Jesus and the Twelve Steps
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Beth Henricks
May 19, 2024
Sources – Alcoholic Anonymous and Breathing Under Water by Richard Rohr
Our scripture reading is from Romans 12:1-2 NRSV - I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
And Proverbs 3:4-6 - Then you will find favor and high regard in the sight of God and of people. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.
In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
A few weeks ago, my son sent me a video of a man being interviewed about his struggles with PTSD and a feeling of irritation that he carried around every day (the Buddhists call this Dukha) This man started studying the 12 Step program not for drinking or drugs but for his PTSD and his emotional pain. He learned he had to open himself up and take a searing account of what was going on inside of him. He realized that emotional pain is physical pain. As he worked through the steps, he started telling his close friends what was going on in his life believing if he really opened himself up these people would not talk to him again. And what he experienced was the exact opposite. They rallied around him. He started to cry on the video.
I began thinking about how the church should be like a 12 Step community. And that the tenets of the 12 Step program apply to all of us as we deal with things in our life. I think much of what Jesus taught mirrors the 12 Step program. Richard Rohr wrote about this in his book, Breathing Underwater about how biblically based the 12 Step program is. The Twelve Steps are a profound way of discovering, following, and learning to live in the peace, the joy, and the freedom- in The Way demonstrated by Jesus.
As many of you know, my son is in recovery for over 4 years. AA saved his life. His recovery was far more than a physical recovery from addiction to alcohol. The only way he conquered this physical pain was through a spiritual resurrection. And it was by working through the 12 steps. I began my admiration for this community when I was sitting in the lobby of Progress House near downtown a number of years ago. Progress House is a supervised sober house for men. This was one of a couple of steps before my son went to NJ 5 years ago for rehab. I sat in that lobby and saw these men from all walks of life vacuuming, working the front desk, doing maintenance work outside and being vulnerable in their weakness and holding each other accountable in their journey. It was in that moment in the lobby that I physically felt Jesus’s presence in the room with these broken men, trying to turn their lives around and I started crying. It was a profound spiritual experience.
I’ve studied a bit about AA as I have wondered how this organization continues to thrive as a total volunteer group, no fees, no insurance, little hierarchy, locally driven, nondenominational, apolitical, without dogma and no ownership of buildings to meet in.
They accept no donations from anyone outside of the group. This sounds to me a lot like the early Christian church. Some of you know the history of this organization but it started in 1935 with a stockbroker from NY and a doctor from Akron OH (Bob Smith and Bill Wilson) that were dealing with their own alcoholism. The program combined science and spirituality and both men were Christians. The steps they developed were based on their Christianity and yet developed language that embraced all faith traditions and those without faith traditions. They saw that recovery required a spiritual awakening followed by helping others on the journey. One of the founders called its structure a benign anarchy. Its inverted hierarchy has prevented it from having organizational issues as many other religious and political entitles have had. The program has created an atmosphere of transcendence and embraces an all-encompassing worldview.
We all need transformation. This is the essence of the Gospel and what all of our faith communities should be about. Jesus said, come as you are. Acceptance, love and grace is what an AA meeting offers where stories are shared, forgiveness is offered, and hope is renewed. We read in the Bible from many writers that speak of this idea of reaching a low point, a dark night of the soul where we must release, let go of our ego and give up into the grace of God’s arms. The writer of Isaiah wrote about this in Isaiah 38:12-24, “My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent; like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom; from day to night you bring me to an end; I cry for help until morning; like a lion he breaks all my bones; from day to night you bring me to an end. My eyes are weary with looking upward. Oh Lord, I am oppressed; be my security.”
We have to expose our wounds, our pain for the Light, the true Light to begin to shine on them and heal them. It is not just about changing our exterior; we must be changed at our core. Christ says that my grace is sufficient for you, my strength is made perfect in weakness. God is not requiring us to get our lives together, so we are worthy of God’s love and astounding grace. The Light is available to us now in our brokenness. God doesn’t withhold this until we clean up our act. God beckons and calls to us now. God always goes right to the pain asking us for humility and honesty. But we must let go of our ego. Step 3 talks about a radical surrendering of our will to Another whom we trust more than ourselves. Many in the program say this is the most important step. Jesus’ way is a way of weakness and powerlessness.
