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BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label God's will. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God's will. Show all posts
23 June 2025
VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS 23JUN25
08 July 2011
Sermon on addiction, AA, the tyranny of the will and Romans 7 3JUL11
ANOTHER fantastic sermon from Sarcastic Lutheran (the cranky spirituality of a postmodern gal. Emerging church a la Luther). Spot on for me, hope it offers something to you too.
Even I can't help admitting that there is a bunch of stuff in the Bible that's hard to relate to. A lot has changed in the last 2,000-4,000 years and I have no form of reference for shepherds and agrarian life and I don't know what it’s like to have a king or a Caesar and I don't know a single fisherman much less a centurion and I guess I can't speak for all of you but personally I've never felt I might need to sacrifice a goat for my sins. That's the thing about our sacred text being so dang old is that it can sometimes be hard to relate to. Things have changed a bit over the millennia.
But one thing has not changed even a little bit and that’s the human condition. Parts of The Bible can feel hard to relate to until you get to a thing like that reading from Romans we just heard in which Paul says I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
Finally. Something I can relate to. This I know about. I too do not understand my own actions. I too can’t manage to consistently do what I know is right. Paul’s simple description of the human condition is perhaps a most elegantly put definition of what we now call addiction.
It's no secret that I am a recovering alcoholic. By the grace of God I have been clean and sober for over 19 years. But boy do I remember that feeling OF powerlessness that comes from not being able to control your drinking. I'd wake up each morning and have a little talk with myself “OK Nadia Get it together. Today is going to be different. You just need a little will power.” Then inevitably later that day I’d say “well, just one drink would be ok” Or I'll only drink wine and not vodka. Or I'll drink a glass of water between drinks so that I won't get drunk. And sometimes it worked but mostly it didn't. In the end, my will was just never “strong enough” Like Paul, I did the thing I hated. But that's addiction for you. It’s ugly. Yet on some level I feel like we recovering alcoholics and drug addicts have it easy. I mean, our additions are so obvious. The emotional, spiritual and physical wreckage cause by alcoholism and drug addiction has a certain conspicuousness to it.
But the truth is, we are not actually special. I mean, our whole culture is addicted. It's not just drunks who wake up in the morning and say today it's gonna be different. Perhaps some of you have done some “self-talk” recently. Perhaps some of you have tried to garner up just a little more will power. Today I won't eat compulsively or i'll not yell at my kids or I’ll not spend money I don't have on things I don't need. Today, unlike yesterday I won't consume pornography or flirt with my married co-worker or look up my ex-boyfriend on facebook. Today I will finally stand up for myself. Today I will not play video games. Today I will really look for a job. Today I will not lie to myself. Today I will start meditating and become a vegan and start training for a marathon and go back to college and go to the container store so I can organize my closet and be in control. But we're not. We're not in control. That would be the point. We’re addicted to poison and people, and praise and possessions and power. And sometimes I think the church and society fuel a very particular addiction to proving our worthiness.
We live in a worthiness driven culture. The pressure to be successful, hide your weaknesses, get ahead make your own way in the world … to pull yourself up by your boot straps, win at all costs and be as impressive as possible to the most people as possible is what drives our entire cultural and economic system. So naturally we think that we should be able to solve our problems through will power and a protestant work ethic. The human will, whether it be a strong will which thinks it can take care of its own problems or a weak will which just dissolves in the face of addiction is just about the worse place to look for salvation. The source of my problems simply cannot also be the solution to my problems. I need something or someone external to myself to save me from myself. There simply is no amount of self-talk that is going to save me. No amount of self-help, no amount of determination or gumption. There is God and God alone.
The 12 steps, which Richard Rohr calls America's single yet very important contribution to human spirituality works precisely because it isn’t a self-help program at all. That’s the point. Isn’t it interesting that one of the most truly transformative things to come out of America....the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is based not on proving your worthiness but on admitting your failure.
The genius is that the people who started AA recognized that addiction isn’t a drinking problem or a gambling problem or a food problem. It’s not a problem of the will see, it’s a problem of the soul. It’s a putting something in the center of our lives other than God problem. And as such it can only have a spiritual solution. It took us awhile to figure this out but St Paul knew it all along. Because as long as we hold out thinking that just a little more will power will do the trick we remain hopeless. As Paul says, I can will what’s right but I cannot do it.
