Chuck C.pdf - St. Paul's Cathedral (Episcopal)

Chuck C.
Saint Paul’s Cathedral, San Diego
Proper 15C (RCL); August 15, 2010
Scott Richardson +
Gracious God,
Let these words be more than words and give us the spirit of Jesus.
Amen.
This morning’s gospel reminds me again of a Cursillo retreat I served on ages ago.
Cursillo, for those who may not know, is a short course in basic Christianity – Thursday
evening through Sunday afternoon; teaching, prayer, community, love. The movement
started in Spain in the late 1940’s as an attempt to re-engage men in the life of the
church. The retreats are now often (but not always) divided into two parts – men the first
weekend and women the second. Every weekend has a theme and a title. On the
retreat that I’m now remembering, the women named their gathering, “All Things Bright
and Beautiful.” The men, taking their cue from today’s gospel, named theirs, “I Come
Not To Bring Peace But A Sword.”
An interesting study in gender difference, perhaps. I want to suggest this morning that
both titles, taken together, begin to describe the reality of Christian living. This is the yin
and the yang of our faith. All things bright and beautiful, indeed! Mercy, grace, affection,
neighbor-concern, charity, justice, compassion – the list of virtues goes on and on. All of
that comes with faith in the resurrected Christ. Believing in the Risen Lord, we hold both
the promises and the obligations that attend to his rising. There is a divine purpose to
the resurrection and specific gifts that come with it. To claim these gifts, and then offer
them to others, is the whole point. So the women, on that long-ago retreat, spent time
recalling and re-collecting the bounty and the beauty of their faith. That is time very well
spent.
And the men, in all their macho bravado, got it right, too. Belief in Jesus Christ, Lord and
Savior, necessarily introduces a sword or division into our lives. The division that Luke
records in today’s text is an accurate account of that which occurred in the lives of the
disciples in his community when his gospel was written. First-century believers put it all
on the line – families were scandalized and then broken, religious authorities zealously
denounced the new faith, and secular authorities vigorously persecuted those who
followed the Way. An actual sword took the head of John the Baptist and then, a few
decades later, Saint Paul, our patron. So this was not merely metaphorical or figurative
language. To follow Jesus in the early years meant risking almost everything that makes
life precious. One would only do that in pursuit of something even more dear.
But this began to change when the Roman emperor converted in the early part of the
fourth-century. Some, in later years, argued that Constantine’s conversion set back the
faith because it eliminated the element of risk and made discipleship safe, easy,
common. I don’t take that position – I think we’re better off today than we were twenty
centuries ago and I believe the sword is still an important part of life in Christ. We are,
even today, called to wield the sword of discernment, gently and prayerfully lopping off
that which hinders our ability to love God entirely and our neighbor mutually.

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So what, you ask, might properly be on the chopping block? Over my vacation I had the
chance to read a book entitled, “A New Pair of Glasses.” The author was Charles
Chamberlain, a.k.a. Chuck C., one of the great early lights in AA in this region. He’s also
the father of Richard Chamberlain, the noted actor. The book is an account of a retreat
Chuck led at the Pala Mesa resort in 1975. In his drinking days, Chuck felt himself cut
off from Life, Good, and God. Those three were synonymous for him. He was cut off
from all three, he later discovered, because of his ego. His definition of ego was “the
feeling of conscious separation from.” In his case, due to his drinking, he was separated
from his wife, his children, his employer, his house, his income, his reputation, his
spirituality – anything and everything that was precious or dear, that held meaning for
him.
Lying in bed in January of 1946, too sick to rise and crushed by his many losses, he
finally died (metaphorically and figuratively speaking). He ceased to matter to himself.
The only reason he wanted to continue living was to rub out just a bit of the record of his
colossal failure. His strategy, born in desperation, was to completely reverse course and
make an oblation, an offering, of himself to his family and to the world. His wife was
divorcing him; before she left, he said to her, “Honey, it’s no longer of any importance to
me whether or not I live under this roof… I’ll never ask a thing of you as long as I live,
but one. If I can ever add anything to your life, let me give it to you.”
The kids were next: “Boys, there’s no father in the household any longer. You don’t
need to love me, you don’t need to obey me, I’ll never ask a thing of you as long as you
live, but one. If I ever have anything – be it money, counsel, or blood – that will add to
your life, let me give it to you.” With those two offerings, and with the good work that
followed, his home was healed.
His boss (the same man who threatened to throw him out the window if he ever set foot
on the plant again) was third in line. Chuck showed up for work after a three-week toot.
The boss burst into his office steaming. Chuck told his boss to calm down. He was
there to work for free until he could catch up with the things he should have been doing
all along. After that, he’d leave on his own. The boss would never owe him another
penny. Eleven years later he owned the company. Far more importantly, he never took
another drink or swallowed another pill.
One might say that Chuck C. didn’t wield the sword so much as fall on it. He gave up.
He surrendered. He died and rose. He decided that he didn’t need to fight everything
and everybody anymore. He opted to let God be God. He turned toward service. He
gave himself absolutely, completely trusting God to care for him as long as he listened
and followed. The feeling of “conscious separation from” gave way to a deep connection
to others and to God, a living relationship that lasted until and, I trust, beyond his death
in 1984.
I mention Chuck’s story because I’m sure there’s a universal theme embedded within it.
The truth is, drinking, finally, wasn’t Chuck’s primary issue. Ego-based separation,
always feeling outside, apart, above and beyond, was the issue – his drinking was a
symptom of that. When he put on a new pair of glasses, when he flipped almost
everything he’d been taught about life, when he let loose his ego, when he gave up outthinking,
out-performing, and out-maneuvering others, when he stopped nurturing his
resentments, when he committed himself to loving every single human being on planet
earth, when he ceased to care how others viewed him, when he put away rationalizing,

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minimizing, and denying, when he was able to view life from a entirely different
perspective (giving, not gaining; serving, not being served; standing under, not lording
over) then a new path, the right path, God’s path, appeared before him. His despair
gave way to joy and he became an immensely useful human being – the fulfillment of his
best hope for himself.
Chuck C. rubbed out the record, and then some. All things, so bright and so beautiful,
were his. And here’s the kicker; they had been his all along, he just didn’t know it. It
was all a free gift from the very start and from a loving God, the God of his own
understanding discovered in a life of service.
Again, I share his story knowing that, while the details may differ, the hope is shared by
all, whether we’re conscious of it or not. We want to be in right relationship with our
God, our neighbor and ourselves. And we want that more than anything else in life. We
will go to any lengths to attain that. That is the pearl of great price, that which we will die
for. The good news is we don’t have to die. The thing we’re looking for, Chuck liked to
say, is the thing we’re looking with. It is right here, right now, fully present, immediately
available. The kingdom of God is within you, Jesus said. May we, in our inward quest,
in our personal and unique journey, be as blessed in the discovering as that selfdescribed
tongue-chewing, babbling, idiot (and I would add glorious) drunk. Amen.