12 Step Eucharist Resurrection, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, April 3, 2024, 5:30, Wednesday in Easter Week, Luke 24:13-35
Today is the Wednesday of Easter Week. We hear the story of the disciples meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Our gospel is about opening our eyes to the resurrected life with Jesus. John Sanford tells us that the kingdom of God, or what some might consider heaven, is not only in the afterlife, but also present in this life around and especially within us.1 Many Psalms remind us that heaven is here on this earthly home if we only have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hands to care for it.
Bishop Jake Owensby and the writings of Marcus Borg remind us that the “Christian life follows the pattern of resurrection: dying and rising.”2
Resurrection to a new life occurs in this life, as well as at our physical death. Those in a 12-step group may know more about resurrection than many others. In our addiction, we are living a life of death, death to the person God created us to be, but also a living death for those around us. Our addiction becomes the God of our understanding. Everything begins to center around that addiction to the exclusion of others. If we are traveling, we must carry plenty of hidden alcohol with us, just in case we cannot find enough at our destination. The same is true for food, drugs, and even work. Our homes are filled with secret storage places for drugs, alcohol, or food of our choice. We drink or use to celebrate, and drink or use when things are not going well.
Recovery is resurrection to a new life, a new life where we gradually hear and see heaven on this earth, within us and others, without using mind-altering substances. As we recite these same 12 steps tonight and actually work them and put them into practice, we discover a new God of our understanding, always a God of love. We learn from this God about surrender, forgiveness, and gratitude. We learn about love for our neighbor and love for the person God created us to be. Our addictive substance is no longer the love of our lives.
At our physical death, the only thing we leave on this earth is that love, the love we give to the earth itself, the love we give to each one we encounter each day, and the love we offer to our family and friends. The only thing we carry with us into the final resurrection to be more connected to the God of love is the same love we shared on this earth. The love we have learned about and shared in our resurrections in this life will never die. Love is a great mystery that we must keep learning about and practicing through these 12 steps every day,/ one day at a time.
Joanna. Joannaseibert.com
1 John Sanford in The Kingdom Within
2 Jake Owensby in A Resurrection Shaped Life (Abingdon Press) XIV.