I speak to you in the holy Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Let me say that another way:
Hi everybody, I’m Stephen, and I’m an alcoholic.
Today I want to celebrate the existence of a powerful, and powerfully good, community. We live in a time of discord, disruption, and distrust; but this community thrives in the face of all that. We live in a time when people feel desperate, lost, and confused; but this community offers them a way forward. We live in a time when the world seems to be falling apart, but this community helps people get their lives together.
Sometimes, in this community, we hear stories of search and rescue. We hear about a person who would go out and literally lift people out of the gutter, put them in his truck, and drive them to a meeting of this community. And we hear about members of the community who invite troubled people to join us, or sign up to serve newcomers, telling them that the community will never, ever give up on them.
This is the community that surrounded and saved our brother Kurt. He told stories about his struggle, which sometimes landed him in the hospital, sick almost to death with a devastating illness. The community never gave up on him. Like everyone, Kurt was welcome to “go out,” as they say, to leave the community any number of times he chose, and they always, always welcomed him back.
This community could teach churches a lot about how to keep the main thing the main thing. Newcomers truly are the most important members. Those who go out are genuinely, enthusiastically welcomed back. The mission of the community is always crystal clear. And so this community never, ever worries about its own survival. They will always offer something valuable to someone, to many people.
Most of us here are residents of a large city, and all of us live many centuries after images like sheep and shepherds would touch our own lived experience. But try to imagine it anyway: try to imagine this community as a flock of sheep in a pasture. If you can picture that, you can imagine our brother Kurt leaving the immediate gathering of the community to seek out the one who was lost.
That’s what he did for me. Kurt would stray from his usual routines to make time for me. If I enter the story of the sheep in a pasture, I enter it first as the lost sheep who got brought back to the community on Kurt’s shoulders. Most of us remember him as unfailingly friendly, positive, and gregarious. So if he carried someone back on his shoulders, he did that in good spirits, with enthusiasm, with abundant love.
Except he did it with respect, too. Kurt respected people. He appreciated what they were going through. He truly empathized; he could relate. He didn’t think of himself as better than his peers.
And he would leaven all of this with humor, which made his leadership all the more authentic. Early in sobriety, in the first couple of months, I called Kurt, my first sponsor, and whined about how I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. It was Friday evening and my husband Andrew was having a cocktail downstairs. (Just the one cocktail…!) But Friday-night cocktails had always been our ritual, and now I couldn’t participate. Kurt said something like, “Just get over yourself and get down there! Go talk to him. Come on, you know this isn’t about the drink you can’t have.” There was a trace of good-natured teasing in his voice. He knew I was whining, and he knew I knew I was whining. “Come on,” he said. “Just go down there.”
And so I did. I went down the stairs, and instead of sulking on my own, I sulked in the kitchen, I’m sorry to say, while Andrew looked like he didn’t have the first clue what he was supposed to say or do. But Kurt hung in with me, and acquainted himself with Andrew. Kurt helped me work the Steps, and gave me a thumb drive with AA recordings and Step worksheets on it. And over the years he would stay in touch, as he did with so many others.
I got carried back to the community. That’s what Kurt did, and my faith tells me that that’s what he still does.
We are here today, then, not just to grieve, not just to lament the grievous end of a person’s life before his time, not just to pay our respects and embrace one another. Sure, yes, we’re here for all of that. But we also are gathering to form yet again a good, strong, life-saving community, a community that works hard to find the lost ones.
And I will tell you what has not died, what never dies. Yes, Kurt had a particular gift in splendid abundance: the gift of welcoming, of seeking out the lost, of gathering others, and still others, back into the fold. But that gift continues to thrive here and now. Even as we mourn our dead, the community grows; even as we grieve the loss of a particular person, the power moves beyond one person’s identity and personal story; even as we notice aching absences, the hillside is overrun with sheep and goats of all kinds, some in extreme need, others able to meet those needs, still others who don’t even know why they’re here, except they can somehow sense the power of the Great Spirit who dwelled so wondrously in Kurt, but also moves among so many of us right now.
Now, many people in this community can’t or won’t say Yes to ideas like God, Jesus, grace, resurrection, religion – really anything that reaches beyond what we can see and touch, anything that places faith in that which can’t be grasped. Some people resist joining the community for this very reason. “I can’t deal with the God stuff,” people say. But their perspectives never bothered Kurt, a lifelong Episcopalian and a beloved leader in this parish church, a person of faith who told me literally to bend my knees in prayer when we did the Third Step together. No, it never bothered Kurt that many – maybe even most – of the people he knew had a “spiritual experience of the educational variety,” to quote the Big Book. He was smart enough to know that that’s all fine, it’s all good, nobody has to believe anything, except that they should keep coming back.
No matter who you are, no matter what you believe, no matter what you think, no matter whether you have a problem similar to Kurt’s problems – no matter who you are, you belong. Kurt was more than a person in recovery who found a solution. He was a brother and a son; he was a brother-in-law and a spouse and a friend; he was a person of faith and hope; and his life witnessed to the truth that no one is beyond reach or beyond aid; every person is worth carrying back to the center of an ever-widening community. You are worth rescuing, and you belong in a community where someone will see you for who you are, and maybe tease you a little (hey, you’ve got some of that coming, don’t you think?), and embrace you as one of us.
I only pray that Kurt will allow us to carry him, too. We want to carry him not just in our memories, but into our gatherings, into our discussions, into our hearts. I for one want Kurt back. And since I’m on a spiritual path that holds out hope for that very thing, I can tell you that this hope of mine is not in vain. I’ll see him in that Great Gettin’ Up Morning, yes. But I’ll also see him before then, too, whenever we members of his community come together. He has departed from our immediate company for a while, but whenever we embrace someone Kurt would have embraced, we can say this with confidence:
“Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep who was lost.”
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Preached at the Holy Eucharist with the Rite of Commendation of Kurt Lucks, October 7, 2023, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Luke 15:1-10