“Are We There Yet?”

Summer time and the living is easy!  Fish are jumping and the river is high.  It’s a time to pull out the kayaks and canoes, the fishing rods and hammocks, jump in the lake, take a road trip and read a good book. 

Do you remember those family vacations when you were a child, being excited to get into the car, but then the road went on and on?  How when we were seven we discovered the power to enrage adults with the simple question, “Are we there yet?”

How many of us, much to our chagrin, later found our kids or our nieces or nephews doing the same thing to us that we did as children?

How many of us never had that experience, maybe family outings were not something we grew up with or maybe some of us grew up without families, or spent time in group homes or residential schools?  Some of us might have spent so much time in hospitals or refugee camps that trips like these didn’t happen.  But we may all have a memory of longing for something better, for some time when we hoped the cancer went into remission, the visas to Canada finally showed up, the summer holidays started, or the destination reached.

We longed for something different, something better, something more.  We didn’t want to wait, we didn’t want to play another game of “I Spy”, or spend another minute strapped in our seatbelts!

Paul was no stranger to waiting for destinations to arrive.  He grew up in Turkey, went to school in Jerusalem, traveled to Greece, Cyprus, back to Turkey, to Syria, and was planning his next trip to Spain when he wrote this letter to the Romans.  He also knew the disappointment of travel plans going awry - ship wrecked on Malta, thrown in prison multiple times, chased out of towns by angry mobs.  More importantly, he knew that he wanted to bring hope to the Romans, a group of Christians he had not met before.  He wanted his letter to show his good intentions and his amazing trust of hope in Jesus Christ’s teachings.  He did that through an amazing demonstration of vulnerability.

A lot of people, when they are trying to persuade others will pile on the praise of both the listeners and themselves.  Paul had moments when he did just that.  The beginning of Romans is a big celebration of how famous the Roman Christian community had become.  And Paul said he couldn’t wait to meet them as he hoped he would be as inspiring to them as they had already been to him.  But then we get this deeply honest and vulnerable passage that sounds like someone in despair because they have an addiction they can’t beat.  Paul had strong will power, but that was not enough.  Like many of the alcoholics that have met in the basement of churches over the years, Paul had to admit he was powerless over his addiction, which he called sin.

Sin had control over his life, and the struggle was hard.  Just like today, our struggle with addictions is alsohard.  Addictions have become very polarizing.  We hear about the growth in tent cities, the increasing number of deaths from overdoses and wonder why people don’t stop living like that.  Why can’t street people be more like us?  A modern-day prophet, Dr. Gabor Maté, says that the only way we will ever address this is when we recognize the addictive nature of our very society and how almost all humans have addictions to something at some time in their lives.  His work in East Vancouver where he treated many addicts was improved when he began to recognize his own addiction.  Maté had an obsession that cost him hundreds, even thousands of dollars a month.  He would feel an adrenalin rush and excitement and deny that he had a problem.  He made lots of money and could afford his addiction, even though his mind was obsessed with the hunt for his next fix.  The addiction that cost thousands of dollars was not to drugs or cigarettes or alcohol, but of all things, music. While it might seem laughable, at one point he wrote that it affected his relationship with his wife, his children, even his job as a doctor.  He had to go to an AA meeting to get help with his obsessive pursuit of cds. 

The first step was acknowledging he had a problem.  Just like Paul, he had to be truthful to himself and others that he was helpless to conquer his addiction on his own.  The second step, the hardest one, was asking for help.

What are we addicted to?  Video games?  Netflix? Investments in volatile stocks? Fast driving? The shopping channels?  Clutter?  Cleaning?  Food?  Control?  Gossip, judging other people, arguing with them online?  What gives us that unhealthy adrenaline rush that maybe just maybe we’re too hungry for?  I heard the phrase ‘rage farming’ the other day, and I think that there are people who are addicted to the adrenaline rush they get from feeling self-righteous about people who think differently than them.  Some politicians nurture outrage deliberately to get more votes, others pass around petitions that target minorities and share outrageous conspiracy theories.

Addictions are beaten by a higher purpose.  It’s interesting that Paul described the first two steps of an 12 step program in this scripture, admitting that there’s a problem, and turning it over to a higher power as we understand it.  Whether its drugs or classical cd’s the solution is the same.

Community and truth telling are essential.  Brene Brown says it only takes one or two people to help us feel connected.  Hate does not build true community.  Hate does not break down addictions.  Hate does not destroy loneliness, despair, or hopelessness.  Only love does that.  Jesus asked us to trust the truth about our addictions to him and to God.  That when we make that choice, take that step, when we experiment with a higher purpose, a nobler cause than just our day-to-day survival, empathy instead of judgement, then we will find rest for our souls.  Are we there yet? No, but that’s what faith is for.  Practicing the patience to know that while we may not be there yet, we are on our way to God’s good dream for us.  May our lives be so filled with our higher purpose that the journey becomes filled with the joy of living into God’s purpose for us.  Amen.