Step 6: Are You Ready? Preached at Wollaston Congregational Church On October 13th, 2019 Scripture: Luke 17:11-19 Today we heard a story of the healing of ten men with leprosy. In the ancient world, the term leprosy covered a range of skin diseases known or thought to be highly contagious. People with leprosy experienced the pain of the disease and also the pain of separation from the community. They could not go to work, or live with their families. They were ostracized and marginalized. Their only company was other people with the same disease. The disease we know as leprosy today has been curable since the 1940’s and vaccinations exist. And still, in some parts of the world there are separate colonies for people with the disease. The men with leprosy we heard of our gospel reading this morning wander the countryside between Galilee and Samaria. They shake bells to warn passersby of the possibility of contagion and to beg for charity. We can imagine food left for the leper community at the boundary of the town, perhaps in a designated safe place. Their clothes are ragged and worn, they sleep rough. No one wants to come into contact with their personal belongings. Jesus happens to be traveling through the same territory as the lepers, and they call to him from a distance “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Jesus does not approach, but simply says “go and show yourselves to the priest.” The law requires people who have been healed from an unclean disease to present the priest, in order to re-enter the community. As they turn to go to the priest, they are made clean! Their skin, nerves, and limbs are restored. They are good to go! One of them turns around to Jesus. This one is a Samaritan, a foreigner and an outsider. Ten men were made clean, but this is the only one who thanks Jesus and praises God! And so Jesus proclaims “Get up and go on your way, your faith has made you whole!” Nine are cured, better from the skin disease, but one is made whole. He is restored to a fullness of life he may have never known before. And so we may wonder, what was different about this man? What was it about him and his readiness to give praise and thanksgiving to God? What was it about him that he saw beyond the simple transaction of pleading and cure? We might imagine that out of the ten, this man is the one whose life will be transformed to a new level. The other nine are fine, they’ll go back to business as usual. But this man is truly restored. And so we come to step 6, in our 12 steps from “Breathing Underwater, Spirituality and the 12 Steps” by Richard Rohr . This step says “[That we] were entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character …” [1] You might remember the past two steps. In step 4 we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. And in step 5 we admitted to God and another person the exact nature of our wrongs. These steps might have seemed to be searching enough. But now there’s a change in tone. This is different. This is more than admitting to doing wrong things and vowing not to repeat them. This step means a change! Real change, in us. And that is hard. That is probably why it is all about letting go and letting God. I have to admit, when I came to this step I thought “I understand how this works for addiction groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. Following the process is a matter of survival for them. But will this go over in church? Are we really ready for this step?” The irony is that this step is all about “being entirely ready.” In the Breathing Underwater Richard Rohr talks about the paradoxical nature of God’s grace. And over the centuries, there have been literal battles over the two sides of the coin of grace. At the time of the European Reformation, Pope Leo X emphasized Paul’s statement in the letter to the Philippians instructing Christians to “work for our salvation in fear and trembling.” (Philip 2:12) The Reformer, Martin Luther, insisted that grace is free and undeserved, there is nothing we can do to earn it. and Luther refers to Paul’s letter to the Romans. (Romans 9:11-12, 11:6) [2] The question is: do we do our own work in removing defects in character, or do we simply sit and wait for God to do it? The answer is both/and. It’s an odd thing. We have to do the work of letting go and we have to wait for God to do it. Sometimes I think of letting go as God prying my fingers one by one off my expectations like a stubborn small child. One of the defects of character I have been wrestling with since we began this program is that of perfectionism. In worship it translates into my vision of the service, and what I expect the message of the scripture will be. Once I have a vision in my mind for how things are going to go, anything different is less-than. Over the week, I will choose the scriptures and the hymns and reflect on the sermon topic. Sometimes I’ll have a picture in my mind of the setting here on the table and what I intend to portray. And I’ll imagine the perfect picture of us all gathered around moved by the sights and sounds. And yet, you church have helped me with this defect of character. Marian and I never quite know what we are going to be faced with when we arrived here on Sunday morning. Perhaps it will be cold because heating failed to come on, and you will shiver through the sermon. Perhaps the children who play outside will have accidentally thrown their ball in the wrong direction, and there will be a broken window and scattered glass. And then my time of silent preparation will be spent picking up the shards. You know all the things that can go wrong in a place like this, especially during extreme weather. Fallen masonry; blown over signs; the microphone batteries run down … half the congregation is ill and the other half are away for the weekend … and, worst of all, frozen and burst pipes. And, so I am learning to say “whatever it is, it is OK”. Perhaps you were here last week when the Spirit was mightily present and palpable. All it took was to let go. As Martin Luther said, the true church exists wherever the gospel is rightly taught and the sacraments are rightly administered. That’s all. Or to simplify even more, as Jesus says in Matt 18:20, “… where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." We can remind ourselves that like the whole church on Earth, Wollaston Congregational Church is “perfectly imperfect.” In the story we heard today, the ten men really did want to get better from leprosy. They hoped that Jesus would have mercy on them and heal them. Once he said the word, they had what they wanted. And so the nine went quickly to complete the requirements and get on with life. But the one, the Samaritan, the outsider among them, turned back and waited. He prostrated himself before Jesus, giving thanks and praise to God. Because he did, he was not only made better from leprosy, he was made whole. Perhaps he had less to lose than the others, by letting go and letting God. Ten were cleansed but only one was made whole. Unfortunately, many Christians today are like the nine who were satisfied with the cure without the transformation. Rohr points out that the problem with Luther’s insistence on “grace alone” it that it has “devolved into the modern private and personal ‘decision for Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior’ vocabulary.” This approach to salvation means there is “no real transformation of consciousness or social critique” for many Christians. [3] They see no need to keep on opening up their vulnerability before God and one another. They see no need to critique the culture, calling society to a greater wisdom and compassion. They remain satisfied with themselves and the water in which they swim. Perhaps someone has told you the exact date that they “accepted Jesus as personal Lord and Savior.” If that’s where the transformation ended, then they’re a little like the nine cured lepers, who skipped off to show themselves to the priest. Jesus’ word was a sufficient cure for them. They didn’t need to remain with him and express a desire to go deeper in discipleship. On the other hand, we may meet some people whose authentic spirituality shines through. On one occasion I met a woman who volunteered to care for the most vulnerable residents in a facility where I was visiting a congregant. Her energy was non-anxious. She was serious but light. And she was honest about herself and her feelings. There was nothing fake about her at all. I wanted to know her story. And so, she told me of a time when she had decided her life needed to change. She told me she spent a whole year eliminating the things, the habits, and the relationships that were not making her whole. She was like the Samaritan leper who stayed to complete the process of transformation, to become who God had created her to be. In short she did step 6. She knew she was ready to have God remove her defects of character. The Facebook page “Begin with Yes” has the following post: “Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so that you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” [4] The 12 Step process and Step 6 in particular is all about becoming who we were really are. We simply have to be entirely ready. And so I say, let’s get ready to let go of our character defects, like trees shedding their dead leaves in the fall. … Let’s get ready to be changed. And then may we pray “please change me, oh God!” Amen [1] Rohr, Richard. Breathing Under Water : Spirituality and the Twelve Steps. Franciscan Media. Kindle Edition. [2] Ibid., p. 52 [3] Ibid., p. 55 [4] https://www.facebook.com/beginwithyes/
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