St. Paul’s United
Church Sunday, January 28, 2007
Speaking of Sin: Addiction and Grace
Romans 6:1-8 Luke
7:36-50
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We had met on several occasions after she first asked if could get
together regularly. A colleague in ministry, she was a bright, caring person.
But she was on long-term disability after the untimely death of her husband,
along with other personal issues, resulted in a steady decline in her sense of
personal well-being. She came to the point where she couldn’t work, and she was
attending the church I served as a way to be in Christian community.
On a glorious early summer afternoon we sat in a lovely and historic
park in one of Canada’s oldest cities. Despite the beauty of the day, she told
me a dark secret. For more than a year she had been searching out pornography
on the internet and she believed she was addicted. I must admit that this was
more than I wanted to know, and I really didn’t take her all that seriously
when I first heard it. She was a middle-aged woman, after all. Could this be
much more than a mildly illicit curiosity that she just needed to bring to an
end?
But she insisted that this was having an enormous impact of her
life. It had begun with curiosity in the
midst of her loneliness and grief. Soon it became a daily foray into an ugly
world. It had such a hold on her that she had run up considerable debt on
credit cards.
She was filled with self-loathing, as well as fear that others would
find out. How would she ever deal with the shame of being a minister addicted
to porn? Make no mistake about it, she felt that this
was an addiction. She had tried, unsuccessfully to stop. For all her
determination she would sit down at the computer for other purposes and find
herself spending hours looking at pornography.
In the end she agreed with my suggestion that she cancel her internet
subscription, which she did. Her financial circumstances on disability gave her
the excuse with her friends. On her own she found help to deal with the causes
of what certainly appeared to be an addiction. I have no idea whether she has
been able to maintain her resolve through the years. I do know that sitting on
a bench in the park we closed our eyes and prayed that God would give her the
strength she needed.
Should we discuss addiction in the church? The word addiction is never
used in the bible, although the word sin is, and often. Can we make a helpful
connection between sin and addiction? Two weeks ago I began a series of sermons
on the subject of sin, the almost forgotten subject of the church. It has been pointed out that one of the
reasons we don’t speak about sin all that much anymore is because we have
developed other language, including that of our legal and therapeutic systems to address most of
what used to be called sin. Unfortunately that language doesn’t address the
spiritual aspect of our failings and our vices and our addictions
This morning we listened to two passages which speak of sin. The first
is from the letter written by the apostle Paul to the congregation he had
established in Rome. The other is a story of a woman who is not given a name
other than “sinner.” We’re not told what has led to this stigma, but she was
obviously considered offensive to the religious leaders who invited Jesus for a
meal one day. She does something which would have been considered highly
unusual in her time as well as ours. She pours perfume on Jesus’ feet, perhaps as a
tangible, sensual response to the message of grace she has heard in his
teaching and preaching.
While the Pharisees are scandalized by this “breaking of the rules,”
Jesus sees this as another
teaching moment. First he tells a parable of the relinquishing of
a debt. Then he directly addresses the woman who has made herself so vulnerable
before this dinner crowd. Jesus seems to appreciate her honesty and devotion.
She isn’t attempting to hide who she is.
He tells her that her sins are forgiven and extends to her the
acceptance and grace of God. In doing so he extends to her the opportunity for
freedom that no one else affords her.
What does this story have to do with addiction? Perhaps
nothing at all, although both the identification of failure on her part, and
the gift of grace in Christ, are part of the process of recovery and
restoration to spiritual wholeness and health.
It would be both easy and wrong to point the finger at those who live
with addictions, as though they were in a special category of sin that deserves
censure. But what if all of us have an innate tendency toward addiction? The
late Dr. Gerald May was both a psychotherapist and a Christian spiritual
director. He wrote a profound book entitles Addiction and Grace in which
he makes the connection between the human tendency toward addiction and our
relationship with the God who created us and redeems us. This is what he has to
say:
We all come from freedom originally, and we are
meant for freedom. But addiction holds us back from our rightful destiny: it
makes us prisoners of our own impulses and slaves to our selfish idols. This is
our condition, and the Scriptures of the great world religions attest to it . .
