The Free Life

One of the things we are thankful for, living in America, is freedom. We say that. We celebrate that, with parades, songs, and fireworks. And we emphasize that notion with the occasional war.

So I’d like to look at freedom for a few minutes- the concept and the reality, and then hear a few other comments from the Apostle Paul.

Freedom. There is an ingrained maxim in the U.S. that our pursuit of happiness is in direct proportion to our freedom. Our Declaration of Independence says so. And one of the evidences of our freedom is our ability to make choices. Our freedom is maximized by the maximized choices we have.

Maybe..

I like freedom, don’t mistake anything I say here otherwise. But I do wonder if we need to think about freedom a little differently. Here’s what I mean:

At a typical Kroger’s store in Dallas or Fort Worth one has a choice of 285 different kinds and brands of cookies. 40 brands and types of toothpaste. And 175 kinds of salad dressing; that’s if you don’t count the 10 brands of extra virgin olive oil and the 8 brands of balsamic vinegar that you can use to make your own salad dressing should none of the aforementioned 175 kinds meet your needs.

In a typical Fry’s electronic store, it is possible- their estimation- to configure, with items in stock on any given day, 6.5 million versions of an entertainment center for one of the walls of your living room. Different speakers, tuners, televisions, amps, stereos, DVD and tape players, recorders, etc.

In communications equipment there are chapters of choice being added daily. We saw Friday and Saturday the introduction of Apple’s iPhone- an incredible piece of technology, it really is. It has, in some circles, enlarged what we call our basic set of freedoms, by giving consumers yet another choice in communicating with others. I dare say that every one in here today who has a cell phone, has a slightly different model or style from everyone else. Apple is working very hard to make the iPhone the one phone to which we all aspire.

Many of us remember, living in what was a free country then, too, when we could have any kind of phone we wanted as long as we called AT&T to get it. And even then we rented it, which means those phones never broke. And they still haven’t.

Even beyond non-material goods, we have a whole new array of choices in service areas like health care. It used to be that you went to the doctor and the doctor would say here’s what’s wrong and here’s what needs to be done. Now, it is a matter of options- “Here’s the problem, here’s some solutions, here’s the side effects, what would you like to do?”

“Just tell me, Doc, if you were me, what would you do?”

“Well, I’m not you; here’s the problem, here’s some solutions, here are the side effects, you choose..”

Which is why we see drug companies advertising on television their prescription products which we can’t just rush out and buy. They know we have the choice of calling our doctors and telling our doctors that we want the little purple option, or that we want that pretty green moth to flutter into our bedroom at night, too. And the drug companies know our doctors will listen to us, and do- most of the time- what we say. Or what the drug companies have told us to say. The pharmaceutical houses are using us, the customer, to create the demand.

Choices seem to equal freedom. More choices equal more freedom, yes? But good news never comes without the possibility of bad news, too.

One downside of having many choices is paralysis. We have so many choices we can’t decide and so we do nothing. One small evidence of that which we can almost all relate to is our Dish or Cable Television choices. 900 channels, and we find “there’s nothing good on.” Is that true, or is it that we simply can’t or won’t decide?

There was also a study done by Vanguard- the huge mutual fund company- which confirms this. The more options a company gives employees regarding their retirement program, the fewer that sign up for any of them. For every 10 programs presented beyond 5, the number participating in any program dropped by 5%, even when the employer was offering matching funds! It was too hard to decide, I’ll decide tomorrow, or next week, next year, and on and on. I know most of us can relate, if not about mutual funds, then about any of so many other, many-optioned decisions we have to make.

Paralysis- indecision- is one downside to having many choices. But here’s another, and studies are being done, and I’m certain they will confirm what many of us have experienced. Because we have so many expectations, so many possibilities to choose from, our expectations become very high, unnaturally high. We make a decision, finally, about buying a house for instance, or a car, or a college education, or.. whatever. And then we immediately begin second-guessing ourselves- because we can!

It is easy for us to begin to imagine alternative decisions we could have made, because they did exist. Any disappointment we may be realizing from our purchase- and who isn’t easily able to be disappointed in something about whatever it is we just bought- we blame ourselves for those disappointments. We should have made a different choice. Our standards are so high that we disappoint ourselves- “What an idiot I was!” or “I’m so stupid!”- when in reality, it was the number of choices, not us, that has caused us to set our standards so impossibly high. Prolonged disappointment in ourselves of this sort is a gateway to depression, and depression in America, the “most free” country in the world when we measure disposable incomes and ways and places to dispose of that income, depression in America is an ever-growing plague.

Our choices are legion. Our inability to decide is increasing. Our expectations are unrealistically high. And our disappointment in ourselves- for not buying the 80 GB iPod instead of this stupid old useless 20GB piece of junk- our advertising agency inflicted disappointment in ourselves is growing. No wonder we’re depressed!

But I’ve got a special little pill here for you. You can decide whether you want it or not. I’m not you; I can’t decide for you. But here it is. It’s something the Apostle Paul wrote to the church meeting in Galatia. I’m reading it from the Message, because it’s easier to hear that way. Which might make it easier for us to decide.

Galatians 5

13-15 It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

Paul begins to say something here that’s important. He’s calling freedom a good thing, and a dangerous thing. Even within the boundaries of the Law, we know we can make choices, market-driven, Constitutionally-protected choices that will land us- very possibly- in a heap trouble. As soon as a young person hits their 21^st birthday, forget the 285 kinds of cookies they can go to the grocery store and buy, they can head to a liquor store and buy any of, I would guess, a thousand different ways to be unconscious in two hours. They have the freedom to buy the first links of a chain that could enslave them for years, or for a short lifetime.

We all have the freedom to give up our freedom to banks and credit card companies. We used to see a phenomenon in Dallas- I’m sure it still exists- of the “Big House-Empty House.” Mortgage brokers made it so easy to find a mortgage- forget the interest, we’ll figure all that out later- that would put a young couple in a bigger house than their parents ever had- “haha, beat you, dad!” But then they sat in bean bag chairs and ate off TV trays while they waited for another credit card offer to arrive in the mail. Big House-Empty House. Freedom to choose, but not much fun, and the choices of divorce and depression often suddenly appear in the doorway.

16-18 My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?

19-21It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.

A little less choice may mean, it sounds like Paul is saying, more freedom. Let’s think for a minute of a goldfish in a medium sized fishbowl. We watch it, doing what goldfish do, and we lean in and whisper to the goldfish, “You can be anything you want to be!” And the goldfish hears us, takes our well-meaning words to heart, and asks us one day, “Help me? Help me to be free?”

So we pick up a hammer, and free him..he has no more boundaries, no more limitations as he slides from the bowl in a gush of water. Quickly, though, he ends up on the floor- paralyzed and frustrated, then depressed and dying.

