Step four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
The psalmist talks of the God before whom such a searching and fearless moral inventory is both possible and necessary. Ours is a God who, in traditional language, is omniscience and omnipresent, a God who knows all and is everywhere. This Psalm is sometimes called the Psalm of the unavoidable God.
We believe that before our God there are no secret thoughts or actions. All is known by our God. I remember hearing a lecture one time where the speaker had a fantasy. He was going to go into one of those high rise apartment buildings where there is a large panel of buttons to call each apartment. He was going to push all of them at once, say "All is known," then step outside to see how many people jump.
What would you feel like doing if all was known? We have a rule with our boys: If you tell the truth you do not get spanked. If you lie, you do get spanked. We usually need to ask twice. That is because our first response is to defend ourselves. "No I did not do that ... Okay, I did."
What does it take to get to the point where you can say what the psalmist says? The key word is fearless. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but it is not the end. We have not been given the spirit of fear, as St. Paul tells us, but the spirit of sonship/daughtership. Talking with God about our worst self is okay because God is not going to spank us for telling him what he already knows.
We have to know our God is a God of grace, or else we could not live. Ours is a God who knows all about us, forgives all about us and loves us regardless.
A mentor of mine talked about his feelings when he got married. He said that he thought his wife would love him and stay with him until she found out what he was really like, then it would be all over. She could not know what he was really like and still love him. He found quite the opposite. The more they got to know each other, the more open and honest they were with each other, the more they loved each other.
That, he said, is the miracle of Christian love. In Christian love, our goal is not to hide things from one another. In Christian love we are not supposed to go through life carrying the terrible burden for what we have done or said or thought.
The New Testament reading and the gospel reading tell about two whom God searched and knew. Peter and Paul are the two most significant figures in the early church. They are two men who had some terrible thing they wanted to hide, who made a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves.
The New Testament reading is the story of Paul's conversion on the Damascus road. Before his conversion Paul was called Saul. (To eliminate confusion I will call him Paul even though this happened when he was Saul.)
Paul was out to persecute followers of "The Way," a name used in the early days to refer to Christians. Paul was not looking for a "way." He was looking for an answer, something specific, something he found in the prescriptions of the law. It is like folks who would rather have "arrived" than face the struggle of being in the process of what life brings.
It reminds me of the time last June when we bought a swing set. Stores do not let you look at the directions until after you have bought the item. The directions began by explaining that it takes experienced workers an hour and 40 minutes to get this swing set assembled, so it might take me a little longer than that.
It took a long time, but it is done and we can just sit back and watch the kids swing. One of the inherent dangers of doing a series on a 12-step process is that it can seem too much like putting together a swing set. Finish the 12th step and you are done.
Swing sets work that way. Matters of faith do not. Last month I listened to a chaplain lead a group of patients who were hospitalized in an addiction recovery center. Someone asked, "At the end of a month here, what step should we be on?"
The chaplain, who is experienced in these 12 steps, said that, if, after a month of intensive work, you had a firm grasp on step one - admitting your life is unmanageable - you are doing very well.
Unlike a product assembly, where you work from step one to 12 and are finished, in this process you return again and again to the basic steps, the basic human struggle of admitting our weakness and turning our life - again and again - over to God. This is not a set of directions and rules and regulations. It is a way of life.
That was not what Paul thought he was looking for. Earlier, Paul had seen the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Paul held the cloaks of those who killed him. He had seen the persistence and faith of other Christians. He had witnessed the shedding of blood.
I think here of people who join the Ku Klux Klan. This group is sure it has the answer: Espouse the cause of white superiority; hate blacks and Jews. Those rules are clear and easy to follow. They put on the robe and join the cross burning. But something happens.
Maybe they see firsthand what happens when racial hatred runs out of control, as it did in Forsythe County. Maybe they have a child bring home a new friend of a different race or religion or culture. As they watch the children play together, something breaks through the hatred and they hear a voice saying, "Why are you so filled with hate when it is so much better to be filled with love?"
Paul was not setting out to do a moral inventory of himself. He was out to destroy the followers of the Way. Paul must have been certain that he was doing good. After all, he was defending what he believed to be the true faith. As often happens with "true believers," the intensity of his effort was his way of convincing himself of his doubts.
He was not just content with driving Christians from Jerusalem. Because they were being severely persecuted, the church in Jerusalem had been forced underground, and refugees were reported to have reached Damascus. They must be pursued and rooted out wherever they fled, not only within the frontiers of the land of Israel, but beyond them as well.
It is about 140 miles from Jerusalem to Damascus. The journey would be made on foot and would take about a week. Paul's only companions were the officers of the Sanhedrin, a kind of police force. But because he was a Pharisee, he could have nothing to do with them. So he walked alone, alone with his thoughts.
