Epiphany 5 - Monday - The Change That Changes Everything

Text: Mark 8:34-38 (see below)

Last week, I began a series of reflections on a portion of text taken from Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions which was read at a mid-week meeting. I stated that the passage not only spoke to folks in recovery but also to the institutional Church. Here is the segment that stimulated my thinking:

“Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry A.A.’s (D.A.’s) message to the next sufferer? No, the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn’t care for this prospect – unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself” (page 23).

The first two questions were addressed in last Thursday’s blog which can be found here: http://john13verse34.blogspot.com/2012/02/epiphany-4-thursday-feast-of.html.

The question about our Higher Power, meditation and prayer can be found here: http://john13verse34.blogspot.com/2012/02/epiphany-4-saturday-leadership-in-local.html.

Today, I want to address this last question: Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry A.A.’s (D.A.’s) message to the next sufferer? and how that relates to the Church for I believe that many Christians face the same sort of struggle in offering the message of Christ to the next person who is lost, suffering or in need. If you and I are not willing to share the Good News of Christ with another person, we have neglected an important aspect of our discipleship. We are no better than the average alcoholic, “self-centered in the extreme.” Jesus said: “What was given to you freely, you must give away freely” (Matthew 10:8).

Step 12 of the Twelve Steps states: “Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry out this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all of our affairs.” The key to understanding the desire to carry the significance of the 12 Steps or, for that matter, and more importantly, the message of the Gospel of Jesus to another person is the phrase “Having had a spiritual awakening.”

Richard Rohr writes that a spiritual awakening “is the grand plan and program of human deliverance. Yes, God could have created us already awakened, but then we would have been mere robots or clones. If God has revealed anything about who God is, then it is enormously clear that God loves and respects freedom – to the final and full and riskiest degree…… A good spirituality achieves two huge things simultaneously: it keeps God absolutely free, and not bound by any of our formulas, and it keeps us utterly free ourselves and not forced or constrained by any circumstances whatsoever, even human laws, sin, limitations, failure or tragedy. ‘It was for freedom that Christ has set us free!’ as Paul says (Galatians 5:1). Good religion keeps God free for people and people free for God. You cannot improve on that” (Breathing Underwater, page 111).

Rohr finishes his thought by saying: “When these two great freedoms meet, we have a spiritual awakening! And the world opens up beneath our feet and above our heads. We are in a differently shaped universe. It is not that God chooses some people to have a spiritual awakening, and others not. Awakening just happens, as certain as the dawn, when the two great freedoms meet. But keeping God free (from bad teaching, fear and doubt) and getting you free (from selfishness, victimhood, and childhood wounds) is the big rub and the lifelong task. Like two super magnets, when the two freedoms are achieved simultaneously – even for a millisecond – they grab one another – and, as in nuclear fusion, an explosion always results. It is without doubt the change that changes everything. It is both divine lovemaking and human ecstasy (Breathing Underwater, page 112).

Have you ever had such an experience in your life where the world “opens up beneath your feet and above your head”?  Do you desire such an encounter? What would our churches look like and members act like if there was a spiritual awakening to the message of the Gospel – the change that changes everything?!

There are countless stories in the New Testament of such an awakening: Nicodemus (John 3), the woman at the well (John 4), the Centurion (John 4), the man on the pallet (John 5), the blind man in the Temple (John 9), the woman with a hemorrhage (Mark 5), and on and on and on. As sure as the sun rose this morning, awakenings are taking place all around us. Thanks be to God!

Sharing with others such experiences is not an option for the person in recovery or for the Christian. The person in recovery completes the 12 Step journey by sharing the message of redemption with another person. The Christian is called by Jesus to go and share our story of grace with another person inviting them to experience the change that changes everything and enter into discipleship with our Lord. If you and I want to overcome our self-centeredness and selfishness there is only one way – serve others. Spiritual gifts (awakenings) are not to be hoarded and used for our own well being. Our spiritual gifts increase only by using them in the service of others.  

A final thought from Richard Rohr: “The reason that A.A. has been more successful than most churches in actually changing people and helping people is that it treats addiction both spiritually and as an illness rather than a moral failure or an issue of mere willpower. We in the churches tend to treat everything in terms of personal culpability, which only elicits immense push-back and the passive-aggressive response. A.A. says, in its own inspired way, that addicts are souls searching for love in all the wrong places, but still searching for love” (Breathing Underwater, page 115).

Jesus has called His Church to be a place where love is found and embraced in all of its richness, goodness and truth. We are called to be a community of believers who welcome the unlovable, the broken, the lost, and the seeker without judgment or opinion providing an oasis where the person can experience by our words and by our actions the change that changes everything.

Love One Another - Brian

The Risky Life

Anthony Mitchell

We live in a time where Herod is in control.... If you stand up and do as John the Baptist did, say a few simple words--such as That is not right; this is not how it should be done; this is not how we should treat one another; this is not how we should live--you are risking death. Sometimes we forget that the Christian life is a risky life, a life that might cost you your own life.... This is the Gospel. This is where it is preached, in dangerous times.

Source: Quoted in Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer

Mark 8:34-38

Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’