Powerless

Genesis 9:8-17 • Psalm 25:1-10 • 1 Peter 3:18-22 • Mark 1:9-15
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor, 2/26/12


When I hear the words of our Gospel reading, I feel that we are all being included in the life of Christ. First of all, for some reason, which no one really understands, Jesus had to be baptized like any sinner. In fact, in the Gospel of Matthew, he insists on it after John tried to get out of baptizing him. Then, at the moment that Jesus emerges from the water, God says to him, as he says to all of us if we just get quiet enough to listen,
“You are my beloved child, in you I am well pleased.”

And just at this transcendentally perfect moment, the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness, which so often seems to happen in real life. And Jesus, just like us, is tempted, as he struggles to survive in that wilderness.

Our reading today is from the Gospel of Mark, but in the Gospel of Matthew many more details are provided about these temptations. And they sound familiar. First of all, Jesus is really hungry, and he is tempted. But he resists temptation with the help of a little scripture. He chooses the word of God instead of eating a stone. Always a better choice.

Then the devil leads Jesus to the very pinnacle of the temple, and temps him to jump off. Jesus does not jump, although, if we are to believe the scripture, he is tempted. Lastly, Jesus’ Messiah complex is challenged.

The devil again brings him to a very high place, where he can look down on all the kingdoms of the world. “All these I will give you, says Satan, if you will fall down and worship me.” Once again, Jesus, although tempted, does not fall.

I have been very familiar with addiction all my life, because even as a child, I was aware of my father’s alcoholism. I never took to alcohol, perhaps because of my father’s negative example, and although I came of age in the sixties, I never took to drugs in a serious way. When my boyfriend would go to Haight Ashbury to get drugs, like any self-respecting hippie, I would sneak down to the corner liquor store to buy- snicker bars!

The year I left home for my gap year in the Tenderloin, I gained 60 pounds. Sugar was my drug of choice, and I really could not stop eating it. This may not sound like a serious problem to you, but early in life I became aware of another negative example that frightened me ALMOST enough to make me stop. My grandmother, an artist, singer, poet and musician, ballooned up to 300 pounds, and, according to my father, was always trying to “reduce.” Obviously she could not. She eventually solved the problem in the most tragic of ways, by committing suicide when she was 42. I have her genes, I did not want to share her fate.

All of us here are familiar with temptation. Some of us have been lucky enough to name and accept and find a program for our temptations. But the more I learn about the 12 steps the more I believe that we all need them. If nothing else, we all seem to have an addiction to toxic modes of thinking that are not only encouraged but almost required by our society. Our culture brilliantly plays the part of Satan all the time. We are made to feel unworthy, made to feel that we must acquire stuff to become worthy, and made to feel that it is proper and right to then feel superior to those who have not acquired the stuff/looks/house/job that we have killed ourselves to obtain. As a culture, have eaten the stone, jumped off the pinnacle AND accepted the wrong kind of worship.

I have been reading a beautiful book called "Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps" by Richard Rohr. If you have an addiction, the 12 step philosophy maintains that it never goes away. Even in recovery, the water is still over your head, but you learn to breathe underwater. This may seem like an impossibility, like a miracle in fact, and that is what it is.

My father died recently, and so I have been pondering my lineage and the good and bad things I have inherited. Several personality types keep appearing again and again in my ancestry: Priests, alcoholics and artists. Appropriately enough, I have one brother who is a filmmaking artist, one who is an alcoholic, and I am the sugar-addicted priest. My father was something of all three, even though he did not believe in God.

But I think my first addiction, like so many is the addiction to negative thinking. This is from "Breathing Under Water"

We keep doing the same thing over and over again, even if it not working for us. That is the self-destructive, even “demonic” nature of all addiction and negative thinking, in particular. We think we are our thinking, and we even take that thinking as utterly true… We really are our worst enemies. It seems that humans would sooner die than change or admit they are mistaken.”

The destination, the end result of surrendering our negative thinking to God, is that we are able to fully live in the grace that is, in fact, all around us. As Thich Nhat Hanh tells us, “The winds of grace are always blowing- we have only to put up our sails.” Richard Roher describes the reality of the addictive mind as being like the child of a very rich family, who, nonetheless, insists on living in rags. And Jesus was always calling himself the bridegroom because it is the bridegroom who invites us to the great wedding banquet. This is our birthright- to live in that kind of abundance.

The first step of AA is “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable.” There are so many things to be addicted to that one might just say, “Admitted that we were powerless over __, and that our lives had become unmanageable.” It seems that we have to have some kind of “death”- we call it a bottom in the 12 step programs- that makes us able to be born again. Very much like the dying with Christ and then being reborn in baptism. It is the death of the ego, and it is no easy task. I reached my bottom by weighing about 180 pounds- that is what it took to get me into recovery. For some it takes much more, for some, less. And certainly being religious is not necessarily enough to get you there. An often quoted phrase I have heard is that “Religion is for people who want to go to heaven. Spirituality (here I would say the 12 step program) is for people who have been to hell and back.” Richard Roher gives a good description of the need to reach bottom before you can be saved:

Until you bottom out and come to the limits of your own fuel supply, there is no reason for you to switch to a higher octane of fuel… unless there is a person, situation, event, idea, conflict, or relationship that you cannot “manage” you will never find the true manager.

That higher octane of fuel, of course is God. But the genius of the 12 steps is that they do not exclude anyone, including the atheist or agnostic. And so God is always referred to as “God as you understand him.”

This is the power we surrender to, this is the one who takes control out of our death grip. This is the surrender that is the beginning of salvation. The Buddhists call it mindfulness. St. Paul called it the Mind of Christ. We might just call it serenity.