Wilderness: Addiction and Burning Bushes

Luke 13:6-9

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

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Hello, my name is Chris. My family and I are fairly new here. We attend second service and are just beginning to get involved. My wife, Mary, and I have been married for over 16 years. We have two amazing daughters, Elliott and Harper, and two spoiled dogs.

When the weather warms up, we can normally be found outside. We fill our weekends camping and enjoying nature. Woods and fields; oceans and mountains; waterfalls and caves; these are the things that fill my cup. These are my sacred and holy places, the places I most often encounter God.

To find places to explore and then make my way through them, I need a map. I need directions or a guide, otherwise I get lost. I have a pretty decent sense of direction on the trail or in the woods. But sometimes I get lost. Sometimes I get really lost.

A few years ago, my family and I were camping in North Carolina over fall break. It was my wife’s birthday and we decided to celebrate by hiking up a mountain to this—supposedly—beautiful waterfall. Except we kept climbing, switchback after switchback and, as the day got hotter and hotter, we could not find the turn off for the waterfall. We kept saying “just a little farther” to two very grumpy kids and then we’d get “just a little farther” and see nothing. We didn’t bring water or snacks or a map or anything you should take on a 3-hour hike on a hot day because we didn’t know it would take this long. Eventually, my family, on the brink of despair and starvation, turned around having never found this waterfall. If you think they have let me live that down, or not mentioned it every time we go on a hike even years later, you would be gravely mistaken.

A lot of the lessons I’ve learned in nature help me when I return to my everyday life. Getting lost can feel helpless and out of control. It can be scary. It can feel lonely.

I felt those things for years. For a long time, I felt out of control and alone.

I didn’t want to be an alcoholic, but I was. I had become one.

I didn’t want my dependence on alcohol to separate me from my wife and kids, but it did. And even in the middle of so much loss and hurt, I could not stop drinking. I was not done hurting myself or others, even though I desperately wanted to be.

I know God loved me in my addiction. God continued to love unconditionally even as I continued to hurt myself and those around me. But I also know God wanted better for me. God wanted me to feel less shame, less loneliness, less scared. God wanted to help me out of the wilderness I’d found myself in. But I didn’t know how to find the map. I had lost my sense of direction. I felt lost.

When you’re lost in the wilderness of it, it's easy to forget that addiction, of any kind, impacts other people and not just the addict. We can convince ourselves that “one more time” won’t hurt anyone. But that’s not the truth. Our decisions always have a ripple effect. We don’t drop a single stone into a pond without hundreds of ripples. It’s the same with addiction; we are not islands, our choices impact others.

In the summer of 2017, I was in a pit of despair. I could not control my drinking and the effect that had on my wife and on my children was hard to avoid. The tears. The anger. The sadness. The confusion. I wasn’t living in our home anymore; I had monitored visits with my kids. I had to prove I was sober and safe before I was allowed to be near them. I was sleeping on other peoples’ couches and guest beds. I was untethered. It was, in the truest sense, a wilderness.

I went to AA. I went to Celebrate Recovery. I spoke with drug counselors and therapists. And all I wanted to do was drink. Drinking was what made everything feel better. It helped me to forget the past. It helped me to forget the present. I was able to drown the world in alcohol. But now it was the drinking I could not forget; I had grown physically dependent on alcohol. I could no longer function without it. I couldn’t get out of bed without a drink.

I said foxhole prayers. “Oh God, get me out of this. Help me feel better. I’ll do anything! God, please!”

Alcohol ruled my life. It made all my decisions for me. Where I went. What I did. Who I spent my time with. In the end, it had secluded me, isolated me, separated me from the people I loved. My wife was at home wondering how long it would be until she had to tell my girls I was dead. I was in the wilderness, and so was my family.

You might be lucky enough to not have had to deal with addiction. But I can guess, you’ve experienced loneliness, fear, and anxiety. We all, at times, feel unlovable, lost, or helpless.

I felt those things and blamed God for all of them. I was in the wilderness of my own making and begged for a map, for a way out. If God would just give me a map, this would all be over. I was sure of it.

In September 2017, I woke up in a hospital. My wife had made the hard decision to call the police as I was driving drunk the night before. I vaguely remembered a police officer telling me I could take a ride to a detox facility or get into the car with my very angry wife. I chose the hospital. It was the less scary choice.

But it was still scary, waking up in a hospital gown in an unfamiliar room. I knew this was it. Nothing else had worked, and this was the end for me. This was not the end I had envisioned. It felt like God had left me; I had not been rescued from myself. I did not plan to live much longer and now I was naked except for a very airy hospital gown in a locked medical facility. As I walked to breakfast surrounded by people in real clothes, I knew this was it. I had reached my bottom. I was emotionally, mentally, and spiritually broken. I had no job. No home. No family. My wife was talking with a lawyer to end our marriage. I had nothing left.

