Rev. Kathleen McShane July 15, 2018 Freedom: 12-Step Spirituality for Everyone Step 7: Trusting God to Do Something With Us John 3:1-8 Pastoral Call to Worship We are, every one of us, this mix of glory and grit. There are instants when we catch a vision of ourselves drawn to a higher purpose, a spiritual way of being; and there are many, many moments in between. Moments filled with all the stuff of our lives that doesn t feel holy at all. I hope you know that everyone feels like this sometimes. The theologian Renita Weems talks about this in her book Listening for God. She says, One day I decided to surrender. After months, perhaps years, of pretending to feel something I didn t feel, I decided to confess to the deep freeze that for a long time had had me in its grip. I stopped scolding my heart because of my inability to pray as I once had. I stopped harassing my soul about my failure to feel God s presence when I prayed or listened to sacred music I stopped badgering God for a sign, a gesture, a sound, some indication that I hadn t lost my way It is not unfaithful to speak this out loud. It is only a confession of our humanity. What is the truth of your life and spirit today? In the silence of this moment, I invite you to speak that truth to God and to yourself. Silence Rituals are the routines that force us to live faithfully even when we don t feel like being faithful. Until our heart has the time to arouse itself and find its way back to being in love, rituals make us show up. There are things to be gained from staying with a ritual, a practice, even when you have lost the thread of its meaning. Going through the motions is a way of slowing down, giving love and hope and renewal a chance to reveal themselves. Your being here today may feel more like ritual than like the desire of your heart. Whatever has brought you here this day, whatever percentage of your heart and mind are present, God greets you with open arms, with patient recognition, with words that call you into less isolation, more connection. May you have ears to hear those words, slowness of mind and heart so that you might pay attention, eyes to see the world as God sees it. Courage to imagine yourself living alongside the God who has great hope for your life. 1
Sermon There was once a young woman who set out to discover the meaning of life. This young woman read everything she could put her hands on philosophy, history, psychology, religion, selfimprovement books. She got a lot smarter, but nothing she read gave her the answer she was looking for. She found other smart people and asked them about the meaning of life. They had long and lively discussions, but no two people ever agreed on the answer. Finally she put all her belongings in storage, and she set off to find what she was looking for. She went to South America, India, Bali. Everywhere she went, people told her they didn t know the meaning of life either. But a few had heard of a woman who did know. Finally, after lots of questions, someone told her how to reach this wise woman s home. The young woman traveled many miles, and then she climbed to a little house at the top of a mountain. She knocked at the door. An old woman, very kind looking, answered. Yes, she said. I ve come halfway around the world to ask you one question, the young woman said, gasping for breath. What is the meaning of life? Come in and have some tea, the old woman said. No I mean no, thank you, the breathless young woman said. I didn t come for tea. I came for an answer. Won t you please just tell me, what is the meaning of life? We shall have tea, the old woman said. So the seeker stopped protesting and went inside. While the old woman was brewing the tea, the younger woman caught her breath. She began telling the old woman about all the things she d done to try to discover what she was looking for: the books she d read, the people she d met, all the places she d been. How long she had been looking for the answers to her life, how nothing had satisfied her. That still, it seemed like there was no answer, nothing worked, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn t find anything that sounded like the meaning of life. The old woman just listened, which was good because the young woman didn t leave any space for her to say anything. And as the seeker talked, the old woman placed a fragile teacup in her hand. Then she began to pour the tea. The seeker was so busy talking, that she didn t even notice when the teacup was full, so the old woman just kept pouring. The tea flowed over the sides of the cup and started to spill onto the floor. What are you doing? the younger woman shouted when the tea burned her hand. It s full! Can t you see that? Stop! There s no room! Yes, said the old woman; I see that. You said you came here wanting something from me, but there s no room in your cup. Come back when your cup is empty. Then we ll talk. 2
No doubt that young woman left the mountain that day feeling enormously frustrated. Kind of like Nicodemus must have felt after his conversation with Jesus in the story we just read this morning. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a leader of his community. John tells us that so we ll know that Nicodemus was doing well. He was one of those people who you d look at and think, He s got it all together. He wasn t one of those people we see in other Gospel stories whose hunger, or need for healing, or poverty was written all over his face. He would never push his way through a crowd because he was desperate to get near the faith healer who had come to town. Nicodemus wouldn t have set foot among those crowds that gathered to hear Jesus teach out in the fields, so hungry for the words of a wise man that they stayed through meal times, until Jesus felt sorry for them and fed them. No, Nicodemus was a strong, self-sufficient man. He already had the resources he needed to survive, even to do well. His cup was full. He d already handled most of his issues. He liked that reputation which is why he came to Jesus at night, when no one else was around, when he was not likely to be seen. In this story, Nicodemus doesn t actually get around to asking Jesus a question, so we re never completely sure what was on his mind when he left home that night. But he needed something. He begins the conversation trying to sound more like a colleague than a student. "Rabbi, he says, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the things you do if God weren't in on it." And just in that preface, Jesus could hear something about who Nicodemus was and what he wanted. He wanted to