Sermon
Mark 12:28-34
Loving God with a Broken Heart
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Mark 12:28-34
Loving God with a Broken Heart
(This sermon was delivered to a group recovering from alcohol and drug addiction.)
Last week, Willam Cope Moyers came to town to speak at Riverbend Church.
But since he’s also a long-time friend of Austin Recovery,
he came and did a little fund-raiser for us too.
William is the son of the famous journalist Bill Moyers
who served as press secretary to Lyndon Johnson in the 1960’s.
William told us that he came from a good family.
That he had a good education, and he had some very good jobs.
But he also told us that even after two treatments for alcoholism & drug addiction,
his illness got the best of him and it wouldn’t let go.
In relapse, it carried him down further than he thought he’d ever go.
It carried him all the way to a crack house in the slums of Atlanta, Georgia –
and it was there – some 11 years ago – that he finally reached his bottom.
He said that bottom came when his father showed up outside that crack-house.
He showed up along with a couple of marshals
who took William into custody and threw him handcuffed into a van
where his father was waiting.
William said his Dad looked at him. … He hadn‘t slept in almost three days –
he was dirty and he was wasted –
he was a far sight from looking like the son his father always wanted
and dreamed he’d one day become.
A moment of truth had arrived between a successful father and his drug-addicted son.
William said, “My father looked at me in the van that night –
looked me straight in my eyes and said, … ‘I hate you!’”
There was a pause in his talk. … We all felt it.
And then William said the line
that every one of us in that room could probably relate to even better:
He said, “You know what? … I hate me too!”
I hate me too!
I don’t know four words that might better express what’s at the very heart
of every alcoholic and addict who’s still stuck in his illness.
I hate me too!
In tonight’s readings, we hear about loving God with all our hearts,
and with all our minds, and with all our strength –
and then we hear about loving our neighbors just as ourselves.
But what if deep inside we have the disease of addiction?
What if deep inside, if the truth be known, we really hate our own selves?
How then can we love God? –
How then can we love anybody?
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How then can we do anything except maybe crawl back inside the crack-house,
or wherever our addiction’s dragged us down to –
and just go back inside and try to make it all go away.
I don’t know about you, but by the time I got to these rooms,
the fun had long gone out of my drinking & using.
I wasn’t doing it to feel good & to get high anymore –
I was doing it so I wouldn’t have to feel anything at all.
“Oblivion” is what I was looking for and I got to know that place pretty well.
It’s the one place where you don’t have to feel the pain and the self-hatred
cause you don’t feel anything at all – at least not for a while. …
We hear all sorts of theories about what lies at the heart of addiction.
There’s new brain chemistry stuff that’s out –
There’s theories about immaturity and distorted thinking.
I always liked the theory that said alcoholism was a Valium deficiency –
so I tried taking that cure for a while.
But when I got to my own “crack house place” –
and when the pain inside became more than I could bear –
then I heard someone talk about a theory that made all the sense in the world to me.
They said, in talking about themselves,
that when they arrived in these rooms,
they suffered from what they called: a love disorder.
They said they had an illness that kept them from loving themselves
and it kept them from loving others too.
When I heard that, I thought for the first time –
“maybe somebody does know what it feels like to live inside of me.
And not only does somebody know what it feels like –
maybe somebody’s found a way to recover from it.”
Whenever Bill Wilson told his story
he always included the part where he tried to explain what it felt like
to be trapped inside himself.
I think they should maybe make that a requirement whenever we stand up to share.
Try to put our inside-pain into words
so that other addicts can maybe get a feel for what it’s like
living inside another addict’s skin.
Drunk-a-logs are funny –
but it’s letting our insides get touched by other people’s insides –
that’s what usually changes us.
Wilson likened his addiction to living deep inside a really long and really dark cave. –
And he was chained in there – chained to the very back wall of his cave.
And he said he felt so god-awfully alone in there.
He said he could see his family standing outside the cave – calling to him –
begging him to come out and join them – come out into the light –
just step out of his darkness and come be with them again.
But he couldn’t escape.
The chains held him tight.
And then, when it seemed that his despair just couldn’t get any deeper –
an old drinking buddy shows up out of the blue –
and this guy’s sober and he’s different –
and Wilson knew that he’d been an addict every bit as trapped
and every bit alone as he was – but now he was free.
Now he’s standing right next to him –
And as he opened up and shared his insides –
he brought Bill the first ray of hope that maybe – just maybe – there was a way out.
Tonight, our Big Book reading talks about the time that comes
between Steps Five and Step Seven.
