Twelve Steps Series Step 12: One Step Closer to Knowing ken wilson

Transcription

1 Twelve Steps Series Step 12: One Step Closer to Knowing ken wilson 12 Series Review. Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. The study that I ve done for these steps has led me into something of a surprise. A surprise conviction that Alcoholics Anonymous itself carries a prophetic message to the church in our time. AA emerged in the late 1940 s, when religion in America was obscuring Jesus as much as revealing him. As all earthen vessels do. In the Roman Catholic church, before the reforms of Vatican II, Jesus ws caged up in a Cathecism, reduced to a dogma. In liturgical moanline Protestant churches, he was locked in stain glass. In the born again churches of Bible belt, dressed up in a cultural garb that made him look weird to many. These are caricatures of course, and so, unfair. But like all caricatures they carry more than a grain of truth. The effect of this obscuring of Jesus by the religious powerhouses of the time had an effect: it provoked God, I think, to raise up Alcoholics Anonymous for the sake, first of all, of drunks everywhere. God sent AA outside the camp of the church (where the alcoholics were and where prophets go.) In this sending, God allowed, one would have to say he at least allowed, the precious name of Jesus to go underground, because as you know, AA doesn t carry the name, in the steps, in favor of an unnamed higher power But I believe Jesus, or something of his presence has been with Alcoholics Anonymous anonymously all these years. This is my own view as a Jesus person. And there is a long tradition in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the incipient messianic tradition, of God appearing anonymously to people. Even in the New Testament, where the light shines so brightly on the face of Christ, we have Jesus appearing anonymously to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. So this is not without precedent. He gets to appear as he wishes. All to say, these steps reflect the path, wisdom, power of Jesus, but with the accumulation of religious trappings stripped away. And some things that are not trappings at all have been stripped away, things that are precious, important, even necessary as far as I can tell. But Alcoholics Anonymous doesn t claim to bet a religion; AA is

2 not Christianity; but it is tapped into the mystery and power at the heart of true religion and certainly at the heart of Jesus. As I say, all this has taken me rather by surprise as I ve studied up for this series. The clarity of this conviction that Jesus has something to say to his church through Alcoholics Anonymous. It s not as though AA is some flash in the pan. It s been around for a while, and the fruit it has born in the form of millions of recovering alcoholics is undeniable. It s at this stage of a prophetic word from Jesus that the stakes get a little higher for us all. Because he s now speaking very plainly to us through AA. Such that if we don t listen up now I m not saying there will be hell to pay, but let s just say, it is time now for us to listen to what he s saying. I hope I haven t put too fine a point on that. Especially if it distracts you from what these steps are teaching us. Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Many an alcoholic new to these steps has said to his sponsor: I ve a big problem with all the God stuff in these steps. And many a wise sponsor has replied, Well, then you have a really big problem since these steps that are essential for your recovery are all about God. In Step 12, this cat is out of the bag: these steps are all about a spiritual awakening. Not just God in abstract, in other words but sweaty religion where God gets into it with the likes of us. Awakening as is coming to a new awareness, having emerged from the fog of sleep. A spiritual awakening, which is all about knowing because we re know we re known. Every spiritual awakening is puts us one step closer to this knowing, as the song goes. But notice that this term spiritual awakening doesn t appear until the final step. Step 1, for example is not, Our lives having become unmanageable because of alcohol, we realized we needed a spiritual awakening and set out to get us one. Nobody gets started that way: aiming for a spiritual awakening! When we re asleep, we don t know we need to wake up. But we feel psychic pain when we re asleep. That s where a spiritual awakening