So who will save us form this body of death as Paul calls it? Well, the world gives us but one solution: our will. And as the saying goes -when the only tool I have is a hammer, all my problems look like nails. And I just pound away at everything. But the Gospel changes all of that. The Gospel of Jesus Christ tells us to lay down our silly little hammers and let God do for us what only God can do for us. Jesus doesn’t say “the solution to your problem is to just try harder” And our brothers and sisters in 12 step fellowships can tell us that the freedom we gain from our addictions (and new ones crop up all the time mind you) but this freedom comes only from admitting that we are a mess and that our will is not going to save us… … believing that God and only God can restore us - and then turning our will over to the care of God. And when confronted with our own sin and addictions we no longer need defend nor deny because we no longer live under the tyranny of the will.
And it is tyranny to be sure. The burden of the too strong or too weak will is heavy. It's exhausting. It's futile. And so we come here today and we hear Jesus say lay it down. Lay down your addictions and fixations and compulsions and all the ways you suffer from the additions fixations and compulsions of others. Lay them here he says at the foot of the cross lay them atop the blood and tear soaked dirt at the foot of the place where God allowed human will to take its inevitable course. Lay your weighty burden on the holy ground where human ambition was allowed to play itself out to it’s logical conclusion. Here is where you can be free from the bondage of the self. Jesus says for the weary and heavy laden to come to him. You can stop believing in your sin management programs and futile exercises in will power because he is simply stronger than all of it. We can all take comfort that it is not our wills but the will of the God who named and claimed us which has the strength and power to transform us. Us. The addicted, the proud, the lazy, the failures, the washed-out and those on top of their game. Lay it down and he shall give you sweet rest - for your worthiness lies not in the strength of your will but in the unyielding determination of God’s Divine Love which is simply too fierce to leave you unchanged.
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c1d0553ef014e89938abf970d
Romans Chapter 7
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. 17But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.19For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.22For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.24Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Even I can't help admitting that there is a bunch of stuff in the Bible that's hard to relate to. A lot has changed in the last 2,000-4,000 years and I have no form of reference for shepherds and agrarian life and I don't know what it’s like to have a king or a Caesar and I don't know a single fisherman much less a centurion and I guess I can't speak for all of you but personally I've never felt I might need to sacrifice a goat for my sins. That's the thing about our sacred text being so dang old is that it can sometimes be hard to relate to. Things have changed a bit over the millennia.
But one thing has not changed even a little bit and that’s the human condition. Parts of The Bible can feel hard to relate to until you get to a thing like that reading from Romans we just heard in which Paul says I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
Finally. Something I can relate to. This I know about. I too do not understand my own actions. I too can’t manage to consistently do what I know is right. Paul’s simple description of the human condition is perhaps a most elegantly put definition of what we now call addiction.
It's no secret that I am a recovering alcoholic. By the grace of God I have been clean and sober for over 19 years. But boy do I remember that feeling OF powerlessness that comes from not being able to control your drinking. I'd wake up each morning and have a little talk with myself “OK Nadia Get it together. Today is going to be different. You just need a little will power.” Then inevitably later that day I’d say “well, just one drink would be ok” Or I'll only drink wine and not vodka. Or I'll drink a glass of water between drinks so that I won't get drunk. And sometimes it worked but mostly it didn't. In the end, my will was just never “strong enough” Like Paul, I did the thing I hated. But that's addiction for you. It’s ugly. Yet on some level I feel like we recovering alcoholics and drug addicts have it easy. I mean, our additions are so obvious. The emotional, spiritual and physical wreckage cause by alcoholism and drug addiction has a certain conspicuousness to it.
But the truth is, we are not actually special. I mean, our whole culture is addicted. It's not just drunks who wake up in the morning and say today it's gonna be different. Perhaps some of you have done some “self-talk” recently. Perhaps some of you have tried to garner up just a little more will power. Today I won't eat compulsively or i'll not yell at my kids or I’ll not spend money I don't have on things I don't need. Today, unlike yesterday I won't consume pornography or flirt with my married co-worker or look up my ex-boyfriend on facebook. Today I will finally stand up for myself. Today I will not play video games. Today I will really look for a job. Today I will not lie to myself. Today I will start meditating and become a vegan and start training for a marathon and go back to college and go to the container store so I can organize my closet and be in control. But we're not. We're not in control. That would be the point. We’re addicted to poison and people, and praise and possessions and power. And sometimes I think the church and society fuel a very particular addiction to proving our worthiness.
We live in a worthiness driven culture. The pressure to be successful, hide your weaknesses, get ahead make your own way in the world … to pull yourself up by your boot straps, win at all costs and be as impressive as possible to the most people as possible is what drives our entire cultural and economic system. So naturally we think that we should be able to solve our problems through will power and a protestant work ethic. The human will, whether it be a strong will which thinks it can take care of its own problems or a weak will which just dissolves in the face of addiction is just about the worse place to look for salvation. The source of my problems simply cannot also be the solution to my problems. I need something or someone external to myself to save me from myself. There simply is no amount of self-talk that is going to save me. No amount of self-help, no amount of determination or gumption. There is God and God alone.
