Sermon Matthew 9:35 – 10:23 Rules for the Road
By Fr. Bill Wigmore
(This sermon was delivered to a group recovering from alcohol and drug addiction.)
On June the 10th, 1935, God did a truly wondrous thing.
Not too many in the world took notice when it happened;
cause it was an easy thing to miss.
The sky didnt open up that day
and no booming voice was heard coming out of a cloud.
Even the principal players were probably unaware
of Gods hand reaching down and touching their lives.
But for the millions of sober alcoholics & addicts
now looking back on the events of that June day, Gods action was obvious.
A miracle happened in Akron, Ohio.
Two hopeless alcoholics did something that never should have happened:
They stayed sober.
God did for them together what neither one had been able to do for himself alone.
Bill Wilson was one of those men.
Hed had a spiritual awakening
a brief encounter with the living God.
That experience changed him and kept him sober for a time.
But now hes out there in Akron
and he finds himself alone and wanting a drink
The business deal that brought him to town had all gone sour.
Bill was depressed and his newfound sobrietys in real danger of being lost.
For six months, Bill had tried carrying his recovery message
to dozens of drunks that hed worked with.
Not one of them had responded!
But what Bill did notice was that even though THEY didnt stay sober by listening to him
HE had stayed sober by talking to them.
Just before leaving New York,
Bill had sat down with his detox-physician – Dr. Silkworth
and he had told him all about his many failures.
The good doctor gave Bill a bit of advice
that he was now about to put into practice for the very first time.
The doctor said,
For Gods sake, Bill, stop preaching to the alcoholics!
Dont hit em with the spiritual stuff right off the bat.
First tell em about you.
Tell em about your own drinking – about how you loved it.
Tell em how it worked for you for a while
How it made you feel better than anything youd ever known before.
But then, tell em how it turned on you.
Tell em how bad things got both for you and for your family.
Tell em how often you tried to quit –
and how you could go for a few weeks or sometimes a month
and then tell em how your un-manage-able mind
always talked you right back into taking that first drink
& starting the cycle all over again.
The old man finished up saying,
Dont preach to them, my boy; just tell them your story.
Dr. Bob was the first one to hear Bill tell his story that way.
There was no preaching on the day they met
Just honest, gut level sharing.
One man who had been hopeless,
telling his story to another man who still was.
And that seems to be why Gods Voice
could be heard so loud and clear that day there in Akron.
Wilson later said he was speaking to Bob – using the language of the heart.
One alcoholic/addict talking honestly to another.
No preaching just telling a fellow sufferer:
What it was like what happened – and what it was like now.
Bobs heart responded to that message
because he heard his own story being told as he listened.
In tonights gospel, we hear words from another man
who knew & who spoke the language of the heart.
He wasnt an alcoholic but he too knew the difference between darkness and light.
Jesus was a man just like you and me but there was one really big difference
He was a man whod gone inside of himself farther & deeper
than anyone had ever gone either before or since
And what he found within himself – was what the writers of the Big Book would later call the Great Reality that dwells within us all
He found God the God who loved him
He found the God who called him his very own son.
Jesus said that was some really good news
and he wanted to carry that good news to the people he knew
who desperately needed to hear it.
So tonight, Jesus is sending 12 of his closest followers out to carry that same message.
The group hed assembled hardly looked up to so important a task.
In fact, the guys in front of him were a pretty motley looking crew.
They were fishermen, laborers, and a hated tax-collector.
12 little nobodys from a little nowhere town in Galilee
But they each had one very important thing going for them
And that one thing is what separated them from all the scholars, and all the holy men, and all the far more beautiful people from Jerusalem.
When Jesus called them they came.
(Some things really havent changed very much in 2,000 years.)
So Jesus was entrusting his whole plan to these 12 guys
And when somebody was said to have asked Jesus
What if these guys blow it?
Whats the plan if these guys fail?
Surely you have a Plan B? they asked.
And Jesus supposedly said, I dont have another plan!
(We might remember that when someone asks us to go on a 12th step call and weve had a long day and we just want to sit around and watch TV!) We are the plan!)
The reading says: Jesus looked out at the crowds he saw –
and he had compassion for them all.
They looked like sheep without a shepherd.
Sheep dont make it alone for very long without a shepherd.
He wanted to help.
And it was always the weakest and the most vulnerable in the crowd
that Jesus was drawn to helping.
So he reached out to the sick and to the lepers
To the untouchables and to the outcasts
To the ones good-society had given up on and was getting ready to throw away.
Jesus said Theyre Gods children too theyre as much a part of this deal as any!
So he told the 12 to Go carry the message to the lost ones first.
And here Jesus sounds very much like Dr. Silkworth when he says:
But dont go preaching to em, boys!
And dont go telling them all sorts of holy stuff about God or about me.
Thats not what they need to hear. Not yet. Not now.
But go instead into their towns and go into the homes that welcome you
and first heal their diseases and ease some of their pains.
These sheep have wounds that first need to be tended to.
Heal them Comfort them – Cast out their demons. Do that first.