. God creates us for love and freedom, attachment hinders us, and grace is
necessary for salvation. In and throughout this condition, God loves and longs
for us, and we love and long for God.
There are some obvious activities which carry with them the possibility
of addiction, such as the consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Whenever a new
budget is tabled, the reporters still let us know if the “sin taxes”
were raised, a phrase which is surely a holdover from a more conservative
era.
There are so many other addictions. As a pastor I have attempted to
support people who have been addicted to drugs, both illicit and prescription.
In another congregation where I was minister we had a modern, downtown building
in which rooms were rented by a variety of community groups. Our administrator
was given the freedom to decide which of those organizations and groups could
use the space, but one morning she spoke to me about a truly unusual request. A
representative for Sex Addicts Anonymous had called her about booking a room,
but pointed out that privacy was of the utmost importance because there were
prominent members of the community who would be part of the group. We agreed
that if they began to use our building we would resist the temptation to hang
around the doors on meeting nights to see who showed up! Of course, despite our
joking, this was no laughing matter.
Of course there are slots of activities which we might not immediately
consider as addictions, yet have a hold on our lives. We can become addicted to
power and control in our places of work and our relationships which lead to
great pain and disruption, both for ourselves and those around us.
Then there is our stuff. Sometimes we describe a person as a “shopoholic” as though he or she is part of a rare breed.
But one writer has asked whether we in the wealthy nations are addicted to our
possessions, the material things we say we can’t take with us when we die,
although we act as though we can. She invites us to make a list of our ten most
cherished possessions and then consider how we would define ourselves without
them.
We can even become addicted to certainty, including religious certitude,
where it is essentially “my way or the highway.”
This is where the grace comes in. The title of Gerald May’s book is Addiction
and Grace rather than Addiction and Sin. He believes that through
both our own wills and the grace of a loving and accepting God we can
experience what he calls a spiritual “homecoming, ” much like the
homecoming we read in another passage from Luke, the parable of the Prodigal
Son. And as with the son in that story we begin with honesty. When we approach
Christ openly and humbly there is the possibility of change and new life.
Most of us have heard about the Twelve Steps of
Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery groups, but you may not have seen them.
They sound remarkably religious, and that is probably because they were adapted
from the writings of a minister, the Rev. Sam Shoemaker. Here they are:
The 12 Steps
1.) We admitted we were
powerless over ________--that our lives had become unmanageable.
2.) Came to
believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3.) Made a
decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understood God.
4.) Made a
searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5.) Admitted
to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6.) Were
entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7.) Humbly
asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8.) Made a
list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them
all.
9.) Made
direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would
injure them or others.
10.) Continued
to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11.) Sought
through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we
understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power
to carry that out.
12.) Having
had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this
message to others in similar circumstances, and to practice these principles in
all our affairs.
When I was starting out in ministry a man began attending church with
his fiancé, even though he didn’t have much of a religious background. Both of
them were recovering alcoholics and attended Alcoholics Anonymous. He was a
bright and insightful guy and we had conversations where he pushed me to ask
what we were really doing in worship. His observation was that AA members were
far more honest about their need for a life-changing experience of God than
church folk, at least from what he could see. He figured that if church folk
actually admitted their addictions they would be shunned in a hurry.
I challenged that assessment but he may have been right, at least to a
certain degree. If church is little more than a cheerful club where we enjoy
one another’s company, then do we really need to be here? But if we come
together in humble awareness of our need, there is hope.
Every one of us can begin with our personal “fearless moral inventory,”
asking ourselves what may be holding us back from the fullness of life God
intends for us. Then through the power that is greater than ourselves
we can receive forgiveness of our sins and start again.
When we do this, there will be “gospel,” the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Grace is our promise. Thanks be to God!