Takoma Park Baptist Church, Washington, DC June 26, 1988
It is frequently said about alcoholics that they have to hit rock bottom before they can be helped. The usual understanding is that because of the nature of the disease, the behavior called alcoholism, the person who suffers as a chronic alcoholic has to find himself at the bottom of his resources before he is open to being helped.
What makes this insight a little tricky is that there are different bottoms for different folks. The way one person hits rock bottom does not look quite like another person's precipitous slide. We learned to say in the 70's, "Different strokes for different folks." Well, we can also say, "Different drops for different folks". .
There is the low-bottom alcoholic, for example, who is typified as the skid-row bum, out of a job, wearing old clothes, walking the streets, smelling of cheap whiskey, bleary-eyed and repulsive. He's the one we call a drunk, and we can see that he is at or very close to rock bottom.
But there are also high-bottom alcoholics, and these folks may get up every morning and shave and go to work and look pretty normal, but the truth is they are also out of control, they are also governed by the bottle, they also feel a desperation about themselves, and they are also therefore at rock bottom. It may be a high bottom, but it's down there, just the same.
To repeat an old joke, the difference between the drunk and the alcoholic is that the drunk doesn't have to go to all those meetings!
Whatever the alcoholic at bottom looks like, still the truth is there; he has to wake up to the truth about himself before he can get help. He has to stop denying that he is in need before he can turn around. He has to hit rock bottom, however it looks, before he can start the tortured way back up.
I see that as a truth about all of us, whether or not we are tipplers, whether or not we can identify some specific and obvious problem that has a grip on our lives. All of us, I suspect, have to discover and experience what a mess we’ve made of our lives before we can begin again. Every one of us has to strike some kind of rock bottom, whether it be a low bottom or a high bottom really does not matter, before we can start to get our lives in order. And most of all, we have to stop denying that we need help. We just cannot keep on pretending that we have it all together when, in fact, we do not. We do not. The Bible teaches, after all, that there is a complete, total, one hundred percent chance that we need to turn around. All have sinned, all without exception, and all have come short of the glory of God. All have come short of what God intended for us.
There is, I say, a one hundred percent chance that we are going to make a mess of managing our lives, and therefore a one hundred percent chance that we are going to be slipping and sliding in the direction of rock bottom. The issue is not whether we are moving that way; the issue is whether we will understand it, see it for what it is, whether we will at some point quit denying it, and go ahead with the turnaround.
The master psychologist named Jesus of Nazareth understands us. The teacher with all insight into human nature teaches us how to see it for what it is. And this Jesus, this master psychologist, this insightu1 teacher, who is also one in whom the fullness of God dwells, one in whom the Almighty Himself has chosen to live, this one also reaches out to turn us around and to pull us out once we've hit that rock bottom.
I want you this morning to notice how he teaches us about all this in his matchless parable. This wonderful story, with so many layers of meaning, last week informed us of a waiting father, a God who would take risks to give us our freedom, a father who would love us and care for us all the way to the cross, a father who would empty his deep pockets, just for us.
This week we focus on the prodigal himself, the younger brother of the story. And in him we are given a picture of hitting rock bottom, hitting rock bottom in all the most important ways. The ways we too hit rock bottom, and therefore the ways we will have to stop denying if we expect to come home.
Now the outline is really very simple today. Some of you are reading in the area of spiritual disciplines. And if you are, you know, perhaps, the author Richard Foster. One of Richard Foster's books is entitled, “Money, Sex, and Power.” Money, sex and power, an unholy Trinity, maybe, but I expect you can see pretty quickly what he is getting at. Foster says that these are the arenas of life in which we will most easily lose our disciplines, these are the facets of our lives which give us the most occasion to sin. In terms of what I am talking about today, I would say that these are the places where most of us head toward rock bottom. And when you read the parable of the Prodigal, that is exactly what you discover. The outline is simple, memorable: money, sex, and power.
I
Money, obviously, is the first issue with the younger brother. “Father, give me my share of the property now.” Father, give me my share; just couldn’t wait, could he? He looked at his father and saw not so much a living, breathing human being, but instead a potential last will and testament. Since you, you old fossil, are not going to be around much longer, why not just turn it over to me so I can live it up? Money is surely the easiest and most seductive issue for most of us.
My mother-in-law laughingly and yet somewhat seriously talks about how her children have their eyes on various things around the house. She claims, with some exaggeration, that when my wife and her sister and her brother come home, they run around the house putting their names on the bottoms of various lamps and bowls and things, getting their reservations in a bit early. I do know that's an exaggeration, but I have seen, and you have too, that money divides families, wills and testaments destroy superficial relationships, the need to have becomes the need to destroy.
Father, give me my share of the property now. The younger son, the prodigal, took leave of responsible relationships right then. Never mind that he walked out and went to a far country; he had already gone to a spiritual far country. The instant he laid claim to money that he did not earn he took leave of his proper place as a son. The moment that he demanded resources to which he had very little right, at that moment he left responsible relationships and became self-centered.
And at that moment, whether he knew it or not, he had taken the first step toward hitting rock bottom.
And when rock bottom came, it was a hard, tough, harsh one. When he struck rock bottom, he felt it all over. Jesus paints a very clear picture, "He wasted his money in reckless living … he spent everything he had. He spent it all …Then a severe famine spread over that country, and he was left without a thing." Rock bottom; hungry, in debt, without resources, without direction, without marketable skills, rock bottom. ;
I cannot moralize too much about this. I too have wasted money. I too have spent and wished I had not. Like the prodigal I have been at the place where I thought I was wiped out, and I was, because I spent money I didn't have for things I didn't need and for reasons I didn't understand. I told you once before that I nearly put my marriage in jeopardy at one point because I tried to conceal from my wife just what I was doing with our finances. And that, I submit, is a real tough rock bottom.
