“Step 3: We made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, as we understood God.”

1. We admitted we were powerless...over our dependencies- that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. We came to believe...that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. We made a decision…to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understood him.

We admitted we were powerless; we came to believe; we made a decision.

It is my hope that you are beginning to see, even if you have never heard the Twelve Steps talked about before, that there is a spirituality here that is embraceable by everyone. These steps are a way of growing our awareness of God, of ourselves, of our relationship to all of Creation.

The faith we have, the faith that any believer anywhere has in a power greater than themselves involves a decision. It may be an easy decision, a decision that rises from living in an environment where a loving, gracious, and good God has been taught about, thought about, and is easily perceived. I share with you the belief that the Jesus of the gospels, enables our faith to grow in such an environment. I share with you the belief that following Jesus, from the moment we decide to so, allows us to discover and begin to live in the Kingdom of God on earth. And I share with you the belief that following Jesus- following his examples, his teachings, his will- bears much more good fruit in my life and for the world- than does anything I can conjure up out of my own will. Those shared beliefs make it possible for us to act in faith, to pattern and plan our actions and our lives after someone who has shown the way, the truth, and the life.

But those shared beliefs that bring us together under this one roof this morning are not the beliefs of many people. And that makes this decision to turn one’s will and life over to God a very, very difficult one for those many people.

Let me explain that by looking at a few verses from Deuteronomy, one the books of the Law of the Hebrew Bible. It’s Deuteronomy 30: 15-20. As I read it, connect the dots in your mind as you react to these words. Think about how they make you feel toward the God who is speaking them. Moses is remembering these words of God as he remembers the covenant relationship established by God with the people of Israel who are, at this time, still wandering in the desert, but about to cross over, after forty years, into the promised Land.

15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

If you heard and focused on the words of “life and prosperity” being spoken, along with the promise that in choosing to love and follow God “you will live and increase, and the Lord will bless you,” then the reasons you are here today have almost surely come naturally and comfortably. You’re reasons for wanting to be here with a community you care about and that cares about you are the compelling ones which got you up on a day you could have slept in, or gone to the lake, or even headed for a mall somewhere.

I hope no one here is here based on the fear of God if you don’t show up. I hope that you heard the words that God was speaking about the destruction which comes to a people who choose to live outside these commands of God, but I hope those admonitions- those threatened trips to a heavenly woodshed out back- are not the motivating factors in your being here- in your decision to turn your will and your life over to God.

But we all know that that is the case for many people in many churches, and for many who have turned their lives over to the fear based teachings of fast-talking Svengalis and Rasputins. In other words, I pray that you are motivated more by wanting to follow Jesus, than by any fears of what might happen if you don’t follow Jesus.

The trouble is, fear is a powerful motivator, and- this is very particular to American Christianity- fear has replaced love in getting many people to church and into a relationship with God. Fear of what other people might think, fear of financial and family failure, and fear of damnation, of the eternal fire and brimstone being stoked even at this moment for all those who fail to squeeze through the oh-so-narrow gates of an angry, coercive, faraway God.

Now many people who grow up with that fear bearing down on them for the first sixteen or seventeen years of their life make a mad dash for the exit as soon as they have a set of car keys and enter into the only alternative world they can see at that point- the illusionary land of freedom where anything goes. Or, even if someone has had no religious or spiritual training at all, the alternative of a loving God, a caring Jesus, is all but invisible. The last Christians they saw on TV were those despicable members of the Westover Baptist Church of Wichita, Kansas protesting at the funeral of a soldier by holding up “God Hates Fags” posters. (By the way, those jerks from Westover Baptist have no relation whatsoever to any Baptist church you know! They are a one family, fear-based cult, but the media loves them, because they feed so many preconceptions of what Christianity is all about.)

But imagine someone coming from either of those scenarios, someone who has come to the realization that their life has become unmanageable for whatever reason, and who have tentatively begun believing that only a Power greater than themselves is ever going to get them out of the mess they are in, imagine such a person now wrestling with the decision to turn their will and their life over to the care of God. God? That angry big guy in the sky who is just waiting for me to mess up again, and who already has my name on an invitation to hell? God? That “loving” God who allowed my dad to beat my mother, that “caring” God who took away my baby brother, that God of the bullies at school, that God of the holier than thou neighbor man who made me promise never to tell anyone- that God? Get outta here!

Here’s where those four words at the end of Step Three become so important: “We made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understood God.” But as important as those words are, something has had to have happened to make a new understanding, however small, possible. And that something is someone: it’s us.

It’s us, second of all, who are sitting around that God-shaped table at a Twelve Step meeting. We’ve been where that person is sitting over there, fighting through the life-saving, life-affirming, life-changing decisions and conclusions he or she has come to so far. All we can do- which is everything and the most important thing we can do, is share our stories: our stories of admitting we were powerless, of coming to believe, and of making a decision. All we can do, is offer those stories in love, in testimony, and in gratitude. All we can do is be the love that person has missed so far, at home, or in school, or at church, or in life. We can accept that person for who they are, despite what they are, maybe for the first time in that person’s life, ever. We can be welcoming like the God as we understand God is welcoming. Any one at one of those meetings is willing to be called upon in the middle of the night or day by that new decision maker for words of strength or encouragement, or even a ride home from the bar, because we know the God of second, third, fourth, and fifteenth chances.

But even before the “us” of that Twelve Step table, that person who is getting ready, getting strong enough to make the most important decision of his/her life, that person has had to encounter someone else- the first “us”- the rest of us. And that can be any of us.

There is not a person who has ever sat down for the first time at a Twelve Step table; there is not a person anywhere in the world today who has made a decision to follow God, who has not first encountered one of us. A person may claim to have been knocked off a horse on the road to Damascus, or to have had a one-on-one encounter with the Holy Spirit all by themselves, but I guarantee there was some one, some person, some one of us, that helped make that encounter possible. Some one prepared the way of the Lord, which is all that John the Baptist claimed to have done by the way. Some one had to model the grace of God to us, some one had to demonstrate to us, in a way that made us curious enough to want to know more about the one-sided love of God and God’s people for us, even us. Some one had to kick some the rocks and hurdles of fear and judgment and prejudice that clutter the way to God, out of the way. Some one had to demonstrate that the following of Jesus is a joyful, not a fearful, journey.

Only then were our own on-going encounters with God’s Holy Spirit able to begin. Only then, will anyone who needs to, find their way to a Twelve Step table and community. Only then, does the decision to be whole, for any of us, maybe for the first time ever, begin.

That’s why we must always be on, be ready, and be willing to point the way, to demonstrate God’s love for another. It may be loving someone so much that you must lock them out of the house. It may mean sitting with them during that first uncomfortable and embarrassing meeting. It may mean going to meetings all by yourself so you can learn what it is your loved one is facing. It may simply be being the only person in years who has shown the respect due a beloved child of God with a hug, or an ear, or a little time.

