This past summer I read an article that caused me to make a significant change from my usual practice of preaching from the lectionary. The article, titled, "Coming to Grips with Drug Abuse," made the point that neither clergy nor parents need to be experts on drug dependency, though we do need to be well informed. We need to understand what it means to describe chemical dependency as a disease. Therefore I am going to talk about addiction for a time before I talk about today's Scripture readings.

But what is most important for the church to understand is that the Christian faith is the spiritual foundation on which recovery is built. The Christian faith is the source of strength and self-esteem which will help keep us from self-destructive behavior. There are 12 steps commonly used in this process, returning us from exile. The exile may have been the result of chemical abuse or the abuse of food. It may have come as a result of an inability to control emotions or an inability to control sexual behavior.

For the purpose of this sermon, we will consider substance abuse as a paradigm of life out of control, which is in exile from its true nature and destiny. No one seeks to become an addict. Those who become chemically dependent are seeking things that we all seek. And like all of us, they often are seeking in the wrong places or by the wrong means.

Experts on adolescent chemical dependency and other youth problems repeatedly explain drug abuse by pointing to adolescents' lack of self-esteem and feeling of powerlessness.

A shy teenager takes his or her first drink or drug and suddenly becomes the life of the party. Another, who has trouble controlling his or her emotions, finds that a joint, pill or drink brings a feeling of omnipotence.

People drink and use drugs because that fixes whatever is wrong - if only momentarily - and it works quickly. The effect of this momentary cure is especially powerful for the young person who is biochemically prone to chemical dependency.

Addiction appears to be an inherited trait, just like inheriting the color of our eyes or the shape of our noses. That could help explain why two people consuming exactly the same amount of alcohol have such different reactions: one becomes relaxed; the other goes out of control. For those prone to chemical dependency by genetics and/or environment, though they may pay a price for the abuse, the positive effects they feel from drug and alcohol use can be seen to far outweigh the negative effects.

However, as tolerance for the drug (an early sign of chemical dependency) grows, so does drug use. In time, the positive side of the drug experience wanes and pain begins to take over. What is the answer to the pain but more of the same fix? Life becomes more and more unpredictable, but the drug remains predictable - at least in its immediate effects.

When our life is unmanageable, drugs and alcohol are two of the great illusion builders that fool us into thinking that for a time we are in control, while all the time making us more out of control.

Eventually the person reaches a point of despair in which he or she experiences powerlessness in a way that even the alcohol and drug cannot fix. This is the moment when many seek outside help. Others simply surrender to their dependency.

These steps begin with a frank admission of powerlessness over one's addiction. It is the spiritual basis for the 12-step recovery program. This spiritual journey is the only effective long-term program that works in keeping chemically addicted people sober and functioning. Ironically, addiction is basically a medical problem for which the only effective, long-term cure is spiritual.

In the article to which I referred earlier, the author made these points about youth, though they are true for all ages: "I have often thought that if only parents, the church and society would teach children the basic spiritual truths centered in these 12 steps, we could save them from much pain and give them something to say 'Yes' to."

This sermon is the first of 12 which focus on the 12 steps. Steps one and 12 talk specifically about drinking. Steps two through 11 do not. The 12 steps make more reference to explicit and implicit spiritual issues than to substance abuse. This sermon is going to look at substance abuse that makes life uncontrollable, and at a biblical basis for understanding that experience.

Let me issue two disclaimers. While I am strongly against the use of any illegal drug, these will not be lectures advocating abstinence from alcohol, except for those for whom total abstinence is appropriate. I believe in temperance. That is not the same as abstinence. Also, I am not trying to do a Sunday morning therapy session. For those who need it, there is no substitute for being a part of Alcoholics Anonymous, or any other appropriate 12-step group. These sermons are not primarily focusing on substance abuse. What I will do in these 12 sermons is look at the scriptural basis for the 12 steps.

What do you need to know is these 12 steps, which were originated by Alcoholics Anonymous, are now used by close to 200 other 12-step groups. The same basic principles apply to whatever it is that makes your life unmanageable.

A.A. literature includes a disclaimer that says the material is not the property of any one religion, and that is true. But you should also know that historically, the 12 steps came out of the Christian church, and whether anyone admits it or not, the stuff that makes it work is the stuff of the Christian faith.

Step one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and other drugs, that our lives had become unmanageable.

The first text we examine as our biblical basis and spiritual resource is Proverbs 23:29-35. There are a lot of folks who say that religious folks lead sheltered lives. But listen to this description of a life that has become unmanageable, and see if it does not indicate some firsthand experience:

"Show me someone who drinks too much, who has to try out fancy drinks, and l will show you someone miserable and sorry for himself, always complaining. His eyes are bloodshot, and he has bruises that could have been avoided. Don't let wine tempt you, even though it is rich red, and it sparkles in the cup, and it goes down smoothly.