3 begins, with an awareness of pain followed by a giving up on ourselves as the solution to the problem that we have become. And sure as shootin that gets us on the road to a spiritual awakening. Having had a spiritutal awakening as a result of these steps Spiritual awakening is every bit as much a path as an event. This is important for those of us who value the reality of earth shaking events in the spiritual path. Like I do. Jesus walks a path that he invites us to follow: in the process we undergo a spiritual awakening. But our focus is the path, especially the next step. Some people are paralyzed from taking any steps on the path because they re waiting to get zapped by a spiritual awakening, thinking that it is first and foremost an event. Well it is, but it happens to us while we are walking this path set out before us. Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics,. I have a very minor confession to make. I have never deeply resonated with any of the programs I ve seen for how to share your faith. Even the kindest and wisest of them have felt to me like something I didn t want to be on the receiving end of. And I d be glad to admit that this might just be me, but I m afraid that it isn t. And this is a bit of quandary for me because I am an evangelical and one who very much believes in evangelism. So, you can imagine how frustrating it s been for me not to have a well articulated way to do evangelism, one that doesn t make me think I d rather not be on the receiving end of this way of giving me something. One that doesn t feel like We ve got something you need; let me give it to you. Then I came across the Alcoholics Anonymous big book discussion of Step 12. Chapter seven, titled Working with Others. And found that it s almost everything I believe about how evangelism is to be done Jesus style, but haven t had the wisdom to put into words. And I m thinking it should be required reading for anyone who wants to share their faith, which we all would want to do, unless we are giving in to stinginess of the worst sort. Never talk down to an alcoholic from any moral or spiritual hilltop; simply lay out the kit of spiritual tools for inspection. Show him how they worked with you. Offer him friendship and

4 fellow-ship. Tell him if he wants to get well you will do anything to help (AA, p 95) Even Jesus, who had every right to, didn t talk down from any moral or spiritual moutaintops, did he? He drew some people up onto a few mountains and spoke to them there. He came down from the mountain and into the valley, where they were and spoke to them there. But never did he speak down to them from a moral or spiritual mountaintop. Hint! This is how we are called to be with others in the world! As he was with others in the world. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God (2 Cor. 1:3-4) The problem with so much evangelism is not so much the method, or the mechanics, as much as the posture. We are all fellow sufferers. This is at the core of our solidarity with our fellow human beings. We all have troubles [trials, brokenness, wrongs done to us and the wrongs we have done] but the Father of all compassion, wants to comforts us, and the older English form of that word means fortify, not just a tender, there, there kind of comfort. In all our troubles he wants to comfort-fortify us. It s not that any one of us has all the troubles, so we can t get all the comfort. But together (as the Bible is so often speaking to us, together with all the saints, so to speak, even all humankind) we do experience all the troubles. And the good news is that the comfort for these troubles is coming. Troubles aplenty, comfort acomin. This means that comfort that comes to me for my trouble, may also be passed on to your through me. At least you can be introduced to the comfort through me. And I through you, and we through one another, to all of our everlasting comfort!

5 So whatever it is we have to share with others, we share out of our pain: where the good news is good to us. Sharing your faith is not about getting some canned wrap together. It s about being in touch with your pain, and selectively open with those who need what you ve received, sharing whatever comfort you ve received there. Laying it out for inspection. Spiritual promotion--speaking from some moral or spiritual hilltop-- just doesn t work. If ever it did, it doesn t now. Except in spite of itself. And anything can work in spite of itself. So that fact that it does is nothing to recommend it as a method. But sharing our faith in this other way, requires us to be open about our shared pain. Almost as if being open about our pain, is the place where we can be open about the gospel we ve received. Not so much laying your pain on others, but listening and speaking from that place in you, where the gospel is most real to you. So if you re an alcoholic, who has found help from this path, you re on the lookout for other alcoholics. If you ve been in a place of deep marriage pain, and grace came to you in that place, you will be given attenae for others in that place. Divine appointments will be arranged for you to share the grace you received in all that dark time. And so, and so on. If this, rather than moral or spiritual hilltop promotion, were our modus operendi, can you imagine the impact? Don t have to imagine, just look at the growth of AA. I m thinking if there s anything we could do to hasten his coming, the whole church learning to share her faith like this would be one of the things that might do just that. And just in case we miss this: our task is not to fix anyone. We re not even called to try to fix anyone. No, we re only called to try to carry this message. If you re using it, for yourselve you re carrying it. So all it really takes, is having the others on your radar screen. Our purest motive, oddly, is not to save others, but to save ourselves. Save the s, I don t mean this theologically. I don t believe we can save ourselves. But I do believe, with St. Paul, just to