Hear now, finally, these words of God as spoken by the prophet Isaiah. Hear them with the fierce, unbounded desire that God has for each person who has lost their way, who has been afraid to come too close, or who is so ashamed that they feel God would want nothing to do with them. Some selected verses from Isaiah 54:

4 "Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame.
Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.
You will forget the shame of your youth

6 The LORD will call you back
as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—
a wife who married young,
only to be rejected," says your God.

7 "For a brief moment I abandoned you,
but with deep compassion I will bring you back.

8 In a surge of anger
I hid my face from you for a moment,
but with everlasting kindness
I will have compassion on you,"
says the LORD your Redeemer.

That’s God the Redeemer’s final word to each person, each addict, each of us: “With everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you.” It is God’s final word that we, each of us, can know and see demonstrated in the life of Jesus. It is the word which the world, some of us more desperately than others, needs to hear. And it is through us- the first us- through our actions and words and demonstrations of God’s everlasting kindness, through which God speaks to the world today.

Next week, Steps 4 and 5:

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

This is where we must get out the acetylene torch and hack saw, and start cutting through chain links. This is where learn what Jesus meant when he said, “I have come to set the captives free.”

Bring a friend.

Amen

Step 2: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

What separates humans from other animals and even from other early humanoid beings, is this front part of our brain, the frontal lobes. All vertebrates have them, but in other vertebrates they are much smaller. Ours in comparison are huge. They make up almost one half of our brains size.

Other parts of our brain, and their various functions, are something we share with all animals, even though our brains are of many different shapes. They work automatically. They cause us to breathe, they tell our hearts to beat, they control our metabolism, our need for sleep, our need to eat and drink. Those parts of our brain are on call, thank God, all the time. There’s no turning them on or off willingly.

We share half our brains with everything else, but we only share our developed frontal lobes with each other. They are that part of the brain which makes us, according to our definitions, human.

It is where our consciousness rises from. We can think abstractly about the world- we are not merely reacting to the sticks in our path or to the raindrops or to our instincts, like ants, who don’t have frontal lobes. And unlike dogs or birds or snakes, who do have small frontal lobes, ours have developed in ways that allow us to imagine events before they happen. And that’s the key to our human consciousness. We know, pretty well, the consequences of our actions. And that’s because of something else our frontal lobes enable us to do: remember for a long time.

Our ancestors remembered that where the little trees were growing at the edge of their camp was exactly where they had their old apple cores. Putting that memory together with the all important question, “What if..?” – two important frontal lobe functions- enabled farming to begin. And agriculture- a fairly recent event in human history- changed everything.

Those frontal lobes went into overdrive, because for the first time in maybe a million years of human history, humans no longer had to spend ¾’s of their time thinking about what they were going to eat. They had time to relax, to think, to converse, to philosophize about an endless flow of “What if’s”. They even began, and this is really recent in the history of humans, they even began to write down in an always developing language, some of the things they were thinking about and that they had discovered.

Without frontal lobes, without this uniquely developed human part of our brains, we would, if we existed at all, certainly not be here in this place today. This building would not have been able to be imagined. The lack of memory about how things in our environment interact with each other would have prevented anyone from putting stones on top of each other to build a wall, or to make paper, or to write down, of all the abstract abilities of humans, music!

We would also, without this part of our brains, have never looked beyond the food we needed right now and been able to perceive God. Nor, would we have been able to recognize and respond to the voice of God.

There is a passage in Paul’s letter to the Roman church which talks about this. Now even though the Apostle Paul didn’t know a thing about frontal lobes or brain physiology, he is writing about something here that we can understand in a new and, I think, really interesting context. (In fact, at the time Paul was writing, it was believed that our emotions and most of our thinking came out of our hearts- what this thing up here was, was still something of a mystery.)

Paul was writing to people about the people they lived among in Rome, who didn’t acknowledge or understand God, or who had rejected God. He’s kind of harsh on them, but that’s the way Paul was. His long term memory was filled with memories of jail cells and whippings. Those memories influenced his present thinking, whether he was aware of that or not. Nonetheless, he was a very intelligent and learned man, and great truths emerge from his writing. Romans 1, verse 19:

¹⁹For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; ²¹for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.”

Humans have, Paul is saying, the ability to see beyond what is there in front of them. And if they fail to see the obvious God who is there, as Paul says it’s possible for anyone to see God, they “become futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds are darkened.”

Futile thinking is a lot like the powerlessness that I was talking about last week in Step 1 of the 12 Steps: “We admitted that we were powerless over our dependencies..” Anyone who is focusing inward, toward themselves and themselves only, will end up with a life that becomes unmanageable. Humans need reasons to exist that are larger than themselves. They need to be able to imagine possibilities, to plan, to dream; humans need, and this is what the frontal lobes and God gives us that makes us human, humans need, in order to thrive, the ability to hope.

The addict is without hope. Be it alcohol, drugs, or anything else that stands between humans and their God-given possibilities, hope is sacrificed on the altar of immediate gratification. Self gratification can be- let’s not lie about it- self gratification can be loads o’ fun the first time, or for the first few days, or even for years. I am told that the very first puff of heavy metal laden methamphetamine smoke is almost glorious in its power, as it drains away adrenaline and dopamine reserves that have taken a lifetime to build up. That ‘glory’ will never be experienced again- there are no more reserves to draw upon- but the addict will pursue that false hope for the rest of their short lives.

The drunk begins to sweat and worry about 6:00 on Saturday evening if there is nothing in the house to drink tomorrow. (Liquor stores close early Saturday night and are not open on Sundays.) The bulimic will look forward to those few minutes alone each day when she, or he, can stuff themselves full with fleeting happiness and futile love from the refrigerator or Taco Bell. The shopaholic will hide credit cards, order new ones, and juggle them all for the false sense of immediate power and joyless gratification of buying another pair of shoes, another car, or a new whatever it is that Apple or Microsoft or Abercombie and Fitch says to buy, which will finally make them whole and happy and satisfied.

But the darkness descends. It is inevitable. The need for real joy, the need for happiness, the need for true love- the need for hope, those needs are as hard-wired into our God-imaged consciousness as are the needs we don’t have control over, like breathing. The day inevitably comes when the false light of perversions, or addictions, or dependencies, burns out. The frontal lobes are almost non-functioning at this point, clouded over by the reptilian part of our brain which screams “more more more” of whatever we have been feeding our souls. God’s doorway into the Kingdom of God, has become a static-filled, unreceptive squawk box, full of nothing more than a lot of false information put there by ourselves or accepted by us from others.

It is the darkness of meaninglessness, the joylessness of futility, and there is nothing more awful. Some people, too many people, have no one at that point to reach out to, or have nobody- even more tragically- reaching out to them. And those saddest of human stories ensue.

For the fortunate ones, and there are many of us, for the fortunate ones there are those persons nearby who have not given up on us, moms and dads and grandparents who have never stopped praying for us, friends who able to see beyond the mess we are, who are able, even when we can no longer do it ourselves, to hold onto hope for us.