"The next morning you will feel as if you have been bitten by a poisonous snake. Weird sights will appear before your eyes, and you will not be able to think or speak clearly. You will feel as if you were out on the ocean, seasick, swinging high up in the rigging of a tossing ship. 'I must have been hit,' you will say; 'I must have been beaten up, but I don't remember it. Why can't I wake up? I need another drink.' "

Or The Anchor Bible also puts it with clarity:

"Those who linger over wine,
Who drain the mixing bowl.
Afterward it will bite like a snake,
It secretes the venom of a viper;
Your eyes will see strange apparitions,
And your mind and speech will be confused;
You will be like one prostrate far at sea,
(Or) who rolls drunkenly like the top of the mast,
(Saying) 'They hit me but it didn't hurt!
They beat me but I didn't know it!
As soon as I can wake up
I shall want another drink!' "

Its presence in Holy Scripture means that God understands us when we reach the point in our life when we are powerless to do anything about our condition. When we find our life unmanageable, God understands, and the saints of the church speak to our condition.

The message here is not abstinence, but temperance. It talks of how wine in excess leads to other problems, such as fighting, promiscuity and crime. That was what the Bible said thousands of years ago, and it has not changed. God understood and understands.

This ancient scripture recognizes the connection of substance abuse - then that was just wine - and personal economic ruin. Proverbs also says (23:19ff Anchor Bible):

Hear now, my son, and gain wisdom,
Give attention to following the right path;
Be not of those who drink wine to excess,
For the heavy drinker and the glutton will be disinherited,
And sleep will clothe a man in rags.

Let me say something here that is very important to know and understand. Recently I was asked why, if alcohol causes so much trouble, God created it. Wine in Israel was a sign of the blessing of God and was to be used as a way of exemplifying the meaning of this blessing.

To make drinking an end in itself, and simply a means of self-indulgence, is to invite disasters. Wine must assist one in living life. To use it as an escape from the living of life is to make it an enemy.

There is a very interesting passage in the book of Ecclesiasticus or The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach. It is a Holy writing that was written a century or two before the birth of Christ and is considered by some as a Scripture. Remember this was written before the understanding that addiction to alcohol and drugs may be genetic. This passage does not take that into account, but it does give theological understanding to God's purpose in creating wine.

Do not aim to be valiant over wine,
for wine has destroyed many.
Fire and water prove the temper of steel,
so wine tests hearts in the strife of the proud.
Wine is like life to men,
If you drink it in moderation.
What is life to a man which is out of wine?
It has been created to make men glad.
Wine drunk in season and temperately
is rejoicing of heart and gladness of soul.
Wine drunk to excess is bitterness of soul,
with provocation and stumbling.
Drunkenness increases the anger of a fool to his injury,
reducing his strength and adding wounds (31:25-30).

Does not God understand? Unfortunately, the basic approach coming out of the religious community is to tell those for whom drinking is a problem or those who drink at all, "You are a sinner. Stop it." That is not very helpful. If drinking has made your life unmanageable, then how can you manage to stop? You only make a person feel worse by calling him a sinner for failing to do the impossible. To the guilt is added shame.

What we need to have is spiritual understanding of what is happening to us when life becomes unmanageable. There is no better passage in Scripture or any book on psychology than what St. Paul wrote to the church in Rome. "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."

Paul talks about the civil war that rages within us, our helplessness in attempting to live up to God's requirements. It is the person who has experienced God's free grace and forgiveness who is the most acutely aware of his own sin and plight.

St. Augustine said, "I do not understand how this very thing for which I lust becomes more delightful when it is forbidden." And again, "... this law of sin which was present in the members of even the great apostles is forgiven in baptism, but it does not come to an end."

The cry, "Who will deliver me from this body of death?" is part of the human condition. God understood and understands. The gift of faith is to be able to say with Paul, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." He was talking about the experience of turning his life over to the power of Christ.

Paul talks about our struggle, but he is not talking about our despair. This step is not a statement of hopelessness. It is a statement of honesty. The good news is that reaching the bottom, we are stripped of our illusions about ourselves and our strength. Knowing that I am not able to manage my life by myself, I am ready to receive help that I would not have if I still had illusions about self-control.

It is often only when we find ourselves crying out as did Paul, with life out of control, that we become ready to receive the One who makes life manageable.

Then there is the rather strange gospel story. I am not going to explain how Jesus sent the demons into the pigs and all that was described in the gospel story. What we can say is that the man described is one whose life was clearly out of control. Most of us manage to carry on with life; at least we do so outwardly.

The man here described in Luke would in the 1960s be in a psychiatric hospital or, today, a street person. What we also know is the reaction of people to this man who was, as the text says, "clothed and in his rightful mind." The reaction of the people? They were afraid.

There is a long and tragic history of people having the town drunk and the village idiot. There is often what is known as "codependency," that is, family and friends who help a person just enough to let him maintain an unmanageable life, but in truth they do not have him healed.

It can be nice to have someone to laugh at, someone to make fun of, someone who makes you feel so much better by comparison. It can be nice to have a friend who is always ready to have one drink too many, to bet too much at a game of poker, to go out looking to cheat on a spouse. That person's return to spiritual and emotional health is by many unwelcorned, even feared.

This leads us to the hope-filled words of step two, "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.''

In summary, let me say that it is the very experience of this civil war that rages within us, of knowing what we should do but being unable to do so, that can be the foundation on which grows a faith which says with St. Paul, "Wretched person that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"