The 12 steps, which Richard Rohr calls America's single yet very important contribution to human spirituality works precisely because it isn’t a self-help program at all. That’s the point. Isn’t it interesting that one of the most truly transformative things to come out of America....the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is based not on proving your worthiness but on admitting your failure.
The genius is that the people who started AA recognized that addiction isn’t a drinking problem or a gambling problem or a food problem. It’s not a problem of the will see, it’s a problem of the soul. It’s a putting something in the center of our lives other than God problem. And as such it can only have a spiritual solution. It took us awhile to figure this out but St Paul knew it all along. Because as long as we hold out thinking that just a little more will power will do the trick we remain hopeless. As Paul says, I can will what’s right but I cannot do it.
So who will save us form this body of death as Paul calls it? Well, the world gives us but one solution: our will. And as the saying goes -when the only tool I have is a hammer, all my problems look like nails. And I just pound away at everything. But the Gospel changes all of that. The Gospel of Jesus Christ tells us to lay down our silly little hammers and let God do for us what only God can do for us. Jesus doesn’t say “the solution to your problem is to just try harder” And our brothers and sisters in 12 step fellowships can tell us that the freedom we gain from our addictions (and new ones crop up all the time mind you) but this freedom comes only from admitting that we are a mess and that our will is not going to save us… … believing that God and only God can restore us - and then turning our will over to the care of God. And when confronted with our own sin and addictions we no longer need defend nor deny because we no longer live under the tyranny of the will.
And it is tyranny to be sure. The burden of the too strong or too weak will is heavy. It's exhausting. It's futile. And so we come here today and we hear Jesus say lay it down. Lay down your addictions and fixations and compulsions and all the ways you suffer from the additions fixations and compulsions of others. Lay them here he says at the foot of the cross lay them atop the blood and tear soaked dirt at the foot of the place where God allowed human will to take its inevitable course. Lay your weighty burden on the holy ground where human ambition was allowed to play itself out to it’s logical conclusion. Here is where you can be free from the bondage of the self. Jesus says for the weary and heavy laden to come to him. You can stop believing in your sin management programs and futile exercises in will power because he is simply stronger than all of it. We can all take comfort that it is not our wills but the will of the God who named and claimed us which has the strength and power to transform us. Us. The addicted, the proud, the lazy, the failures, the washed-out and those on top of their game. Lay it down and he shall give you sweet rest - for your worthiness lies not in the strength of your will but in the unyielding determination of God’s Divine Love which is simply too fierce to leave you unchanged.
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c1d0553ef014e89938abf970d
01 February 2011
Sermon on the Beatitudes and Performative Blessing from SARCASTIC LUTHERAN 30JAN11
BLESS you, and you, and you....And God bless us everyone!
Last week one of you told me about a friend of yours who, when her young brother died tragically, her church said irretrievably stupid things to her like “it must have been God’s will” as though that is a comfort, as though pawning suffering off on God is doing anybody any favors whatsoever. To be honest, and call me a heretic, but this is a concept in theology that’s always bugged me. It’s called “the sovereignty of God” it’s the idea that everything that happens happens because it’s the will of God. Everything. The problem is that this idea of God’s sovereignty seems to most often come up when something awful has happened. So when someone is grieving the death of their child or is facing untreatable cancer and the church makes the claim that God is controlling and even willing all of this to take place seems to just a) make people feel worse and b) make God seem like a heartless bastard. And I am just gonna go out on a limb here and claim that maybe making suffering people feel worse and making God out to be a heartless bastard is not what the church is supposed to be doing.
Anyhow, I bring this up because I started wondering about why God’s sovereignty is never brought up when we talk about the beatitudes. Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn…why do we play the It’s God’s will card when it comes to suffering but never when it comes to blessing? Why don’t we ever make big cosmic claims about God controlling everything that happens when it comes to the way in which God insists on blessing that which the world deems undesireable?
One reason is maybe because I think it can be easy to view the sermon on the mount as pure exhortation. It can be easy to view the beatitudes as Jesus’ command for us to try real hard to be meeker, poorer and mournier so that we might be blessed in the eyes of God.