That hope of others can also be read about. It may be a brochure picked up months ago and stuck on top of the refrigerator- “I’ll get around to reading it someday.” A friend of mine from high school told me that those were her exact words one day eleven years ago. Then one day ten years ago, waking up one morning with someone she didn’t know, again, she went to that little dust covered brochure and read, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol..” And Patty began, again, that morning, despite a horrible hangover, to be born again.

That’s how it works. When we begin to take our own egos out of the equation, the answers will begin, if we let them. Listen to this remarkable little episode written about by the prophet Daniel about 2500 years ago. It’s Daniel 9, beginning at verse 19. He was pleading to God, in a prayer for himself and his people. He had run out of options, as had the nation.

“Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, listen and act and do not delay! For your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people bear your name!”

It’s a demand. He’s pleading, he’s desperate. Here’s what happened, verse 20:

“While I was speaking, and was praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God on behalf of the holy mountain of my God— ²¹while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen before in a vision, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. ²²He came and said to me, ‘Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding. ²³At the beginning of your supplications a word went out, and I have come to declare it, for you are greatly beloved.”

At the moment Daniel began to speak, a word went out in the heavens, and Gabriel, messenger of God, was on his way to Daniel. At the moment we are able to say the words of Step Two, however garbled and confused and even silly they may seem, God hears.

“We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

God hears, and Gabriel is on his way. God hears, and Jesus, who’s been knocking at the door for years, has an opportunity to enter in. That’s why, at an AA meeting, surprisingly enough to many people, that’s why there is always room for the drunk who wanders in. A person doesn’t have to be sober to call out in desperation- most of them, in fact, are not. But room is made for even the sick drunk who can barely stand up, because everyone else there knows that a power greater than that drunk, greater than any of them, is on the way. And because of that power, that power that has made, kept, and is keeping them sober, they’ve learned something about God’s love for the least of these, that many people have missed.

For the person who can say that there is a power greater than themselves, even if hey know nothing about the name, the personality, or the history of that power, for the person who can admit that they can no longer manage being the King or Queen of their own lives, for the self-centered person who is able, even for a moment to step out of the spotlight of their terminal unique-ism, for that person, new birth begins. And God is on the way to assist in the delivery.

The sun has begun to just peep over the eastern horizons, a sunrise has just begun. The opening chords of a great symphony, have just sounded. A single swipe of oil paint has just been brushed over what will become an ageless masterpiece. “Behold!” Paul would later write, “all things have become new!”

It is good to mark such a time and place with a symbolic act, so that we remember (and we will need to remember in the days and years ahead), so that we will remember the where, when, how, and why of everything becoming new with us. With one man I was with, it was a joyful emptying of probably $500 worth of liquor from the liquor cabinet which had become a household altar. Another man sat in the parking lot of the church in Dallas and smashed with a hammer a very large collection of porno tapes. Others have cut up all the credit cards except one for emergencies which they then freeze inside a block of ice, which gives them time think should that thing they suddenly “really need” rear its head again.

For me, it was symbolically, prayerfully, with witnesses, handing over to Jesus the last and final six-pack. If I want another one- ever- I’ll have to wrestle it from Jesus’ arms to have it. And I’m not willing to do that.

Now, is all over? Is it a downhill slide at this point into sobriety and wholeness from this point on? There are ten more steps; the answer is no, sobriety has just begun. The important thing though, is that is has begun!

The body will scream for more. The soul will ache with a parched pulse for more of whatever it is that closed down the receptors of the brain to the breath of God. The lies we told ourselves- “I can handle it”, “Just one won’t hurt”, and “I’ll start again tomorrow” will eloquently and seductively begin their song, and dance, again and again. The words, “Unmanageable” , “Came to believe”, and “restored sanity” are not one time spoken events. They need to be repeated daily sometimes, affirmed hourly some days, or breathed constantly to remind ourselves that “God is here, we are not alone, thanks be to God.”

And, finally, what is that sanity to which we hope to be restored? It is that full functioning of those frontal lobes which define our humanity. It is that renewed capacity to see beyond ourselves- to know that we are a part of a community, citizens of the Kingdom of God which we are getting to know better and better. It is the ability to plan beyond the next hour or the next day, it is the renewed ability to imagine our lives in the colors and sounds of continuing Creation, it is the ability to know, as Gabriel told Daniel, that we are greatly beloved.

It is the ability to hope.

Amen

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over ourselves- Hitting Bottom

Two biblical incidents, two different scenarios, two different sets of characters, separated by two thousand years:

The first comes from the beginnings of the story of the Exodus. God is speaking to Moses, getting Moses ready for the role he will play:

Exodus 3: 7-12: Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, ⁸and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…⁹The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ ¹¹But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ ¹²He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’

The second incident is from the New Testament. Matthew 8: 5-13: When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him ⁶and saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, in terrible distress.’ ⁷And Jesus said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’ ⁸The centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, “Go”, and he goes, and to another, “Come”, and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this”, and the slave does it.’ ¹⁰When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.

As Christians, these are two of our sacred stories. These are two of the stories that we’ve allowed to speak to us across the centuries. A sacred story is not sacred just because it comes from the Bible, but a story is sacred because it speaks to us at our deepest core; it sounds a chord within us. A sacred story can set to life a melody within our beings that allows us to dance in the steps of the Creator.

What do these stories have in common? In both cases, someone had come to end of their personal capacity to cope. They no longer had it in themselves to fix what was wrong in their lives. They had run out of all human resources. They had hit bottom. After many years of slavery, the Israelites in Egypt had lost hope. The Roman centurion was helpless in the face of his beloved servant’s illness. The Israelites cried out to a god they knew very little about after generations of living in Egypt. The Roman centurion went to a wandering Jewish teacher, about whom he had heard, but about whom he knew very little else.

Both the Israelites and the centurion were desperate. But desperation alone has never fixed anything. Both took the next step, the first step, the most difficult step of all and said, in effect, “I need your help.” Both had to reach outside of themselves and admit to another their own lack of resources. They had to drop their pride, their fears of what others would think about them; they had to admit their weakness, their impotency. They had to admit, because there was no further place to fall, that they were at the bottom of their lives and their hopes; they had nowhere else to go.

The words, “I need help” are the most difficult words that most people can say. Pride blocks those words in our throats; none of us wants to admit our dependency on others. Or our personal failures. The first human story in the Bible, the story of Adam and Eve, is a story about each blaming the other, each refusing to take personal responsibility for the misbehavior in which they had been caught. Both refused to say, “I screwed up. I failed. I’m a mess.”

Pride is the cancer at the center of almost every human problem. Because of pride, we strap masks of competency and strength over our faces so we think that the people around us will think that we’re OK, we’re fine, we’re cool, “couldn’t be better!”

Which makes Step One of the Twelve Steps the most difficult one. Here’s how it was originally written by the alcoholics were getting sober:

“We admitted to ourselves that we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.”