I wonder, sometimes, if we in our affluence have not gone on beyond the bowl of Creation in which we were meant to live and thrive. Have we broken through the environmental and life-giving walls of what we have decided is limited freedom to end up on the floor, paralyzed, depressed, and dying? Have we allowed the Kingdom of God, within us and outside of us, to be hammered into a broken, temporary illusion of unlimited freedom?

Here, as a reminder from Paul, are the payoffs for staying in this marvelous, incredible, ever-able-to-be explored, but limited fishbowl of God’s Creation into which we born:

22-23 But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.

Freedom comes to us as a God-given right- the framers of the Declaration of Independence were absolutely correct! But unlimited freedom, and the always endless choices that go with it, are not life-giving. They are conjured up by people with hammers and sold to us as rights we have. God’s choices for Creation, for us, are enough. They are the standards which can cause our decisions to be easier to make, and better for us and our children and our neighbors, next door and around the world. Those God-given boundaries in which we enjoy Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are the only ones to which it is worth pledging to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Here’s one more way to look at it. You can remember everything I’ve just said by imagining this: The choice between one of Ozella’s fried pies and a slice of Jean’s angel food cake is enough, more than enough, isn’t it? 285 kinds of cookies cannot possibly make anyone happier than that.

Amen

Step 12 of the 12 Steps: The Point of the Journey, So Far

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all of our daily living.

Ever since the Greek writer Homer wrote about the wanderings of his mythic hero Ulysses in the Odyssey, the idea of a journey has been an often used metaphor for understanding life. We are able to understand and know Abraham, for instance, because in Chapter 12 of Genesis, it was written: “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.,” and he did. If he’d have stayed in his father’s land where everything was familiar and comfortable, all the episodes of Abraham’s life which added up to his being the father of Judaism, would never have happened.

In Genesis, the journeys of others are used to describe spiritual as well as geographical change: the journeys of Noah, Jacob and Esau, then of Joseph, then another wandering journey: the 40 year journey of Moses from Egypt to the Promised Land.

We fit Jesus’ life into a journey, from the stable to the cross. Dante’s Inferno later described a journey, into hell. Mark Twain in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, described the maturing of a boy and the maturing of a nation after the Civil War, by describing a journey on a raft down the Mississippi. Jonathon Swift, Gulliver’s Travels. Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley. Jack Keroauc, On the Road.

Humans have an understanding of journeys; we understand, unlike any other life-form on earth, we understand beginning and ends, filled with chapters and plot twists and revelations. Reading about the journeys of others is an easy, but also deep and meaningful way of understanding our own journeys through life.

You may have been able to see by now, as I’ve talked about the Twelve Steps, that there is a very real journey involved in moving from Step One to the Twelfth and final step. The alcoholic or addict, or the person whose personal identity has been lost in the compulsive behavior of chemicals or culture, comes to a determination and begins again to move: “We admitted we were powerless; that our lives had become unmanageable.” They begin, by saying those words, to leave a place of powerlessness, yes, and of unmanageability, yes, but most of all, they begin to work up the gumption, based on their own life’s messes and based on the testimony of others at this point, they begin to move from a place of hopelessness.

If you have never been there, to that place, where life has been reduced to mere need, where your best friends are the clerk at the liquor store, or the pharmacist, or whoever it is that has sent you yet another Mastercard application; that place where you cannot see clearly into the next hour, let alone the next day, or year; if you have never been there, Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

If you have, there is no need for my trying to describe it further, because hopelessness is everything so inhumane and so ungodly, that my words cannot begin to describe it for you and it would be insulting of me to even try.

To move from that place of hopelessness, to begin to take that very first step outward, involves strength and courage that can only come from outside of ourselves. It’s not within us anymore to go on. Admitting that out loud to another person, or to God, or to just scream it into the darkness- is where everything begins to be made new. It may feel, at the time, like it is trying to light a candle on a windy seashore, but it is, in fact, the very first light of a new dawn.

It’s the beginning of a journey- a journey which will turn us inside out. It will really hurt. It’s a journey that will force us from our sickbed of terminal uniqueism, into a community where we will find people who are just as screwed up as we are, but who are also, we will find, as beloved of God as we are.

It’s a journey from certain early death to life, through ten more steps after that first one, until we arrive at this one, Number 12: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all of our daily living.”

Journeys have beginnings, and journeys have destinations. This is the destination of the Twelve Steps. It is not merely a destination though; it is a rest-of-our lives place of continued and continual healing; of giving away as often and as much as possible what we have been given and, in so doing, becoming wealthy in the knowledge of our place in God.

Bill W., a drunk insurance agent in Akron, Ohio- the founder, along with Dr. Bob, of AA, wrote this in a letter, years after he had enabled tens of thousands of others to become sober:

“Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance, urges quite appropriate to age seventeen, prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven and fifty-seven.

”Since AA began, I've taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up emotionally and spiritually. I kept asking myself "Why can't the twelve steps work to release depression?" By the hour, I stared at the St. Francis Prayer ... "it's better to comfort than to be comforted". Here was the formula, all right, but why didn't it work?

”Suddenly, I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence, almost absolute dependence, on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.

“Because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed upon any act of circumstance whatsoever.

”Then only could I be free to love as Francis did. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing love appropriate to each relation of life.

”Plainly, I could not avail myself to God's love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldn't possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies.”

If we’re going to begin to be whole, if we going to have a chance at continued sobriety; if we’re going to, any of us, have a chance at a life that reflects the God-image in us; if we’re going to, any of us, give up the culture-driven, ego-driven drives within us that keep us from our Promised Land, then, we, too, must give up what is false, to make room for that which is true.

And the best way to do that- the only way to that- is to give away all of that false pride, those false emotional dependencies on others.

The best example I can think of is one I’ve told you about before, but it’s an image that defines me, and you feel free to borrow it. Etta was a 65 year old Lakotah Sioux woman that my wife and I worked with in South Dakota. Born in 1910, she had been of that generation that was forcibly removed from her parents to go to white man’s boarding school. After that, she was relocated, also by the government, from the reservation to Chicago, to become assimilated, which, in government jargon meant, to become white.

She tried; they all tried. But Etta failed and ended up at the bottom of a bottle for many years. She made her way back to the reservation in the 50s, married a man 30 years her senior- her third marriage. But this time she married a man who had never stopped being Indian, and who knew Jesus. Together, John and Jesus brought Etta home.

It meant an end to the false pride forced upon her. She came to the end of dependency on others, so unlike her, for approval. In the acceptance of her people as she was, Etta could accept herself, as she was becoming.

