Steps 8 and 9 of the 12 Steps: Dancing in Public

Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

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And now back to St. Francis, and the rest of the story. (This message had been preceded by a Children’s Message about St.Francis of Assisi)

He was born a rich kid, the son of a wealthy merchant in Assisi. In this town, he would have been the 16 year old with a Hummer.

But one day, when he was about 18, Francis met a leper on the road to town. Francis offered him some money, but the man refused. “I don’t want your money,” he said, “I would like to have a little of your time.”

Francis had no idea how to react to such a request. So, easily noticing the rags the leper wore, Francis offered to trade his fine clothes for the beggar’s rags. An exchange was made, and Francis was not recognized when he returned to town. He realized then that his many friends in town were not friends of his, but friends of his clothes, his riches. He tried an experiment. He sat down on the steps of the church and begged for money from passersby. And he received their charity.

He returned that evening to his former life, as a party animal. But the experience of that day had affected him. So much so, that his friends accused him being too serious and less fun than he used to be. This hurt Francis, but gave him an opportunity to show himself as the real man he was becoming.

There were no football games in Italy in the year 1212, the year Francis was 20 years old. But periodically, neighboring towns would have a brief war over boundary lines or some similar problem. Perugia was a larger town than Assisi, and declared war on Assisi. Francis and his friends dressed in their finest war clothes, sang a lot of songs, drank a lot of wine, and rode off with the Assisi army to do battle.

It was a slaughter. The Perugians won easily and Francis was taken prisoner and remained a prisoner of war for a whole year. Which gave him a whole year to live without pretense, without the standards of good clothes, superficial friends, or all the work that living the ‘good life’ demanded. He remembered the leper, and how that encounter had made him feel. So he dedicated himself, for however long he would be a prisoner, to helping his fellow prisoners.

He became a nurse, a confidant, an acting priest. He ministered, he served, he suffered with those who were suffering. And he felt more alive, there in prison, than he had ever felt before.

When he was released, he returned to Assisi, went into the church there, and prayed, all by himself. He heard a voice. It said, “Rebuild my church.” He looked up and saw the crumbling walls and peeling paint f the church he was praying in. Assuming that that was the church he had just been requested to rebuild, Francis went to his father’s store, took a bunch of fabric and a horse, and sold them in order to raise the money to rebuild the church.

His father, Piero Bernardone, was very angry. His beloved, spoiled, handsome son had not only stolen from him, but Francis was rejecting all of the values which he, a rich man, had so loved. So Piero had his son arrested, and demanded repayment of the stolen money.

Francis asked his father to meet him in the village square the next day. At that time, he returned what money he had left. He took off his rings, his silver-buckled shoes, and his big-feathered hat and gave those things to his father, too. Francis was taking on the poverty of Jesus, who did not have a home or even a pillow of his own. He knew that, like Jesus, he would also have to give up all of his pride as well, in order to truly walk in Jesus’ footsteps, and the beggar’s footsteps, as best he could.

So he stepped behind some trees in the square, and when he emerged from them, he was holding his clothing in his arms. He gave those clothes to his father. But still, Francis did not feel stripped of his ego; he did not feel empty of himself like he wanted to be in order to be like Jesus. Even as the crowd laughed at him, and his father swore at him, Francis knew he had to do more.

So he danced. He danced to the music of the beggar; he danced to the gratitude of the prisoners he had helped. He danced for Jesus, and left all of his pride, all his reputation, all of his status, there on the ground, upon which he danced.

And he went on, indeed, to rebuild the church.

He only lived for 21 more years. He never again owned more than a cloak and a staff. He lived by begging and if he ever had any coins left at the end of the day, he gave them away, so that he could begin the next day totally dependent on others. Others began to follow him. He single-handedly stopped one of the Crusader’s Wars with Islam by daring to go and talk to and becoming friends with the Muslim leader Saracen. He started way-stations, rest areas for injured soldiers- hopitaliers- hospitals, a brand new concept in the delivery of health care. The Franciscan order is still a major influence in the Catholic Church today. In California, the Franciscans started a mission in the 1500s and named the mission after Francis, San Francisco. His words are in our Methodist hymnal, page 481- “All Creatures of Our God and King.” And we tell his story to children today.

All because Francis dared to lay down his pride. Because he dared to dance.

Step 8, and Step 9 is the addict’s, the alcoholic’s public, humiliating, ego-stripping dance. For those who haven’t had to, try to imagine making a list of everyone who has ever- because of you- been harmed, insulted, betrayed, or cheated by 5 years, 10 years, 40 years of out of control, selfish, chemically altered behavior. This is where the drunk, or anyone who seeks to confront his or her past, must be more courageous than they have ever been before. Who did I borrow money from? Who did I insult? Who did I steal from? Which employers did I give less than my best to? Sometimes- who did I hit, or fight with, or, as must be asked too often, who did I cripple or cause to die?

Sometimes, paying back- money, goods, even time- is possible. More often, acknowledgements- a letter, a personal (and excruciating) personal visit- are necessary. This is not really about making amends- bringing everything back into the balance of the “way it should have been” is impossible. No one can make everything OK again by writing a check.

