Good Friday 2006
St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, Hanock Maryland
Attachment. A word to ponder on the day our Lord was nailed to the cross. Attachment. It comes from the French attache which means, “to be nailed to.” Jesus was attached, nailed to, the cross. We know attachment. It is a part of the human condition.
I’m revisiting a book my spiritual director gave me last year. It’s called Addiction and Grace by Dr. Gerald May, the late spiritual director and physician. Dr. May spent his career working to treat addicted people. Through this work, he concludes that addiction stems from our human nature of attachment. He says there are two forces which enslave our wills: repression, which stifles our desires, and addiction which attaches, bonds and enslaves our desires to certain specific behaviors, things, or people. Attachment nails our desire for God to these other specific objects and creates addictions. Now he’s not being flippant when he says we all suffer from addiction. His point is that the same biological, psychological and spiritual processes which are responsible for additions to drugs and alcohol are also responsible for addictions to work, ideas, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, success, achievement, money, power, intimacy, the approval of others, even our own self-image. Addictions are part of what it means to be human. When we nail our desires to objects instead of God’s love, we have misplaced our trust. Misplacing our trust is a classic definition of Sin. Martin Luther says we are in bondage to Sin and cannot free ourselves. Yet, I find it easier to understand the bondage to addiction better than the abstraction of the “bondage to Sin.”
Let me give you an example. As many of you know, I am the mother of two daughters. I love my daughters dearly and they are gifts from God, but as a parent, I constantly struggle with the process of letting go. I want to do the right things to protect them from harm without being so overprotective that I stifle their development. There was a time I obsessed with making sure everything was safe and I worried about them constantly. When my concern became an obsession which caused anxiety in me, that’s the point where I had attached myself to cross of sorts – the cross of being the “perfect mother” who could always protect her children from all danger and harm. This distorted image was an addiction which gripped me and I could not free myself from its grasp. This is but one of many psychological / spiritual addictions I have battled in my lifetime.
Addictions, like the cross, are paradoxical. Addictions make us willingly nail ourselves to the objects of our desires – they become crosses on which we crucify ourselves and we have no power within ourselves to come down from them. Addictions make us idolaters because they force us to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly and freely loving God and one another. Addictions breed willfulness in us yet paradoxically they also erode our will and rob us of our dignity. Addiction is both an inherent part of our nature and the antagonist of it as well. It is the absolute enemy of love yet, in another paradox, it is addiction which can lead us to a deep appreciation of grace. It is our addictions which can bring us to our knees. Dr. May describes the point he faced his own addictions head on:
Amen.
St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, Hanock Maryland
Attachment. A word to ponder on the day our Lord was nailed to the cross. Attachment. It comes from the French attache which means, “to be nailed to.” Jesus was attached, nailed to, the cross. We know attachment. It is a part of the human condition.
I’m revisiting a book my spiritual director gave me last year. It’s called Addiction and Grace by Dr. Gerald May, the late spiritual director and physician. Dr. May spent his career working to treat addicted people. Through this work, he concludes that addiction stems from our human nature of attachment. He says there are two forces which enslave our wills: repression, which stifles our desires, and addiction which attaches, bonds and enslaves our desires to certain specific behaviors, things, or people. Attachment nails our desire for God to these other specific objects and creates addictions. Now he’s not being flippant when he says we all suffer from addiction. His point is that the same biological, psychological and spiritual processes which are responsible for additions to drugs and alcohol are also responsible for addictions to work, ideas, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, success, achievement, money, power, intimacy, the approval of others, even our own self-image. Addictions are part of what it means to be human. When we nail our desires to objects instead of God’s love, we have misplaced our trust. Misplacing our trust is a classic definition of Sin. Martin Luther says we are in bondage to Sin and cannot free ourselves. Yet, I find it easier to understand the bondage to addiction better than the abstraction of the “bondage to Sin.”
Let me give you an example. As many of you know, I am the mother of two daughters. I love my daughters dearly and they are gifts from God, but as a parent, I constantly struggle with the process of letting go. I want to do the right things to protect them from harm without being so overprotective that I stifle their development. There was a time I obsessed with making sure everything was safe and I worried about them constantly. When my concern became an obsession which caused anxiety in me, that’s the point where I had attached myself to cross of sorts – the cross of being the “perfect mother” who could always protect her children from all danger and harm. This distorted image was an addiction which gripped me and I could not free myself from its grasp. This is but one of many psychological / spiritual addictions I have battled in my lifetime.
Addictions, like the cross, are paradoxical. Addictions make us willingly nail ourselves to the objects of our desires – they become crosses on which we crucify ourselves and we have no power within ourselves to come down from them. Addictions make us idolaters because they force us to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly and freely loving God and one another. Addictions breed willfulness in us yet paradoxically they also erode our will and rob us of our dignity. Addiction is both an inherent part of our nature and the antagonist of it as well. It is the absolute enemy of love yet, in another paradox, it is addiction which can lead us to a deep appreciation of grace. It is our addictions which can bring us to our knees. Dr. May describes the point he faced his own addictions head on:
“It occurred to me that my original ‘professional depression’ had happened because I had been addicted to success and control. It was, in fact, a withdrawal; it happened when I couldn’t get my fix of professional success. I can honestly say, then, that it was my work with addicted people, and the consequent realization of my own addictive behavior, that brought me to my knees. I am glad. Grace was there. To state it quite simply, I had tried to run my life on the basis of my own willpower alone. When my supply of success at this egotistic autonomy ran out, I became depressed. And with the depression, by means of grace, came a chance for spiritual openness. To be alive is to be addicted, and to be alive and addicted is to stand in need of grace.”Cappadocian father Gregory Nazianzus said, “That which is not assumed is not redeemed” which means Christ assumed the totality of our human nature. Did Christ assume our addicted nature to redeem it? From what Scripture tells us, the object of Christ’s attachment was God’s will and that he was human in every way yet did not sin. Ideally, we would all attach ourselves to God’s will and this is not addiction because it is a properly placed trust. But I do think that Jesus did experience something of our addicted selves on the cross on Good Friday. On that day, his friends were not there – they had abandoned him to his fate. Addictions isolate us from friends and loved ones. Our loved ones and friends feel powerless to do anything to help our addictions just as the disciples felt powerless to do anything for Jesus in the face of the cross. Jesus felt the separation and isolation we experience with our addictions. And on that day, God was silent. Jesus heard no words of affirmation from God about being beloved – instead, he heard nothing. Jesus experienced what seemed like complete abandonment by God in that moment he cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” It is the same cry from our souls when the despair of addiction drives us to our knees. Through the cross, Jesus was detached from his very physical life and taken to the Throne of Grace. In the despair of our addictions, we fall to our knees at the foot of the cross where we too find grace. Through grace, God removes the nails which hold us to the crosses of our addictions. We cannot save ourselves, but the grace outside ourselves is the means by which God saves us and redeems us. Today we look to the crucified Christ and see through the cross … and we find the grace which will heal us.
Amen.
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