There are so many incidents and stories of being around someone who served others in the name of Jesus, without ever considering it an obligation to do so. One late afternoon, I was with her when she got a call that an old man, a neighbor of hers, needed a ride home. He been found by the road, by the police, passed out. “David and I will be there,” she said to whoever it was on the phone, while she was making it impossible for me to say “No.”

We drove into the country, got _____ into the car, where he fell into the back seat and promptly threw up, all over Etta’s floor. Etta laughed while I cringed. “Smoke a cigarette,” she said, “so that you can’t smell it.” And she drove _____ home. Without a single complaint. No preaching. No condemnation of _____. Only acceptance. Only service. Only Jesus.

Back to Bill W.’s letter: “This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of God's creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the real current can't flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what real love really is.

”If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependence and its consequent demand. Let us, with God's help, continually surrender these hobbling demands. Then we can be set free to live and love: we may then be able to gain emotional sobriety.”

And that’s where we are going in this journey of the 12 Steps, and in this journey of Life. “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all of our daily living.”

Which means, by the way, carrying this message- this message of spiritual growth and human wholeness- not only to addicts, but to everyone. Daily living includes people who all around us who are living in various degrees of hopelessness. We may outwardly believe, if we are still buying into the false pride and false emotional dependencies of the world, we might make the mistake of assuming that the guy across the street is nothing more than a loud-mouth show-off. Or that “her” sister is just a gold-digging little tramp. Or that the guy with the new car every year has “got it made.” Or that the drunk passed out beside the road is just another drunk Indian, let him lay there and sleep it off.

But each of them, bottom line, is far more like us, than they are unlike us. Having done a spiritual and moral inventory of ourselves back in Steps 4, 5, 6, and 7, it is forever impossible to see anyone again only through the narrow-focused lenses of our own egos. We can begin to see others in the light of mistakes they’ve made, and their regrets, and in the knowledge that they, too, are involved, like we were, in actions of self-deception and denial. We can see them, and know them, for the fragile creatures they and we are.

And that makes all the difference. It is the point where, as Paul said, “Behold! All things become new.”

When Jesus stood up in the synagogue and publicly announced his ministry, he didn’t turn to Isaiah 61, he picked up the scroll and read from that place where it said:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
²to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
³to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

Later on, Jesus said that “those who come after me will do even greater things than I have done.” That’s the responsibility being handed on to us by Jesus, by Bill W., Doctor Bob, and Etta. We are the ones on this planet, right now, we are the ones to bring good news to the oppressed. We are the only ones- those of us who can see beyond ourselves into the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Continuing Creation- we are the only ones Jesus has right now, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.

We are the only ones with any inclination at all to have a sick guy in the back seat of our car and be able to imagine at all that God sees him, that guy who just messed up the back seat, as an “oak of righteousness, planted by the Lord, to display his glory.”

A final word from Bill W., at the end of his letter: “Nowadays, my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine"

Step 12- that’s all you need to remember about it; it’s the destination of all of our journeys: “a quiet place in the bright sunshine” where the belovedness by God of all persons can finally be seen.

(An AA chip) This was given to me this earlier this week, by a brother in Christ who’s also a brother of the 12 step table. I show it to you not because it has a single thing to do with me, it absolutely does not. This is a thirteen year medal of sobriety. It belongs to Etta, to my wife, to my family, to the hundreds of people around tables as I was going to 90 meetings in 90 days back in 1993 and 1994, and to the people I sit with now on Wednesdays, and the people I stand in front of today. It belongs to Jesus, who really, really does continue to do great things.

Amen..

Step 11 of the 12 Steps: Knowing God Better

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.

This is the latest edition of the North Texas Conference newspaper and this week’s edition shows all of next year’s assignments of pastors to churches. This makes it official: David Weber, Jacksboro.

My heart is with those who are moving to new places this morning, because I remember what it was like four years ago doing the same thing. I was thinking this week of what that one last thing might be that I would want to talk to you about if we in fact were on our way to somewhere else. And what that topic would be is exactly the same theme as this 11^th Step.

Whether we are involved in the 12 Steps and learning to live sober, or whether we are moving through our lives with the desire to better know and more closely follow Jesus, we must arrive at a place- not a geographical place, but a spiritual place. It is that place where we enter into state of communication with God, a place of prayer and meditation with God.

Those words- prayer and meditation- are loaded with traditional meanings. If there is one thing I hope you know by now about me by now, and feel good about exploring for yourselves, it is that we must not ever bound in our journeys with God by the traditions of other people, no matter how old and well established those traditions are. There is the familiar story of the new bride who was serving her husband her family’s special roast beef. After a couple such meals, the husband asked his wife why she always cut the ends off the roast before putting it in the oven. “It’s better that way.. it browns better, I guess” was her response, which was the only response she had.

When the in-laws came to visit, mother-in-law prepared her version of the family’s roast beef special recipe and new husband watched her as she cut off the ends of the roast, too, before adding various spices. “Why do you cut off the ends like that?” he asked.

“It just makes the roast better, more juicy, it cooks better that way..I think. Anyway, that’s the way we’ve always cooked it in our family,” was her answer to the question that she’d never been asked before.

At Christmas, new wife and husband made the journey to grandma’s house. On Christmas Day, grandma announced that they would be having her special roast beef dinner. New husband immediately inserted himself in the kitchen to do more research. He watched as Grandma got an old, slightly dented roasting pan from under the stove, and set it beside the cut of roast.

He watched as Grandma, too, meticulously cut the ends off the roast, before putting it in her pan. “Why, Grandma, why do you cut the ends off the roast?” he asked, again.

And finally he heard the real, very unmysterious answer: “So it will fit in the pan,” she said.

It never hurts to ask, “Why?” about anything. Roast beef or God, it doesn’t matter. Because the answers, when we find them, are almost always rooted in formerly unquestioned traditions, and sometimes- even in questions about God- we find that it had to do with something as silly as the size of the pan, or the size of the mind that God was being fit into.

Why do we pray in the ways that most of us pray? We know the answer, historically, and it doesn’t have very much to do with anything particularly “holy.” In the Middle Ages, as the relationship between the Church and the State was growing stronger, by force from the leaders of both parties, it was decided to pattern some of the outward worship practices of the Church to the well-established legal traditions of the State. There really wasn’t that much difference anyway between standing in a court of law and standing in a church at that time.

People would get on their knees when approaching royalty, or representatives of royalty like judges. Sometimes they’d even crawl from the back of the room to emphasize their lowly station in life compared to the high and mighty person in front of them. So we now kneel to pray. And lower our heads. Kow-towing, they called such a practice in China.

