Kathryn Z. Johnston The Elephant in the Room John 11:1-44 February 10, 2019 Addiction Matthew 18:10-14

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1 Kathryn Z. Johnston The Elephant in the Room John 11:1-44 February 10, 2019 Addiction Matthew 18:10-14 Matthew 18:10-14 Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven. What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost. A I am not a mental health professional or an expert on addiction. As a pastor my job is to reflect on our lives with you through the lens of Scripture and faith. There is a conversation to be had about the social use of alcohol and yes, drugs, and when social acceptance and tolerance can lead to abuse and addiction. As church leaders we are aware of this and take care to pay attention to those who attend the gatherings we offer where alcohol is available. I am not going to stand behind this pulpit and tell you that I don t drink I do. Please feel free to say hello to me at the state store or in the beer aisles at Giant. There s no way it could be any worse than the time I went over to the beer section at the Upper Allen Giant after a softball game. I had a six pack in my left hand, and then reached up to get another four pack off of a top shelf, when the beer bottles next to them fell, broke on me with a loud crash, and then broke even more when they hit the floor. I looked like a ship that had been christened. I looked around to see if there was an employee or anyone with a mop nothing. So I went around the corner by the way, still holding onto the original six-pack - and there was a woman on her cell phone who stared dumbfounded at me and then said, Can I call you back, the pastor at my kid s preschool is standing in front of me and she s covered in beer. This is not a teetotaler sermon. Instead it s an invitation to reflect honestly on our culture s relationship to substances that can numb us out from our feelings. Our society has a hard time with emotions. We don t know how to feel the feels. We don t know how to sit in discomfort, although you came today and are still sitting there, so there s that. Our culture s reliance on the medical marvel can create a toxic combination where if we don t like how we feel, we find some way food, alcohol, drugs, sex to numb out from those feelings. And it s hard to know where that line is. I don t like the phrase slippery slope but there is certainly a gray area where a glass of wine after the kids go to bed can become three or four glasses of wine in order to get through bed time. And when I see on social media memes that talk about only having one glass of wine, but it s this BIG or a joke about a watch that doesn t tell you how many calories you ve burned, but instead how many glasses of wine you can have. I worry about the messaging there. I worry about the person on the other side of the screen A Sermon Series Title Card 1 The Elephant in the Room: Addiction - John 11: Matthew 18: February 10, 2019

2 who s beginning to think that maybe they have a problem, or who has already realized it, but no one seems to take it seriously. In your bulletin are some resources for anyone who has questions or thinks they may have an addiction, and of course I m here to talk with you. There is plenty of help, and as a community of faith, we are committed to being beacons of God s hope, love, and light. Please join me in a spirit of prayer Precious Parent, Loving God guide our hearts and minds as we listen to your Word proclaimed. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be guided by the Holy Spirit and worthy in your sight. In your Son s name we pray, Amen. B In the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John we find the story of a man named Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. The family members are friends with Jesus. In fact, verse 5 tells us: Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus Word gets to Jesus that Lazarus is ill and when he and his disciples finally make their way to Bethany, just outside of Jerusalem, he has died and has been in the tomb for four days. We ll pick up the story at verse 30. Listen: John 11:30-44 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, Where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, See how he loved him! But some of them said, Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying? Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days. Jesus said to her, Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God? So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me. When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out! B Bible 2 The Elephant in the Room: Addiction - John 11: Matthew 18: February 10, 2019

3 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, Unbind him, and let him go. This is the Word of the Lord C Earlier this week I led a lesson for Presbyterian Women entitled God with Us Through Our Trials. In the middle of the lesson was this paragraph: It s a given in life: we will pass through rough waters. Every one of us faces trials, pain, loss, and difficulty: the betrayal and estrangement of a friend or family members, lifealtering illness, the long hard road of cancer, financial problems, the hard grip of addiction, the silent struggle of infertility, the disappointment of a career derailed, the relentless battle of mental illness, the death of one we love. i Aside from being true, I like this list because the author gives equal weight to all of the burdens that we carry. Scripture tells us that Jesus was deeply disturbed in spirit and deeply moved by the sorrow of his friend. Even though he IS the Good News he KNOWS our future - when God s beloved children are burdened Jesus weeps. God doesn t see anyone as more deserving or less deserving than anyone else. D Addictions are so hard to understand, even for those in the throes of it. Because there s an element of choice or free will to it, those who by the grace of God aren t trapped by it, struggle to find compassion for those who are. We don t understand what drives a person to use. And that lack of understanding can often shift to fear. Because if the neighbor s daughter, who is the same age as yours, is an addict, they must have done something wrong, right? We want the assurance that our own loved ones will not be bound up by addiction. So we point fingers, we blame the victims and worse, we turn our back on the people in our community who need us the most. We know better than that. Don t blame the victim. And don t blame the loved ones of the victim. Addiction is filled with shame for both the addict and their families. It is filled with guilt. It is filled with loneliness and emptiness. A parent in our community tells me that there is also the stigma of a dual diagnosis in the medical community; meaning that if a patient has depression or mental illness and addiction, it is all the harder for families to find treatment for their loved ones. There is a gaping void between families living in the throes of addiction and those on the outside, keeping their distance out of fear or judgment. Beloved children of God God calls us to step in and fill that gap. C PW Cover D Addictions illustration 3 The Elephant in the Room: Addiction - John 11: Matthew 18: February 10, 2019

