The Whole Head is Sick (A Nation in the Mirror)

I wrote earlier this week about a small ritual I’ve fallen into over the years. Every Sunday morning, before I leave for church, I stand in front of the mirror for a few quiet seconds.

Not to fix anything.

Not to judge.

Just to notice.

It’s a way of asking a simple question: am I actually here? Or am I about to step into the world performing a version of myself I’ve learned to play?

Lately it feels like something similar is happening at a much larger scale. As if, through certain stories that keep resurfacing — the Epstein situation being one of them — we’re being made to stand still long enough to look at ourselves again. Not individually this time, but collectively. As a nation.

Not the version we project.

Not the version we narrate.

But the version that shows up when the lights are too bright to look away.

Which is why I keep coming back to this line from Isaiah:

“The whole head is sick,

and the whole heart faint.

From the sole of the foot even to the head,

there is no soundness in it…”

(Isaiah 1:5–6)

Isaiah isn’t talking about one person. He’s talking about a body. A society. A people.

Not some people are broken.

But: the system itself is unwell.

That feels like what makes these stories so disturbing. Not just that terrible things happened — but how long they went on, how many systems failed, how much power insulated itself, how many voices weren’t believed or were taught not to trust themselves in the first place.

It doesn’t feel like an isolated wound.

It feels like a symptom.

Isaiah’s imagery is almost medical. Bruises. Sores. Open wounds. This is the language of trauma, not just morality. Diagnosis, not condemnation. He’s less interested in blame and more interested in truth.

Something in the body is not well.

And the temptation, when confronted with that, is to go in one of two directions. Either we turn it into spectacle — tracing connections, naming villains, feeding the outrage machine. Or we turn it into despair — shrugging and saying, “This is just how the world is.”

Isaiah refuses both.

He doesn’t offer conspiracy.

He doesn’t offer collapse.

He offers a mirror.

And then he offers something almost disappointingly simple:

“Seek justice.

Rescue the oppressed.

Defend the orphan.

Plead for the widow.”

No grand solution.

No cosmic fix.

Just a slow, costly reorientation of the body toward the vulnerable.

As if healing doesn’t begin with uncovering every secret,

but with changing what we protect.

Maybe Epstein isn’t the disease.

Maybe he’s a lesion that reveals it.

A visible wound exposing invisible systems. A story that forces us to notice patterns we’ve learned to normalize — power without accountability, silence rewarded, victims carrying the burden of proof, institutions more concerned with reputation than repair.

In that sense, this isn’t really about one man. It’s about a culture learning to see itself again.

The whole head is sick.

The whole heart is faint.

Which is not an invitation to shame.

It’s an invitation to honesty.

Because you can’t heal a body that refuses to admit it’s wounded.

And maybe that’s what the mirror is for — whether it’s the one in my bathroom on a Sunday morning, or the one Isaiah holds up to a nation.

Not to fix ourselves.

Not to perform remorse.

But simply to stand still long enough to see what is actually there.

And then, quietly, to begin the work of becoming a body that knows how to care for its most fragile parts again.

Your pastor, physically sick about what is we are hearing, Brook