Similarly, because mere mortals were not allowed to look directly into the eyes of some royalty, some priests adopted that custom, too, and made the people close their eyes in prayer. Even in the 18^th century, in New England, ushers would walk around the room and make sure people had their eyes closed during prayer. If they didn’t, they might get a little knock on the head from the sticks the ushers carried with them. So we close our eyes, too.

When people would beg mercy from the court, they would put their hands together, in a formal sign of pleading. So we put our hands together in prayer.

Priests and judges were regarded as necessary intermediaries between God and humans; you want to have God hear you, then you go to the places where priests and judges hang out- the church or the courtroom. Even today, you’ll notice that courtrooms often, suspiciously, look like the front of a church. Actually, it’s the other way around. Churches were designed to look like courtrooms- the jury box, the judge’s bench, the bar. So we come to church to pray.

“Why?” It’s always a good question.

Here’s another one: Why are so many drunks reluctant about coming to church, and why, when you do get them there, do they sit there in a cold sweat, running their fingers down the bulletin to see how close we are to that last hymn, and “how fast can I get to the exit?” Well, it’s because many of them have stood right here in places that look a whole lot like this.

“License suspended, 30 days, 2 years…”

Or worse: “The prisoner is reprimanded to the jailer..”

And even if the drunk has never been to court, or even if a person has no problem with any of the obvious addictions, coming to church is made to feel like a threat sometimes, like the preacher, or God, will be keeping tabs on what you wear and how still you sit, or even be able to know somehow what crazy, “unholy” thoughts you may be having while sitting there. Yikes!

Now, back to the original thoughts I was having about the most important thing I could say to you, about prayer and meditation. About everything, really. And that is this: Follow Jesus.

Follow the priests and the judges, if they are following Jesus, until you can strike out on your own directly behind him, if you need to. Learn about and practice prayer in church, if you need to, but only so it becomes a natural and normal part of life outside of here as well. But make that your ultimate goal- following Jesus- and everything else falls into place.

So, as we’re following Jesus, where and when do we observe him praying? Everywhere and often, apparently. There were times of formal prayer on his part that were recorded- think of his teaching of what we call the Lord’s prayer, or think of that night in the Garden of Gethsemane before his death. We know how the Hebrews prayed- like this: arms spread up and out, eyes wide open. Not at all unlike a puppy or a cat who rolls over on its back to show its vulnerability and trust in you. Openness is the key here I think, an invitation, not a wall. And eyes wide open, listening for God, but also watching for God, not only during prayer, but during life, all the time.

And if communication with God through prayer by following Jesus is the most important thing- that, I think, is the most important thing about prayer: keeping our eyes, ears, hearts and minds open; permitting our imaginations, our visions, our dreams, even our daydreams, to be ready, on call, and aware that God is everywhere and can speak to us, be seen by us, in church yes, but everywhere else, too. If we choose to see God in all things.

Again, following Jesus: he drew lessons from the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, grains of wheat, fig trees, rocks by the road, from bread, from a cup of wine. He saw the image of God in children wanting to be near him, in a widow dropping her pennies in the collection plate, in a short guy up in a tree, in lepers, in a demoniac, in fishermen, tax collectors, grieving people, poor people, sick people, in people who were hungry, thirsty or in prison.

His eyes were wide open. Imagine following him! Imagine him stooping down to watch the ants, imagine him sighing when he looks out a field of wildflowers, imagine him tracing the clouds with his eyes, or becoming lost in the moon’s glow.

Imagine him reaching out to touch those lepers, those children, those fishermen, that drunk, that addict. It’s not hard at all to imagine is it? We can easily imagine that because it’s the Image of God in Jesus and the same Image of God in us, talking back and forth right now, and that is prayer. That is praying like Jesus prayed, all the time, aware and awake, open and vulnerable to messages in the wind that are without words, and to the silent thunder of God’s voice in the quiet of a sleeping child’s face or in the serene face of one whose body is about to die.

The path behind Jesus that I am describing is at odds sometimes with the practice of religion as it is often taught. A lot of people sitting around a Twelve Step table come to realize that. It is not about the rules of church, the very rules that some of us were rebelling against (we thought) when we began to drink, or use, or otherwise sacrifice our souls on the altars of our Selves. It’s not about religious dogma and human doctrine, it’s about relationships, between ourselves and God and with each other.

It is about learning to be grateful for those same birds of the air and lilies of the field that Jesus was. It’s about not being afraid, like Jesus wasn’t afraid, to touch lepers and scoundrels. It’s about not being completely spiritually satisfied by meeting together in church, as beneficial and inspiring as that might be! It is about being anxious to get back into the world and follow Jesus there in all the places where you may not have thought before about his being present.

Step 11, again: Prayer and meditation are so that we can “improve our conscious contact with God.. so that we may have knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out.”

If we can get over the notion, and I know Jesus enables us to do this, if we can get over the notion that we are standing on top of a world that was created for us, and realize, instead, that we are a part of something that is still being created, then- no matter who are or what we have been- everything can be new.

Religion has often taught, tragically, that the world, the earth, other people, and everything in the world are ours to exploit, to use at our leisure as quickly as possible. That system of thinking came directly out of the Greco-Roman world that Jesus stood up to and died fighting against. That system of thinking is a breeding ground for jealousy, greed, and all kinds of psychological problems because it flies in the face of God’s face, God’s image, in us. It is easy to be disappointed and even bitter toward the world and the people around us when we have bought into that easy-to-buy-into tradition, It’s also easy to drown that disappointment and bitterness, for awhile, or to smoke or inject it away.

But Jesus leads us into a better way. We can follow Jesus into a continuing

Creation, where he shows us the tools- love, grace, and forgiveness- with which we can be co-creators, with God, of this part of God’s universe. We can follow Jesus into a world that burning with God’s beauty and we can be changed by it in the same way Moses was when he encountered the burning bush of God’s voice.

If we’re on top of the world, we’re alone. If we are part of Continuing Creation, we are in community with every single thing in the universe, from the rings around Saturn, to the baby blue jay learning right now to fly, to the sunflowers beginning to bloom, to the healthy baby just born anywhere in the world, to the old man or woman dying somewhere else.

And why in the world would someone want the dark curtain of alcohol, or the wretched selfishness of drugs to remain standing between themselves and..all of that?

Next week, Step 12, and we’ll talk about the very best thing step of all- helping others escape from behind that dark curtain and leaving behind the soul cancer of selfishness. We’ll see the real party that following Jesus leads to.

Step 10 of the 12 Steps- Building Markers

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

In anthropology, the study of humans, their cultures, and their emigrational moves from Southern Africa to the various continents of the worlds, one of the earliest pieces of evidence, looked for by anthropologists of human presence, is found in stones. Stones piled in an unusual way, or fitted together, or erected in a particular formation, like Stonehenge, are often the first indicators of an ancient human presence.

