3 Lent 2015
On Thursday, I was able to make a
short trip to St. Gregory’s Abbey in Three Rivers. This is a Benedictine
monastery, which happens to be Episcopalian—and I went with a priest colleague
from our diocese.
Anyway, the drive to Three Rivers, Michigan
is long enough that we started listening to a podcast of these two guys who
were having this drawn-out conversation about everything from technology,
cruise ships to furniture. But the conversation really got interesting when one
of them began talking about being in recovery from alcoholism.
He talked a bit about alcoholism
being an issue in his family, and how his father was also a recovering
alcoholic. Finally, he explained that what impressed him most about the 12-step
program in AA was that no matter how
long you were sober—whether it was 4 months, or 40 years—everyone is given
space to tell their story. And if the story is complete boloney, or not, no one
gets to call you out—and no one gets to tell you “how you should be doing
things.”
The point is, that the people in
the group have to trust the process enough that each individual will come around to finally being
honest. More importantly, they need to become humble enough to know that they
need the group, and they need the honesty if they’re ever going to continue
choosing sobriety in their lives. And he said this was the whole reason he
thought everyone should experience an AA meeting
so that they could see what life could be like if we approached it being honest
about ourselves, and humble enough to be open in that honesty.
I mean, let’s be honest; the reason
we say the confession regularly, and have a whole season of penitence (like
Lent) isn’t so we don’t have to feel guilty about the bad stuff we do—we have
all of these things regularly because we know that by the time we get back to
praying them, or living through seasons of repentance—we need them… We need these things because we have a problem with
addiction to sin, and it is a heavy burden. Yet, this isn’t to say that we’re
just addicted to always doing bad stuff—no, it’s worse than that; because it’s
something deep inside of us that makes us choose to do the things we really
shouldn’t do, and in choosing them we affect not only our own lives, but the
lives of others, as well.
Now, before you think I’m getting
all Southern Baptist on you; I should clarify that I’m not just talking about
the external stuff. I’m not talking about drinking, dancing and associating
with fast women who do that sort of thing. I’m talking about the things that
are matters of the heart. I mean things like selfishness; manipulation; gossip.
Or, even those vices that Paul talks about in his letter to the Corinthians:
Arrogance; Greed; Envy; Wrath; Impurity; Gluttony; and Laziness. These 7 vices that
are often referred to as the “deadly sins.”
The reality is, however, we all
have a family history of this addiction—we can talk about the story of Adam and
Eve, but more importantly we see it in the people of Israel: the people God
delivered from Egypt, and called to be the chosen people—a light to enlighten
the nations…
Not only do we see them time and
again complaining while they’re wandering in the wilderness (again, remember
they were slaves before…); we see them responding to God’s call, but then we
see them falling back into the old, negative patterns over and over again. It’s
sort of like they never got over the need to be slaves to something…whether it was their own desire to have it the way it
used to be, or their drive to be in control of their own destiny; Israel would
be doomed to some type of wilderness until they fully gave themselves over to
God, and what God was calling them to be.
Yet, as we know all too well—not
only from the stories, but from human nature, as well—that even this
opportunity was missed. Rather than receiving the Law, and allowing their lives
to grow upon it like roses on a trellis, they instead choose pettiness, and
eventually brokenness.
As Paul says it best, “if you give
humanity one Law, they’ll break it—if you give humanity 10 Laws, they’ll break
them…” It’s sort of the same problem as giving a moose a muffin, or taking a
mouse to the movies—we find that, in spite of ourselves, humanity seems to have
a natural inclination for self-destruction. We find this to be especially true
when we believe that through our own efforts, or even cleverness that we’re
able to behave otherwise.
Yet, here again, in our Gospel
reading for today we find what can happen when we rely too much on our efforts
and understanding. We begin to see how some of the best intentions of people in
Jerusalem begin to go in a bad direction. The truth is, the money changers and
animal sellers at some point may have actually been providing a real and
necessary service to people. There were any number of pilgrims coming into the
city who needed animals, or the proper money to purchase their sacrifice for
Temple worship—but instead we see how these best intentions become an obstacle
to people being in right relationship with God and one another.
And so, this original idea, which
might have at one time been helpful, had slowly become destructive. It had
become so out-of-hand that, just as Jesus says, it’s become a marketplace—and
people were taking advantage of the needs of other people, and cheating them…
To Jesus, this was criminal (unfortunately, in America, we would still call it
free-market enterprise). But the point is, left to our own devices, we can take
even something as sacred a the Temple, and sacrifice, and find a way to turn it
into profit. That’s a real problem, and it sounds a lot like addiction. The
reason Jesus is so angry here is because the people fail to see how dangerous
this addiction is…and in John’s Gospel, this is the point at which the people
start plotting his betrayal and death. Sometimes truth is dangerous.
The reality is, whether we’re
breaking into houses to steal blue ray players and flat panel televisions to
sell for a fix—or we’re manipulating situations in our lives to try and have
some kind of control—either way, we’re behaving as people driven by a deep need
(a disease, even) which highjacks our higher cognition, and even helps us
justify our actions in our minds. The end result of these actions may not look
the same on the outside—certainly substance abuse has some obvious physical
affects—but this addiction we have to sin is no less destructive. Because all
addiction is selfish, needy, isolating, and it never seems to have enough. Unfortunately, for all of us, the capacity to
fall back into our baser nature is always a possibility, and whether we think
about it in these terms of addiction or not, we know the negative potential
within ourselves—otherwise we probably wouldn’t be here.
I suppose the difficult thing for
us to admit, then, is that even after all that we can learn from Israel; after
all that Jesus teaches us, and what he did for us on the cross—it remains very
hard for us to admit that we still haven’t gotten over our addiction. What’s perhaps
more difficult is that we still haven’t figured out that there isn’t any
secret, or magic pill that can make that addiction go away. Unfortunately this
addiction to sin isn’t just about making the decision to not sin anymore.
Instead, our road to recovery is simply the decision “to keep working the
program”—to continue to come back, ask forgiveness, be restored to God and one
another, and then do the best we can (with God’s help) to choose better ways of
living afterward.
The point is, we come to faith
because we know that we can’t live life by our own design. We need God in our
lives—not in the way that we need more vegetables, or the right amount of
fiber. We need God, because as Architect and Father, God calls us to become our
best selves. In Jesus we see what a faithful life as a Child of God looks like,
and in him we receive the grace and mercy to remember and return to faithful,
loving relationship as God’s children when we forget. And through the Holy
Spirit, God pursues us, and calls us again and again to humbly be in loving,
transformative community. So that, in being true and humbly honest in community
with one another, and with God; we try to create a place of refreshing, healing,
and recovery for every other sin-sick addict who has ever realized their need
for love and grace.
(Hello, my name is Matt and I’m a
recovering sinner…)
No comments:
Post a Comment