Just before Damascus the road climbs Mount Hermon, and down below lay Damascus. That region has one characteristical meteorological phenomenon. When the hot air of the plain meets the cold air of the mountain range, violent electrical storms result. Just at that moment there came a blinding light and out of the storm and in it Christ spoke to Paul.
There are various and sundry speculations as to what happened to Paul on that road. It may well have been the intensity of the thunderstorm that made him listen to God in a whole new way. Others say it was hysterical blindness. Paul did dictate his letters instead of write them himself, and when he did write, he wrote in large print. Others think Paul had epilepsy. This might tie in with Paul's later reference to his "thorn in the flesh."
Paul's conversion reminds me a bit of the courtroom scene from every Perry Mason show. The innocent party has been charged with guilt. The guilty party is on the stand or in the courtroom watching the trial. The evidence builds and builds. There is that one last piece of evidence detective Paul Drake brings in, and in an instant the plea of innocence becomes an admission of guilt.
Paul had been fighting and fighting and fighting against the Way of Christ, but as he dealt with the saints, the evidence continued to mount against what he was doing with his life. The last piece of evidence came in, and then the surrender. He who had intended to enter Damascus with an avenging fury was led by the hand, blind and helpless.
For three days - a holy number - he fasted, a penitent fast. And he said nothing. He needed to get things right with God, but what was he to say? He realized that God knew all. How could he ask forgiveness?
Whatever happened on the road, God did something to him. His life was transformed. He stopped fighting the Way of Christ and started following the Way of Christ. He changed from chief persecutor to chief missionary.
This is the story of Paul's conversion. The word conversion literally means having your life turn around. I have talked with people whose lives have gone through a substantial change. They can point to the hinge experience of their life. But when I refer to that as their conversion, the reaction is often that I did not understand what they were explaining. This was not, I am sometimes told, a religious experience. Their entire life changed, but they did not see God in charge.
Paul could have done that. He could have analyzed what happened. "I guess I have a phobia with lightning and I lost my senses." "It is just hysterical blindness." "It was just exhaustion. The trip wore me out." "I have been under too much stress." No. What happened was God spoke to him and he listened and he let God forgive him and he let God change his life.
This brings us to the story of Peter. Some days before Peter had promised Jesus, "Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you (Matthew 26:35)." But things happened. There was conflict at the last supper; then there was the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane where Peter and the others fled.
When Jesus was inside the house of Caiaphas, the high priest, being questioned, Peter showed a lot of courage in even going into that courtyard, and then sticking around after he has been twice identified.
He wanted to be brave, but he was like a child caught in a lie. "I didn't do it." Then one lie leads to another. Aristotle said that the penalty for telling a lie is that the liar is not believed when he tells the truth.
We want to hide our lies and ourselves from that God who judges us. I talked with a teenager who told me that when she was a pre-teen she tried to kill her mother. Fortunately she did not succeed. But after that when she went to church she would hide under the pews. That was her response to her guilt, to try to hide from God.
Peter's response to his guilt was healthy. He stopped the lies. He did not try to hide his guilt. He cried. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who mourn when they look at their lives, for they shall be comforted.
At about the same time both Peter and Judas betrayed Jesus, each in his own way. The difference in their betrayal is a matter of degree, just as each of us to some degree betrays our calling. But the difference in how Judas and Peter responded to their awareness of what they had done wrong, was not a difference of degree, but difference of kind.
Both men did wrong. Both men became painfully aware they had done wrong. You recall Judas throwing the money back at those who gave it to him. God knew what Peter and Judas did. God did not destroy either of them. But Judas destroyed himself. Peter wept but returned.
Let us conclude with two observations. Ours is a God who searches and knows us. Christ knew Peter would fail. He told him so. God knew how Peter had persecuted the Christians. Our God knows our weakness before we even do the wrong. Our God loves us, from the greatest to the least, and knowing us, loves us. How else could these two who had done such wrong come back and operate with such power? The God who sees us as we truly are loves us as we truly are.
Second observation. How did the church get these stories of Peter and Paul? Peter and Paul must have told these stories themselves. If I had done what they had done - so overtly denied Jesus, so openly persecuted the followers of Jesus - and tried to cover it up we would have "Christgate."
If the early church was into cover-ups, this would be the event to hide. But it was not hidden, because Peter and Paul were willing to tell their story.
Paul's driving ambition was to strike fear in the hearts of Christians. As a Christian himself he was fearless before any such threats. The same Peter who was fearful of the question of a servant girl was touched by the grace of God, so that a short time later he would be fearless in the presence of the mob on Pentecost. It was not because Peter or Paul were terribly virtuous, but simply because of the great love of our God who empowers those with the courage to honestly place our whole lives in God's care.