Stones were used by ancient humans for thousands of years before the refinement and firing of various ores into metal took place. But even before rocks were used as tools, they were used as fire boundaries, as altars, markers, and memorials.

It’s a tradition, a human endeavor, which has never stopped. Distance markers laid by ancient Greek then Roman armies are still found throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Stone monuments and stone plaques built into walls are still an affirmation of the stone’s permanent qualities over the impermanence of human flesh. We have grave markers built for loved ones- a continuing, modern manifestation of something which began happening even before humans had a language or the tools to write on rocks with.

A pile of stones- in the form of a circle, or in the carved heads on Easter Island, or in the form of a pyramid in Egypt or Mexico, or a carved commemorative cornerstone, or a headstone up here at Oak Grove- a pile of stones, or a special stone, is a primary and certain indicator of human habitation. We are, after all, the only species aware our impermance and therefore the only species which has developed both a need and the skills to use rocks in these ways.

Here’s part of a story from Genesis that shows rocks being used in a particular way that has everything to with Step 10 of the Twelve Steps. It’s OK if yo don’t see the connection yet, because you will.

Jacob was Abraham’s son, the father of Judaism. Jacob was the leader of a band of families, all related to Abraham, and which included Laban and his sons. Bands of families, like some churches, even some countries, occasionally get to squabbling with each other over real or perceived problems and either fight it out, or go their separate ways. Jacob and Laban, lucky for newly born people of Israel, decided to go their separate ways when Laban’s sons accused Jacob of keeping all the good livestock for himself. Which is exactly what Jacob had been doing.

Genesis 31: 45-55

⁴⁵So Jacob took a stone, and set it up as a pillar. ⁴⁶And Jacob said to his kinsfolk, ‘Gather stones,’ and they took stones, and made a heap; and they ate there by the heap. ⁴⁷Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha: but Jacob called it Galeed. ⁴⁸Laban said, ‘This heap is a witness between you and me today.’ Therefore he called it Galeed, ⁴⁹and the pillar Mizpah, for he said, ‘The Lord watch between you and me, when we are absent one from the other. ⁵⁰If you ill-treat my daughters, or if you take wives in addition to my daughters, though no one else is with us, remember that God is witness between you and me.’

51 Then Laban said to Jacob, ‘See this heap and see the pillar, which I have set between you and me. ⁵²This heap is a witness, and the pillar is a witness, that I will not pass beyond this heap to you, and you will not pass beyond this heap and this pillar to me, for harm. ⁵³May the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor’—the God of their father—‘judge between us.’ So Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac, ⁵⁴and Jacob offered a sacrifice on the height and called his kinsfolk to eat bread; and they ate bread and tarried all night in the hill country.

Now Laban saw this particular rock pile as a witness, a reminder to Jacob that if Jacob wouldn’t be watching him, God was. And he also saw the pile of rocks as a line in the sand, a boundary. “That’s your side, this is my side”- like two kids fighting in the back seat of a car. The rock pile was made official by breaking bread over it and eating before each party went its separate way.

Whichever role the rock pile officially played for the tribes of Jacob and Laban, it was an important role. It was a reminder of God’s presence, or it was a boundary. Which is what Step 10 is: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

By now, we’ve come a long way. To have come this far in the Steps means we are looking outward for answers and guidance, toward God as we know God, and not inward, toward ourselves, who we now know we really didn’t know very well at all. We, those of us who really thought we needed alcohol, have been surrounded now for weeks by people who, we’ve learned, were also really messed up but who have been able to live sober. We have become dependent on their stories, their encouragement, their insight into themselves and us.

We’ve looked hard and long at ourselves, figuring out, piecing together where we’d gone wrong, when we had stopped drinking alcohol and when alcohol had begun drinking us. We made the first faltering, hesitant attempts to turn those shortcomings over to God, as God sits there with us in the hearts, love, and presence of people who not only want us to get well but believe we can get well.

We’ve even begun to make some amends. We’ve found out that some persons we hurt in our addictions have sometimes been hurt beyond any chance of healing. Others are skeptical as the dickens, which they should be; they don’t want to be hurt again. And some accept our stumbling, inadequate apologies.

We are, at this point, maybe at our weakest, most dangerous point in the whole 12 Step process. Because this is where we begin to say, way too often, sometimes repeatedly, to ourselves. “Hmm..I’ve done pretty good so far. I’ve come a long way.”

And indeed we have. We’ve been sober now for six weeks, six months, six years- however long it is- when those suicide bomb statements about ourselves to ourselves come bubbling to the surface. And I know that it’s not hard to remember saying those kinds of things about a whole range of bad habits humans suffer with.

“I’ve not smoked a cigarette for two months now..pretty good!”

“I’ve made it a whole week without complaining to anyone about anything..I must be getting better!”

“I’ve not clicked onto a porn site in a month,” “I’ve not gone shopping crazy since last Christmas,” “I’ve not had a hit, a snort, a poke, a taste, in a year now and I’m feeling great!

Amen, amen, amen to all those statements- hallelujah for you! Here’s your 30 day, 60 day, six month, one year token, we’re proud of you!

But it’s then, on the way home, sitting alone in front of the TV, or waking up one morning with the pressures of the day already accumulating, that the other part of those self-congratulatory statements gets spoken: “I think I’ve got it under control. In fact, I feel like a new person, I really do. I feel great!” Then:

“I think I’ll have a drink. Just one, for old time’s sake. I know how to handle it now.”

If you have never put that set of sentences together yourself, then you know people who have. And we all know the rest of the story is worse than the first chapters.

Which is why Step 10 is vital. It is a never, never-ending step for anyone who ever wants to change their ways, by allowing God to change their ways. We’ve got to keep to door of vulnerability open to God. We’ve got to know that the chemistry, the physiology of our brains that made us crazy to drink- or whatever- in the first place, is still the template to which our actions will default. Nothing has changed except our perspectives and our relationship to some new, also formerly weak people and to God. The synapses in our brain are still sitting up there by the millions like dry sponges waiting to be wetted down by golden liquids.

“I know how to handle it now.” We know that demonic thought is always on its way to being said. And there is a great one word, two syllable, unquotable response which we also need to be ready to make to ourselves when that lie is ready to be spoken. And if that’s the first line of defense for you, so be it, put your head in a pillow and scream until you believe it.

But you can also, while you’re still climbing the hill of the Twelve Steps, do something else which is of far greater permanence, and won’t scare the kids if they were to catch you screaming into a pillow.