One of those drunks that formulated that statement- because he lived that Step- was a successful surgeon, Dr. Bob. The other was a successful insurance salesman- Bill W. For years, both beginning in college, their lives had been defined by alcohol. It had been a problem, many, many, many times for each of them in different ways. But they would choose, on their own, to not drink for a day or two, even a week or two on occasion. Thus, for years, they fooled themselves; they were able to believe, to convince themselves, that they chose to drink, and they, of their own volition and strength, could choose not to drink.

But Dr. Bob came to a point where he could o longer operate without a nurse giving him drinks of beer to calm his shaking hands. Bill W. came to a point where he was, he knew, going to lose Mrs. W and his family. They met each other at Akron General Hospital, coincidentally some might say, and they began a conversation that continues around the world in hundreds of cities and thousands of meeting rooms, to this very day.

And it was a conversation based on helplessness. They had each tried and tried and tried on their own to stop drinking, but were unable, by themselves, to stop. The Egyptian’s slaves- the Israelites- had lived for generations with the hope that things would somehow get better, but there was always another pyramid to be built, and finally, they gave up that foolish hope. The centurion could command his soldiers and slaves with a single word, but he had no authority, no command whatsoever over the disease of his servant.

The cries heard by Dr. Bob and Bill W., each to the other; the cries heard by God of the Israelites; and the cries heard by Jesus of the centurion, all of these cries were born from the forlorn, lonely, and brutal bottom of these peoples’ lives. And that’s the lesson today, and it’s two-fold: one of those lessons is about helping others to reach the bottom of their lives and the other is about calling out for help ourselves, when we need it.

First, why would we ever want to help another hit the bottom of their existence? Why would we want to see such a terrible thing happen? Here we must discuss what has come to be known as tough love. Unfortunately, more and more people, even here in this town, are being forced to confront it, know about, and act on it. Methamphetamines have made this formerly unknown part of acting love more and more necessary to more and more people. Addiction to any substance will eventually lead to this point, but meth has sped the whole process up exponentially, so the moment a problem is suspected is the moment tough love must be begun. And it will be the second most difficult thing loved ones and friends of the addicted will ever have to go through. The worst thing, of course, is what happens if nothing is done, and that is death.

As long as the meth user, and eventually the alcoholic, the pain-killer addict, or other substance abuser, has access to a warm bed at your house, your checking account, your car, and your enablement, he/she hasn’t hit bottom. And until he/she does hit bottom- that’s the way it works and has worked for 4000 years now- until they hit that bottom where there are no more of their or your resources to draw on, then they have not hit the bottom they must hit in order to cry out for help. As long as there is an illusion existing in their minds that there is a place to sleep, 25 bucks to be gotten, or something they can steal and sell, they are maintaining an illusion of control. And it’s that illusion which will, in the case of meth, kill them. Unless we can help them find whatever there bottom is, they will die.

Tough love is risky, because all we’re doing is increasing the chances that they will live; there are no guarantees. And it will almost always get worse before it gets better. For some parents, and I’ve talked about I right here in town, the goal must be rehab. But if the kid is over 18, that’s not an easy option. That’s when we do what is necessary, and this sounds horribly heartless I know, but when rehab is not possible, then county jail is the next best place. County jails have saved countless lives in the last ten years of the methamphetamine plague, because for many middle class people, that is about as bad as they could ever imagine it getting. County jail at least gives persons the opportunity to sober up, learn a little bit about addiction, and, hopefully- and this is the point- cry out. For the meth addict, there are only two other opportunities to stop- state prison and the funeral home.

I will say this again, if you know of a family facing this kind of crisis, there are people here in town, available anytime, to encourage, care for, and walk them through this tough love process. My number, for one, is on the back of every bulletin, and I’ll help make those kinds of arrangements. And there are others.

Alcohol, even heroin, does not always need that kind of drastic action, but often it does. Those addictions, too, will always end in the early deaths of those addicted or of others. The only saving grace of those problems is that the bottom is often, not always but often, a few steps up from county jail. The unmanageability of one’s life, the inability to take control over something one wants to have control over, is the realized bottom which a person must come to. That can happen in the gutter, in jail, in a rehab center, or even in the living room of one’s own home. Thank God, it can happen in the living room of one’s own home. Confrontation may be enough to start the addict down the road to recovery. Maybe, hopefully. Confrontation takes courage too, of course, lots of it, maybe even a couple years of it. But confrontation is often the very best way possible of saying, “I love you.”

The other lesson to be learned from Dr. Bob and Bill W, from the Israelite slaves, and from the Roman centurion, is about our own need for help. Not just help with addictions. And I want to emphasize again, that’s not what this series on the Twelve Steps is only about. This is about addictions and about becoming better disciples, better followers of Jesus Christ, and more joy-filled, happy humans.

Our own need for help, from God, from others, also involves dropping the mask of invulnerability. It also, to a greater or lesser extent, but no less difficult ways, involves admitting, out loud, to ourselves, that we need help. Just a couple weeks ago, my car stopped running out at the dam one night where we’d taken the dogs to walk. Stick the key in, turn the ignition and that sickening sound of…click, click, nothing. Well, maybe if I turn it this way, or this way, it’s not like there are a lot of options. Maybe if I speak to the key gently, or to the battery harshly. Maybe if I put up the hood, wiggle the wires, look real hard at it in the dark. Maybe. Nope, still nothing.

So, in a mini-process of admitting to myself that I was powerless over my car, and that my life, and that the lives of my wife and the two dogs, for these moments, had become unmanageable, we called friends to help us. They had something we needed- a vehicle that ran to get us out of there. And we were pretty sure that that they had the willingness to help us in our powerlessness.

Not a big deal now, in retrospect. The car got towed the next day, fixed, and got me here this morning. The key to its not being a big deal though, is that we gave up, made the call for help and most importantly, were responded to by people willing, even anxious to help.

Now, as I think back, and I invite you to think back, too, about circumstances you have faced, whenever I’ve been in trouble and asked for help, I’ve gotten it. Maybe not on the first cry, but soon thereafter. “Mommy!” we learn early on to cry out easily when we’ve fallen off our bike, and we knew she’d come running. Later on, after years and layers of pride have settled on our thick hides and thickening hearts, it’s not so easy. I saw a lady get hit by a car in downtown Dallas years ago. Right in front of me. I ran out to her, and she immediately started apologizing for being a bother. 30 seconds earlier she was spinning in the air, and now she was apologizing for needing help. That’s pride. But it’s exactly the same kind of pride- a misbegotten, kind of silly self-love- that has stopped me about ten thousand times from asking for help when I needed it. Or feeling badly when I was forced to.

It’s easier to cry out when we are hurting physically. 9-1-1: that’s what it’s there for. But emotionally and spiritually I’ve needed help many times, too, and tried to suck it up, go it alone, be a man..and accomplished nothing more than strapping the mask of “Nothing Wrong” around myself even more tightly than it had been. And that mask- like meth, or alcohol, or any other destructive fix, can kill us, too. It suffocates us slowly, our own pride asphyxiates us over years. Our fears of needing help, of admitting our weakness, or of expressing needs which we can no longer conjure up solutions for, can choke the happiness from life. It can take the gifts of God’s grace in our lives and turn them mundane. Our pride can make the sacred into something profane, our blessings into joyless desires for more of them.

