Recovery, a Celebration of Easter Every Day

Another Easter Sunday is rapidly approaching. A funeral yesterday, it wouldn't be Holy Week without a funeral. It was my first Native American funeral, very moving and I will write about it more in the future. But today I look forward to finishing up the services for the week. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are in the can, so to speak. "Come As You Are" Saturday service, Easter Vigil and Sunday services are floating around in my brain but haven't made it to my fingertips yet. It will come, just hope it comes quickly.

As I think about Easter I am beginning to ask the question "why"? Don't we celebrate Easter every Sunday? Why don't we proclaim "Christ is risen" at the beginning of every worship service throughout the year? I do think it is important to set aside Maundy Thursday and Good Friday for special services. But Christ is the reason life is won, death has been defeated. Because of Easter we are all risen.

I know that we already celebrate Easter every Sunday, but as I prepare for this Sunday I am struck that this is nowhere more evident than at Recovery Worship.

Every Sunday at Recovery Worship we hear individual "Resurrection Stories." Stories of people's resurrection from addiction to a new life of recovery, incredible stories of living a life while dead, held in their living graves by their addiction; stories of broken families, broken relationships with children, friends, and with God. Not everyone will find their personnel resurrection from their addiction, as a friend reminds me on a regular basis, "Cemetery's are full of people who have failed to find recovery."

So this Sunday we will do the religious thing. The altar and the cross will be draped in white, banner will be hung, and everyone, for this one Sunday, will be dressed up and we will proclaim "Christ is Risen." As we proclaim Christ risen we will also remember that this one great event in the history of the world now gives us the ability to proclaim our own resurrection, a resurrection into a new life of Christ, a life of recovery from all the addiction and hardships of life. This Sunday and every Sunday we can proclaim "Christ is Risen" but we can also proclaim, "Stan is Risen," "Bill is Risen," "Joni is Risen," "Kathy is Risen"; risen to a new life in recovery, and a new life in Christ.

See you Sunday, thanks for stopping by.

Pastor Ray

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

Back in December, a closed meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous started at Recovery Worship. When a meeting is listed as closed, you need to be an alcoholic to attend. I felt honored that this group, made up mostly of people who attend Recovery Worship invited me to attend.

At the first meeting, following the traditional sharing of the Serenity Prayer and first names, we listened to a tape lecture on the First Step, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. The lecture was given by a gentleman, Phil Hansen. I read with interest the short bio on the back of the case. Ordained in 1951 Hansen was a Lutheran pastor in Minnesota. At some point in his career he was a chaplain at the famous Hazelden Center. He was also hired to set up a treatment center in a hospital in Minneapolis. As I listened to the tape I felt myself wanting to know more about this man. I assumed he was in recovery, his knowledge of the 12 steps and addiction was impressive.

Following the meeting I went to a Christmas party of a group of pastors, mostly retired, that I have breakfast with every Friday morning. As we were sitting around the table shooting the bull I asked, "Does anyone here know of a pastor named Phil Hansen?" It was pretty much unanimous, everyone knew him. One of the pastors said, "I was in the room across from him at college." Trying to be funny I said, "So you were the reason he was an alcoholic?" Right away Vid, one of the pastors said, he wasn't an alcoholic! Wow I thought, another pastor who works with people in recovery. I had to find a way to meet him. As we talked, I found out that Pastor Hansen had died several years ago. But Vid mentioned that Hansen had written a couple of books so the next day I searched the shelves of Lost and Found Ministry and found his stack.

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired was the first book of his that I read. It is a small book, but it is a good book on alcoholism. In the book Hansen weaves his story with the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which he says, is a story of alcoholism. The Son in the parable is an alcoholic. Hansen calls Alcoholism an "addiction of abundance." In order to maintain one's drinking, you need money and you need it abundantly, focusing on where the money will come from for your next drink. The son withdraws his inheritance from his father and strikes out into the world, a world of drinking and self abuse. The father, says Hansen, had probably done what most parents of alcoholics have done: bailed him out, got him help and loved him a little too much. Now he was ready to do the tough love part, let the son go.

Well we all know the story, the son eventually hits rock bottom, sleeping with the pigs. In the closing scene the father is running down the lane to embrace his son; a scene many fathers and mothers, wives and husbands dream of for their alcoholic family member.

Unfortunately Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired is no longer in print. A few used copies can be found on Amazon or EBay but this is a book that needs to be in print. If you have a loved one in addiction, read it! If you are in addiction, read it! If you are in recovery, read it!

Glad you are here, see you next Sunday.

The Addiction of Religion

Over the past several months I have been reading a lot of blogs dealing with the strife within the ELCA. I have struggled to put a name on what I have seen as an unhealthy attitude by some in the church. However, because of my work within the recovery community of Recovery Worship and a recent email from a longtime friend, I have finally been able to put a name on what is ailing many in the church today. The ailment is "Religion Addiction" or simply "Religionism". In Alcoholism or other addictions there are signs that tell us that the addiction is present; warning signs alert us to the possibility of addiction. Here are a few signs that may indicate that a person is a Religionaholic:

1. Over use of the word "Orthodox." Orthodox is typically used to mean adhering to the accepted or traditional and established faith, especially in religion. Of course you can only be Orthodox if you believe completely with the religionholic. In other words, if you are deemed acceptable in your belief systems and worship style and interpretation of scripture then you are Orthodox, as least in the view of the religionaholic.
   
2. Quote Luther as if it is Scripture. This applies to the Lutheran religionaholic. A Methodist religionaholic quotes Wesley, a Presbyterian religionaholic quotes Calvin. A Roman Catholic religionaholic quotes every Pope and all Catholic Saints and tradition. I am not sure there is recovery for the Roman Catholic religionaholic.
   
