We're All in Recovery
I mention recovery because this is the end of Recovery Month, a time to foster awareness and understanding of mental and substance use disorders and to celebrate the people who are in recovery and have escaped the grip of addiction. “Recovery” in this context is a life-long, on-going process, typically described in 12 steps. The Betty Ford Clinic defines it this way: Recovery is “a voluntarily maintained lifestyle characterized by sobriety, personal health, and citizenship.” I mention recovery also because this is the last day of our lectionary readings from the Epistle of James, and the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, Dr. Bob and Bill, wrote that the Epistle of James was the first and most important of several biblical sources they considered absolutely essential to their spiritual program of recovery—in fact, there were some in the AA founding group who wanted to name their fellowship “The James Club.” Why did they have this affinity for James? Because more than any other single book in the Bible, the Epistle of James is like a handbook, a how-to guide, for living a faithful, abundant, Christ-centered life.
In five short chapters, James lays it out for us in simple, concise bullet points: James pushes us to seek God’s wisdom without doubting. James encourages us to have strength that endures enticing temptations, temptations that turn us to sin and ultimately lead us to death. James exhorts us to always remember what a powerful tool—for good or for bad—our tongues are. James urges us to be ‘doers’ of the Word and not hearers only; he urges us to be self-aware rather than deceiving ourselves with sham Christianity built upon cheap grace. James exhorts us not to be partial to the rich and powerful but rather to recognize in humility and love God’s preferential welcome and care for the poor and powerless. James warns us to acknowledge our abuse of wealth and the demands of faithful stewardship. Now, of course, James is not laying out the requirements for achieving our own salvation—James is describing the natural response we should have in accepting the gift of salvation, and laying out the “doing”—the “exercising” of our faith and gratitude muscles in response to God’s grace, exercise that will strengthen our faith and draw us even more powerfully into the grace-filled, abundant life we are made for.
James’ purpose is to produce spiritual maturity in us. Our faith in God naturally results in behavior that reinforces us as the bearers of God’s image. Our growth in spiritual maturity must produce a change in our attitudes and actions; it produces change in our daily lives. Advancing from spiritual immaturity to spiritual maturity is another way of expressing the path of the 12 steps in Recovery. Our relationship with God changes how we live each day. Throughout his Epistle, James lists behaviors for us to strive for that will lead down the path of spiritual maturity: “…you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing (1:3-4).” “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted by evil and God tempts no one. But we are tempted by our own desire (1:13b-14a).” Our only path to peace is to hand our selfish and self-serving desires, our “cravings that are at war within us” (4:1)—hand our whole selves, our whole life over to God (4:7).
We have to accept our inability to save ourselves, to hand our weakness and powerlessness over to God, because God—who created us and loves us and saves us—is the only true Power there is, and God’s path for us is the only true path to abundant and eternal life. For James, the key behavior of mature faith is to recognize our sin and helplessness and to submit to God. Now let me paraphrase for you the first three steps of Recovery:
- Step 1: We admit we are powerless--over alcohol, over anger, over gambling, over fear, over drugs, overspending—admit that our lives have become unmanageable and out of our control.
- Step 2: We acknowledge that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to wholeness and sanity.
- Step 3: we make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.
Another behavior of mature faith in James is to let go of our old ways of thinking, especially to let go of our desire to judge our neighbors, and to leave the judging to God. Judging is a roadblock for loving others, and it blocks us from God. Our faith and trust in God must bring love and tolerance into our daily living. James spends a whole chapter, chapter three, on the practical aspect of not judging: taming our tongues and filling our minds and hearts and speech with God’s wisdom from above, which “is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy (3:17).” How much today do our country and our world desperately need us to model a peaceful self-restraint that pauses in wisdom and compassion before lashing out with hate- or anger-filled speech? As James puts it, “With [our tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” As God’s faithful people, we must constantly ask God to direct our thoughts and words and actions; we must be humble and gentle and willing to yield, as James says. As a practical guide, steps four through nine of Recovery describe various aspects of making peace with ourselves and with others (and with God), and of making amends for our wrongs when possible. It turns out that for all of us, handing over our will and aligning it with God’s will is the only way to follow the path of the Prince of Peace.
The Prince of Peace in today's Gospel uses exaggeration to explain to us an additional insight into the recovery process that those in a formal 12-step program know: There are times when our only choice is to turn our backs on our dependencies and walk away: “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off…if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off…if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out” (Mark 9:43-47). Jesus is clearly not endorsing self-mutilation—but he is saying some of us may find we can never take another drink, we have to cut up our credit cards, we have to give up the casinos, we have to block pornography, we have to put down our cell phones, we have to turn off the angry news feed…We have to give up on all the idols we have given control of our lives, give up on the selfish addictions that give us a quick rush, in humility and faith that the process of becoming whole ultimately brings us more fulfilling, more complete, more deep, more lasting joy.
My friends, I’m going to state explicitly now what I hope has already become clear: I am in recovery. You are in recovery. As Christians, we are all of us…all of us…every single one, in recovery. We’re on a life-long journey to restore the abundant, healthy, and whole life that God created us for. We can’t “lose” salvation in the sense of God taking it back from us—it was and is always a free gift, something we never deserved to begin with. We can’t lose it because we’re not strong enough or smart enough or good enough—because the truth is we’re not strong or strong or good—But we can lose it by refusing it. Rather than turning our backs to all the life- and soul-crushing dependencies in our lives, we can turn our backs to God. We can continue to put our own desires and cravings first, before God’s will for us. We can put some power other than God in charge of our lives. God is faithful; God will never renege on what has been lovingly, sacrificially, given—but we can lose track of that gift—we can let it fall through our fingers—we can push it away—we can walk away, self-confident in our own control, but, actually and tragically, self-deluded about the truth that we are really out of control.
James presents to us a life of faith marked by trials. I have to say, that’s certainly my experience. How do I handle the trials in my life? How do I handle my character defects and my weaknesses and my sins? What are the idols that I let rule my life, rather than handing my life over to God? My reliance on myself, on anything other than God, leads me to fear and to shame and to anger and to guilt…it leads me to hurt others and to hurt myself. How can I change? How can I recover the joy that I long for?
Of course, the truth is that “I” can’t change—but God can change me. God’s love, through the grace of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, can change me. And the conduit for this change is prayer. “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective (5:13-16).”
Steps 11 and 12 in Recovery are the promise to pray for both knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry that will out in all our lives, and the promise to carry this message of recovery to others. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. The Holy Spirit, working through my prayers and your prayers, will comfort, heal, guide, and sustain me…will comfort, heal, guide, and sustain you. This week, I will be praying for us all that may we more fully enter into our lives of Recovery: that we may put all our lives into God’s hands; that we may we admit and confess to ourselves and to each other our hurtful actions; that we may we enter into deep prayer to better discern God’s will and then act on it; that may we sustain each other and everyone we meet with the Good News of Jesus’ path to abundant life. I will be praying for Recovery. I hope you will pray with me, because, indeed, your prayer is powerful and effective.
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