You can build rock piles. Along the way, you can start building memorials of where you were on a given day in your struggle. You can start, early on, to build boundaries around your new perceptions and your new behavior that will remind you that there are places you cannot cross into again. There are fences which must separate you from the grass on the other side no matter how green it seems to be.

One of those rock-piles can be coming out of your anonymity. That’s not for everyone, but it is for some of us. I’m open about my own problems for two reasons: the second is so that others with the same problem will know that they have a friend. They really do. But the first reason I’m open about it is that the more people I tell, the more people I’m accountable to. I don’t want you ever to have to hear that your cousin’s daughter-in-law’s boss’s sister saw me at the liquor store in Bryson, Wichita Falls, or Fort Worth or anywhere else. It’s protection. It’s a boundary line for me. Every single one of you helps me, whether you knew it or not, to never drink again.

Another rock pile marker is, as I said before, a Jacob reminder that while no one is watching, God is. And I don’t think God is watching us with a scorecard in one hand a lightening bolt blow gun in the other. I think God is watching us with hope. God is my co-pilot, you remember that famous poem from WWII. Well, I think of God as my cheerleader, too. God is our cheerleader. God cheers while the rest of the world doubts. God hopes for us when the rest of the world has given up. God is even there to scream into a pillow with us, I think, and so it is entirely appropriate to build a heap of stones, a pillar, to God. A picture on the wall that only you know the real meaning of. A rock on the fireplace, an altar in the backyard that you can see from the window over the sink, a plastic Jesus ridin’ on the dashboard of your car, it doesn’t matter. Build it, because those self-deluding lies are always looming, waiting to be born. Again.

And one more thing when those lies start to be said, promptly admit it. That’s where a sponsor, a pastor, a wife, a husband, a confidant, is vital. Don’t pretend to be strong. We’re not, admit it. Don’t pretend that it doesn’t matter to anyone that we are wrestling again. It does.

Step 10 must never stop. It is yet another way to pray, as Paul said, continuously. Or as Jesus prayed, “Deliver us from evil.” Because that is what anything that separates us from the love of God, the cheerleading of God, is.

No one with a predilection toward bad behavior can afford to think of themselves as invincible, in control, or on top of whatever that “problem” is. We never were in control before, and we will never be in full control again. The process of self-examination, of gaining new insights, must be on-going.

It is possible for awhile, to act sober while all the old stimulations and wrong attitudes are still pinging away inside. That’s called being a “sober drunk.” It’s like driving a car with no oil: it will get us down the highway a little ways, but at some point, the engine’s going to blow.

That’s why we maintain our engines. That’s why we must maintain our sobriety. We must constantly be shedding the weight of burdensome attitudes- losing the baggage that got us where we were, where we never want to be again.

Rock piles- markers which point us to God, and away from ourselves, help us do that.

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.

~~

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.

“Steps 6 and 7 of the 12 Steps- Ready, Willing, and Able (Maybe)”

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

This is one of those messages where I’m going to speak directly to the high school seniors here with us this morning, and everyone else can, if you wish, listen in. Because, as we’ve all discovered, a big chunk of who we are now, no matter how old we are, was being formed right about the time these young people are living in today. So if I say something relevant to them, let your eighteen year old ears hear, too. Because they are still listening.

I’ve been talking the last several weeks about the Twelve Step Program. About which it is my hope that none of you will ever have to become more acquainted with it than you what you will hear about it today. So, if you listen closely to these 6^th and 7^th steps of the Twelve Steps, I believe we can help that goal of future ignorance about the 12 Steps to be a real one.

But first, don’t think you are immune from the potential need for this program. Forty years ago, right about now, on a Sunday like this one, I was sitting in a church that I never missed a Sunday attending. I was president of the church’s youth group, and I was surrounded by a loving and large family who filled many pews of that church. We, too, the class of 1967, were being honored as graduating Seniors.

One year later, 1 of my classmates was dead, in an unpopular war not unlike the one some of your classmates will end up in. Five years later, 1 more was dead from the war, 2 had their brains cooked by Southeast Asia heroin or Vietnamese speed, and there were already, as I remember it, about ten failed marriages in a class of 115 people. Ten years later, two people were in prison, at least one had died in an alcohol related auto death, and I didn’t know anyone, except the Mennonite kids, who hadn’t tried, at least, marijuana, and much else that was available at the time. And many of us were drinking with a great deal of regularity and a few of us were drinking with a whole lot of compulsion. And not a single one of us would have said ten years before that we would be dead, addicted, divorced, in prison, or the least bit unhappy.

But, it is easy to see now, many of us were.

And I also remember how I would have reacted if someone in 1967, had stood up that day in church and said, “Here’s what’s going to happen to your class over the next ten years.” I’d have been choking on my own laughter, maybe even getting angry at such a pessimistic prophecy. “We’re different,” I would have shouted with the full and righteous conviction that 18 year olds then had about themselves and their generation. “We’re not our parents! We’re going to make a difference in the world!”

That kind of attitude said so much about who many of us thought we were back then. Our parents had lived through a Depression, fought and won a terrible and noble and sacrificial war against genuine evil, yet we didn’t want to be like them. We were different.

You might be saying, thinking the same thing. And, you know what?, this time you’re right- you are different than young people were forty years ago. You’re about an inch taller, on average, and your life expectancy is between five and six years longer. You’ve got much more knowledge, good and bad. You know way more stuff than the average 18 year old in 1967 did. You know science and technical language about things that hadn’t even been thought of forty ears ago. But you’ve also go all the junk from 115 cable and Dish channels in there, too, and most of you have had that inflowing all your lives. You know probably ten times more about Paris Hilton than I did about the Beatles. You actually, whether you want to or not, have opinions, based on huge amounts of information, about people like Kevin Federline, Britney Spears, and Lindsey Lohan.

And, you also have available to you something inconceivable forty years ago. This- well, something that looks like this (crytal meth). Cruise the edges of Main Street here or in other nearby towns tonight, or, if you prefer, Google up a recipe for it. You know it’s right there. This stuff, maybe more than anything else, makes your generation different from any other. Because 24 hours from now, after 2 or 3 puffs of this, your soul can belong to a multi-billionaire in Mexico, who will begin a two, three, maybe four if you’re lucky, a few year process of squeezing every dollar from you, your loved ones, and every unfortunate sucker who comes near your lies during that time.

You do this tonight, and within a couple years, you can come see me at Thursday afternoon chapel over at the jail. If you’re alive.

I know I’m shocking other people more than I’m shocking you, because you’ve already seen what this stuff has done to some of your peers. Because you are different than we were- in absolutely stunning and wonderful ways, but in some horrid ones as well.

