January 10, 2016 – The First Sunday after the Epiphany: The
Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ
© 2016 Evan D. Garner
You’ve probably noticed
that we’re using a different sort of bulletin this morning. Since we’ve put all
of the words right there in your hands, you don’t have to do the usual
“Episcopal juggle” of switching back and forth between two books, a bulletin, and
some inserts. And you may be so excited about that that you haven’t noticed
that we’ve added the twelve steps of recovery into the context of the service,
putting each step in the part of our liturgy that roughly corresponds to that
step. We aren’t saying them out loud, but, if you read them and think about
them and hold them in your heart and mind while we worship God together, you
may see how what we do on a Sunday morning is, in fact, a lot like a twelve-step
program in miniature. It isn’t a perfect fit, but, each week in church, we
admit our brokenness, turn to God for help, proclaim our hope for restoration, seek
Communion with our creator, and ask God to help us take that good news into the
world. To those who know the twelve steps frontwards and backwards, that sounds
pretty familiar.
But why are doing this in
church? Other than a nice, convenient parallel, why would we take a Sunday to
talk about addiction and recovery? Well, for two reasons: first, without
exception, all of us are affected by addiction, and, second, without
equivocation, the hope of recovery is the hope of the gospel.
All of us are touched by
the ravages of addiction. Some of us are addicts, which is to say that some of
us know what it means for our lives to become unmanageable because of a
compulsive, uncontrollable addiction to alcohol, narcotics, gambling, sex, or
another life-destroying vice. Whether we’ve admitted it or not, whether we are
in recovery or not, we know addiction firsthand. And others of us live with
addicts. Maybe our spouse has a drinking problem. Or maybe it’s our parent. Or
maybe it’s our child. Whether it’s right at home or a little further away, all
of us know someone who is an addict. They are our families and our friends and
our co-workers. They are people we know and love. Many of them are addicts even
though we don’t realize it. Maybe they have found help in managing their
addiction, or maybe we haven’t noticed it yet, or maybe we have turned a blind
eye or simply learned to accept the chaos that their addiction brings. But all
of us know addicts.
And, even though all of
us know more addicts than we probably realize, a life plagued by addiction can
be the loneliest existence imaginable. There is no lonelier place than sitting
in your car at work, where you down a pint of vodka before walking through the
door. There is no quieter place than an empty house, where even your family has
deserted you. There is no colder place than the bathroom floor, which has
become your bed yet again. There is no sadness deeper than turning down the
Christmas party invitation or making an excuse for why your family cannot come
and visit because your husband or wife is out of control. And why so lonely?
Because addiction—whether yours or that of someone you love—comes with unbearable
shame.
Shame is the real
separator. It is the manmade wall that cuts us off from the land of the
living—from those we love. Many of us believe wrongly that our compulsive
drinking is something that we should be strong enough to control on our own or
that our family member’s addiction is somehow our fault because we were not
supportive enough or loving enough or patient enough. And, as long as we
believe that—as long as we think that trying a little bit harder can get us out
of this mess—we’ll never find sanity. Left up to us, we will always make the
wrong choice. That’s because addiction is a disease. It is a part of who we
are. And we cannot choose our way out of our addiction any more than a cancer
patient can decide not to have cancer. But the world says try harder. And our
deluded brains say try harder. Yet the harder we try, the more we will fail,
and the deeper our shame becomes. That cycle of shame can only be broken when we
surrender and admit that we need help.
And that’s the story of
salvation. Hear what the prophet Isaiah says to God’s people when they needed
God’s help the most:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. (43:1-3)
Those words are spoken to
a people whose lives are in ruins. Yet, to those who know what it means to be
exiled from their homes, to be ostracized by those around them, to be lost and
hopeless, God says, “You are mine. You belong to me. I have not forgotten you.”
To those who are inundated by the crashing waves of life, God says, “I am with
you in your struggle.” To those who have been subjected to the fires of
tribulation, God says, “You will not be consumed. I am with you.” When everyone
else has left you and you feel deserted and most alone, God says, “Do not fear,
for I have redeemed you. I am the Lord your God. I am your savior.”
Notice that God does not
promise to remove our sufferings. God does not tell us that he will wave his
hand and make the way easy for us. The waters still crash down upon us, and the
fires still threaten to burn us up. But God declares that he is with us even in
our loneliest places. Even when we cannot feel that he is there, God is with
us. Even when everyone else has left us—when no one else knows what we are enduring—God
is there, present in our suffering, promising to bring us home. Even when we
are too ashamed to look for him and ask him for help, God still calls us by
name because, no matter what happens, we still belong to him.
And, as Christians, how
do we know that? Because of the story of Jesus. God sent his Son into a world
that rejected him and abandoned him and delivered him over to death, and still
God was with him. We see that the tomb is empty, and, if we believe that God
has raised his Son from the dead despite our deepest failures, we believe that
God’s love for us is unbreakable. As Christians, it is the waters of baptism
that crash upon our heads, and those waters, which we remember today, remind us
that we, too, are buried with Christ so that God might raise us to new life.
Our hope is not found in trying a little harder. Our sanity is not dependent
upon the choices we make. We have hope because God has chosen us and refuses to
let our brokenness separate us from his love. With Christ, we have been through
the waters and fires of death, and God has been with us and will stay with us
until he brings us home.
But that isn’t the end of
the sermon. The story of salvation doesn’t end with God’s love for us because,
if God loves the unlovable, we can, too. It is, in fact, God’s love that makes
our love for others possible. If we can accept that God, who is holy and
perfect, loves even the outcast and estranged, then, in him, we find the
ability to love those who are otherwise unlovable. But I’ll even go one step
further. God’s love doesn’t just make our love for the outcast possible; it
demands it. If we believe that God loves us, we must love each other in the
exact same way. We must love until our love becomes perfect. And that means no
more shame, no more hiding, no more judgment. God’s love has set us free—every
single one of us. That is the message of the gospel. And, if we are going to be
children of the gospel, we must love as we have been loved—without condition
and without reservation. No more shame. No more guilt. Only love.
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