In a moving New York Times op-ed, David Brooks reflects on a dear friend's suicide after battling depression for three years. Brooks had struggled with how to best serve his friend during this period and said the most useful thing he did was sharing the video of Michael Gerson's beautiful 13-minute sermon at the Washington National Cathedral on his depression and faith. (Gerson died less than four years later at age 58.)

For a link to the full transcript and an excerpt, see below the fold.

Washington National Cathedral, Michael Gerson (Feb. 17, 2019):

When your Dean and I were conspiring about when I might speak, I think he mentioned February 3rd as a possibility. A sermon by me on that date would have been considerably less interesting, because I was, at that point, hospitalized for depression. Or maybe it would have been more interesting, though less coherent.

Like nearly one in ten Americans — and like many of you — I live with this insidious, chronic disease. Depression is a malfunction in the instrument we use to determine reality. The brain experiences a chemical imbalance and wraps a narrative around it. So the lack of serotonin, in the mind’s alchemy, becomes something like, “Everybody hates me.” Over time, despair can grow inside you like a tumor. …

All of us — whatever our natural serotonin level — look around us and see plenty of reason for doubt, anger and sadness. A child dies, a woman is abused, a schoolyard becomes a killing field, a Typhoon sweeps away the innocent. If we knew or felt the whole of human suffering, we would drown in despair. By all objective evidence, we are arrogant animals, headed for the extinction that is the way of all things. We imagine that we are like gods, and still drop dead like flies on the windowsill. …

My own experience is tied to this place. Let me turn to an earlier, happier part of my journals, from May 2nd, 2002:

It has probably been a month since some prompting of God led me to a more disciplined Christian life. One afternoon I was led to the Cathedral, the place I feel most secure in the world. I saw the beautiful sculpture in the Bishop’s Garden — the prodigal son melting into his father’s arms — and the inscription how he fell on his neck, and kissed him. I felt tears and calm, like something important had happened to me and in me … My goals are pretty clear. I want to stop thinking about myself all the time. I want to be a mature disciple of Jesus, not a casual believer. I want to be God’s man.

I have failed at these goals in a disturbing variety of ways. And I have more doubts than I did on that day. These kind of experiences may result from inspiration … or indigestion. Your brain may be playing tricks. Or you may be feeling the beating heart of the universe. Faith, thankfully, does not preclude doubt. It consists of staking your life on the rumor of grace.

This experience of pulling back the curtain of materiality, and briefly seeing the landscape of a broader world, comes in many forms. It can be religious and non-religious, Christian and non-Christian. We sometimes search for a hidden door when the city has a hundred open gates. But there is this difference for a Christian believer: At the end of all our striving and longing we find, not a force, but a face. All language about God is metaphorical. But the metaphor became flesh and dwelt among us. …

Here is how G.K. Chesterton described this experience in a poem called “The Convert”:

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

It is impossible for anyone but saints to live always on that mountaintop. I suspect that there are people here today — and I include myself — who are stalked by sadness, or stalked by cancer, or stalked by anger. We are afraid of the mortality that is knit into our bones. We experience unearned suffering, or give unreturned love, or cry useless tears. And many of us eventually grow weary of ourselves — tired of our own sour company. …

Many, understandably, pray for a strength they do not possess. But God’s promise is somewhat different: That even when strength fails, there is perseverance. And even when perseverance fails, there is hope. And even when hope fails, there is love. And love never fails.

So how do we know this? How can anyone be so confident?

Because we are Lazarus, and we live.

I have blogged about Michael Gerson two other times:

• The Defiant Hope Of Christmas: God Is With Us (Dec. 27, 2020)
• Christmas And The Two Men Who Died In 2022 Taught Me How To Live (Dec. 25, 2022)

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