Telling Secrets

A young monk arrives at a monastery and is assigned the task of helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand. The young monk notices that all the other monks are copying, not from original manuscripts, but other copies. The young monk points this out to the abbot, and notes that if someone makes a small error in the first copy, that error will continue in all subsequent copies.

The abbot agrees that this is a good point. So the abbot goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn’t been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbott. The young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He finds the abbot banging his head against a wall and wailing.

“We missed the r!”

“We missed the r!”

“We missed the r!”

The abbot’s forehead is bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably. “What’s wrong?” the young monk asks.

With a choked voice, the abbot replies, “The word was

Celebrate

Occasionally we tell ourselves that we’re not really sure what is sin and what’s okay. We tell ourselves we don’t really know the rules. Or, we don’t know when and if they always apply. I mean, who’s to say?

What is sin? It’s not just breaking rules, though it is that. It’s breaking relationship with God and other human beings. “The rules” are in place so we don’t do the more serious offense of breaking relationship.

John Ortberg writes, “Strictly speaking, I cannot break the rules. They endure, for they reflect the way things are. I can only break myself against them.”

When we sin we hurt God, we hurt others, and we hurt ourselves. We sacrifice our integrity.

What is addiction? Addiction is idolatry – taking a good thing and making it an ultimate thing. Addiction is compulsively trying to fill the void of a broken relationship.


To understand this is to understand the truth behind the addict’s lie – “I’m not hurting anybody but myself.” This is simply not true. Sin always has relational consequences.

Take King David, for example. You know his story of how as king he usually leads his troops in battle, but one spring, he doesn’t. He stays home. Soon he is bored. He sees a beautiful woman named Bathsheba; and he covets her, though she is another man’s wife. David sends for her and commits adultery. He then tries in different ways to have it covered up. But even King David cannot manipulate the situation to his liking at first. Finally, David sends the husband to the front lines of battle and the husband is killed. David is off the hook! He can have his adultery in peace. He thinks that he has gotten away with it. He doesn’t consider how this might have affected Bathsheba and he certainly tries not to think about her dead husband. Bathsheba mourns for her husband, but when her mourning was over, David again sends for her and makes her his wife.

“But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.” 2 Samuel 12.1

Remember – sin has relational consequences. David’s sin took a wife from her husband. David’s sin also tested his relationship with God. God sends the prophet Nathan to David to confront the man with his sin. Nathan, being wise, tells David a story about a rich man who steals from a poor shepherd. Even though the rich man has all the sheep he needs, he takes the poor man’s one lamb to feed a guest. What do you think of this David?

“The man who has done this deserves to die!” David cries with outrage. His moral compass is unwavering when it comes to others.

“You are that man, “ the prophet replies.

David is undone. Or rather, David is saved. He is saved by the fact that his friend is willing to tell him the truth. David had thought that if he could just get away with his sin without anyone finding out he would be fine. In reality, someone finding out and telling him the truth was the best thing and perhaps the only thing that could have saved him.

Even if the addict’s lie – I’m not hurting anyone but myself – were true, it would still be sin. Sin is sin against God and against our very selves. St. Paul writes, “Don’t you know that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit?” When we sin, we desecrate the sanctity of our selves, a sacred self made in the image of a holy God.

Frederick Buechner’s father committed suicide when he was ten years old. His father had been an alcoholic though no one talked about that. His mother moved him and his brother immediately across the country. They didn’t stay for the funeral. What’s more, Buechner wasn’t allowed to ask questions about his father’s death. Soon, he wasn’t really allowed to talk about his father. A code of silence surrounded his father’s death just like it had surrounded his drinking in life.

Buechner writes that it is important to keep track of our secrets lest we miss who we are.

“I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are your secrets.”

1. To break the power of addiction we have to tell the secret. We have to confess the sin.

Just as there is a code of silence in the family of an addict, there is power in confession. Step Five in the twelve steps of AA is “Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” It’s why the IRS maintains what is informally called the “cheater’s account.”

There’s an old story that the IRS received a letter that read, “My conscience is bothering me because of cheating on my taxes, so I’m sending $10,000. If my conscience doesn’t clear up, I’ll send the rest of what I owe.”

What did David do after Nathan confronted him with the truth. Psalm 51 is what he did.
The Psalm is subtitled, Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon – To the leader: A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

The first words of David’s psalm are: Have mercy on me, O God.

Verse three is: For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.

David is finally telling the secret. He is confessing. He is also entering into the next crucial step:

2. Ask God for help. God has the power to save and heal us.

Step Two of AA is “come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.”

In Mark’s gospel (1.21-28) we read about a man with an “unclean spirit” who had wandered into the synagogue. When the man sees Jesus he cries out wildly “I KNOW WHO YOU ARE JESUS OF NAZARETH, HOLY ONE OF GOD! Everyone is probably so embarrassed by the man’s shouting they don’t stop to notice the truth he is speaking. Nonetheless, Jesus commands the unclean spirit to come out. Later in Mark’s gospel, Jesus meets a man in the country of the Gerasenes who is possessed by demons. “Legion” they are called because they are so many. Jesus casts out the demons into a herd of swine and leaves the young man calm and in his right mind once again.

Anyone who has seen addiction in full bloom has seen at least a glimpse of the demonic in action. But friends, the good news is that Jesus still has power and authority over unclean spirits – he has the power to “restore us to sanity.”


God is able and willing. When we ask, He gives us grace, truth, and power. We find these things in the sacrament today. More importantly, in the sacrament, we find Him.