I know each of you is prepared, and probably already have had the opportunity to say “No, no, no” to this and other stuff. But, I also know that over the next several years you will be making discoveries about yourselves- your brains, at this age, are exactly at the place, cognitively, that you will begin to examine your beliefs about he world and about yourselves. You will have the ability, and it will develop further over the next 2 or 3 years, to think critically about what it is you believe. You will be developing a worldview. You will discover, and want to something about- here comes Step Six- you will discover defects in your character.

Don’t be insulted by that statement. None of us, grew up in the Garden of Eden. Stuff, as the bumper stickers used to say, Stuff Happens. And you’re going to sometimes find things out about yourselves that you want to change. You want that to happen, that’s a good thing. Here’s a story from the gospel of John, Chapter 5, about a defective guy who really went about dealing with his defectiveness in a screwed up way:

John 5: 1-3 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Notice that when Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be made well, the man didn’t answer “Yes!” He made a whiney excuse instead. He’d learned to live with his defectiveness. He maybe even had grown used to and enjoyed the special attention it brought to him. It certainly gave him a good excuse to not try anything new. He’d grown satisfied living a half life.

Don’t be satisfied, ever, living a half life. The man in this story had learned to live with his disability. He had learned to feel sorry for himself, to make excuses, to be comfortable in his discomfort. He had redefined what living meant in order to accommodate his circumstances. He had come to love his mat more than the dream he once had to get up off of that mat.

It’s why Jesus’ question to him- “Do you want to get well?”- was so important. It was a question the man had stopped asking himself. It was too scary of a question for the man to ask himself. The only way Jesus could demonstrate this oddity of human nature was to go ahead and heal the man anyway. “Stand up, take your mat, and walk,” Jesus told him.

Now when you read the rest of the story you’ll find out that the man wasn’t happy with his having been healed. He went right to the Jewish authorities and tattle-tailed on Jesus for having healed on the Sabbath. I have my doubts whether the man was physically sick in the first place. I think he was kind of like the guy who’s gotten used to laying around in front of the TV, making excuses about not getting up and going outside with real people in a real world, who keeps a long and ready list for anyone who dares to listen of all the aches, pains, trials, and tribulations that life has dumped on him. I think he enjoyed playing sick s that others would say, “poor boy.”

So, it’s a question we must all ask ourselves from time to time, just to make sure we haven’t fallen ourselves into the “poor me, nobody will help me” syndrome. Because the defects of character, which we address in Step Six are laying all around out there, ready to be picked up or inflicted on us.

We really do choose, crazy as it may seem, to pick some of those defects up ourselves. They come in brown and green bottles, or little baggies, or in wrong emotional responses to the world, like anger, or shame. We even cultivate some of them- they don’t all immediately grab our souls like this one does. (the baggie) Two beers a week can become after a year or two, eight to ten beers a night. It’s no longer something we choose to do, it’s something we have to do.

“Do you want to get well?” can be a life-saving question we ask ourselves, courtesy of Jesus.

But, I also said that some of those defects in character can be inflicted on us. Here’s an example, you can explore your own lives and find out the ones that have affected you personally. Pick any one of the Spanish-language talk shows some afternoon and watch. It doesn’t matter which one, because this is always true. The hosts of the show, the people in control, the pretty ones with nice clothes, will be European Mexicans. The crazy people, the ones who fight, dress badly, and have bad haircuts, will be Indian Mexicans. That’s a choice the producers of those shows make for whatever racist reasons they choose to do so.

But if you’re a young, Spanish speaking kid of Indian background, how do you grow up thinking about yourself in light of what you’ve learned about Indian Mexicans on TV? It affects everything- the average American woman is 5’5”. The average model or television actress is 5’11”. That’s a false defect that has been inflicted on American girls to the point that eating disorders and self-image problems have become a plague. It’s as false as a Mexican talk show.

“Do you want to get well?” Whatever the problem is- and I wish I could tell you there will never be any, but there will- whatever the problem is, its solution starts there, an important question given to you by Jesus himself: “Do you want to get well?”

When the addict is ready to say “Yes” to that question, when anyone is ready to say “Yes” to that question, we are ready to take Step Seven: “We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.”

Our pride, our perceived unique-ness, our human attitude of being oh-so-special is what most often has gotten us into a defective state of being in the first place. Our pride can even be an addiction of its own!

And so that we aren’t here all day, listening to me tell you the 25 most important things that I think you should know as graduating Seniors, let me shoot right to the top of the list and give you the single most important thing I want you to know: If you want to be happy in life, if you want to be satisfied, whole, and happy at 20, 30, 40, and 80 and 90 years of age; if you want to live life with a minimum of regrets, if you want to follow Jesus in a way the most admirable people you know of follow Jesus, forget Pride. Adopt the attitude as soon as possible that life is not about what you get, it’s about what you can give.

Here’s a parable Jesus told:

Luke 18: 10-14 ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

You think Jesus couldn’t be sarcastic? He scorned the show-off who held himself above the riff-raff. His words were venomous toward those who judged and lorded it over other people. On the other hand, he cherished those who were humble, those who understood their defectiveness, and were willing to quietly, behind the scenes, seek mercy and healing for themselves and others.

Don’t get me wrong here. Be proud, proud as the dickens about that A you will receive on a big term paper. But be prouder of that professor, not for giving you an A, but for enabling you to earn an A. Let him or her know. And be proud of the parents who have helped and are helping make this whole further learning experience happen.

And then take that A and dedicate it and yourself to making the world better.

Sobriety for the addict comes when we begin to see beyond ourselves into the family, the community, and the world around us. Happiness, satisfaction in life, comes the same way. The same way.

Love, and you will be loved. Be instruments of peace, and you will know peace. Give, and it will be given to you. It really is that simple.

(Sing)“And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.” I always wanted to end a message with the Beatle’s shortest song- Paul McCartney at the end of “Abbey Road.” Jesus could have sung it himself.

Come to think of it, he did.

And I hope you will, too.

Steps 4 and 5 of the 12 Steps: Discovering and Letting Go

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

It’s Mother’s Day, so I begin with a Mommy story. I was probably seven years old, my brother Denny would have been five. Our uncle, whose family had just moved to Florida, had sent my brother and I two genuine Seminole Indian tom-toms. Each of them was about the size of a coffee can and covered with stretched piece of rubber from an old tire tube. Genuine Indian.

For whatever reason a seven year old might have for doing such a thing, I could not resist the temptation to push a sharpened pencil through the taut rubber on one of the tom-toms- my brother’s tom-tom, which, of course, rendered it useless as a tom-tom. Immediately, I regretted what I had done, so I hid the drum up high on a fireplace, where my brother couldn’t find it. The top of the fireplace was exactly where Mom’s eyes landed first when she was trying to help Denny and stop his crying by finding his missing tom-tom.