Money, the Lord is telling us, is the first place where we feel it when we are on that precipitous slide. If the Scripture says in one place that the love of money is the root of all evil, it also is telling us right here in this parable that the misuse of money is the root of brokenness, the beginning of hitting rock bottom .
II
But after money there is sex. Where do you get that, preacher? What makes you think that the prodigal dealt with sexual issues, and how do you know that this too was a rock bottom that he hit?
The first hint is just that, a hint. Reckless living; that's what Good News for Modern Man says. Loose living, that's the Revised Standard Version; good old King James says, "riotous living." He spent his money in riotous living; and I don't think that means a rousing game of checkers. I don't expect that means good food, good wine and loud laughter. Enough said.
But the real clue comes when you hear the elder brother at the end of the parable. The elder brother, protesting the father's welcoming his brother back home screams out a powerful accusation, "This son of yours wasted all your property on prostitutes." "This son of yours wasted all your property on prostitutes." It is entirely possible, of course, that this tells us more about the suspicious mind of the elder brother than it does of the sexual habits of the younger brother; and yet I would suspect that it is not far from the truth.
And here's what I am really getting at, here's what I am seeing here: there is something enormously powerful about our sexual natures. There is something inside us that keeps on nagging at us and will not let us forget that we are all sexual creatures, everyone of us, from the smallest infant to the eldest. And when we decide to leave aside responsible sexuality, we are clearly headed toward rock bottom.
Now the elder brother mentions prostitutes; that’s a low, low place. I hope you hear what I am struggling to teach. This is not meant as a wide swat of the hand to prostitutes and to their johns. That would be too easy, that would be too cheap. What I am laboring to express is this: that when you begin to play fast and loose with who you are as a sexual person, you are beginning to head toward some kind of shame-filled, degraded condition. The worst rock bottom here would be simply blending the money problem and the sex problem and imagining that you can get the joy and the satisfaction you need by commercializing sex. That’s the worst sexual rock bottom, but it's not the only one.
This is hard to talk about and it's hard to listen to, isn’t it? I have been thinking for some while that I ought to preach or teach or say something about sexual morality. And I will yet find an appropriate time and place to do that more thoroughly. Let's just leave it at this today: when you and I, like this young man, determine that we will go into some spiritual far country, let’s not fool ourselves about what the stakes are. Let’s not pretend what the issues are. Quite frankly, I have known too many pastors, professional Christian leaders, who have tripped up on this one. I think we do know that the misuse of sexuality gets us headed abruptly toward a rock bottom brokenness.
III
And then there is power. Money, sex, and power. To complete the unholy trinity, the issue of power. And in some ways this is the most seductive and the most dangerous of all.
Think of it this way. Here is a young man, heir to a good-sized fortune, from a wealthy and prominent family. He is somebody. He gets his money neatly packaged, be buys himself a new chariot, four on the floor, and roars off to never-never land, where again he is somebody.
But all of a sudden the money is gone, the far country is a desert and there is nothing left. And when there is nothing left, there is nobody left. All the friends are gone when all the funds are gone. And when this young man saunters out to find a job and replenish his empty belly, all he can get is a demeaning, insulting job taking care of unclean swine. Hungry, degraded, devalued, going nowhere. From somebody to nobody. From thinking he had power to discovering that he was powerless. From feeding fair-weather friends delicacies to slopping the hogs and not even being allowed a filthy beanpod for himself.
The issue is power; the issue is status. The question, at its depth, is who am I? Am I somebody? Do I count for anything?
And so, you and I, in our own spiritual far countries, spend far too much time and energy protecting our reputations, building our images, polishing our halos. You and I, in our own spiritual far countries, want to make sure that nobody puts us down, and we think we hear insults and putdowns in every corner. In our insecurity, when somebody criticizes us, we think we are being devalued; and the truth is that it is we who have devalued ourselves. It is we who have cut and trimmed at our own self-esteem. It is we who have started down the slide toward the rock bottom of thinking we are nobodies, fearing that we are valueless.
And when we think we are powerless and that we have to seize power, once again, we are on the way to rock bottom.
Money, sex, and power … the three steps toward rock bottom. And if we deny that these are issues for us, we will not be open or ready for what the Father will do for us. Money, sex, and power: put them all together and you have a Swaggart, a Bakker; but in truth you have all of us in one way or another.
I would love to have another half hour to help you see all these things turned around. I would delight in having time to think through the ways in which we can find our way back home from the struggles over money, sex, and power. But instead I will point you only to two key phrases in the parable and to the father's response. I will simply ask you to glory in these, to marvel in these two powerful phrases and then to take heart in the father's reaching arms.
First, the text says the Prodigal son came to his senses. He came to his senses. Or, says another version, he came to himself. In other words, one day he woke up and said, I have hit rock bottom. All I can do is to go home and to trust my father. All I can do if I want to live at all is to ask the father's mercy. As the 18th century wit Samuel Johnson put it, “You can depend upon it, when a man knows he is to be hanged, it concent4ates his mind wonderfully.” He came to himself.
And then the second phrase, "So he got up and started back to his father:" He got up; he may have wallowed with the pigs but he chose no longer to wallow in despair. He got up and started back to his father.
It hurts, frankly, when you hit rock bottom. It's cold and sharp and tough down there. But if we will admit that that's where we are and come to our senses, if we will get up and start back, we'll find that our Christ, who desires not the death of any sinner, has met us at rock bottom. They called it Joseph’s tomb. And together with the Christ of rock bottom, hear the Father sing, “This my child was dead, but is alive again … was lost but is found.” He was at rock bottom, but is on the way home.
