Sermon 2.22.26 Don't Ignore Your Symptoms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TF5DtNDnmI

I’m interested to know how everyone’s Lenten disciplines are going.

We’re through the first half week,

We have our traditional Scripture readings about resisting temptation,

About Jesus spending 40 days in the Wilderness (just as the Hebrew people spent 40 years in the Wilderness before finding the promised land),

We’re reminded that we have almost all of Lent to go before Easter.

So, How’s it going?

However you are doing, just remember that the most important thing is not where you start, but where you end up.

Don’t give up, even if things haven’t started great.

Make each day a new start.

Remember that none of us is Jesus.

Now, what I really want to talk about with you all this morning is semiotics.

Have you ever had someone ask you, “what’s your sign?”

Then you tell them, “I’m a Taurus.”

And they look at you with those knowing eyes and smile politely and say, “that explains so much.”

And that used to be good enough, but now there are more questions, like “what’s your moon phase,” or “what planet was ascending.”

Honestly I’m making that part up, because of my ignorance, but people who take astrology seriously have a whole host of knowledge about certain details of your birth and what they mean.

This is a form, but not the totality of semiotics.

Semiotics is the study of symbolism and how it works. It is the theory that underpins how people like astrologers, or artists, or writers use signs as symbols.

The use of one object to depict another object or an abstract concept is as old as sentient life.

It begins with our need for survival.

A rustling of leaves, warned our primitive ancestors and pre-historic animals alike, “danger,” and that is a sign.

The rustling leaves represent the possibility that something that could eat us is hiding nearby.

A baby’s cries tell us that our child needs food, or to be changed.

That too is a sign, an audio cue that stands in for some other information that we need to heed.

In our current culture, and in many places around the world, if you are driving on the road and you see a red octagon with writing on it, whether it says “stop” or a word in another language,

You can be pretty sure that it is a sign that means, “don’t roll straight through this intersection.”

The sign stands in for the instruction.

I think we get it.

What we see with semiotics is a double layer of meaning: what we see, and what’s under the surface.

Interestingly, the first philosophical exploration of semiotics did not begin with poetry’s symbolic expressions, or sculpture’s iconic images, with frescoes or mosaics, with music or another form of ancient art.

As far as we can tell, semiotics was first explored in the writings of philosopher and physician Hippocrates 2,500 years ago.

He is the guy from whom we get the Hippocratic oath in the study of medicine.

As you can imagine, in ancient cultures, when someone got sick, the solution was most often a religious one rather than a medical one.

This is because disease does not usually just present itself fully to human observation.

Things like bacteria and viruses are too small for people to see.

And so, if there was a plague, it was not from a tiny, microscopic organism that hitched a ride on a flea-bitten rat,

It was the god Apollo, who was angry and shooting his invisible arrows at the victims of the malady.

We look at these things and scoff maybe, but our ancestors were not stupid, we wouldn’t be here if they were.

This is part of the reason that we have taboos, actually, prohibitions like the one that we get in our Genesis reading, or the laws about which Paul is telling the Romans.

“don’t go to that part of the river, it has evil spirits.”

“do not covet your neighbor’s property.”

“do not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden.”

We often hear these things in our modern world and we think how silly it is to have these kinds of prohibitions,

Like they were simply put into practice as a way to curtail our freedom.

And perhaps that is true sometimes, but semiotics tells us that perhaps there is some unspoken wisdom beneath the surface that we are ignoring, if we just dismiss the signs as spurious and controlling.

You may remember the story, I’ve told before of Wangai Maathari, the Kenyan environmentalist who grew up hearing from her tribal elders, “you can cut down any tree in the land, but never cut down a fig tree.”

She thought that it was superstitious nonsense.

But later in life as drought and famine began to affect her land, a symptom caused by the deforestation of her homeland,

She came to understand that of all the trees in the land, the fig was the one whose roots brought water to the surface for all of the other plants and trees.

“You can cut down any tree, but the fig tree,” then, was not just a prohibition, but pre-scientific folk wisdom about the proper balance of the ecosystem.

In life and culture, as in the medicine of Hippocrates, there are symptoms and there are causes of the symptoms: there is the sign and the thing that the sign represents.