talk, man-to-man, smart-and-successfulman-to-smart-and-successful-man, about living a better life. So Jesus didn t have to wait for the question. He knew it was going to be something like, Tell me how you do it. Tell me where you learned to do what you do. What are the steps you follow? How I can get some of that God presence inside of me too? Because no matter how much Nicodemus looked like he had it together on the outside, inside, he was feeling like there s still some way my life feels incomplete. There must be something I can do about that, some secret I haven t learned, some process I can complete. There must be some key I haven t figured out yet. That s why Nicodemus stayed up late and snuck out of his own house in the middle of the night. He needed to see if he could get just a few minutes with this teacher who seemed to have mastered life. And no, the Bible doesn t say all of that, but I know it s true for Nicodemus because I know it s true for all of us. There s that one thing or maybe it s more than one thing that we just can t get hold of, one thorny relationship or bad habit or stuck place in our lives that we just can t control or put behind us. If someone would just tell us what to do, how to break the solution down into ten clear steps or maybe even twenty we d be willing to follow the program. Won t someone just tell me what I m supposed to do? Jesus response to Nicodemus is sort of like pouring tea all over his hand. I m telling you, unless you are born anew, it s not possible to see God s kingdom, he said obscurely. You 3
have to be born of the Spirit, which blows where it will blow. You can t see it, and you don t know where it comes from or where it s going, and this Spirit comes inside of you I think it s my job to try and make what the Bible says more understandable, but I ve got to tell you that I m with Nicodemus here, who must have been scratching his head at this point, looking back at Jesus and saying, Huh? Which is, I think, the point. Jesus taught many things, but he offered no manual for getting control of your life. No ten concrete steps you can take to do it right, so that all the hard parts of your life can be mastered. That s what this seventh step, in the 12-step approach to freedom and faith, reminds us. It s ironic, I know, for us to offer a sermon series about twelve steps to tell you that there is no step system to happiness or solving your problems or living a better life. But it s true. The seventh step in traditional Alcoholics Anonymous language is, We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings. The translation of this step that I m suggesting to you today is Trusting God to do something with us. Trusting God to do it. That s quite a different thing than figuring out how to fix yourself. Our good, American, can-do spirit says, ultimately, that the only one you can really depend on to figure things out, to take care of your problems and inadequacies, to make your life what it s supposed to be, is you. There s a sort of grandiosity that we value. We should, we think, create higher expectations for ourselves. We should be able to make ourselves better, kinder, more capable, more loving, even more spiritual than we have ever been before. And God is supposed to be our helper, an assistant we employ to come alongside of us and support us in achieving our goals. We know we need help; we just wish God would do it a little more predictably. But we re the managers. We call the shots about what we d like fixed and how we d like our lives to look. We re ready to do something. Tell me what to do so that I can have that wisdom, the young seeker wanted to ask the wise woman. That s what Nicodemus wanted from Jesus: tell me what I should do so that my life will look more like yours. We are sort of hard-wired to want to do something. That s what makes that twelve-step word surrender hard for us. It s just not concrete enough. What does it mean to surrender? I need to feel like I m doing something. This is where Jesus stops us, just like he did Nicodemus, with words that can seem incomprehensible to us. Trust God, he says. Trust God to do something with you. Most of the time I think that if I can just worry effectively and try hard enough, I ll figure things out. I ll get through whatever hard situation is in front of me, no matter how impossible it seems at the moment. I wait until I m at the end of my rope, out of my own ideas about how to fix myself (or someone else). It s only then when I know I cannot make things better, when I feel completely spent that I m ready to turn to God and say, I can t do this. I don t even know what needs to happen here. But you do, God. Can you just give me the grace to get out of the 4
way, to trust, so that you can do whatever needs to be done? Give me the patience not to force things, not even to force myself. I am putting things into your hands. i Get there sooner, this step says. To assume the position of needing God does not require that you get hopeless first. Maybe this sounds as vague and mysterious to you as Jesus saying to Nicodemus You must be born from above. All I can tell you is that when I can do this hard thing of leaning back into the arms of God acknowledging that God isn t there just to help me do it myself, but to reshape things; when I can hold on to God s hand like a child; when I trust God to give me whatever is needed for whatever is at hand somehow things begin to change. Insights come. Something inside of me begins to feel more right. The people around me seem to open too. I listen more carefully, and a way forward just seems to appear. And I can t explain it any better than that. Trusting surrendering to God is not passive. It doesn t mean we do nothing. But I have to enter each moment of my life with my cup more empty than full. I have to be attentive to something other than what I want. My work is letting go of control, being willing to stay present, even when I don t know if things will turn out the way I think they should. Trusting God doesn t mean being sure that God will heal us on demand or turn our failures into successes or make our problems go away. It means that that it s enough for us to know just two things. First, that putting the world or even my own life in order is not my work alone. And second, that God is good. That those two things will be enough even if we never understand how it works. The traditional prayer of the 12-step program was written by someone who had learned this for himself. Will you pray it with me now: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. i Many of these words and thoughts are from Becoming Human, by Brian C. Taylor. 5