Ascending and Descending with Power

**Rev. Kyle Hackmann** (0:00)
You're listening to the Christ Church Toronto Podcast, a recording of the Sunday Sermons of Christ Church Toronto.
Christ Church Toronto is located in Toronto's East End and seeks to practice the ancient Christian faith today. We would love for you to join us in the future. Until then, here is today's scripture reading.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:23)
Today's scripture reading is from Acts, Chapter 2, verses 1 to 13
When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly, there came from heaven a sound, like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound, the multitude came together. And they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Chirini, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.
And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? But others, mocking, said, They are filled with new wine. This is the word of the Lord for our church, and it is given for our good.

**Rev. Kyle Hackmann** (1:50)
Well, in 2012, a journalist named Laurie Gottlieb had actually decided she was done with journalism, and kind of somewhat frustrated with the state of journalism, and she became a therapist. And she ended up pending an article in the New York Times magazine entitled, What Brand is Your Therapist? It went a bit viral in a 2012 way. What brand is your therapist? And the article wasn't so much about branding and marketing, but it was more about a shift that she experienced in the therapeutic culture, especially in North America. She noted that people were no longer coming to therapists, sort of wanting to understand themselves better, and wanting to seek tools through which they might change and become different people. But they were coming to therapists raising problems outside of themselves, and showing others who needed to change, and asking for the therapists for tips as to how to help others around them change. And in the article, she spends some time talking about the ways in which she fails to start her therapy practice, and a marketing consultant comes along and tells her that rather than sort of saying, I treat people with depression and anxiety on her pamphlets, she needed to say something like, are you having trouble with difficult people in your life? I can help.
She notes this sort of shift in the counseling world, and she's writing in 2012 Well, last month, another article came along and kind of picked up something of this theme by a man named Jonathan Alpert. He's a psychotherapist and an author, and he penned an op-ed piece that was related to the release of his new book, Therapy Nation. And this article was widely circulated, and someone in this congregation sent it to me, so I thought it would be a good illustration. And in this article, he argues that the situation actually that Godley had noticed has only gotten worse. And he starts by telling the story of what it feels like to be a therapist in his world, and he tells the story of a client coming into his office. And she's absolutely in a mess of frustration and anger. She's absolutely furious. And he finds out that the reason she's furious is that the client had a friend who she was supposed to meet for dinner and that client canceled last minute via text. Alpert said the patient, by the time she had come to his office, had already framed the whole episode through therapeutic speak, through therapeutic language. The friend was now toxic, the exchange became a violation of boundaries, and the hurt itself was elevated into the realm of trauma. And the client had already diagnosed her friend's pathologies. Alpert writes, what my client didn't have access to was introspection. He goes on to write this, which I thought was very helpful. For years, my profession has trained clinicians to elevate validation over challenge, affirmation over interpretation, and emotional fluency over the harder work of behavior change. What has followed is the rise of a grievance culture dressed up as psychological sophistication.