For the rest of our time together this morning, I want to focus on two things that are crucial learnings from this discussion of semiotics:

1.     Never confuse the symptoms for the thing itself.

2.     Don’t ignore your symptoms.

Let’s start with the first one: never confuse the symptoms for the thing itself.

Earlier I asked you all how your Lenten disciplines are going.

I want to ask you a sort of provocative question about that now.

What if your inability to hold to your discipline is the symptom and not the thing itself?

In trauma-informed care, we talk a lot about behaviors, covering emotions, and triggers.

What these three things have in common is that they are the symptom and not the sign.

A behavior is the outward expression of something that is happening inside of you: do you have too much pent-up energy? Is there something happening in your life that you cannot talk about and so it comes out sideways somewhere else? Do you just need to sing like no one is listening, but actually you’re in the middle of a crowded room and everyone is listening?

Do you really need someone to pay attention to you, but you’re being ignored, or you feel invisible?

These things and more will bring out a behavior, but the behavior is not the thing itself, it is the sign of the thing.

So, if you gave up chocolate for Lent, let’s say.

You may need to notice that the behavior of eating chocolate is tied to something inside of you that is deeper than just a love of chocolate.

If you struggle to keep that discipline, it may not be a failure against temptation, but confusing the symptom for the thing itself.

Likewise, a covering emotion, especially something like anger, is a symptom of something that is happening inside of you.

A few years ago, when I was doing some continuing education around parenting and emotions, we were given one of those iceberg pictures.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen them (we have an iceberg model in the College for Congregational Development as well)

The iceberg model is this idea that there is some ice above the surface of the water, but the majority of the ice is below the water.

This particular iceberg was focused on the emotion of anger.

Above the service were a few things like anger, frustration, and rage.

Below the surface were about 40 undercover emotions that express themselves as anger.

Disrespect, loneliness, grief, shame, danger, helplessness, powerlessness, anxiety, embarrassment, sadness, etc…

What the iceberg shows is that anger – just like behavior - is the symptom of something that is happening deeper inside.

And so, if you’ve ever tried to give up anger, but have not tried to explore what makes you angry, or what manifests as anger in your life, then you may have failed to hold your temper, when you tried your absolute best not to lose it.

The final piece to this puzzle of symptoms that masquerade as the thing itself is to talk about triggers.

A trigger, as the metaphorical symbol implies, is the thing that sets off the reaction.

This is sort of in between symptoms and the things themselves.

We each have things that signal to our brain certain states of being.

They are often deeply subconscious.

A certain situation subconsciously puts us in a state of fear, or anxiety, or joy because of a past experience.

I may personally love a big hug, and I want to give everyone around me a big bear hug, because to me that feels like inclusion and love and comfort.

But, if you approach someone who has experienced abuse, a big bear hug may trigger bodily memories of confinement, powerlessness, and trauma.

That bear hug, then, may trigger a behavior or a covering emotion.

It could be that the person explodes in anger, it could be that they were visiting your church, but they don’t feel safe anymore, so they don’t come back.

Whatever the response is, it is activated by the trigger.

If you have struggled with a Lenten discipline, could it be that your behavior or emotion is being triggered and you have not addressed the trigger?

In all of these things (the behavior, the covering emotion, and the trigger), if we mistake the symptom for the thing itself, then we may have a hard time gaining freedom from the symptom.

And isn’t this the same with sin?

Sometimes we take the surface level “sin” and think, “if only I could stop doing … this.”

The Christian idea of sin is much more complex than most people give it credit for.

The Apostle Paul tries to give us a clue.

For the most part, we have received this idea that sins (plural) are the real problem.

“Lord, I sinned today in these 50 ways,” or “Lord, look at those sinners living in sin, they always do these 50 things against your holy law.”

But actually, what Paul shows us, especially when he talks about the “sin that clings so close,” is not the individual sins that we all commit, but the singular Sin, what theologians have called Original Sin.

Notice how Paul talks about the “One Sin” and the “One free gift.”

“For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.”

Later in Romans 8, Paul will talk about his inability to “do the thing he wants.”

