Last night I was watching Grey’s Anatomy and I noticed something a bit unusual. Now, you may be thinking the fact that I spend my Sunday evenings watching “the soaps” on ABC is unusual. But I am not sorry to report that Grey’s Anatomy is my favorite show on television. It has a killer soundtrack, lovable characters, memorable plot lines, and it is full of pithy one-liners. This in part due to the fact that it is brilliantly narrated by the show’s protagonist Meredith Grey.

But I am digressing. As I said, last night the show contained – for me at least – a rather unusual (for prime time television) subject matter. So here’s the scenario. The Chief of surgery, Dr. Richard Webber gets called to perform an emergency liver operation on a recovering alcoholic who has been on the transplant list for several years. When he enters the room (the scene shown above) he finds it his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor who he has not seen in twelve years. Before she goes under the knife the woman chastises Dr Webber for losing contact, quitting AA meetings and for visiting a dying woman whom he had an affair with years ago without his wife’s knowledge. He is as they say in the program, “setting himself up for failure.” When the doctor returns to her in a later scene, she has called in all of their old Alcoholics Anonymous “family.” The scene closes with Dr Webber joining them in the serenity prayer.

Now, please hear me out. I do not mean to suggest that Alcoholics Anonymous is the perfect answer to the alcoholic’s problems, or to anybody else’s for that matter. Anyone who knows me at all knows that ultimately I believe the answer to every problem is the $20 Sunday school answer. JESUS.

However, AA damn sure knows and unapologetically teaches this truth: You cannot make it on your own. You can not make a lasting life long commitment to change yourself for the better, to live contrary to your self-destructive lusts and passions, and do it alone. AA has twelve guide-lines for it’s members that have become internationally known as the twelve steps. Step five is probably my favorite, “We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” In fact five of these twelve steps focus on the recovering alcoholic’s relationships with other people. After a time all memberes in AA are given a “sponsor” to advise them in following the steps. One thing is for sure; those who take the Alcoholics Anonymous program seriously will find that they have the Gnostic hell beaten out of them (Um, that’s a good thing).

Gnosticism was like a plague in the early Church and has been something that Christians have had to deal with every since. Gnostic belief systems are thought to possess an esoteric or secret knowledge. One of its chief characteristics is to draw a strict divide between the spiritual and material world and treat the spiritual and intellectual as good while devaluing the world of matter and flesh. Gnostic tendencies have lead to a whole host of heresies. They have also lead to Christians rejecting relationships with others (especially those “in the world”), rejecting the institution of the church and even devaluing their own bodies. “God is gonna’ get me out of here” is the mentality and it is often accompanied by the thought that “God is all I need.”

Well if your God is Jesus, my friend then you are right but you are also wrong – very wrong. We are not meant to do this life alone. People need people. God made it that way. In Alcoholics Anonymous people admit to God, to themselves and to another human being that they are “powerless over alcohol.” In Christianity, we confess before God, with other human beings, about ourselves, and how we are powerless over sin and death but in Christ alone we collectively find renewal, healing and strength. We read liturgy, sing songs, raise our hands, bow our heads and partake in the Lord’s Supper – together.

A child with no family is an orphan. So is a christian without the church.

The Reformed Church of America has a terrific statement about the communal nature of the Church: I encourage you to read the whole thing, but this is how the opening reads:

We believe God intended God’s children to live in community with one another. The people of the Reformed Church understand that our relationship with God always includes responsibility toward other people.

The statement goes on to remind the members of the RCA of their responsibility and privilege to be a blessing to their church and community. In remarkably similar language the late (and I believe great) Lesslie Newbigin reminds all who are concerned about the mission of the Church of this truth:

Since the gospel does not come as a disembodied message but as the message of a community which claims to live by it and which invites others to adhere to it, the community’s life must be so ordered that it “makes sense” to those who are so invited.

This is a picture taken from my Last night as youth director at Middleville United Methodist Church. It was a wonderful three years working with some really terrific students. It was a very hard goodbye. Since then I have kept in touch with several students. Others I have not heard from since that night. I know that some of them are still going to church at Middleville UMC or somewhere else. Others, I know have not been going to church much the past couple of Years.

So tonight, here is my prayer for them, for you and for myself in typical AA fashion : “May God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change in the Church, the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. May we live one day at a time in a loving community with other believers and hold out Christ as a light to the world. We surrender to his will, forsaking our own happiness in this life if need be, for the sake of the whole and for the sake of the precious Trinity which calls us and blesses us to be a blessing”

Just as Dr. Webber needed to called into check so do all who will take up the name of Christ as Lord. For the recovering Alcoholic there is no sobriety without some sort of group to support. For Christians there is no sanctification without the Church to love, nurture, protect and even correct us.

Shalom,
Wayne