3. Religionaholics have an unhealthy aversion to people different from themselves. They will tolerate female clergy despite what Scripture says, yet they break into DT's if they hear a church may wish to ordain an openly gay man or woman.
   
4. They claim to be "Missional" but they don't believe in any church structure that may require too pay benevolence.
   
5. They read the Bible literally, except when they need to read it another way to support their position.
   

There is hope for the religionaholic! The following was from an email from an old friend, Pastor Don Prange. I would love to tell you more about Don but space doesn't allow. If you know a religionaholic, pass this along, it is never too late to find recovery.

1) We admitted that we are powerless over our cultural & religious addictions and they often made our lives unmanageable…

2) We were convinced that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity…                                      3) We made a decision to turn our wills and lives over to the higher power we named as God however we understood that…                                             4) That allowed us to make a fearless and moral inventory of our lives…                                                                     5) We admitted to God, ourselves, and others the exact nature of our problem…                                                                 6) We were entirely open to let God remove all these defects in our lives…                                                                     7) In humility, we asked God to remove our shortcomings…                                                                             8) We made a list of persons we had harmed and resolved to make amends to them all…                                                             9) We made direct amends to such people when possible, except when doing so would have injured them or others…                                                 10) We continued to take personal inventories of our lives and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it…                                                     11) We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious relationship with God (as we understood that), praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and our power to carry it out…             12) Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other compulsive cultural and religious addicts and tried to practice these principles in all our affairs… From: Spirituality of the Beatitudes – Matthew's Challenge for First World Christians," Michael Crosby, Orbis Books, 1980]

Have a great week, glad you were here.

 

The Spirituality of Recovery

I have never considered myself a "Spiritual" person. Not sure why, maybe because as a youth I never heard people talking about spirituality. Not that the people I grew up weren't spiritual, they were, they just didn't go around talking about spending time with their Spiritual Guides or quoting Henri Nouwen all of the time. When I arrived at seminary I had classmates who were required to have a Spiritual Guide and to meet with them regularly. I wasn't, and wondered why, but was glad my synod didn't require me to have such a person. I can also remember talking with a couple of people who said there needed to be a new rostered position within the church, that of Spiritual Guide, because in their view, it took special training to be a Spiritual Guide.

In my first call I met some very spiritual people, mostly people in the GIFTS (Growing in Faith to Serve lay led ministry) program in my congregations and in the Eastern North Dakota Synod. The worked on their spirituality, they read books by authors they knew they would not agree with, the studied their Bible with a critical eye, never compromising their beliefs but never unwilling to stretch their mind and learn.

It wasn't until I started my call to Recovery Worship and my work with people in recovery that I really began to understand spirituality. To live a life of recovery a strong sense of spirituality is essential. Without a Higher Power you can't get beyond step two in the twelve step program. They might not consider themselves Christian, even when they are. Tthey will refer to God as their Higher Power more often than any other name for God. For a person in recovery, God reveals Him or Herself in many ways. At first, Higher Power might be their group, or maybe their sponsor. If it is the God of the Bible, recovery people will be reluctant to attend church because of the lack of understanding most churches have of addiction.

In the book The Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham the opening chapter starts with the header, "Religion is for people who don't want to go to Hell, Spirituality if for people who have already been there." In a recent The Lutheran magazine Bishop Mark Hanson pretty much pooh pooh'd this statement; this is a good example of the lack of understanding of addiction and people in recovery. People in recovery from addiction can describe to you what the gates of hell look like, some of them can show you the burn marks.

If you want to read a good Spirituality book, pick up a copy of the AA Big Book. You will read incredible stories of how God works in the recovery process. So put down Henri Nouwen and pick up Bill W. and Doctor Bob.

See you next week.

 

 

Saving Souls or Saving Lives

An important part of every worship service at Recovery Worship is the "Time for Sharing." I will toss out a question based on the Scripture reading for the day, and, I hope, somehow directed at recovery. One thing I hear from people is how Recovery Worship has "saved my life." These are powerful words indeed. I have heard a lot of people from other congregations say a lot of things about their church, claiming that their "church had saved their life," is not one of them.

Several years ago when I was in the Navy I was deployed to Atlanta, GA for a few days. The first day at our hotel I noticed all of these men walking around in suite and ties, very clean and proper, each wearing a tag that had a number printed on it, in big bold, black letters. In smaller letters just above the number were the words, "Souls Saved." In the elevator I asked one of the men what the tag meant. "Well," the man said, "I am a Baptist pastor and this number represents the number of baptisms that I did last year." I just kind of smiled and said, "That's nice," hoping that he would not ask me if I had been baptized.

Like so many notches in a gun slingers pistol grip, this man was taking credit for the salvation of those whom he had baptized. I can think of a dozen questions that I would have liked to have asked that pastor today. How many of these "souls" remained active in his church? How many were truly healthy and living out their baptism? Or, was all of this simply a matter of numbers, like yearly sales figures, an effort to avoid being embarrassed with a small number on his tag at the annual church convention.

I have a lot of problems with this idea of soul saving. We Lutheran's believe that in Baptism, God is doing the action. For Baptists, Baptism is what we do. There isn't a lot of support in Scripture for this individual "soul saving", a brief statement in the Book of James, and of course we all know what Lutherans think about James. Is it the mission of the church to save souls? I know a lot of people will turn blue and say, "of course", but what if the church focused more on saving lives then saving souls? I ponder, is it easier to have someone's (I refuse to take credit for anyone's soul being saved) soul saved if their life is saved first? When I hear these heart tugging stories of recovery and how Recovery Worship has played a critical role in that story, I am filled with wonder.

I would suggest that the church of the future pay more attention to saving lives, the Holy Spirit will take care of the souls.

 

See you next Sunday!