He finds that there is some flaw in his human nature that leads him to do the “thing he doesn’t want.”

Our individual sins, then, are a symptom of the deeper problem.

They are not the thing itself.

So many people stop at the surface.

This would be like saying that the things that were offered to Jesus were the real problem, as if eating bread, or trusting in God, or having power were evil and sinful in themselves.

The sin is not the symptom, but would have been the replacing of God with the tempter as God.

The question is not about symptom, but about what it represents.

Along these lines, we often hear things about how certain ways of life are sinful just by their very nature.

This is nonsense.

People used to excoriate interracial marriage: but how can true love properly exercised be sinful?

It has often been thought that certain ways of being black were in and of themselves sinful.

Ross Gay, a contemporary essayist and author of the Book of Delights, talks about the perception of black loitering as an inherently malicious act.

He explores how the delight of community and rest were seen as the “sin” of anti-productiveness in an economy based on black labor.

But, rest and relaxation are not a sin. It only becomes a problem, when drugs that destroy human lives are part of that picture, or when gun violence and grooming become part of that picture.

Loitering by itself is not the problem.

In the wake of losing the beloved and powerful prophetic voice of Jesse Jackson this week, we should be reminded even more by his witness that “sin is not reckoned when there is no law.”

Or another way of putting it, sometimes our laws make sinful what does not actually touch on the nature of what sin really is.

Sometimes the symptom is taken as sin, when it’s actually not the real thing.

This is why I say, don’t mistake the symptom for the thing itself.

To close out, I want to say that if the symptom is often mistaken for the thing itself, that does not mean that we should ignore the symptoms.

They are the thing that tells us something is wrong.

They are the impetus to do a deeper search, not the end of the game.

Don’t ignore your symptoms, they’re telling you something.

We often ignore symptoms either because as we have just discussed, we see them as not being the real thing,

Or more often, because we have made them seem normal.

I know that I have a lot of teachers in the room, and working professionals who get busy during the day.

How many times do you ignore your body, when it’s telling that it’s time to go to the bathroom?

You don’t have to answer.

How many times do we ignore or body telling us we are hungry, or thirsty for water, and we ignore it, because we have so many things to do?

How many people have I known, who ignored back pain or abdominal pain or changes in bodily patterns and then discovered it was stage 4 cancer?

Our symptoms are meant to tell us something.

If you are struggling with something in your life, sin or otherwise, don’t normalize it: signs are meant to be explored below the surface.

And do you know what our biggest obstacle can be?

Individualism.

We don’t want to let anyone else in. we can learn all we need to know by ourselves without the shame or embarrassment of letting another person in.

Relationships of trust and accountability are the hallmark of Christian life.

We don’t have to fight every battle on our own. Even Jesus on the night before he died and in times of trouble asked his disciples to go and pray with him.

If you’re struggling with a symptom of sin, or symptom of body, tell someone who you can trust.

Maybe they can help you determine the deeper issue, or at least hold you accountable for exploring further with a professional: a doctor, a priest, a psychologist, or a spiritual director.

Don’t fight your symptoms, whatever they are, alone.

My brothers and sisters. The beginning of Lent gives us an opportunity not just to talk about sin and Lenten disciplines,

But to explore how and why these things affect our lives,

How the freedom that Jesus offers from sin can become even more real in our lives.

The crucifixion itself is a symptom of a culture both political and religious that was so focused on symptoms that they failed to realize the real thing they were doing.

They put the eternal love of God to a shameful and sinful death.

But, we are more than conquerors because we know that sin and death did not get the final word.

Sin has been conquered, but we still have its symptoms among us.

If you are serious about living into freedom from sin, pay attention to what your symptoms are, learn that they are not the real thing, but a sign of a deeper issue, and never never ignore your symptoms.

And now in the name of the God who created you, the Christ who redeemed you, and the Holy Spirit who walks the path with you and empowers you with boldness to overcome every evil,

Be glad, you righteous, and rejoice in the Lord; *shout for joy, all who are true of heart.

Lift every voice and sing ‘til earth and heaven ring with the harmonies of liberty.

For when last enemy, sin is defeated, we will all truly be free.