Law, Gospel, & AA

We Lutherans love the Law, we also love Grace. Some Lutherans seem to love the Law a whole lot more than they love the Grace, and some Lutherans seem to love Grace a whole lot more than they love the Law. We are taught at seminary that every good sermon must contain both law and gospel in order to be a good Lutheran sermon. "You must convict before you can offer the Grace" as a former colleague of mine used to enjoy saying.

I decided a long time ago that if I was going to favor one side over the other it was going to be Grace over Law, especially here at Recovery Worship where the congregation is all too familiar with the law. However, it took an evening with a recovering alcoholic and a drunk, to understand that in many ways. AA is much more Law & Gospel than is the Lutheran church.

It happened last Wednesday, I was at the church when the phone rang, and the man on the other end of the line was very drunk. He slurred his words as he told me that he needed somebody to talk with, and he wondered if I would come over to visit him. Believe it or not, this is the first time this has happened in my almost three years as pastor of Recovery Worship. I jumped in the car and headed for the address that the man had given me, feeling good that he thought to call me.

However it soon dawned on me that I really didn't know what I would say to him. Not being an alcoholic I knew that any attempt to express myself to him would be met with a drunken, "Pastor Ray, your not an alcoholic, you don't know what I am going through," and I suddenly realized while drunk on his butt, he is absolutely right. I am a pastor. I thought, sitting next to this guy, reading the 23^rd Psalm is not what he needs right now, he needs another alcoholic. So, in a very rare moment of sound thinking, I knew who to call. I called a good friend who has been in recovery only about as long as I have been at Recovery Worship but at the time I didn't know who else to call. I was delighted when he agreed to meet me at the man's apartment.

I got to the apartment about ten minutes before my friend did; I walked into the apartment and sat down across from a very intoxicated man. Sure enough, I had not been there two minutes and I heard the words that I had anticipated, "Pastor Ray, you don't understand, you aren't an alcoholic." I assured him that he was right, I didn't know but someone was coming over who did understand. For the next ten minutes I heard him cuss and swear at me, his wife, and life in general.

When my friend showed up he sat down next to the drunk on the couch and looked into the man's eyes and said, "If you don't stop drinking, Pastor Ray will be doing your funeral real soon." For the next hour and a half I watched as a recovering alcoholic preached the best law & gospel sermon that I have ever heard. The drunk asked me to call his wife; she had left him earlier in the night telling him that she would not come home again. "She didn't leave you." said my friend to the drunk. "You as much as kicked her out; she would not have left if you had not started drinking."

Several other "truths" came to light during the conversation. The reason the man called me was simple, all of his buddies have given up on him. They are tired of listening to his BS and his lies. They are tired of listening to why it is everyone else's fault that he drinks and why he won't go to treatment because "they don't know what they are talking about."

My friend told him over and over again, "go to treatment, go to meetings, get a sponsor, work the program and you will have a life; keep drinking and you will lose your family, lose your job, and in the end, you will die." The prophet Jeremiah could not have said it better.

The good news is, the sermon worked, at least for now. The next day the man let me take him to a local treatment center. Who knows if it will work this time, we can only pray that it does. The one thing I know for sure, if it doesn't work he can only blame himself. We tried, we tried really hard.

See you next week.