Sermon Illustrations on drunkenness
Background
Pushed to the Brink of Destruction
Psychiatrist James Knight describes in graphic detail the experience that members of Alcoholics Anonymous experience:
These persons have had their lives laid bare and pushed to the brink of destruction by alcoholism and its accompanying problems. When these persons arise from the ashes of the hellfire of addictive bondage, they have an understanding, sensitivity, and willingness to enter into and maintain healing encounters with their fellow alcoholics.
In this encounter they cannot and will not permit themselves to forget their brokenness and vulnerability. Their wounds are acknowledged, accepted, and kept visible. Further, their wounds are used to illuminate and stabilize their own lives while they work to bring the healing of sobriety to their alcoholic brothers and sisters, and sometimes to their sons and daughters. The effectiveness of AA’s members in the care and treatment of their fellow alcoholics is one of the great success stories of our time, and graphically illustrates the power of wounds, when used creatively, to lighten the burden of pain and suffering.
Stories
The Clever Husband
The drunk husband snuck up the stairs quietly. He looked in the bathroom mirror and bandaged the bumps and bruises he’d received in a fight earlier that night. He then proceeded to climb into bed, smiling at the thought that he’d pulled one over on his wife.
When morning came, he opened his eyes and there stood his wife. “You were drunk last night weren’t you!”
“No, honey.” “Well, if you weren’t, then who put all the band-aids on the bathroom mirror?”
Source unknown
Hearing the Confessions of the Poor
Angela’s Ashes took the publishing world by storm when it was released in September 1996. It won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in the category of Biography/Autobiography. It was also a massive commercial success, eventually selling over 10 million copies across the globe. It tells the story of Frank “Frankie” McCourt, born 1930 into the severe, brutal conditions of the Great Depression in Limerick, Ireland. One particular story from the book is quite compelling.
Frankie is a small boy when his mother gives birth to a new child. His grandparents have given the family $5 to buy milk for the new baby. Unfortunately, McCourt’s father, an alcoholic, takes the money to go on a bender. Frankie’s mother sends the boy to find their father and bring him home.
He is unsuccessful in his attempt to find his father. But in his search, he comes upon a man, drunk and asleep with an entire plate of fish and chips lying in front of him. Frankie is famished, and, giving in to temptation, brings the food outside and stuffs himself with the unsuspecting and unconscious patron’s meal.
Afterwards, the boy feels pangs of guilt and regret, and decides to go to confession and receive penance for his sins. Frank enters a Dominican church and confesses to the priest. The priest gently prods him, asking why he stole the man’s meal.
You can imagine the emotions rushing through the boy as he explains how the cupboards were completely empty, that his father had spent their only money on alcohol and the deep hunger he experienced as he came upon the meal. The priest was silent for a moment. Frankie expects a verbal lashing from the priest. Instead, he responds with a gentle word of compassion. This is McCourt’s retelling of the moment:
I wonder if the priest is asleep because he’s very quiet till he says, My child, I sit here, I hear the sins of the poor, I assign the penance. I bestow the absolution. I should be on my knees washing their feet.… Go. Pray for me. He blesses me in Latin, talks to himself in English and I wonder what I did to him.
Stuart Strachan Jr, Source Material from Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes (New York: Scribner, 1996), 185.
Housing the Fullness of God
One of my favorite stories is of John of Kronstadt. He was the Nineteenth Century Russian Orthodox priest at the time when alcohol abuse was rampant. None of the priests ventured out of their churches to help the people. They waited for people to come to them. John, compelled by love, went out into the streets. People said he would lift the hungover, foul-smelling people from the gutter, cradle them in his arms and say to them, “this is beneath your dignity. You were meant to house the fullness of God.”
James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus Knows (The Apprentice Series), InterVarsity Press
A Life Changed by a Stolen Gideon Bible
Steve May tells the story of “Dee,” who grew up in east Tennessee in an affluent, but unchurched home. Dee’s time at college involved as much wild living as it did studying, and soon her life became a never ending search for a party.
One weekend, Dee and her friends rented some rooms at a local motel, and set about the usual activities involving drugs and alcohol. On this weekend, the group also devised a contest to see who could steal the most from the room. One of the things Dee stole was the Gideon Bible.
Since they all thought it was funny, Dee won the contest.
