Sermon

Sermon    02-01-15         Romans 7:14-25             Mark 1:21-28

          One of my faith-shaping moments in seminary, many years ago, came when one of the other students took on a special project on his own.   For about one week, he asked everyone he met, at the school, at his field education placement, and anyone he thought would answer him, one question.     “Can you sum up your faith in one sentence or one verse of Scripture?”

          The responses were quite diverse.   A good number of folks quoted John 3:16.   Others had a line from a favorite theologian, or a verse from a favorite hymn.   He stopped the seminary president in the hallway and asked the question.   The president paused, suggested he make an appointment to come see him.   And when my friend did this, after an hour’s discussion with the president, he gave my friend a book to read.  

          But one day, when we visited the chaplain at the local mental hospital and he asked this question, the chaplain answered in a flash, the words that have stayed with me ever since.  “Oh, that’s quite easy,” he said, “John 10:10….I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”    To hear those words, summed up by a man who spent his days in such an emotionally challenging and draining facility, was electric for me.

          His words have been words that I have embraced ever since.  I believe the purpose of life is for the children of God, to know life, the fullness of life, the wonder of creation, in as full and abundant a way as possible.   Within us all, there is a deep hunger, a powerful drive to know the goodness of this promise fulfilled in our lives.   That is our hunger to know God and all the goodness of God, the promise of creation in the living of our days.

          Within us, that drive to know and glory in God is compelling and deeply rooted.  And for too many, too easily satisfied.  Thomas Merton, who would have turned 100 years old yesterday, if he had not died so young, once commented that “If you have found God with great ease, perhaps it is not God that you have found.”

          The spiritual search is challenging.   Like much in life, that which comes too easily, rarely endures.   And along the way, all of us look for detours, short-cuts, maybe even something as alluring as a complexity like faith summed up in a sentence.   But for many, the short term solution to the deeper questions of life as well as the predictable times of great anxiety or deep sadness, has an attraction and an appeal.   Within the complex ordering and synchronicity of mind, body, heart and soul, we can very easily make a connection, feel an attachment to that which seems so beyond us.   And in that attachment lies the roots of addiction.

          If we understand sin as that which leads us away from God, then we can all relate to that which leads us to sin, that which leads us away, for a moment for some, for a lifetime for others, from knowing or pursuing God.  And so often that which leads us away can have a temporal reward, and in the process, can become for us a source of devotion, a false idol.   And while all this is going on, all this pursuit of this new devotion, when that couples with the complexity of the bio-chemical mixes in our brain, we can become addicted.   Biologically, physically, emotionally linked to one of the many false idols in our midst which promise instant gratification, at least for awhile.

          There is that internal reward in our pursuit of that temporary idol, that is reinforced with a flood of emotion and chemistry, that convinces us of its wonder and power for us.   Over time, as the power of those chemicals fade, we experience tolerance.  A lessened ability for what had once had such great promise to deliver on those promises.  And so we pursue our idol with greater fervor, deeper devotion, at greater risk and cost, for less and less reward.   And Merton’s words speak with new wisdom and power—If you have found God with great ease, perhaps it is not God that you have found.

          In the lesson we hear from Paul today, we hear Paul’s internal conflict, words that echo in all of us, when we think of our struggles with temptation and the power of false idols in our life.   “I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” 

          In these verses, Paul is referring to his inner conflict between living life by the letter of the Law and living life in the glory of grace.  We know Paul suffered from a deeply rooted inner struggle, which he described as a thorn in the flesh, and for centuries, theologians have debated and discussed just what this was.   I don’t want to say that Paul was struggling with an addiction of any sort, since I’ve no other proof of that.  But Paul’s words here mirror that words of so many who have struggled with the pull and demands of addiction throughout time.  “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

          This ability for us to so attach ourselves, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, to substances and behaviors whose promise of glory is short-lived is overwhelming.    St. Augustine once said that God is continually trying to give us the blessings of life, but our hands are too full to receive them.   Too full of that which have embraced as the short term solutions, which we have become attached to despite their inability to give us the joy and wonder we once knew. 

          Our Gospel lesson today tells the story of Jesus healing the man with the unclean spirit.  It is one of the many healing stories we hear in the Gospels.   And with the benefit of time and knowledge, we see these stories in a new light.   Leprosy, which was so greatly feared in Jesus’ time, we now know as Hansen’s Disease, a skin disease easily prevented and able to be treated.   It’s believed that some who suffered from seizures did so before the diagnosis of epilepsy was understood.   And some of those, who were believed to be possessed with an unclean or demonic spirit, we now see as likely suffering from mental illness, in one way or another.

          In this day and time, we are coming to understand the complexity of addictions in new ways.  Through the lens of history, we are coming to understand any number of illness and how they were understood and treated then, as opposed to now.  What we know now is that addictions, in their many forms, are plaguing our nations, destroying people and families, in very daunting numbers.   And the day is coming, when we will see our knowledge of the complexities of addiction through the lens of history, as we now understand that healings in Jesus’ time.  This is a dynamic time in measuring and treating addictions, and today, the Christian Action Committee is sponsoring a Lunch and Learn, a fellowship time and conversation on the spiritual roots of the 12 step recovery movement.  

          On June 26, 1963, President John Kennedy gave a famous speech while visiting the Berlin Wall.   In renouncing the wall that split a city and a nation, Kennedy inspired the German people and much of the free world when he declared, “Ich bin ein Berliner.”  “I am a Berliner.”   In standing in solidarity with the German people, President Kennedy let them know they were not alone in their struggle.

          In more recent years, we can recall how the nation rallied around the people of Boston after the Marathon bombings, with the front pages of newspapers in cities throughout the nation, declaring that they too were “Boston Strong.”   And just last month, after the attacks on the staff of Charlie Hebdo in France, the declaration “I am Charlie” or “We are Charlie” echoed world wide.

          All these efforts were ones that sought to let a hurting people know they were not alone.  As part of our wider ministry here, we are currently hosting six different 12 step groups, meeting over the course of four different nights.   It is our way of standing in solidarity with those who struggle “one day at a time” with sobriety in its many forms.   Our way of standing with those who are struggling in life to know the promises of God, pursuing in the course of their recovery, to know the blessings of life, full and abundant.   To know the purpose of life, the reasons we have been created.

          The theologian D. T. Niles once said that “Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”   And the heart of 12 step recovery programs is one addict being available to another.   It is pure Gospel at work here four nights a week.

          So, on this day, set aside in our shared life, for us to more deeply understand, support and empower the 12 step ministries  housed here, let us be ever open to those who are seeking, and God wiling finding here, the resources to make the promises of Jesus, “I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly” possible in transformative and redemptive ways, “one day at a time.”   Thanks be to God.  Amen.