Fifth Sunday of Lent March 9, 2008. Our Lady of
Grace 5:15, 9:30 and Men’s
CRHP retreat. Ezekiel 37: 12-14.
Romans 8: 8-11. John 11: 1-45
Second Lieutenant Bill Wilson didn’t think twice when he was
offered an alcoholic drink as a twenty two year old soldier. He overlooked the fact that alcoholism had
destroyed his family. He wrote
that he had found the elixir of life – the answer to all of life’s problems. Seventeen years later alcohol had ruined his
health and destroyed his career. His
marriage was on the rocks.
After he had been locked up in a hospital for the mentally ill for the fourth
time he had a deep and freeing awareness of God’s presence. Insanity and a certain early death because
of severe heath complications from excessive alcohol use was the path that he
had been walking. Then his new
awareness of God and the support of other alcoholics lead him in a new
direction and to the discovery of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Today more than 2 million people in 150
countries meet regularly to support one another in living the 12 steps that are
the only hope of recovery and survival for them.
It would have been easy for Bill Smith to blame his
alcoholic father for his problems.
We are all tempted to blame someone else for our difficulties in life. He could have blamed the poverty he grew up
in after his father abandoned his family.
He could have blamed tensions in his life as a businessman or even the
depression he was experiencing.
Bill Smith learned from experience that blaming others was an excuse for not
dealing with himself.
The twelve steps begin with admitting our powerlessness and trusting in God who
is powerful, but they do not end there.
The amazing thing is that the twelve steps do not focus on what others have
done to us. They focus on what
we have done and who we have allowed ourselves to become.
The spiritual genius of the 12 steps teaches us not only that we cannot change
without God, but also that we cannot change unless we face ourselves honesty
and courageously. The
fourth step says that we must make a fearless moral inventory of our lives. The fifth step says that we must share that
moral inventory with great courage and honesty with at least one other person. The sixth step says that we must make amends
and restitution for the evil we have done.
No where in the 12 steps does it say that the way to a healthy spirituality is
to blame anyone else for what we have done or become.
Dependence on God and courageous honesty and moral responsibility can turn the
most hopeless drunk or addicted person into a deeply spiritual person – even
into a saint. That is true of
the rest of us as well.
“When Jesus arrived in Bethany, he found that
Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days … When Jesus saw Mary
weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping he became deeply troubled in
spirit and said, ‘where have you laid him?’ They said, ‘Come and see.’ And Jesus began to weep…. So Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave and the stone lay across it. Jesus said, ‘Take the stone away.’ Martha said, ‘Lord, by now there will be a
terrible stench for he has bee dead for four days.’
But Jesus insisted that they remove the stone from the entrance of the tomb of
Lazarus. Jesus looked death
right in the face and he moved into the stench of death.
It was only by facing the horrible reality of death with faith, with tears and
with courage that Jesus called Lazarus back to life.
Jesus could have kept Lazarus from dying or raised him to
life from the distant place where he was when he first heard about the death of
Lazarus. Jesus could have
brought Lazarus back to life immediately without any tears and without
experiencing the stench of death.
All powerful God though he was, Jesus chose to teach us how to overcome the
power of death in our lives by facing death and evil face to face with the
faith, honesty and tears that call us and the world around us to new life.
Forgetting the past and not facing it doesn’t work. When we haven’t faced our past it almost
always sneaks back into our lives to haunt and deceive us.
When we blame others for our past, the things that we blame others for continue
to haunt and even destroy us because blaming is always about making someone
else responsible for our lives and not taking responsibility for who we have
become ourselves. My father was a
very good man. He was also a
very angry man who had a very difficult life as a poor immigrant. Spending my time blaming him for the angry
displays I experienced as a child will get me no place in dealing with my own
responsibility for my anger. The
fact of the matter is that my father has been dead for a long time and it is
time that I grow up and take responsibility for my own life. It is much easier to blame my Dad or to
place my anger on somebody else than it is to look myself in the face and
smell the stench of death that I sometimes create.
Blaming is easier than honesty and personal responsibility.
My sense is that each of us has areas of our lives that we
need to take personal responsibility for during this season of lent. The way to true spiritual freedom for every
one of us is to make a fearless moral inventory of our lives, to admit the
exact nature of our wrongs to at least one other person, and to make serious
amends for the evil we have done.
We can take these hard and spiritually responsible steps only when we trust in
the power of God in our lives.
When Lazarus came forth from the tomb of death Jesus said, “Untie him and let
him go free.” Jesus says to each of
us, “I am the resurrection and the life…do you believe this?” He
wants to untie us and let us go free.
The prophet Ezekiel tells us: “Thus says the Lord God: O
my people I will open your graves and have you rise from them….I will put my spirit in you that you may live…thus
you shall know that I am the Lord.
I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord.”
For the wisdom to trust God and take personal responsibility
for our sins, our faults and our weakness as we come forth from the tomb into
the new life of Easter we give God thanks and praise.