But it is about being willing to try, to confront the consequences of our actions, and to learn, in the process, about the real meaning of behavior we must, must, must never enter into again.

Step 8: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” Step 8 is about being willing to pick up our cross.

Step 9: “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible.” Step 9 is about being nailed to that cross.

In Luke 19: 1-10, a story is told of Jesus when..

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. ²A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. ³He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. ⁴So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. ⁵When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ ⁶So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. ⁷All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ ⁸Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ ⁹Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’

Jesus was ready to forgive Zaccheus, he always is, but his words demonstrate that he wasn’t ready to forget. The local tax collectors for Rome were, by everyone’s definitions, including their own, sinners. They paid a franchise fee to Rome, promised to pay Rome a certain amount each month, and were allowed to keep anything they collected above and beyond that amount. And they had Roman soldiers to help them do that.

So, of course, the people who saw what was happening in this little scene between Jesus and Zaccheus grumbled. That’s what most people do very well- look for someone whose sin is greater than their own, by their own how-convenient standards, then grumble or cluck their tongues in judgment.

But Jesus never says that there are not civil penalties to pay when we have sinned. We may be forgiven in the divine scheme of things but there are still secular laws to be followed and obeyed. People who are owed money or who have been injured, hurt, or cheated by us while we are in our sin, even though we’ve left that sin, need to be compensated, to the best of our abilities.

Zaccheus knew, as all humans know, the cost of that yin/yang debt which hung on his heart. The elation he felt about being acknowledged by Jesus was being drug down by the methods through which he’d become a rich little man. ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ Now, notice again, Jesus’ answer to that oath was not “Don’t worry about it, Zaccheus, everything’s OK now, you’re saved!”

To the contrary, Jesus accepted Zaccheus’ promise to pay back, to make amends. That promise was the hinge which allowed Jesus to say ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.’ Jesus was not about making Christians, he was about making true Jews. And Zaccheus here demonstrated with his oath that he was a true Jew, a son of Abraham. He was ready to leave behind his status as a Roman puppet, and become again the son of Abraham he was born to be. Zaccheus was willing, like Francis, to dance in public, and Jesus said, “Do it.”

It is useless to sober up, get straight, or leave behind a former harmful way of life, without going back and cleaning up, to the best of our abilities, the messes we left there. Because those messes, like a pair of scissors or a sponge left behind in a surgical procedure, will eventually make us sick again, if we don’t remove them.

During the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980s, I had, as a client one of the Savings and Loan banks in ________. I made many, many trips between that Savings and Loan and a local very cooperative property appraiser and a realtor there. They were flipping properties, sometimes three times in a day. I could watch the paper on the front seat of my car, the title for a local condominium, go in value from $25,000 to $100,000 in one day. And all of those inflated dollars were guaranteed to be paid to the originating Savings and Loan by us- the U.S. taxpayer. Which they were, and still are, I guess.

But it was a deepening mystery to me because this was right about the time I was beginning to pay serious attention to Jesus, who I didn’t know very well. And every week, some of these same men who were flipping condos as fast as most people can shuffle a deck of cards, these guys were in the newspaper, building new church additions, giving scholarships to minority kids, giving their “come to Jesus” testimonies in some of the big Dallas churches.

It didn’t add up for me. And, as we all remember, it didn’t add up for the federal prosecutors or juries either, and most of these guys ended up in jail, including all of the ones that I moved paper for.

That was happening all over Texas, and then all over the U.S., of course. But I happened later, in the 90’s to meet one of the former S&L bigwigs, after he had spent eight years at the Federal Correction Center in Fort Worth. He had had to give up all his assets- his home, his accounts, everything- as fines and penalties before he went to jail. His wife had gotten a job and an apartment and waited.

While he was in Fort Worth, this man met the true Jew. This Jesus was not the cardboard puppet Jesus which he had known before, who he had paid lip service to, and who he grandstanded in churches on behalf of. This was the Jesus who said, “I forgive you, but you’ve got some amends to make.” I met him on a Kairos prison ministry team. He was working two jobs- one as a 40 hour a week paid employee in the bookkeeping bowels of a major retailer, and the other job was as unpaid mentor to a class of ten kids in a _______ high school. That job was 2 hours every day and all day Saturday. He had fallen in love, with Jesus and the “least of these.”

He said that when he met the real Jesus, he found out living was not about what he could make, but what he could give. He still had a load on his heart- he’d been, he knew, a real jerk, just as all of these guys did because they knew exactly what they were doing. But the Jesus part of his heart was getting heavier and better all the time, too. Balance was happening. He said he hoped he would never see his name in the paper again, but he hoped that there was a bunch of kids in that high school who would remember him.

He will never be able to repay. None of us who focused on ourselves will ever be able to fully repay. But we can make some amends. We can cause, because he’s helping us to do it, to make the Jesus part of our hearts heavier, stronger, and more like his own.

We can, hat in hand, tail between our legs, red-faced and embarrassed, begin to dance. Ever so clumsily at first, yes..these are the hardest public steps of the Twelve. But getting better, and giving ourselves more and more reasons to stay sober, all the time.

Amen.