It says that time ought to be about an hour –
An hour after we finish opening our insides and sharing what’s inside us with God,
and with our selves and with another human being.
That other human being part is especially tough.
Most of us go into that Step feeling frightened and ashamed.
Here’s the me I’ve been running from for all these years.
Here’s the me with all my guilt and with all my shame.
– the small and little me that hides under all that grandiosity we show on the outside.
Here’s the stuff I swore I’d never share with another soul –
but now it’s coming out – My meanness and my pettiness
all the feelings and the fears
that started even before the drinking and the drugs came to cover ‘em up.
All the early scripts that I bought into that told me I was no good – or stupid – or fat – or ugly – or dumb – or check all of the above.
Other people’s shame that I inherited and carried for them.
All the sexual stuff that the Big Book insists we look at
and that none of us want to go near –
All the stuff that screams from way down inside: “I hate me too.”
But what happens to us in that Fifth Step?
What happened to me was another man got a look inside.
He took a good look – cause I didn’t hold back.
And he didn’t judge, and he didn’t walk out, and he didn’t flinch an inch!
He said he’d seen it all before – both in himself and in others.
I hate to shoot down your grandiosity, folks,
but there’s really nothing much new under the sun.
We like to think we’re different and we’re unique under there – but the truth is: we’re not.
The truth is: We just have a disease that’s spiritual –
A disease that keeps us alone and feeling separated even when we’re in a crowd.
This guy saw that I was too sick to love God –
and too sick to love my neighbor – cause I didn’t yet love myself.
That’s usually where we start our journey.
He told me that he’d had his own love disorder and he knew what it was like.
For eleven years it kept him living on skid row.
For eleven years it sabotaged him whenever he tried to recover.
But he’d finally escaped – someone had come along and led him out of his cave –
they’d given him a map with 12 Steps on it – and he’d followed ‘em.
After that 5th Step, for the first time in my 27 years –
somebody knew me from the inside out.
Someone knew me and accepted me and he even loved me.
And when I was all done taking the biggest spiritual dump of my life –
the guy said something to me that I’ll never forget as long as I live.
He said; “Bill, welcome to the human race.”
And at that moment, I felt something move deep inside.
I wasn’t sure what it was because it was so new –
but today I think it was the beginning of that thing that Jesus talked about tonight.
The greatest commandment – the most important thing in life – he says –
is that we love.
Love our God – Love our neighbors – Love our selves.
That’s what we’re built for –
that’s what we’re each meant to do in this life
and we’ll never feel whole or complete until we do.
The 12 Steps do more than just keep us from drinking & drugging – and they’d better –
because there’s more wrong with us than just our drinking & drugging.
The Book says those things are only the symptom of what’s really wrong inside.
I believe what the 12 Steps really do – if they’re done right – remove our barriers to love – the barriers we’ve each built inside –
the barriers that block us from experiencing the love of our God,
and our neighbor – and even our own true selves.
“I hate me too!”
That’s the demon that lives in William Moyers and it lives also in me.
Does it maybe live inside you too from time to time?
Mine didn’t go away when I stopped my drinking and drugging.
I just got what every other addict with a love disorder receives here:
a daily reprieve that’s based on my spiritual condition.
Is God’s love, and your love, and my own love flowing inside me?
Or are my sins – my character defects as we like to call ‘em –
are they back solidly in place and blocking the flow?
Every morning I do a Quiet Time where I try to look at Steps Six and Seven.
It doesn’t take a full hour every day but if the blockage is heavy it might.
Quoting (and adding a few words to) the Big Book passage once again, it says:
“Carefully reading the first five steps we ask if we have omitted anything,
for we are building an arch through which we shall walk (out of our caves and into recovery) free men and free women at last.”
Are the stones properly in place?
Have we skimped on the cement?
Have we tried to make mortar without sand? …
When we are ready, we say something like this:
“My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, the good and the bad.
And sometimes, Lord, you know that I bring a lot more of the one than the other.
Take my self-hate, wherever you find it, and wash it in your love.
You loved us when we were still in sin –
you sent your Love into this world in the form of your son – our brother Jesus.
He always loved and healed those who were too sick to love and heal themselves.
We believe he still does.
Remove now every defect of character that stands in the way of our usefulness –
but especially, Lord, remove the love disorder
that stands in the way of our finding and loving our own true selves.
Restore us to the men and women you created –
the recovering men and women you want us to be.
And grant us strength, as we go out from our caves and into your world, to feel your love and to carry it to those who need it most – just like someone carried it to us.”
Amen.
Copyright 2008 Bill Wigmore. Used by permission.