4 E Dr. Larry Lake, a professor of writing at Messiah College, wrote an essay in 2013 for Slate entitled Comfort Food: No One Brings Dinner When your Daughter Is an Addict. ii When his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, their family feasted for months on the lovingly prepared dishes brought by friends from work and church and the neighborhood. He describes them: chicken breasts encrusted with parmesan, covered safely in tin foil; pots of thick soup with hearty bread; bubbling pans of lasagna and macaroni and cheese. There were warm homebaked rolls in tea towel covered baskets, ham with dark baked pineapple rings, scalloped potatoes, and warm pies overflowing with the syrups of cherries or apples Later in the article he continues: Almost a decade later, our daughter, Maggie, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and diagnosed with bipolar disorder, following years of secret alcohol and drug abuse. No warm casseroles. Maggie was disciplined by her college for breaking the drug and alcohol rules. She began an outpatient recovery program. She took a medical leave from school. She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, diagnosed, released. She began years of counseling, recovery meetings, and intensive outpatient rehabilitation. She lived in a recovery house, relapsed, then spent seven weeks in a drug and alcohol addiction treatment center. No soup, no homemade loaves of bread. Dr. Lake goes on to describe Maggie s progress at a treatment center, the insurance running out, the five hour drive round trip once a week only to visit their daughter for an hour and then: late one night in June, Maggie and another patient were riding in the treatment center s van on the way back to their house after a full day of the hard work of addiction recovery That night, an oncoming speeding car hit the van head-on. Maggie survived, and as she recovered in the hospital from the car accident Dr. Lake writes: Cards and letters filled our mailbox at home offers of food crackled from our answering machine and scrolled out on If there s anything I can do In the passage we read in John, Jesus is there greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved so moved, he weeps. But he is not the only one. F The community gathers as well and follows through on a commitment to be with the family in their mourning: The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When a person or family is suffering, God calls us to lead with compassion. To the addict: I m concerned for you. You don t have to figure this out on your own. Any time you call, I will take you to a treatment facility. You are not alone. E Daughter with an Addiction F Heart People 4 The Elephant in the Room: Addiction - John 11: Matthew 18: February 10, 2019

5 To the family: I m so sorry for what you are going through. Do you have the professional support you need? Can we bring you dinner? You are not alone. Neither the addict or the family needs shame or guilt they are already feeling all of that. They need love, empathy, and compassion. G I chose the raising of Lazarus for this sermon because recovery from addiction or from the crippling effects of being in close relationship with someone who is addicted is a lot like rising from death to life. Grace is received in the restoring of relationships, in the second chance at life, in gratitude from being spared from death, in moving from confusion, grief, anger, and despair into honesty, clarity and hope. But not everyone is able to respond to the call of hope outside the tomb. Some are stuck in what binds them. Is it for us to judge? Or is it for us to continue calling, relying on the Word of God that promises that God never gives up on the one even when there are already ninety-nine. Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus and calls for him to come out. And Scripture tells us he did. But what if he didn t? What if he was too stuck in what binds him? Would Jesus walk away? Should we? Or should we continue to call out should we continue to revive with Narcan Because we never know when that last grasp at hope will be the one where the lost is found. No one ever loses the name beloved child of God. So if we are lucky enough to be outside of the tomb of addiction we must continue to bring the meal, to be community, to call out, confident that God doesn t give up on any of us - even the ones who don t make it out alive. H Jesus tells his disciples: Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven. What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost. Let s pray: Healing God, you gave your healing touch to those who came to you. Look with compassion upon all who through addiction have lost their health and freedom. Restore to them the assurance of your unfailing mercy, remove from them the fears that overcome them; strengthen them in the work of recovery; and to those who care for them, and those who surround them, give patient understanding and persevering love. Amen. G Lazarus H Lone sheep 5 The Elephant in the Room: Addiction - John 11: Matthew 18: February 10, 2019

6 A B C D E E F G G H i Amy Poling Sutherlun PW/Horizons Bible Study - God s Promise I am with You, 2018, p. 55. ii 6 The Elephant in the Room: Addiction - John 11: Matthew 18: February 10, 2019