“What happened here, Dave?” she asked holding the now holey drum out to me.

“I don’t know. How did it get up there?” I asked, ridiculously.

“Tell me,” she said. I knew that she knew, and she knew that I knew that she knew, so I decided to tell the truth.

And here’s what I said. I think the only reason I remember it so well is that it was even absurd for a seven year old:

“When I came in here this morning,” I began, “I saw a mouse leaning up against a pencil and the mouse pushed the pencil into the tom-tom. I got it away from the mouse and put it up there where it would be safe.”

Now, I don’t remember my mom’s specific response, but I know my mom well enough to know she probably turned around and laughed before putting her game face back on. “That’s just silly,” she said. “Give Denny your drum.”

“Not fair,” I’m sure I said, in the great comeback known to all four to ten year olds, when they know they’ve lost, and when they know that you know that they know they’ve lost.

Later on, we all remember the routine, the lying gets a little more sophisticated, and, sometimes, amazingly and unfortunately in retrospect, they worked:

“My grandma died.”

“Somebody spiked the punch.”

“I only drank a couple.”

“I’ll never do that again!”

They get more sophisticated, so much so that we even believe some of them ourselves:

“It’s not my fault I didn’t get hired; they (the great THEY) are a bunch of idiots.”

“I drink to relax, there’s a lot of stress at work.” (Stress- the other great straw man of the modern era.)

“I can stop anytime, don’t worry about it. I’m not.”

And on and on and on. Oh, what a tangled web we weave..you know the saying. But what heavy chain and rope-bound life that tangled web becomes! It’s crippling because it’s so heavy; it’s blinding as the lenses through which we see ourselves and the world become darker and darker; and it’s dangerous as we slide further and deeper into our own now misshapen egos and away from the Image of God. From blaming a mouse- the stupidest of small lies- to living a lie, the stupidest of human actions.

It is at this point in the Twelve Steps that most people need a helper- a sponsor, a spiritual guide, a mentor, a Mom- someone who will encourage us, for however long it takes, to look back at all the missteps that got us into trouble. And someone who will recognize when we relapse into the claptrap we have come to believe about ourselves. We need someone who knows that we know that they know. And who we will learn to trust as we have maybe never trusted anyone before.

There is an interesting passage in the book of Nehemiah, that describes that period of time when the exiles returned after several generations, fro Babylon, back to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was physically in ruins, as were most of their lives. They had been cut off from the Temple, from their families, from their history, and there was a whole ruined city to be rebuilt. During the rebuilding, a copy of the book of Deuteronomy was discovered. It had been lost for centuries. Deuteronomy contains an explanation of the covenant established between Godand the Israelites through Moses, while the Israelites were still wandering in the desert.

Neh 8: 7-10

…the Levites [the priests], helped the people to understand the [newly found law], while the people remained in their places. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, ‘This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.’ For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, ‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’

When confronted with the lost truths of their ancestors, the people were ashamed, saddened over what they had lost, and how far they had yet to go. Nehemiah and Ezra were encouragers, though. They were sponsors, if you will, spiritual guides, mentors, Moms to children who had to relearn how to live within new and life-giving possibilities. Just like the child who falls off the bike and cries the first couple times, but who is blessed with a mom or dad or says “get up, try again” even when mom and dad want to protect the child from ever being hurt, Nehemiah and Ezra encouraged their people. They took the long view: “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” The grief would, they promised, come to an end if the people kept their eyes on the prize.

People whose lives have become defined by their weaknesses, rather than their strengths- and that certainly is the case of all addicts- need encouragement. But they’ve got to be able to accept it, first- which begins in Step One- “Came to realize our lives had become unmanageable.” That realization, that admission, leads to a recognition for the need for outside help- God, Steps Two and Three- a power greater than oneself. But there’s a difference in the Twelve Steps at this point that separates the Steps from what is happening in many churches.

In the Twelve Steps, God has clothes on. God is sitting across the table from you with a cup of coffee. God has a phone number. This program recognizes that God speaks to us best, most eloquently, and most powerfully, in the language of other humans. We need someone who will listen to us who will help us keep our eyes on the prize, like Nehemiah. We need someone who knows when the lies of addiction, when the lies of our self-serving weaknesses begin to be spoken, like Mom. We need someone who has met God and knows God and will take the time to help us become properly, and messily, introduced.

One of the mistakes made during the Reformation of the Church in the 16^th century, I think, was getting rid of the confessional booth. The Reformers correctly said that faith was a matter between persons and God, and that humans did not need to rely on the intervention of a priest for their salvation.

But humans do need a community. And some of the Reformers “go it alone” attitudes led to isolation on the part of many believers. They end up screaming at God for help, feeling as though their prayers are bouncing off the ceiling, when in fact they are simply missing the language God speaks best in- the language of other humans. We need persons around us who are willing to listen, to help, to be there when we need them.

To admit to another person, a priest who will listen, a sponsor, a spiritual guide, to admit to them the exact nature of our wrongs, is the beginning of a loooong process. It doesn’t happen in an evening. It’s a process that will be marked by anger, sadness, and the remembrance of things we hoped we would never have to think about again. But one of the mistakes we make as humans is to think we have put bad stuff behind us when, in fact, all it takes is a reminder of that bad stuff for it to drop from the clouds of our clouds of our past and become a full-fledged tornado, wreaking havoc in our present day lives… unless we get help, unless we are prepared for the inevitable tornado warnings and know what to do.

If we don’t change who we were that led us night after night to the bottle, if we don’t come to a new understanding of the detours and roadblocks that sent us careening off the paths of God, if we don’t reframe our old memories, then we will end up even deeper in the drowning pool of our addictions.

As the Indian in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest said, “I was no longer drinking from the bottle, the bottle was drinking from me.”

We need humans who are already firmly holding the hand of God, to hold on tightly to our own. We need people who will keep our eyes on the prize, and off of ourselves. And that’s where the rest of us come in.

People need people. God created us to be in community, and we must be available to each other. We need to be the carriers of God’s message of love, acceptance, and help to others. It’s not easy. It’s would have been no solution at all for Nehemiah to have told his people, “Let’s all be sad forever and give into the heartbreak of our history.” It would have been no solution at all for Mom to have said, “We’ll just have to buy Denny a new tom-tom.”

Paul wrote to the Galatians in chapter 6, verse 8: So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

Working for the good of all means starting to work for the good of one. That is the highest honor given to us by God: to stand in for God when necessary, to be God to the best of our abilities when someone is reaching out for God. And Moms, as a rule, I have found, do that very well. As does the Mom of my children.

Like all of you, I am thankful for all the Moms, and all the Nehemiahs I’ve encountered along the way, because they helped me on my way. Let us go and do likewise.

Amen