I spent a week in the medical facility detoxing. I wanted that to be the end of it, but my wife said no, you can’t come home. My friends said no, you can’t come back. I was out of options. I checked myself into a residential rehab facility. You have a lot of free time in rehab but no access to your normal vices. I did what I was told to do because what else was there to do? I was a whole other kind of wilderness.

Sometimes the map out of the wilderness is other people and routine. It’s trusting those ahead of you on the journey. I didn’t feel like this was the way out of the wilderness, but I didn’t have any other ideas or options, either.

In Exodus, Moses encounters a burning bush. I’ve heard the story of this strange event my whole life. This burning bush phenomenon has always fascinated me. God speaking to Moses from a fire in a bush. Holy ground. I can’t help but imagine Moses being at his rock bottom during this time. Here was a prince of Egypt wandering the wilderness tending his father-in-law’s flock. He was running for his life, in hiding because he’d just killed a man. He didn’t even have his own sheep. And now he was talking to a bush?

I could relate to Moses. I had hit my own kind of rock bottom, and I liked the biblical company.

A few weeks into my rehab stay, I began to walk around the grounds. Behind the house was a small-wooded area. On this day, I had just learned that my insurance company was ending my treatment and wanted to discharge me. I was scared. It was the longest I had been sober in years. I wasn’t ready. I still needed constant supervision. I still had so much work to do. While wandering around the woods, I came upon a downed tree. The tree was covered in a bright orange-red fungus. It consumed the tree, giving it the appearance of being on fire.

It felt like my own burning bush. I could feel God—in the midst of all my worries and hurts and fears—say, “I will be with you.” Just like God did for Moses. The ground I was standing on felt holy.

I had been pleading, begging, and calling out to God for years asking to take this addiction away from me. I didn’t want to be an alcoholic like my dad. I had seen the destruction it had caused. Addiction ruins marriages and families and lives. It steals so much. In this moment, when I had finally gotten quiet enough to listen, God reminded me that He was with me. God had never left me, but I had forgotten what it felt like to not be alone. And I wasn’t alone. God was with me.

Things did not get magically better. But God used people to help guide me out of the wilderness I had ended up in. Sober people who knew how it felt to be so lost. Counselors who helped me address the reasons I drank. Guides showed up along the path and led me when I was too tired and scared to do it alone. I did in-patient programs, out-patient programs, AA meetings, and lived in a halfway house with supervision. I stopped hiding, I showed up, I was held accountable. I was given directions and I followed them even if it was painful. (And it was painful; recovery is hard and painful.) But it was worth it.

I had been in the wilderness alone for so long that I forgot how much I needed other people. I forgot that hiding and shame alienated; that the map I was begging God for was always going to be other people and honesty. I was demanding something God had already provided, but I wasn’t ready to show up for or receive it yet.

Isaiah 41:10 says, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” God is with us, always. And when we don’t feel it or believe it or see it, there are people who come alongside us and reflect God’s love, mercy, grace, and peace for Him. For me, those people were my wife, my girls, my fellow addicts and alcoholics, the friends and family who showed up again when I was ready to show up again, too.

Like I said before, your wilderness might not be addiction. Your wilderness might look different than mine, but the feelings are often the same: loneliness, fear, shame, or anxiety. We feel lost and out of control and forgotten. We feel unloved and sad. Often the answer God is giving us, when we care to look around, is the people who surround us. People are the map to higher ground. People are the support when we feel tired. People are the guides that reflect God back to us. We just have to be willing to pay attention. I’m glad that I finally did and grateful for the chance to try again each day.

Amen

Blind Pharisees

John 9:1-41

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

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I hinted a couple of weeks ago – by way of a disclaimer during my sermon about Nicodemus – that it can be hard, risky, dangerous, even, to preach on some of these Gospel texts about the Pharisees, considering the bad rap the Jews and the Pharisees get, week after week, chapter after chapter, verse after verse – especially in the gospels of John and Matthew. It’s hard, risky and dangerous because so many throughout history have used this negative characterization of “the Jews” and “the Pharisees” to perpetuate hateful, destructive, sinful, anti-Semitism over the years and to justify it all in the name of faith.

So, it’s worth knowing a few things that matter about the Pharisees – then… for the people of Jesus’ day, and for us… still, here and now. The Pharisees have become a caricature for some – and an easy target – for our judgement and condemnation by way of Scripture. Because of what we read there and because of the example Jesus seems to make of them so much of the time – as being hypocrites, religious zealots, gatekeepers of the synagogue, arbiters of the law and of works righteousness at the expense of love, mercy, and grace. And there were some Pharisees and Saducees and other Jews who believed and behaved in those ways, for sure.

But there were also Pharisees who respected Jesus, who invited him to meals without ulterior motives, who helped him when he was in trouble, and who helped the Apostles in the early days of their ministry, too. Nicodemus, remember – a Pharisee and leader of the Jews – ended up following Jesus after they’re late-night meeting, it seems; he defended him against his accusers on the way to the Cross; and he cared for and helped bury his body after the crucifixion. The apostle Paul was, himself, a Pharisee.