It’s been said that the three hardest words to say to another person are, “I, love, you.” But the three hardest words we have to say to ourselves are “I, need, help.”

They are hard words to say, but remember the Israelites in the mud pits of Egypt. When they finally said “Help!” they were heard. Remember the Roman centurion, he was heard, too. Think even of some poor slob in his living room one day, 23 years ago, who’d hit that bottom- and would hit bottom again a few more times. Every time he’s hollered help, he’s gotten it.

Psalm 46:1: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble." As are the people of God. But that help begins here, for each of us, by taking off the mask, and admitting to ourselves that we need that help.

Next week, Step Two: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” All of the Steps are liberating, but not all of them are fun. This one can be fun.

Be here, bring a friend.

Amen.

Born Again (and again and again and again): an introduction to 12 Step spirituality

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”

Those are the first words of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. They are the only words possible for this the beginning of this series, and I’ll spend the next ten weeks or so telling you why.

The Twelve Steps are a program put together initially by two men, Bill W., an insurance salesman, and Dr. Bob, a surgeon, in their founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, in the 1930’s. That program has saved the lives of thousands and thousands of persons since that time, and remains relatively unchanged since its earliest beginnings.

But this will not be a series about alcoholism, although a drunk or two may show up in a story from time to time. It will not be a series about overeating, narcotics, sexual misbehavior, gambling, or even religious addictions, even though some of those persons, too, might have a word or two with us.

This is will be a series about the poor in spirit, and finding the Kingdom of God, which, Jesus also said, is already right there in each of them.

Now, the challenge for me is to transform a series about “them”- those people- into a series that is meaningful to us- all of us, the rest of us. My challenge, our challenge, is to discover what it is that all humans share with each other, and what all humans share with Jesus, that caused him to point to those people at the edges of society, at the furthermost edges of hearts, and say “there I am.”

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. (Matthew 25: 35, 36)

You’ve no doubt realized by now that those are among the ten or so verses I could talk about every week. And that is so because they speak most loudly and clearly to me about both the mystery of Jesus and the practicality of following him. People in need, according to those words, are the people from whom we can learn the most about Jesus, by being with them, and from whom we can learn about the Kingdom of God in each of us, by serving them.

Which brings us back to “them” and “us.” Who are those people in need? Who was Jesus talking about- those people “poor in spirit?”

We understand, at least intellectually- we say the words from time to time- that “…God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17) Who did Jesus come to save? Who was it that he came to repair the separation for, between them and God?

Yes, indeed, it was those drunks, those addicts, those religious crazies, all of those who try to numb the pain of separation from God or others through some initially satisfying but ultimately destructive behavior. And indeed it was all of those who, grasping at the brass rings of earthly pleasures, sought to make themselves more powerful, more beautiful, more fun, more happy, but who found themselves gaining nothing but the need for more of whatever it was that they thought would make everything better.

That’s “them”: those guys.

But, have you ever been hungry or thirsty, maybe not for water or food, but for companionship, respect, love? Have you ever felt left out, in a prison of lost opportunities and personal regrets? Have you ever been the stranger, the new guy, the one passed over for a job you deserved, the one who got bullied, the one who never felt quite good enough, or smart enough, or worthy enough for what everyone else seemed to have? Or the one who felt all alone, even in a crowd?

For the fortunate ones among us, those are fleeting moments, common feelings we all share at crucial points in our lives. But for others of us- not just them, but us- for others of us those feelings become a definition of who we are. We learn to live with and even hide those feelings that grind at us in the night, that affect our decisions throughout the day, and that we even pass on to our children with about as much effort as it takes to pass a plate at the dinner table.

When we get trapped that way within our own selves, it is easy to feel separate from God, from the rhythms and the symphonies of life. We may not rush for the bottle, or a baggie filled with crystallized hope, but there are dozens of other ways we tend to shield ourselves from the truths we don’t want to face. “I have a bad temper,” we might say, somehow blaming our anger on our DNA. Or, “I’m just not very lucky”, which is a whole lot easier than admitting, “I’m afraid to try.” We may find ourselves looking out on the world through the blue lenses of regret about the past, or the red lenses of anxiety about the future. Some people find themselves almost immune from the enjoyment of today- these moments- as they nostalgically ruminate endlessly over some vague “good old days” or as they wait for, hope for, wish for some magic that will miraculously fix things in the future.

Those are all things that, left unsaid, or not confronted, build up over time into half-lives: lives lived outside the joy and the peace that God has placed within us, that God has for us within the Kingdom of heaven that is ours right now, Jesus said.

The Twelve Steps of Recovery offer anyone who enters into them, the chance, the opportunity, the assurance of being better than they were before entering into them, because they are about recovering the relationship with God that Jesus has demonstrated is possible for any human to have. It is not about being drunk and getting sober; it is not about being addicted and getting clean. It is about being broken and getting fixed- not with the tools we’ve tried and failed with in the past, but with the love and intentions of God, and because of the sacrifice and example of Jesus Christ.

Each week, we will look at one or sometimes two of the Twelve Steps. I’ll talk about their biblical counterparts and their spiritual truths. And you will, I hope, be able to see clearly, maybe even in a way that affects you personally, why I say it is possible, maybe even necessary, to be born again, and again, and again and again and again.

The Twelve Steps are about vulnerability- openness to God and with each other. They are about honesty, with ourselves and one another. They are about forgiveness, maybe above all about forgiveness- the letting go of anger and blame we hold for ourselves and others. They are about the miraculous turning of fear into love and then, finally, about being willing, willing and wanting, to share that love with others.

In Psalm 139, the psalmist wrote a powerful statement about God’s presence:

¹O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
²You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
³You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.

No matter what our concept of God is- we are inside that God. To try to define ourselves outside the parameters of what the natural forces of the universe are, is a uniquely human and silly endeavor. In fact, most addicts, and many of the rest of us are engaged in a way of behaving and thinking that says we are “different, special, and have different needs.” The best phrase I’ve ever heard to describe this is terminal uniqueism. People are dying- killing themselves- because they feel so unique, so different, so left out, or so special, that nothing can help them. “Nobody understands me” is their war cry as they refuse to surrender to the God who loves them.

⁷Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
¹¹If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night’,
¹²even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

The Spirit of God blows through time. It is God’s breath, God’s intentions for all of Creation as evidenced in the harmonies and rhythms of Creation. When we try, and my oh my how some of us have tried, to step outside and away from that Spirit of God, we suffer. When we place ourselves with those harmonies and rhythms, when we allow God and those who care for us to help us escape our terminal uniqueism, we can know peace. And beyond peace, joy. We can begin to know that Kingdom of God is not some far away place that we might, if we’re good, get to enter when we die; the Kingdom of God is not a reward deserved by someone else, or something that we merely read about, or a place that we can hold over someone’s head like a weapon. Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is- is is is is is- the Kingdom of God, right here, right now. The terminally unique don’t see that though. It is the tragedy, suffered by so many people, of lives half-lived. Lives of waiting to die. Lives blurred by alcohol, or drugs, or fear.