This radical transformation requires a different way of thinking. We are dealing with our reptilian brain that wants us to think in a dualistic way. We categorize and contrast everything as that is how our brains are wired. We go to an all or nothing place in our minds. This is how our ego rules ourselves and brings us into a constant state of fear and potential loss. We fear change and death. When we think in a dualistic way, we typecast people and then we will find the evidence that supports our beliefs. Thomas Aquinas says that no one intentionally does evil. In our dual minds and in our addictive systems within our ego brain, we explain our behavior by rationalizing we are doing some good for something or someone. We can do evil without calling it evil. We become blind. Letting go of ego, recognizing that we submit to a higher power starts us on a journey of thinking in a more non dualistic way. Everything is interconnected. We truly are beings that are united within.
Another tenet of the AA program that is profound for the experience is not requiring to name God but a Higher Power as one knows it. I have a dear friend that is a fundamentalist Christian that is dealing with a daughter with an addiction to fentanyl. She is currently in treatment but has not responded to the 12 Steps and does not want to be a part of that program. They both do not like that the language used in the 12 Step Program that names a Higher Power or whatever you want to call that versus God. They both feel like one must call this Being God because that is the Truth. I understand they struggle with this language, but it feels like the founders were visionary in not quarreling with what to name this Higher Power. The church often gets too tied up with the naming of God. This Higher Power is really unnamable as we heard from Moses at the Burning Bush – I am who I am. This has allowed AA to reach millions that struggle with their religion of upbringing and those of faiths outside of Christianity. I wonder if our churches would expand if we stopped fretting over the naming of God.
Richard Rohr writes in Breathing Under Water, “I truly believe that the Twelve Step program (also known as Alcoholics Anonymous or A.A.) will go down in history as America’s greatest and unique contribution to the history of spirituality. It represents what is good about American pragmatism. There’s something in the American psyche that becomes mistrustful and impatient with anything that’s too abstract, theoretical, or distant. Americans want a spirituality that is relevant, that changes people, and that really makes a difference in this world. For many, the Twelve Steps do just that. They make the Gospel believable, practical, and even programmatic for many people. Worthiness is not the issue; the issue is trust and surrender. As Thérèse of Lisieux said, “Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude.” A.A. had the courage to recognize that you don’t come to God by doing it right; you come to God by doing it wrong, and then falling into an infinite mercy. Any talk of growth, achievement, climbing, improving, and progress highly appeals to the ego. But the only way we stay on the path with any authenticity is to constantly experience our incapacity to do it, our failure at doing it. That’s what makes us, to use my language, fall upward. Otherwise, we’re really not climbing; we’re just thinking we’re climbing by saying to ourselves, “Look, I’m better today. Look, I’m holier than I was last week. Look, my prayer is improving.” That really doesn’t teach us anything or lead us anywhere new.
Rohr wrote Breathing Underwater inspired by a poem by Carol Bieleck that speaks of this common message that I’d like to share with you –
Breathing Under Water
I built my house by the sea. Not on the sands, mind you; not on the shifting sand. And I built it of rock. A strong house by a strong sea. And we got well acquainted, the sea and I. Good neighbors. Not that we spoke much. We met in silences. Respectful, keeping our distance, but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand. Always, the fence of sand our barrier, always, the sand between. And then one day, - and I still don’t know how it happened – the sea came. Without warning. Without welcome, even. Not sudden and swift, but a shifting across the sand like wine, less like the flow of water than the flow of blood. Slow, but coming. Slow, but flowing like an open wound. And I thought of flight and I thought of drowning and I thought of death. And while I thought the sea crept higher, till it reached my door. And I knew then, there was neither flight, nor death, nor drowning. That when the sea comes calling you stop being neighbors. Well acquainted, friendly at a distance, neighbors. And you give your house for a coral castle, And you learn to breathe underwater.
Friends we all must learn to breathe under water. We will face pain, we will have difficult realities in our lives, disappointments and we must learn to turn our homes into coral castles.
I think one could go quite in depth with each step of this program but I want to read all 12 steps adding the words of our addictions versus alcohol.
Step #1: We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol (or whatever our addiction is)—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step #2: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Step #3: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Step #4: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Step #5: We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.
Step #6: We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Step #7: We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Step #8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
Step # 9: We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step #10: We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
Step #11: We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Step #12: Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics (or our faith communities) , and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
I close this message with the Serenity Prayer by the 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.
"God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
As we enter our time of waiting worship I offer the following queries:
Have I done a searing inventory of my heart?
Do I embrace that God loves me in my brokenness?
What is my part of building a community that loves and accepts all?
Do I hold myself accountable as well as others?