6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
This is one of those messages where I’m going to speak directly to the high school seniors here with us this morning, and everyone else can, if you wish, listen in. Because, as we’ve all discovered, a big chunk of who we are now, no matter how old we are, was being formed right about the time these young people are living in today. So if I say something relevant to them, let your eighteen year old ears hear, too. Because they are still listening.
I’ve been talking the last several weeks about the Twelve Step Program. About which it is my hope that none of you will ever have to become more acquainted with it than you what you will hear about it today. So, if you listen closely to these 6th and 7th steps of the Twelve Steps, I believe we can help that goal of future ignorance about the 12 Steps to be a real one.
But first, don’t think you are immune from the potential need for this program. Forty years ago, right about now, on a Sunday like this one, I was sitting in a church that I never missed a Sunday attending. I was president of the church’s youth group, and I was surrounded by a loving and large family who filled many pews of that church. We, too, the class of 1967, were being honored as graduating Seniors.
One year later, 1 of my classmates was dead, in an unpopular war not unlike the one some of your classmates will end up in. Five years later, 1 more was dead from the war, 2 had their brains cooked by Southeast Asia heroin or Vietnamese speed, and there were already, as I remember it, about ten failed marriages in a class of 115 people. Ten years later, two people were in prison, at least one had died in an alcohol related auto death, and I didn’t know anyone, except the Mennonite kids, who hadn’t tried, at least, marijuana, and much else that was available at the time. And many of us were drinking with a great deal of regularity and a few of us were drinking with a whole lot of compulsion. And not a single one of us would have said ten years before that we would be dead, addicted, divorced, in prison, or the least bit unhappy.
But, it is easy to see now, many of us were.
And I also remember how I would have reacted if someone in 1967, had stood up that day in church and said, “Here’s what’s going to happen to your class over the next ten years.” I’d have been choking on my own laughter, maybe even getting angry at such a pessimistic prophecy. “We’re different,” I would have shouted with the full and righteous conviction that 18 year olds then had about themselves and their generation. “We’re not our parents! We’re going to make a difference in the world!”
That kind of attitude said so much about who many of us thought we were back then. Our parents had lived through a Depression, fought and won a terrible and noble and sacrificial war against genuine evil, yet we didn’t want to be like them. We were different.
You might be saying, thinking the same thing. And, you know what?, this time you’re right- you are different than young people were forty years ago. You’re about an inch taller, on average, and your life expectancy is between five and six years longer. You’ve got much more knowledge, good and bad. You know way more stuff than the average 18 year old in 1967 did. You know science and technical language about things that hadn’t even been thought of forty ears ago. But you’ve also go all the junk from 115 cable and Dish channels in there, too, and most of you have had that inflowing all your lives. You know probably ten times more about Paris Hilton than I did about the Beatles. You actually, whether you want to or not, have opinions, based on huge amounts of information, about people like Kevin Federline, Britney Spears, and Lindsey Lohan.
And, you also have available to you something inconceivable forty years ago. This- well, something that looks like this (crytal meth). Cruise the edges of Main Street here or in other nearby towns tonight, or, if you prefer, Google up a recipe for it. You know it’s right there. This stuff, maybe more than anything else, makes your generation different from any other. Because 24 hours from now, after 2 or 3 puffs of this, your soul can belong to a multi-billionaire in Mexico, who will begin a two, three, maybe four if you’re lucky, a few year process of squeezing every dollar from you, your loved ones, and every unfortunate sucker who comes near your lies during that time.
You do this tonight, and within a couple years, you can come see me at Thursday afternoon chapel over at the jail. If you’re alive.
I know I’m shocking other people more than I’m shocking you, because you’ve already seen what this stuff has done to some of your peers. Because you are different than we were- in absolutely stunning and wonderful ways, but in some horrid ones as well.
I know each of you is prepared, and probably already have had the opportunity to say “No, no, no” to this and other stuff. But, I also know that over the next several years you will be making discoveries about yourselves- your brains, at this age, are exactly at the place, cognitively, that you will begin to examine your beliefs about he world and about yourselves. You will have the ability, and it will develop further over the next 2 or 3 years, to think critically about what it is you believe. You will be developing a worldview. You will discover, and want to something about- here comes Step Six- you will discover defects in your character.
Don’t be insulted by that statement. None of us, grew up in the Garden of Eden. Stuff, as the bumper stickers used to say, Stuff Happens. And you’re going to sometimes find things out about yourselves that you want to change. You want that to happen, that’s a good thing. Here’s a story from the gospel of John, Chapter 5, about a defective guy who really went about dealing with his defectiveness in a screwed up way:
John 5: 1-3 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Notice that when Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be made well, the man didn’t answer “Yes!” He made a whiney excuse instead. He’d learned to live with his defectiveness. He maybe even had grown used to and enjoyed the special attention it brought to him. It certainly gave him a good excuse to not try anything new. He’d grown satisfied living a half life.