¹³For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

The metaphors of God’s presence in our lives, in all of Creation, are perfect here. We are woven together in our mother’s womb and even before that, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Sounds like an evolutionary statement to me- but no matter how one reads it, it says there is way, a truth, a commonality that runs through all of humanity. We share our beginnings, we share the imprimatur of God on our souls, we share the ability to align or re-align ourselves in the wind, the Spirit of God. We share the ability to follow Jesus, to take him at his word, and to realize and let loose the Kingdom of God that is within us.

Let me summarize the rest of Psalm 139 as I read it and as I have allowed it to shape and bend my own thinking: God knows me- God knows my shortcomings, my failures, my betrayals, my mistakes. God knows all that stuff about me that ha separated from the Spirit of God so so so many times in the past and probably will again. God knows me, but loves me anyway.

As we gather around these 12 Steps over the next several months, my words may cause, from time to time, the Spirit of God to tweak a memory, or a feeling, or a new discovery about yourself that you aren’t too happy about, maybe even ashamed of. So hang on to what I’ve just said- God loves you anyway. There’s nothing any of us can do to stop that love, either. Even those in the throes of dying from their terminal uniqueism are loved, known by God, loved by God, as the persons God intended them to be.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

Next week, Step One, the first and most difficult step: “We admitted we were powerless over ourselves--that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Be here, bring a friend.

Amen

The Journey to Easter: One Last Story

It’s the final journey to Jerusalem. There’s not much more time left for teaching. No more days left for walking into the hills, or beside the sea. The time is running out. What has begun happening now is what Jesus has been expecting would happen.

He’s here in the temple with some of his disciples and other people who have come to hear him. The people who are following Jesus around now are of serious concern to the temple priests. Those followers are, after all, seated in front of Jesus, not in front of them. They’re listening to this upstart rabbi from out in the sticks, not them. The priests are about to lose the people, and that means nothing but trouble with a capital T. Rome depends on the priests and scribes and elders to maintain calm among the Jewish people. If things get out of hand it will be the priests themselves who will be called before Pilate, the emperor’s representative, to explain what has happened. The priests have seen the dozens of crosses on the hill just outside the city, and they have experienced the Romans unhesitating ability to use those crosses to put their enemies out of circulation.

No, no, no, no..they must take control from this trash-talking preacher!

“By what authority are you doing these things?” one of the priests shouts at Jesus, interrupting him. “Who gave you this authority?” ( Luke 20:2)

They’re trying to trap Jesus now by making him answer in a way that will get him indicted by the civil authorities. That way, their hands will be clean when the Romans come to take him away. But Jesus, being Jesus, doesn’t answer them, he returns the volley, and asks them a question which will get them in trouble with the people no matter how they answer. It’s a trick question, a very smart question, and you can read it in verse 3 if you’d like, but I want to stop right here and point out something about the way Jesus taught people- teaches us- about the Kingdom of God.

When Jesus teaches, he never goes to the blackboard. He never turns on a Powerpoint presentation or starts handing out topical outlines for the day. He is always operating from the presumption, the knowledge, that the important answers, the stuff we need to know about, is already in us. On another occasion, when confronted by the Pharisees and priests, he told them to stop thinking about when and how where the Kingdom of God would come: “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation,” Jesus told them, “the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17: 21)

I don’t think I personally can overemphasize this enough. Jesus didn’t teach with answers, he taught with questions, and as we’ll see again in a moment, stories. He asked questions and told stories because of the respect he had for the people who were listening to him. Jesus knew the yarn God had used to knit people together in their mother’s wombs. He knew the Image of God that was imprinted on each and every person. All that Godstuff in a person was still there even if it had been buried for years under the cultural and religious debris of life, and what Jesus did better than any teacher before or since was help people to rediscover the God in them, on their own.

The Kingdom of God is within you, he told them, and then he began to help them find it again. By doing it this way, Jesus wasn’t always successful. Some people wouldn’t get the point of his stories- “So, what are you saying, Jesus- that we should all join the Church of the Good Samaritan?” Not everyone gets the point, or they are too uncomfortable with the answer that comes bubbling to the surface of their hearts when confronted with one of Jesus’ pointed questions. But for those who do get it- for those who have ears to ears, as Jesus said over and over again- for those people the world becomes different. The world changes forever. The Kingdom of God begins slowly leaking into their worldview and, if they allow it to, it becomes a thunderstorm that never stops.

Back to today’s story. Jesus has effectively, for the moment, hushed the priests who are interrupting him. I can imagine him shifting his eyes from them, and back to the people who are feeling a little bit uncomfortable right now, a little bit scared. Jesus has just shut down the priests who hold a great deal of real power over the people, and they know those priests right now are most likely in the process of taking names. I can imagine, easily, Jesus giving the crowd a quick wink at this point. Verse 9:

He went on to tell the people this parable: "A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. 10 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. 12 He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.

Stop. This parable, this story, is different from any Jesus has told before. This is the last story he would tell before the events of the last week of his human life would begin the next day. This was the Saturday before Palm Sunday. Everything he teaches from this point on will told only to the disciples. This is the final story he has for the people. And while he speaking it into the ears of the people, he is aiming it at the hearts of the Pharisees and priests who are still listening, even though they are pretending not to.

He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out. Verse 13 "Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.'

14 "But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

"What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others."

When the people heard this, they said, "May this never be!"

Most of the people are getting most of this story. They’re putting 2 and 2 together quickly. God had sent the prophets over and over again to the vineyards of Israel but just like the servants in the story, the prophets had literally been beaten and treated shamefully by the people- the sharecroppers of the vineyard. As a result of those rejections, the people of Israel had been kicked out of their homeland. That fear of being sent from their homeland is where the priests and Pharisees had stepped in. When people, then and now, are afraid, they are willing to hand over the control of their lives to others claiming authority.

But what about this “son of the vineyard’s owner”? Who’s that? This is the first and last parable Jesus told in which one of the main characters of the story was himself. How many mouths dropped open that day as that realization began to dawn?

Certainly not all of them, because there is still enough fear in the room for some of the people to protest the ending of this story. “May this never be!” they argued, I’m guessing with a sidelong glance back at the priests who were by now seething.

So Jesus brings in some supporting data from the Psalms. He uses the priest’s precious scriptures to write up a writ of indictment against them:

Verse 17. Jesus looked directly at them and asked, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written:

"'The stone the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone'?

18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."

19 The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.

They were afraid of the people. Fear begets fear begets fear. What the blackboard and Powerpoint teachers of the law did at this point was to stomp out of the room in a flurry of huffiness and insult. And we know from what follows that they hid out from the people for the next several days and began sending spies to gather information about Jesus which they could go the Roman authorities with. In fact, that the priests even found a special spy named Judas, inside Jesus’ inner circle.