Several weeks later, Dee’s life began to fall apart. She discovered she was pregnant. Abortion seemed the only solution, and it was a solution she had used in the past. Her boyfriend left her, and Dee found herself all alone.
One night, in the midst of her fear and uncertainty, in the midst of her crisis, she picked up the Bible she had stolen and began to read.
She flipped the book open to 1 Samuel, and found the story of Hannah, who desperately wanted a child. It was the first time Dee had ever read the Bible, and the words seemed to have a life of their own. In a short time, as she read more of the Bible, and as she found Christians ready to help her, Dee accepted Christ. As the years went by, Dee grew deeper in her walk with Christ, and by the time her child was a teen-ager, both mother and daughter were telling their story to groups all around their community.
It was crisis that brought Dee to a point of searching for answers, and it was the Bible that took her to the only place where she’d find true wisdom. And immediately, that wisdom changed the way Dee lived.
The State Trooper with a Sense of Humor
In most of the United States there is a policy of checking on any stalled vehicle on the highway when temperatures drop to single digits or below. About 3 AM one very cold morning, Montana State Trooper Allan Nixon #658 responded to a call there was a car off the shoulder of the road outside Great Falls, Montana.
He located the car, stuck in deep snow and with the engine still running. Pulling in behind the care with his emergency lights on, the trooper walked to the driver’s door to find an older man passed out behind the wheel with a nearly empty vodka bottle on the seat beside him. The driver came awake when the trooper tapped on the window. Seeing the rotating lights in his rearview mirror, and the state trooper standing next to his car, the man panicked. He jerked the gearshift into ‘drive’ and hit the gas.
The car’s speedometer was showing 20-30-40 and then 50 MPH, but it was still stuck in the snow, wheels spinning. Trooper Nixon, having a sense of humor, began running in place next to the speeding (but stationary) car. The driver was totally freaked, thinking the trooper was actually keeping up with him. This goes on for about 30 seconds, then the trooper yelled, “PULL OVER!”
The man nodded, turned his wheel and stopped the engine. Needless to say, the man from North Dakota was arrested and is probably still shaking his head over the state trooper in Montana who could run 50 miles per hour.
Source Unknown
Analogies
Housing the Fullness of God
One of my favorite stories is of John of Kronstadt. He was the Nineteenth Century Russian Orthodox priest at the time when alcohol abuse was rampant. None of the priests ventured out of their churches to help the people. They waited for people to come to them. John, compelled by love, went out into the streets. People said he would lift the hungover, foul-smelling people from the gutter, cradle them in his arms and say to them, “this is beneath your dignity. You were meant to house the fullness of God.”
James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus Knows (The Apprentice Series), InterVarsity Press
Humor
The Clever Husband
The drunk husband snuck up the stairs quietly. He looked in the bathroom mirror and bandaged the bumps and bruises he’d received in a fight earlier that night. He then proceeded to climb into bed, smiling at the thought that he’d pulled one over on his wife.
When morning came, he opened his eyes and there stood his wife. “You were drunk last night weren’t you!”
“No, honey.” “Well, if you weren’t, then who put all the band-aids on the bathroom mirror?”
Source unknown
The State Trooper with a Sense of Humor
In most of the United States there is a policy of checking on any stalled vehicle on the highway when temperatures drop to single digits or below. About 3 AM one very cold morning, Montana State Trooper Allan Nixon #658 responded to a call there was a car off the shoulder of the road outside Great Falls, Montana.
He located the car, stuck in deep snow and with the engine still running. Pulling in behind the care with his emergency lights on, the trooper walked to the driver’s door to find an older man passed out behind the wheel with a nearly empty vodka bottle on the seat beside him. The driver came awake when the trooper tapped on the window. Seeing the rotating lights in his rearview mirror, and the state trooper standing next to his car, the man panicked. He jerked the gearshift into ‘drive’ and hit the gas.
The car’s speedometer was showing 20-30-40 and then 50 MPH, but it was still stuck in the snow, wheels spinning. Trooper Nixon, having a sense of humor, began running in place next to the speeding (but stationary) car. The driver was totally freaked, thinking the trooper was actually keeping up with him. This goes on for about 30 seconds, then the trooper yelled, “PULL OVER!”
The man nodded, turned his wheel and stopped the engine. Needless to say, the man from North Dakota was arrested and is probably still shaking his head over the state trooper in Montana who could run 50 miles per hour.
Source Unknown
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