Then whisper this gently in their ears: Say:
The kingdom of God is close at hand Today its come very close to your house.
And theyre gonna know thats true because the kingdom of
God will have touched them where they live.
You know, they say Texas sits in the heart of the Bible belt
and if thats true
then youd think the kingdom of God ought to be close at hand here too.
But is it? Take a quick look around!
Among all our 50 states:
Texas is dead last in helping its alcoholics & addicts.
Texas is at rock bottom when it comes to caring for its poor.
Were last in just about every measure you can take of social action or social justice.
Weve filled our prisons with the poor and the powerless
while our leaders mouth sweet sounding slogans about leaving nobody behind.
The kingdom that Jesus spoke about
wasnt some fairyland located up there in the clouds.
The kingdom Jesus knew, & experienced, & spoke about
he said it begins right here and now.
He said we enter that kingdom whenever we make God the ruler of our lives
and whenever we begin to act toward his other children
the way we would want them to act towards us.
So, tonight, Jesus gives his followers some rules for the road.
Tonight, he lays out a set of instructions on how to carry this message
to the ones who are waiting.
Jesus says: Take along no gold, or silver, or copper coins in your belts.”
He says: Dont make this thing all about money
cause money will destroy my message quicker than anything.
We all know that Jesus was a healer and a miracle worker.
But scholars now tell us that Jesus wasnt the only healer or the only miracle worker operating back there in Galilee.
There were other sages and other healers
practicing in the very same towns and villages.
But there was one thing that made Jesus hugely different from all the rest.
Jesus never tried to cash in on his gifts!
You received the gift freely; now if you want to keep it he says: Give it away!
Jesus was an itinerant preacher – a healer who never settled down.
He was the Good Shepherd going out each day in search of lost sheep.
He went from town to town always searching
Looking for the ones who were lost and never waiting for the lost to come and find him.
Sometimes the poor get a little suspicious when someone shows up
saying theyve got some good news for them.
Theyve heard that before and theyve been let down a lot.
And the same seems true of us alcoholics and addicts.
By nature, we seem to be a very suspicious lot.
Being con-artists ourselves, were always looking for the con
artist or the wolf thats out there.
Were looking to see if whats being told to us isnt all just a bunch of BS.
And I think its our illness that makes us think that way.
We may not yet have the heart of a dove
but we usually arrive here with the minds of a serpent pretty well developed!
And so for us, trusting is rarely a strong suit!
My first sponsor was a guy named Floyd
and Floyd taught me some of my earliest lessons in trusting.
He tracked me down and he carried the message to me
before I was even well enough to go looking for it myself.
Floyd picked me up for meetings when I didnt want to go.
Floyd picked up the check for lunch when I didnt have any money
and was too proud to ask.
Floyd invited me into his home when I was living down at the Salvation Army
He believed in me when I still didnt believe in myself at all.
And so, of course, in my alcoholic illness, I wondered:
Now whats this guy up to here?
Whats in it for him? Maybe he swings both ways!
Whys he doing all this nice stuff for me?
And so in a rare moment of honesty I asked him:
Hey Floyd, why are you doing all this good stuff for me?
And without missing a beat he answered me in the language of the heart.
He said that when he was down
when he was living his life on the bottom of the pile
someone had come along and that someone had done the very same things for him.
He said: Now it was payback time.
Now he was just trying to pass on to me
what had been freely given to him.
And one of the things Floyd passed on to me
was that reading we heard a little earlier, called:
Why We Were Chosen.
That reading gave me some hope when hope inside me was pretty scarce.
That reading gave me some purpose
when I couldnt seem to find any real purpose to my life at all.
That readings probably done the same
for thousands of other alcoholics & addicts over the years.
Nobody knows who wrote it;
but it sounds to me like its pure Jesus:
The reading says:
“In choosing the ones to carry the recovery message of Gods kingdom,
he didnt go to the proud, to the mighty, to the famous or to the brilliant.
He went instead to the humble, to the sick, to the unfortunate.
He chose the drunks and the addicts,
‘the so-called weaklings of the world.’
“But God had a reason for choosing you and me.
And we need to hear it loud & clear when he says:
We were chosen because were a group thats already suffered.
Were a group thats already been down to the bottom.
And because weve felt like the outcasts of the world,
then we ought to be able to speak the language of the heart
to those other outcasts who are out there waiting to hear some good news.”
73 years ago this week, that language was first spoken by Bill Wilson
to a drunken doctor in Akron, Ohio.
If Bill had read tonights gospel before he went,
then he knew he didnt have to worry about what it was he needed to say to him.
Jesus says: What you are to say will be given to you at that time;
for it is not you who speak,
but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
People are dying because they desperately need what weve been so freely given.
Go share your story Share it in the language of the heart.
Just tell em what it was like
what happened what its like now.
Thats really all weve got to share.
Thats the gold we need to carry.
And if the people hearing us have suffered and if theyre ready
then that day the kingdom may come to them too.
Amen.
Copyright 2008 Bill Wigmore. Used by permission.