Jesus could have jumped all over the priests and Pharisees, got the crowd all stirred up, and begun right here the kind of insurrection that Judas and others were hoping he would. Instead, he told a story. It was a story designed to do exactly what all the other stories Jesus told had been designed to do- cause the Kingdom of God to come to the surface in those who were hearing it.

And it did in two ways. For those with ears to hear and hearts to be changed, they had just heard Jesus clearly identify himself as the son of the vineyard owner, the son of God, the cornerstone- referred to in the Psalms. They would be among the few who would know what was really happening on that cross the following Friday.

Others with ears to hear, but hearts unwilling to change- the teachers of the law- had the Kingdom of God stimulated in them that day too, but for those with a vested interest in the status quo, the Kingdom of God is worse than a salmonella stomache ache.

As with all of Jesus’ parables, there was the local and immediate meaning and a larger, universal, and eternal meaning. This parable meant something specific to those in front of Jesus that day. But what does it mean to those of us with Jesus this day?

At this point I could give you a 1, 2, 3 list of major points and we’d remember them all about as long as it takes to hit the sidewalk just outside. Or, I can try to do what Jesus did and tell you a story:

Once upon a time there was a woman who raised roses. She had tea roses in the window boxes, antique roses in the backyard, and hybrid roses of all colors tastefully planted throughout her front landscape. She worked hard to grow them; she had special soil and fertilizer delivered from the gardening center, hovered nearby while her yard man spread the soil and fertilizer, and personally checked the Rainbird water controls daily.

It was her greatest desire to win “Best of Show” at the Rose Nationals each year and she’d come close in the past. Each September, on the day before the Rose Show was to begin, she would put on her L.L.Bean muckaboots, her Abercombrie and Fitch garden apron, and with her Swedish steel scissors, imported from the Dieter-Schmidt Tool Craft Center in Dresden, Germany, proceed into her gardens with a Styrofoam encased vase, a stainless steel metric ruler, and high hopes. Checking each rose for size, petal count, and swirl balance, she would choose five of the very best roses to enter into that year’s contest.

She stressed all of that night and throughout the following day as she and her husband drove to the show. Arriving hours before the judging would begin, she spread her fine Irish linen tablecloth, chose five of the seven cut glass antique rose vases she’d brought along, fretted and fussed over the perfect angular placement of each rose and each vase, brushed each them carefully with a tiny ultra-fine sable brush, and misted each of them with a blend of water and sucrose so that precisely placed drops would enhance each petals beauty.

Some years she had won First Place. Many years she had won 2d or 3^rd place. And each year’s failures- and that’s all they are if you don’t win Best of Show- each year’s failures would be unceremoniously dug up by the yard man and thrown in the front yard dumpster.

This year, though, would be different. The woman had worked throughout the winter, spring, and summer, grafting, transplanting, and daily fussing over a hybrid rose born of two of the antique roses from the backyard. The Queen Victoria Pink and the Grover Cleveland Yellow would she knew, produce a one-of-a- kind peach colored beauty come September and indeed it did.

It was the Best of Show that year and the woman was the talk of Rose Societies everywhere. When it came time to name the rose, she named it the Peachy Elizabeth Carson Shaw, which was, of course, her own name.

Still beaming with the pride that only a Best of Show award can bring, Elizabeth, upon arriving home, made a beeline for her closest neighbors, so she could share with them the pictures and the trophy she had won, all by herself.

In the neighbor’s front yard, she noticed that the neighbor’s 6 year old granddaughter, come for a visit, was lying on her elbows in the front yard staring intently at some weed there. “What on earth are you doing, honey?” Elizabeth asked the little girl, but then the neighbor’s door opened and Elizabeth didn’t have time to wait for an answer

Melanie- that was the little girl’s name- Melanie didn’t want to answer anyway. She didn’t want to scare away the little white butterfly which had landed on the yellow, end-of-summer dandelion in front of her. She tried to count the petals but forgot she was counting when she saw that each petal looked the same but was just a little bit different. Then she saw the butterfly’s long tongue dipping into the dandelion, and then..and then, she thought she saw the butterfly’s little black marble eyes move in her direction!

And it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and she would never forget it. Twenty-seven years later, in fact, she took her own three children into the backyard one September afternoon to see if they could find dandelion’s of their own, and maybe even have their own breath taken away by a little white butterfly’s friendly greetings.

Let anyone with ears, hear.

Amen

Islam..WWJD?

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of it's furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

--Jalaluddin Rumi

Next week, we will begin a “proper” series of Lenten messages leading to Easter on April 8. I promise.

But there is one more, very important subject to talk about before I finish this month’s series on “controversial” topics; and that topic is Islam. And I’ve chosen to study Islam this week by seeking an answer to the dangerous question, “What Would Jesus Do?”

I call that a dangerous question because there is never a clear answer. Jesus didn’t teach in clear, formulated answers. He taught in parables-stories- and by example. And those ways of teaching led to problems then, even as they continue to lead to problems now. Here’s an example: Luke 22: 36. It is the verse, taken out of its context, which is most often used in connection with present day discussions of Islam:

It was spoken by Jesus to his disciples just after the Last Supper in the Upper Room, and immediately after telling Peter that Peter would betray him. It was a warning- Jesus knew that for the next several days, after his death, the disciples would be in a fair amount of danger. Here’s what he said:

Verse 36: “He said to them, But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”

It’s one of the great mystery verses of the New Testament, because there is no evidence anywhere in any of the gospels, or in Acts, or in any of the epistles that a single disciple bought a sword, nor that any of them ever used one in their own defense. It goes against everything demonstrated by him as Jesus was being crucified. Despite that, though, it is a verse which has been used, over and over again to justify aggression on the part of Christians.

And that’s the trouble with the question, “What would Jesus do?” It is possible to dig around and find an easy answer. But rarely is the easy answer the right answer. Beware of easy answers!

So here’s the question for this morning: What should we as Christians, think or do about Islam? And I’ll let you decide whether my answer is the easy answer or the right answer, or..none of the above.

First, There were no Muslims in first century Palestine. But there were Samaritans and they were a pretty interesting group of people: They believed that the Jews were wrong about almost everything. They believed there had only been one true prophet- Moses- and that all the rest of the Jewish prophets were false prophets. They had their own version of the Torah- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy- and it was written very differently from the Jewish Torah. They believed the true Holy Mountain was not Mt. Sinai in the South, but Mt. Horeb, in the North, where they lived. They believed their priests were the only true priests.

Now for their part, the Jews believed Samaritans to be unclean, to be avoided at all costs, and to be wrong in every possible way about the way they worshipped their “false” God. they were never to be trusted, never to have business dealings with, and to be spoken to as little as possible.