6 drop one name, that we re to work out our salvation with fear and trembling Sorry, for lapsing into defensive preacher mode there. It s part of our recovery, this willingness to be open, to share the comfort we ve received with others. We re not doing others a favor so much as ourselves, because it s the only way we get to keep whatever recovery we ve been given. When this is the motive we most trust and nurture in ourselves, it s when we become most effective. Because it sucks all that sickening condescension and patronizing attitude out of us. The attitude that we most object to when we re on the receiving end of having something wonderful shared with us. Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Isn t that just a dynamite way to end these steps? This ending that is really a beginning, a getting on with the rest of our lives? It s also where the deep wisdom of AA is speaking prophetically to us. Recovering alcoholics have discovered that freedom from alcohol is not about applying AA principles narrowly to their drinking: Throw booze out. Stay out of bars. Turn off the TV when Budweiser commercial comes on. No, that s not the ticket. In fact, I believe the word alcohol only appears once in the twelves steps, right at the beginning. No, recovery, if you re alcoholic. is about admitting your pain, surrendering to God, tending your relationships, curbing your do, so to speak and cleaning the messes he s made of relationships inviting, in other words God into the whole of your life. Every nook & cranny, Granny! And it s the same for recovering sinners. Recovery is not about applying Christian principles to your sin life. Not that most of us don t try that for a time at least. We experience something of a spiritual awakening, and in the process our conscience is awakened. And we let God into our equations, and we start noticing that he s bothered by

7 certain things in us. And one or two of these things make it to our radar screen and we laser focus on those one or two things and think we re doing God a big favor by trying to apply his Christian principles to these one or two sins. Here s what is so ridiculous about that approach. What would make us think that as people steeped in sin we d have any hope of having very accurate spiritual discernment, especially early on, in discerning our own sin accurately. Like that s going to happen! So the likelihood that the issue we ve selected for our little laser lock focus to apply our Christian principles to, is the issue on the top of God s agenda for us, is well, shall we say, remote. Besides that, that s not the way forward. The way forward is to let these principles, and here I would say, let his power into all the affairs of our life, as he decides to go about that. Yes, the spiritual path is about inviting God into all your affairs. Which is why it s so doggone fascinating and exciting this spiritual path, because there always new frontiers. To God, we are each of us a veritable universe of exploration! And like Magellan and Columbus and all the unknown great explorers he s out to find and conquer, only in love, not in the raw will to power conquering of human discovery and conquest. With permission discovery. Spiritual boredom, do you know what that is? There s two forms. The first form is what you feel when you ve not tasted any of the sweet nectar of God, knowing it was God. So the thought of God just seems boring to you. Like so much religious blah blah blah. That s the spiritual boredom born of the ignorance of God. But there s another form of spiritual boredom that comes after you taste the sweet nectar of God knowing it s God. You ve made some wonderful God connection discovery, and everything you do seems to drip with interest. But then one morning you wake up, and it s like the same old things, seem same and old. And you re in a place of spiritual boredom. It s actually a wonderful sign, this state, but we often miss it.

8 This form of spiritual boredom (unless maybe it s just clinical depression) is a sign that he s waiting for permission to move into new territory. To explore and conquer with your permission and with love. Because he wants in to all your affairs. Every nook and cranny, Granny! So the cure for spiritual boredom is to ask the Holy Spirit for a little light about where he wants to go next, and to let him in. To ask him, Would you kindly come into this new territory for me, or with me? Often it means stepping through a version of the fear you first felt when he was knocking on the door the first time to make his home with you. But you get used to that, and even invigorated by the appearance of the fear, because it s a sign that he s up and at em in you, out and about within you, curious, eager, ready to make a move. And you re just a yes away from it getting very interesting once again. Like the pilgrim, I imagine who has made it to this twelfth step--sober, awake, girded for action, I picture him. Ready for the adventure of prayer, and other adventures. Ready to get on with life with God and others and himself. Eager, expectant, fearful still, but awake and alive. Oh what a beautiful morning!