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“Why can
I be more honest at my AA group than I can at church?” my
friend once asked me. At 24, she was new to Alcoholics
Anonymous. “I don’t really know,” I said. “Maybe
because they know it’s a matter of life and death at AA, and
we don’t at church.”
For
my friend, repentance began with telling the truth about
herself where it could be received without judgment or
condemnation. At church, she tried to hide her drinking and
keep a good face. As she slowly worked her way through the
first few steps of AA, she admitted her addiction and began to
experience her repentance because there were others who could
be there with her. When I asked another friend who has walked
the twelve-step road to recovery about why he felt people were
more honest with each other at his AA meeting than they were
in his Bible study at church, he said, “Because at AA, we
all know we are in this thing together.”
We’re
all in this together. That is the perfect mantra for Ash
Wednesday. It is the perfect mantra for the beginning of Lent.
Lent is our yearly journey to Easter, a journey that takes us
to the foot of the cross and into the empty tomb. Our Lenten
journey is a forty-day time span set aside each year for
recovery, rehab, reconciliation, repentance and renewal. It is
the time we set aside to be honest—honest about our sorrows
and sickness, honest about our sin.
Sin.
Now there is one of those heavy-duty religious words that come
with a ton of baggage. Sin too often is used only to make
people feel guilty or to judge. Many use the language of sin
to promote their own self-righteousness rather than to reveal
God’s righteousness. “I am glad I’m not like those
sinners…” But in the Greek, the word hamartano,
which is translated in English as “sin,” was originally an
archery term which meant “missing the mark.” I like the
archery analogy because it helps me understand the places in
my life where I am missing the mark, the places that I am
“not quite there yet” and the places where I need to take
aim and try again. Being honest about sin is to be honest
about the places where we are missing the mark with God. When
it comes to the mark, some of the arrows of our lives might
come close but are not quite there yet, while others are never
even hitting the target. Lent is about being honest about
where the arrows in our lives are hitting God’s target—the
target for how we are called to live in this world. And when
it comes to being honest about sin, we must quickly realize
that we’re all in this thing together.
That
is what the Apostle Paul wants to make clear in the third
chapter of his letter to the Romans. He says that when it
comes to sin, there are none who are righteous—not even one.
We’re all in this together. “For there is no distinction,
since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
I think that’s what folks involved in AA and other 12-step
programs know and understand: they are all truly in the same
boat. Their disease has led to years of missing the mark,
which eventually begins to impact every other aspect of their
lives. At an AA meeting, it would not be unusual to find a
well-known local celebrity, several prominent millionaires,
blue collar workers, along with unemployed high school
dropouts, stay-at-home moms, and kids who wear Band-Aids to
hide the needle marks on their arms. It is the kind of social
mixing seldom found in our churches and rarely in our society.
The atmosphere of a meeting would resemble the best of any
small group we would like to see at our church—compassionate
listening, a lot of truth telling, warm responses, and many
hugs. One recovering alcoholic described it like this: “It
is the only place I know where status means nothing. Nobody
fools anybody else. Everyone is here because he or she made a
slobbering mess of his or her life and is trying to put the
pieces back together again.” Healing can begin because the
ground is level, and it is level because they all realize they
are in it together.
That
too is what Ash Wednesday is all about. It is our chance to
come together to be honest that we have made a slobbering mess
of our lives (and if not a slobbering mess of our own lives,
we must be honest about the slobbering mess we are making of
our war torn, ecologically damaged, divided, broken and
hurting world). Ash Wednesday is our time to begin the journey
of putting the pieces back together again. And we ought to be
able to help each other along and hold each other up in this
journey, because when it comes to sin, when it comes to
missing the mark, we are all in this together. Our Lenten
journey begins with radical honesty.
The
other lesson we can learn from those who found recovery from
addictions through 12-step programs is that radical honesty
must move to radical dependence. AA programs demand of their
members a radical dependence on God and fellow strugglers.
Once we become clear we are all in this mess together, we soon
realize that the only way out is from a source higher than
ourselves—only God can save me from myself and only God can
save the world from us all.
Do
you want to know why AA and 12-step programs are successful?
Because they are biblical.
Look again at our scripture today. Right after Paul is
radically honest, “all have sinned,” he is radically
dependant, “we are now justified (saved…made right) by
grace as a gift (nothing we merit or earn…only receive)”
and this salvation, Paul says, “comes through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus.” Radical honesty must move us
towards radical dependence. Our Lenten journey must do the
same.
I
have been told that one of the mantras of those in recovery is
“I can’t. He can. I think I’ll let Him.” That is what
Ash Wednesday is for. Radical honesty. “I can’t save
myself from my sin or save my world from the sin of us all,
but God can.” Our Lenten journey to the cross and on to
Easter is our opportunity to learn to let God heal us, change
us, transform us…and not just for us, but for the world we
live in. “I can’t. He can. I think I’ll let him.”
There is
a classic illustration from a children’s sermon that creates
the visual of what it means to live in radical honesty and
radical dependence. The pastor has one child stand on the
middle of a piece of rope and take an end of the rope in each
hand. Then they have the child try to pull on both ends of the
rope to lift himself up off of the ground. Most children will
struggle with this and not understand why they can’t budge.
The pastor encourages them to try harder. Then, just when the
child is about to give up, the pastor stands behind the child,
and while he or she holds and pulls up on the ends of the
rope, the pastor gently grabs the child at both of their
wrists and lifts them up. The pastor then explains that when
it comes to our faith lives, we all eventually have to be
honest that we can never lift ourselves out of our sin. It is
only when we finally realize this that we are able to let God
take a hold of us and lift us out of our otherwise-helpless
situation.
I
leave you with one final mantra that my friends who have gone
through AA have taught me.
About their experiences with the 12 steps, they simply
say, “I came. I came to. I came to believe.”
That is the very essence of our Lenten journey. We
came. We came here today to begin the journey to the cross. We
came to. We came to realize that indeed we have all sinned and
fallen short of the glory of God. And then we came to believe.
And it is my hope that during the next forty days, we will
come to believe what the Apostle Paul would go on to say later
in that same letter to the Romans, that despite our sin, “all
things work together for good for them that love [and depend
on] God.”
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