But what if the beatitudes aren’t about a list of conditions we should try and meet to be blessed. What if Jesus saying blessed are the meek is not instructive –what if it’s performative? meaning the pronouncement of blessing is actually what confers the blessing itself. Maybe the sermon on the mount is all about Jesus’ seemingly lavish blessing of the world around him especially that which society doesn’t seem to have much time for, people in pain, people who work for peace instead of profit, people who exercise mercy instead of vengeance. So maybe Jesus is actually just blessing people, especially the people who never seem to receive blessings otherwise. I mean, come on, doesn’t that just sound like something Jesus would do? Extravagantly throwing around blessings as though they grew on trees?
So I began to think this week about what our relationship to receiving and giving blessings might be if it’s the giving of a blessing itself, and not the ability to meet the conditions of receiving a blessing that make the receiver blessed
It’s a pretty Lutheran idea really, this whole because of not in order to thing. You see, you live lives worthy of the gospel because you have received grace upon grace. You don’t live lives worthy of the gospel in order to receive this grace.
It’s a pretty critical distinction, but the hard thing about looking at it this way is that for some of us it can be easier to try and meet the conditions of receiving a blessing that to simply receive a blessing.
A couple years ago I experienced this weird thing where old ladies kept blessing me in ways that felt super awkward. Walking off the stage after I spoke at an event at St. Mary’s cathedral in Memphis, a British woman in her 70s walks straight toward me and in front of God and everybody, embraces me. Not a friendly “thank-you” hug, but it was like embracing-with-the-intent-to-bless.
I had just read aloud an essay about my call to ministry; how it involved stand-up comedy and suicide and AA and pornography strangely and it was about seeing the gospel from the underside of our lives. And now before I know what was happening some proper old Brittish lady is blessing me. Red cardigan covered arms enfold me as this stranger whispers in my ear “God has given you something.” She kisses my cheek not breaking the embrace even a little: “Jesus walks with you.” Again she kisses me. Again she whispers a blessing but always she keeps embracing me. Me. A heavily tattooed Lutheran who swears like a truck driver. I don’t feel worthy of any of this But it feels like God’s own self blessing me with warm breath and a scratchy sweater.
When I sit back down I think, “What the hell just happened?” My friend Sara, having seen the interaction, slides into the pew next to me saying, “Girl, you gotta just submit and let people bless you.”
It’s hard though. But she’s right. we need to let people bless us. Maybe letting ourselves receive blessings is part of the Christian life. It’s just not one that people talk about much because we’re so busy worrying about what we should be doing for others.
A week or so after the scratchy red cardigan old lady blessed me…again just as I finish preaching at Church of the Beloved in Edmonds, Washington, it happens again. Almost exactly like the last time, only this time it’s a Franciscan nun in her long brown habit. With a hand on each of my shoulders, she looks me in the eye without a hope of me turning away. “You have been blessed.” She chokes up and embraces me.
I think looking back that maybe God had somehow caught on to the fact that 70-year-old women are the only people whose blessings even I can’t resist.
So if we have a God who, out of God’s sovereignty blesses the poor the hurting, the peace making and the meek then I wonder what a Church might look like that submits to these blessings offered us by God. Perhaps you yourselves have your own version of old ladies with scratchy sweaters who are bringing you God’s own blessings. Look for them this week perhaps in the form of a text message or love from a pet or someone who lets you in front on them on I-25 or a smile from the homeless guy you just handed a dollar. Submit to these blessings brothers and sisters. Because God is a God who blesses in order that we might be blessed in order that we too might bless.
So if there is something we take away perhaps it is not to try and fulfill the conditions of receiving God’s blessing, but perhaps being God’s people is being a people who, like God, bless the world around us not on the basis of the world’s values but on the basis of God’s values. So I say let’s just make up excuses to bless people and places and things because it just seems so Jesusy and kind of fun and I’m pretty sure that human blessing and NOT human suffering is “God’s will”.
Sermon on the Beatitudes and Performative Blessing
Last week one of you told me about a friend of yours who, when her young brother died tragically, her church said irretrievably stupid things to her like “it must have been God’s will” as though that is a comfort, as though pawning suffering off on God is doing anybody any favors whatsoever. To be honest, and call me a heretic, but this is a concept in theology that’s always bugged me. It’s called “the sovereignty of God” it’s the idea that everything that happens happens because it’s the will of God. Everything. The problem is that this idea of God’s sovereignty seems to most often come up when something awful has happened. So when someone is grieving the death of their child or is facing untreatable cancer and the church makes the claim that God is controlling and even willing all of this to take place seems to just a) make people feel worse and b) make God seem like a heartless bastard. And I am just gonna go out on a limb here and claim that maybe making suffering people feel worse and making God out to be a heartless bastard is not what the church is supposed to be doing.
