The Rev. Kate Braestrup delivers her sermon “In the Country of the Gerasenes” during the morning worship service on Sunday in the Amphitheater.
What does it mean to be a chaplain to game wardens? “It means I show up and love my neighbor, however and whoever needs it. And I hope and pray that my love is sufficient and serves God,” said the Rev. Kate Braestrup.
Braestrup preached at the 10:45 a.m. Sunday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermon title was “In the Country of the Gerasenes,” and the scripture reading was Mark 5: 1-20.
She began her sermon by explaining what the Maine Warden Service does and her role within the service. The wardens are empowered, much like state troopers, but their mission is off the asphalt: They respond to fish and wildlife law and other outdoor accidents.
“They respond to boating accidents, people being lost in the woods, even homicides and suicides,” she said. “When it is likely to be fatal, they call the chaplain.” Game wardens responded to the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, in 2023, and Braestrup was there.
Braestrup called herself a very practical theologian. She said, “I come back to God’s love. What does that love look like? One way to know is if the neighbor is better off, or at least no worse than before they were loved. If they are dead, then the answer is no.”
Thomas, a man possessed by demons, ran into the river in his town. His terror was the result of psychosis and substances.
“Thomas’ death will not be counted among the 100,000-plus people who overdosed last year,” Braestrup said. “Thomas drowned, but addiction has marked him for death — he could have died of Hep C, frozen to death, or murder.”
Thomas had a home, which Braestrup said is true of many unhoused people. He had a home with his mother in a small apartment. She asked him to stop trashing the apartment, to stop stealing from her and to stop assaulting her. When he could not follow these requests, she kicked him out.
There is a “shambolic” encampment of homeless people along the Kennebec River in Waterville, Maine.
“Every city has one of these encampments,” Braestrup said. In the old days, people with mental illness or addictions were housed in asylums. “There were concerns about abuse so now we have encampments and prisons and shelters. There are the de facto new institutions. In Bangor, Maine, there are modern-day demoniacs living in graveyards.”
One of the perks of Braestrup’s call is that she gets to see a lot of places new to her in Maine, but Waterville was not a new town for her. She and her son Zach lived in Waterville while her first husband was going to the warden academy. She loved exploring the former mill town and going to the art museum at Colby College.
She felt that Waterville and Maine in the 1980s were infused with goodness when compared to other places she had lived, like New York City or Washington D.C., where drugs and gang wars were in the news.
Periodically, Braestrup and her family would visit other family in New York. One day she was walking with her family on 69th Street on their way to the Central Park Zoo. There was a man in ragged clothes lying on the frozen sidewalk.
“Zach tugged my sleeve and asked, ‘Shouldn’t we stop and help him?’ ” Braestrup said. “He was brought up in Maine and when there was a neighbor in need of help, we did. He had not learned to pass by on the other side. He had to learn that things are different in New York City.”
While the dive team was looking for Thomas’ body, his friends and neighbors stood by. They were skinny, sick, missing teeth, had ulcerated wounds and either acted feral or like zombies.
A young man with curly hair, while talking to Braestrup — wearing her warden’s uniform with a clerical collar — injected a timed dose of a drug into his foot and then dropped the hypodermic needle in the grass. It was disconcerting for Braestrup.
The folks in this encampment live in nice tents, they have donated clothes, new underwear and socks and hand-knitted afghans. Waterville has heated shelters, but they are unpopular because people cannot use drugs in them.
“They have meals and Narcan. From a distance the place resembles a family campground but this one is strewn with or clogged with discarded trash,” she said. There are discarded gifts of new shoes, afghans and sleeping bags.
Why is this, Braestrup asked the congregation. “Because these are not actually poor people,” she said. “They have a lot of stuff and money to buy drugs. The curly-haired guy spends $40 a hit for five hits a day.”
She continued, “Thomas and the curly-haired guy are neighbors. How are we supposed to love them? If they are not poor, they don’t need money. If they aren’t cold, do they need afghans? Why are we giving our neighbors what they do not need and failing to give what might save them?”
There was a time when people could be arrested and they might detox in jail and perhaps sober up. “I know three people who say being in prison saved their life,” Braestrup said.
Today, we are nice to people, she told the congregation. An addict can have a SNAP card (supplemental nutrition assistance program), access to social workers, she said, and lots of nice stuff.
“We are nice. We decriminalized all the red flags of this disease. We are now forced to pass by on the other side,” Braestrup said.
While the Waterville Fire Department made the effort to find and save Thomas, and then the wardens’ dive team looked for his body, his neighbors were ransacking his belongings to find things to sell.
Maybe they will find a way off the street, she said, but they have to make a voluntary choice and most of them prefer drugs. “Sometimes they reach for a lifeline and are welcomed home, but that does not happen often.”
Braestrup said that the only people in the Gospels Jesus could not help were those with mental illness. “Their choice machine was broken. We want to solve the madness but we haven’t. It is madness to project niceness on God. We are overlooking what scripture demands — that love demands looking at reality with courage and truth.”
She continued, “What do you want for your child? What does God want for you? Right now all of us are being taught moral blindness, to pass by on the other side. Please, God, make us servants to answer at your throne, make us wise instruments of your love.” The congregation applauded.
The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor for Chautauqua Institution, presided. Deborah Sunya Moore, senior vice president and chief program officer at Chautauqua Institution, read the scripture. The prelude was “Carillon,” by Louis Vierne, played on the Massey Memorial Organ by Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist. The Chautauqua Choir, under the direction of Stafford, sang a capella “Lord, sanctify me wholly,” music by Thomas Ken and words by Jean Pasquet. The offertory anthem was “Insanae et vanae curae, by Franz Joseph Haydn, sung by the Chautauqua Choir under the direction of and accompanied by Stafford on the Massey Organ. The postlude, played by Stafford on the Massey Organ, was Vierne’s “Toccata in B-flat Minor.” Support for this week’s services and chaplaincy is provided by the Jackson-Carnahan Memorial Chaplaincy and the John William Tyrrell Endowment for Religion.