Even in today’s Gospel the Pharisees were “divided.” Some thought Jesus couldn’t possibly be faithful because he’d broken the Law by healing on the Sabbath. Others thought he must be worth something because he had worked a miracle, after all.

All of this is to say, like I said a few weeks ago: in these times when anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly, sinful head in ever-prolific ways, that when I make note of the flaws of the Pharisees in Scripture, I do that, not because they’re Jewish – as too many misguided souls believe – and not even because all Pharisees were all bad. I do it because the ones who confound and confront Jesus so often look and smell and act so much like religious people of all kinds in the world as we know it. As I like to say, these particular Pharisees are meant to be more like reflections in our mirror, than targets for our self-righteous judgment and condemnation.

And today’s episode with Jesus, the Pharisees, the blind man and his neighbors is an example of that – particularly the exchange between the Pharisees (also called “the Jews,” here) and the formerly blind guy’s parents.

See, I was particularly fascinated and saddened by the notion that the man’s parents were so afraid of being kicked out of the synagogue that they couldn’t speak the truth about their son’s experience. (Did you catch that?) When they were asked about what woulda/coulda/shoulda been the great joy of their son having received his sight, they’re like, “Yes. That’s our boy … he used to be blind … he can see now … but don’t ask us how it happened. Ask him. He’s old enough to speak for himself.” They were afraid, we’re told, because anyone known to confess Jesus as the Messiah … anyone following this new way … anyone NOT following the rules of what faithfulness was supposed to look like, according to their standards … would get the boot. Just as their son eventually did, according to the story.

And this caught my attention this time around because I saw a modern day example of it, just this week. A woman posted a letter she got from her church, signed by three men from the congregation’s elder board. The letter, littered with passages and citations from Scripture, said this:

“For the last several weeks we have noted that you have stopped attending the assembly of the church. After attempts to discuss this situation with you, we fear that you are no longer convinced in the need to assemble with the church for which Christ died. We are very saddened by your decision.

“The ‘failure to assemble’ is not the only problem that you must address. We have been informed and understand that you have a living arrangement that is not Biblical and must be terminated immediately. This action alone reflects that you have not avoided ‘all appearances of evil’ as the scripture directs us. (1 Thess. 5:22)

“Please understand our obligation as shepherds: first, we must watch for your soul (Hebrews 13:17) and second, protect the congregation by withdrawing from every brother/sister that walks disorderly. (2 Thess. 3:6)

“If these issues are NOT corrected and public repentance made … by Sunday, Feburary 21, 2021 … we will withdraw fellowship.”

Now, I don’t know anything more about this church or their elder board or the three guys who wrote that letter, but it was a not-so-nice reminder about the truth that anyone and everyone can misuse religion and blame all sorts of ugliness on God and scripture and the certainty we wish we could find there and that we pretend too much of the time exists more often than is true.

Which is the lesson I was reminded of by way of this morning’s Gospel, this time around, and one we can’t hear too often…

First, that Jesus is more interested in forgiving sin than in punishing us for it.

Second, when Jesus hears that that man had been driven from the synagogue and pushed from the fold, he goes after him. And when he finds him, Jesus is as curious as I think he believes we should be, more often.

Jesus asks the guy if he believes, instead of telling him what to believe.

And then Jesus reminds him of what he’s already seen and experienced of God’s grace in his life – “You have seen him,” he says – “I was the one with the mud and the spit, remember? – the one speaking with you is he.” This, for my money, is like saying, “Forget about what these knuckleheads have said and done and think they know.

“Their certainty clouds their vision …

“their single-mindedness about who God is and about doing things the way things have always been done limits their ability to experience God most fully …

“their black-and-white, cut-and-dried, right-and-wrong world-view forgets that God is always up to something new, in and for and through us and that we are blessed and better when we look for those surprises – and when we find ways to share them – rather than resist them at every turn.”

Now it feels slightly more faithful and fun and satisfying, if we’re honest, to point fingers at some fellow Christians in all of this – much like everyone in that story about the blind was Jewish in one way or another. But let’s keep to the notion that all of this is about holding up a mirror, not throwing self-righteous stones.

And let’s wonder who we are quick to judge and how? (prostitutes and addicts; people of other faiths or denominations, even; people of other ages or races or gender identities)

What are we fast to condemn and drive from our midst? (the “woke mob” or the “far right” … the Republicans or the Democrats … anyone who challenges our worldview or familiar, comfortable way of doing things?)

In what ways do we dismiss God’s ability to work in the lives of others who don’t live, move, breathe and practice their faith in ways that make sense to us?

So let’s learn to open the eyes of our hearts, more often, as the song goes. Let’s believe that God’s vision of the Kingdom and for the Church is bigger than what we are always willing or able to see. And let’s have faith, that this kind of grace can change us; that it can show us something new and holy and different about the world as we know it; that, even if it’s just a glimpse, it’s worth seeing and sharing until all people – and each of us – are seen as worthy of the love God brings in Jesus.

Amen