Anyhow, I bring this up because I started wondering about why God’s sovereignty is never brought up when we talk about the beatitudes. Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn…why do we play the It’s God’s will card when it comes to suffering but never when it comes to blessing? Why don’t we ever make big cosmic claims about God controlling everything that happens when it comes to the way in which God insists on blessing that which the world deems undesireable?
One reason is maybe because I think it can be easy to view the sermon on the mount as pure exhortation. It can be easy to view the beatitudes as Jesus’ command for us to try real hard to be meeker, poorer and mournier so that we might be blessed in the eyes of God.
But what if the beatitudes aren’t about a list of conditions we should try and meet to be blessed. What if Jesus saying blessed are the meek is not instructive –what if it’s performative? meaning the pronouncement of blessing is actually what confers the blessing itself. Maybe the sermon on the mount is all about Jesus’ seemingly lavish blessing of the world around him especially that which society doesn’t seem to have much time for, people in pain, people who work for peace instead of profit, people who exercise mercy instead of vengeance. So maybe Jesus is actually just blessing people, especially the people who never seem to receive blessings otherwise. I mean, come on, doesn’t that just sound like something Jesus would do? Extravagantly throwing around blessings as though they grew on trees?
So I began to think this week about what our relationship to receiving and giving blessings might be if it’s the giving of a blessing itself, and not the ability to meet the conditions of receiving a blessing that make the receiver blessed
It’s a pretty Lutheran idea really, this whole because of not in order to thing. You see, you live lives worthy of the gospel because you have received grace upon grace. You don’t live lives worthy of the gospel in order to receive this grace.
It’s a pretty critical distinction, but the hard thing about looking at it this way is that for some of us it can be easier to try and meet the conditions of receiving a blessing that to simply receive a blessing.
A couple years ago I experienced this weird thing where old ladies kept blessing me in ways that felt super awkward. Walking off the stage after I spoke at an event at St. Mary’s cathedral in Memphis, a British woman in her 70s walks straight toward me and in front of God and everybody, embraces me. Not a friendly “thank-you” hug, but it was like embracing-with-the-intent-to-bless.
I had just read aloud an essay about my call to ministry; how it involved stand-up comedy and suicide and AA and pornography strangely and it was about seeing the gospel from the underside of our lives. And now before I know what was happening some proper old Brittish lady is blessing me. Red cardigan covered arms enfold me as this stranger whispers in my ear “God has given you something.” She kisses my cheek not breaking the embrace even a little: “Jesus walks with you.” Again she kisses me. Again she whispers a blessing but always she keeps embracing me. Me. A heavily tattooed Lutheran who swears like a truck driver. I don’t feel worthy of any of this But it feels like God’s own self blessing me with warm breath and a scratchy sweater.
When I sit back down I think, “What the hell just happened?” My friend Sara, having seen the interaction, slides into the pew next to me saying, “Girl, you gotta just submit and let people bless you.”
It’s hard though. But she’s right. we need to let people bless us. Maybe letting ourselves receive blessings is part of the Christian life. It’s just not one that people talk about much because we’re so busy worrying about what we should be doing for others.
A week or so after the scratchy red cardigan old lady blessed me…again just as I finish preaching at Church of the Beloved in Edmonds, Washington, it happens again. Almost exactly like the last time, only this time it’s a Franciscan nun in her long brown habit. With a hand on each of my shoulders, she looks me in the eye without a hope of me turning away. “You have been blessed.” She chokes up and embraces me.
I think looking back that maybe God had somehow caught on to the fact that 70-year-old women are the only people whose blessings even I can’t resist.
So if we have a God who, out of God’s sovereignty blesses the poor the hurting, the peace making and the meek then I wonder what a Church might look like that submits to these blessings offered us by God. Perhaps you yourselves have your own version of old ladies with scratchy sweaters who are bringing you God’s own blessings. Look for them this week perhaps in the form of a text message or love from a pet or someone who lets you in front on them on I-25 or a smile from the homeless guy you just handed a dollar. Submit to these blessings brothers and sisters. Because God is a God who blesses in order that we might be blessed in order that we too might bless.
So if there is something we take away perhaps it is not to try and fulfill the conditions of receiving God’s blessing, but perhaps being God’s people is being a people who, like God, bless the world around us not on the basis of the world’s values but on the basis of God’s values. So I say let’s just make up excuses to bless people and places and things because it just seems so Jesusy and kind of fun and I’m pretty sure that human blessing and NOT human suffering is “God’s will”.
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