Don’t be satisfied, ever, living a half life. The man in this story had learned to live with his disability. He had learned to feel sorry for himself, to make excuses, to be comfortable in his discomfort. He had redefined what living meant in order to accommodate his circumstances. He had come to love his mat more than the dream he once had to get up off of that mat.
It’s why Jesus’ question to him- “Do you want to get well?”- was so important. It was a question the man had stopped asking himself. It was too scary of a question for the man to ask himself. The only way Jesus could demonstrate this oddity of human nature was to go ahead and heal the man anyway. “Stand up, take your mat, and walk,” Jesus told him.
Now when you read the rest of the story you’ll find out that the man wasn’t happy with his having been healed. He went right to the Jewish authorities and tattle-tailed on Jesus for having healed on the Sabbath. I have my doubts whether the man was physically sick in the first place. I think he was kind of like the guy who’s gotten used to laying around in front of the TV, making excuses about not getting up and going outside with real people in a real world, who keeps a long and ready list for anyone who dares to listen of all the aches, pains, trials, and tribulations that life has dumped on him. I think he enjoyed playing sick s that others would say, “poor boy.”
So, it’s a question we must all ask ourselves from time to time, just to make sure we haven’t fallen ourselves into the “poor me, nobody will help me” syndrome. Because the defects of character, which we address in Step Six are laying all around out there, ready to be picked up or inflicted on us.
We really do choose, crazy as it may seem, to pick some of those defects up ourselves. They come in brown and green bottles, or little baggies, or in wrong emotional responses to the world, like anger, or shame. We even cultivate some of them- they don’t all immediately grab our souls like this one does. (the baggie) Two beers a week can become after a year or two, eight to ten beers a night. It’s no longer something we choose to do, it’s something we have to do.
“Do you want to get well?” can be a life-saving question we ask ourselves, courtesy of Jesus.
But, I also said that some of those defects in character can be inflicted on us. Here’s an example, you can explore your own lives and find out the ones that have affected you personally. Pick any one of the Spanish-language talk shows some afternoon and watch. It doesn’t matter which one, because this is always true. The hosts of the show, the people in control, the pretty ones with nice clothes, will be European Mexicans. The crazy people, the ones who fight, dress badly, and have bad haircuts, will be Indian Mexicans. That’s a choice the producers of those shows make for whatever racist reasons they choose to do so.
But if you’re a young, Spanish speaking kid of Indian background, how do you grow up thinking about yourself in light of what you’ve learned about Indian Mexicans on TV? It affects everything- the average American woman is 5’5”. The average model or television actress is 5’11”. That’s a false defect that has been inflicted on American girls to the point that eating disorders and self-image problems have become a plague. It’s as false as a Mexican talk show.
“Do you want to get well?” Whatever the problem is- and I wish I could tell you there will never be any, but there will- whatever the problem is, its solution starts there, an important question given to you by Jesus himself: “Do you want to get well?”
When the addict is ready to say “Yes” to that question, when anyone is ready to say “Yes” to that question, we are ready to take Step Seven: “We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.”
Our pride, our perceived unique-ness, our human attitude of being oh-so-special is what most often has gotten us into a defective state of being in the first place. Our pride can even be an addiction of its own!
And so that we aren’t here all day, listening to me tell you the 25 most important things that I think you should know as graduating Seniors, let me shoot right to the top of the list and give you the single most important thing I want you to know: If you want to be happy in life, if you want to be satisfied, whole, and happy at 20, 30, 40, and 80 and 90 years of age; if you want to live life with a minimum of regrets, if you want to follow Jesus in a way the most admirable people you know of follow Jesus, forget Pride. Adopt the attitude as soon as possible that life is not about what you get, it’s about what you can give.
Here’s a parable Jesus told:
Luke 18: 10-14 ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’
You think Jesus couldn’t be sarcastic? He scorned the show-off who held himself above the riff-raff. His words were venomous toward those who judged and lorded it over other people. On the other hand, he cherished those who were humble, those who understood their defectiveness, and were willing to quietly, behind the scenes, seek mercy and healing for themselves and others.
Don’t get me wrong here. Be proud, proud as the dickens about that A you will receive on a big term paper. But be prouder of that professor, not for giving you an A, but for enabling you to earn an A. Let him or her know. And be proud of the parents who have helped and are helping make this whole further learning experience happen.
And then take that A and dedicate it and yourself to making the world better.
Sobriety for the addict comes when we begin to see beyond ourselves into the family, the community, and the world around us. Happiness, satisfaction in life, comes the same way. The same way.
Love, and you will be loved. Be instruments of peace, and you will know peace. Give, and it will be given to you. It really is that simple.
(Sing)“And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.” I always wanted to end a message with the Beatle’s shortest song- Paul McCartney at the end of “Abbey Road.” Jesus could have sung it himself.
Come to think of it, he did.
And I hope you will, too.
