referred to as Santa, she didn’t give him money to make herself feel better.  Giving to him didn’t lift her up.  She gave the money to him because she knew what it was like to beg.  She knew what it was like to have nothing.  When she gave to him, she didn’t think she was better than him—if she gave him two dollars it was because that was all she had—she gave to him because she knew that deep down, they were the same.

Like those men who came out of that farmhouse and got down in that ditch to lift up our car, my mom got down in the ditch with you, even if it meant she had to stay there with you for a long while and get pretty muddy.

My mom was friends with the mentally ill and drug addicts because she herself was mentally ill and had problems with addiction.  And even though she was never addicted to any illegal drugs and even though she was frequently the sanest person on the psych ward, she never considered herself better than anyone.

My mom didn’t love her neighbor as she loved herself, per Jesus’ commandment.  She loved her neighbor precisely because loving herself was so hard.  She saw value and worth in people who were not used to being valued. 

In today’s Gospel reading from Luke 11:37-52, we are shown another example of “tough love” Jesus.  Jesus is fired up in these verses.  I’m imagining a lot of finger wagging on his part as he warns the Pharisees and the lawyers, not once, but six times, saying “Woe to you Pharisees!” twice and “Woe to you lawyers!” twice and simply “Woe to you,” another two times.

Now, it is very easy to just read these verses and say, “Well, look there’s Jesus giving another tongue lashing to the Pharisees.  I’m sure they deserved it.  And of course, the lawyers deserved it.”

Apparently, no one has liked lawyers since the dawn of creation.

But we need to look specifically at what Jesus is calling them out for because it ties directly into what I was just talking about with my mom.  Jesus was upset with them because they were not following that basic commandment—to love their neighbors as themselves. 

He accused the Pharisees of thinking they were better than everyone else because they followed those strict rules of law and he accused the lawyers of making life difficult for people with no care to their suffering.

Jesus tells the Pharisees that they may think they’re special, but in verse 44, they “are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without realizing it.”

Sadly, little has changed in two thousand years, except that Jesus is no longer speaking to just the Pharisees and lawyers, he is speaking to us.

Even in today’s first reading from Jeremiah 22:11-17, we are given warning again about putting ourselves above others.  Verse 13 reads: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages.”

Later, verses 15-16 basically say that to treat the poor and needy with justice and righteousness is to know God.

Think back, for a moment, to Matthew, chapter 14, when Jesus feeds the five thousand with only five loaves of bread and two fish.  When Jesus instructs the disciples to bring the fish and the bread to the people, he does so for one simple reason … they are hungry.  He doesn’t instruct the disciples to ask the people for proof that they are hungry.  He doesn’t ask them to question the people as to why they hadn’t brought food with them and been better prepared.  He doesn’t ask the people to pay for the food.  He doesn’t ask them to fill out a twenty-page application for food. 

He feeds them because they are hungry.

Loving our neighbors as ourselves means avoiding—though it is human nature to do so—comparing ourselves to others.  Because you cannot compare, even with the best of intentions, without judgement.

We may strive to see Jesus in everyone we meet, but we also need to see a little bit of ourselves in everyone we meet in order to be empathetic, in order to avoid judgement, in order to love.

My mom spent the last three years of her life taking care of her father.  He had dementia and required constant care.  She was his sole caretaker.  She could not leave him alone, ever.  He needed to be bathed and dressed and fed and watched.

For years I have wondered why she did it, why she basically sacrificed her life for his.  And it’s complicated.  I know she did it because it gave her purpose.  I know she did it because she was terrified of being alone.

But I also know that before you can give your life for another, you have to see a bit of yourself in that person.

After all, that’s what Jesus did—he saw a bit of himself in everyone.

Amen.