It really is OK to think of Samaritans as modern day Muslims, because the attitudes held toward them were very similar to the attitudes held toward Muslims by non-Muslims today, and for many of the very same reasons. So, what would Jesus do? Well, here’s what he did:

John 4:4

Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

Point #1: Jesus was not afraid to enter Samaria. He refused to be bound by religious law that separated human beings, one from the other.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?"

Point #2: Jesus spoke first. He spoke to someone the Jews would have labeled as inferior on two counts- a Samaritan and a woman. And he spoke out of his vulnerability, as a person in need. He was thirsty.

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?"

10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

Point #3: Jesus makes the woman curious about him. He is respectful, but mysterious. He has something for her, and he wants her to know it, but he wants that need to rise in her, and not be inflicted on her.

11 "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

13 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

Point #4: Kindness and gentleness works! The Kingdom of God within this woman has been aroused! She wants to know more!

16 He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

17 "I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

Point #5: There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. He doesn’t preach, he doesn’t shame, he doesn’t tip his Jewish nose up in the air in self-righteous authority, he simply states the facts as only a prophet- a true prophet- could know them.

19 "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

(Since Samaritans believed that there have been no prophets since Moses, this is one whale of an admission!)

21 Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Point #6: Jesus does not hide the fact that there are differences between Jews and Samaritans. But these are not fighting words. They are followed with an inclusionary vision of “true believers,” a status which the woman is just inches from at this point.

25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

26 Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

Point #7: Ta-da!

27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.

Point #8: Jesus stayed with the Samaritans- he would have eaten their food, drunk from their vessels, looked them right in the eye, and right in the heart.

42 They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

Notice: No sword talk. No high-fives- “My team is better than your team.” No listing of points 1 through 8. Just conversation, openness, a willingness to go against the religious and cultural law, and..dare we say it?..love.

None of those things are easy to do. For most of us today, here in the U.S., breaking fee of the cultural bias toward Islam and Muslims is very difficult. Since 1979, when the Ayatollah took over the government of Iran, and especially since 2001, we have been fed particular images of particular Muslims in such a way by our media and by our government, so that it is almost impossible for us not to think of Muslims as anything but flag-burning, mob-crazed, oil-spoiled, Jew-hating maniacs.

And, indeed, some are. But most of those we see, because it is easy to see them (some of them love network cameras), most of those we see are nationalists using the language of Islam. They are not at all unlike the Nazis in that regard- nationalists who used the language of the Bible- specifically the gospel of John which we just read from- to further their nationalistic goals. Not at all unlike Timothy McVeigh who truly believed that by blowing up the Mullah building in Oklahoma City, he could help return this country to its so-called Christian roots.

One of the very real problems we must deal politically and spiritually with the reality of when dealing with Islam, is that it is not a hierarchical religion. There is no Pope, no international governing body. The nature of Middle-eastern and Asian Islam is that it becomes indistinguishable from the government of a country. Think of Saudi Arabia or Iran or Egypt. And then, when billions of dollars of oil are mixed into that formula, fundamentalist Muslims- who are usually among the have-nots- grow in political power, legitimate and otherwise.

When Church and State are one and the same, that’s called a theocracy. And, thank God, it is something we don’t know much about in the United States and must always be on our guard against this country ever becoming a theocracy. Theocracy always- always- leads to killing in the name of whatever God is fashionable at the moment. That’s true in the Middle East, just as it was true for awhile in the American colonies.

But even judging Islam by their Church/State connectivity can be confusing at times. Here’s an example: the three countries in the world most heavily populated by Muslims are, in order- Indonesia, India, and Pakistan. Now we know about the repression of women in Islamic societies, right? Or, do we? All three of those Muslim-heavy countries are democracies, or representative republics, similar to the U.S. system. Yet, unlike the U.S., where Christianity is predominate, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan have all, within the last forty years, elected women as presidents or, in the case of India, prime minister. We talk about equality here, but in those three countries, anyway, they demonstrated something we have not been able to yet.

Confusing? Yes. But then, most human things are, which is precisely the reason that easy answers are almost never the right answers. Here’s some more confusing statements for most Americans.

“The Detroit-based Shari'a Muslim Scholars Association of North America (SSANA) strongly condemned the 9-11 attack and said that there is no cause that justifies "this type of an immoral and inhumane act that has affected so many innocent American lives."

“These fundamentalist groups are endangering and embarrassing ordinary Muslims”
Inayat Bunglawala
Muslim Council for Britain

"Anyone can prove anything from any scriptures, provided he has a $2 piece of equipment," said Jamal Badawi, head of the Canada-based Islamic Information Foundation. "That is enough to buy a cheap pair of scissors to cut up verses and put them together the way you want."

“This despicable incident is an unacceptable outrage, regardless of who is ultimately held to be responsible, and we condemn it as fundamentally un-Islamic and against all the principles of our holy faith. We pray God to have mercy on the souls of the murder victims and to punish all evildoers who perpetuate and support such an act of Terrorism.” Islamic Association of Egypt.

“It's not courage in any way to kill an innocent person, or to kill thousands of people, including men and women and children..”

Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantaw, Syria

That’s five of literally hundreds and hundreds of such statements issued by Islamic groups and scholars from around the world and available for anyone to see on the Internet, including Fox News and all the various preachers who seem to think God needs their special protection.

I maintain again, as I have for the past several weeks, that fear is the main culprit, not Islam. Fear sells television advertising, fear has a free hand in the public treasury, fear causes people to reach in their pockets and buy salvation from whatever hustler is screaming the loudest in the God-language of their own secret terrors.

Should we be wary of certain Muslims? Absolutely! Just as we should be wary of certain Christians, Buddhists, atheists, and Jews. The weapons of today are heinous and American and European factories are designing and manufacturing them at greater levels than anytime in history and they make their way- wink, wink, nudge, nudge- into the wrong hands all the time. We would be stupid not to be vigilant and wary.

But we are also- and that’s a collective ‘we’, my taxes buy the same percentage of weaponry as yours do- we are also..well, less than smart, less than our Savior would have us be, if we continue to fail to follow Jesus in this most important of challenges.

What if we put aside the normal human responses of fear, anger, greed, revenge, and dogma that we apparently cherish because we- humans- have been using them to no avail throughout all of recorded history? What if, instead, we, like Jesus, put ourselves purposefully and intentionally into positions to empathetically communicate with those we fear, to be respectful of differing ideas, to be motivated by Jesus’ kind of love, to identify the source of such of such love in kindness and gentleness, to sit knee to knee, eye to eye, stay with, eat with, and genuinely be with other humans as people born in the Image of God? And then, if it didn’t work the first time, to start all over again?

No, we won’t change everyone, through force or love. But we can change us. Our responses to Islam, and all things and people, must be as similar as we can make them to the responses of Jesus to all things and people. That’s not an easy thing to do: Jesus demonstrated that for us, too. But when you ask the question, “What would Jesus do?”, there’s a couple of answers.

One more by Rumi, to end these thoughts for now:

Tender words we spoke

to one another

are sealed

in the secret vaults of heaven.

One day like rain,

they will fall to earth

and grow green

all over the world.