CHANGE ?

Galatians 4:4-7, Luke 2:22-40a

This morning, being the first day of the New Year, I'm going with the cultural theme of the day--a day when people generally take stock of their lives and how they're living them; when people think about the inertia by which we often live, the unconscious tide that carries us along. We think about whether we're eating too much, drinking too much; spending too much, giving too little; wondering if we're living the unexamined life that Plato said is not worth living. Maybe we're asking ourselves: Is this who I want to be? And if we're attempting the spiritual life, perhaps we asking the question: am I who God wants me to be?

We think about change. We ask ourselves whether it's possible to change. Can people change? Can I change? Can this guy next to me finally change?

Most of the sermon today is actually a story that has to do with that question--a story that was read during the Advent Service of Prayers and Readings. It's a story written by church member Elizabeth Pasko, and, I wanted to share with you today, because it's a wonderful (and true) story. It's a story you can superimpose over the idyllic and heroic story we read from Luke this morning, of Joseph and Mary taking Jesus to the temple for his dedication. Consider this a sort of photo-negative of that story, which perhaps is a better representation of real life for us, a story that is no less a parable of what the gospel truly means.

Here it is:
As a child, my niece Kim was the type of kid who couldn't walk without turning a cartwheel or twisting her limber little body into some kind of flip. She was fun, and the joy she brought to life just added to her vibrancy and beauty. She was smart, sassy, and artistic.

In high school, she ran with the fast crowd that partied and wore big hair. After high school, to our disappointment, she didn't do all that well at college, and she soon found herself working at a job that didn't feed her spirit, though it gave her a little money, and a lot of free time. Her father--my brother Michael--in an attempt to gain some control, tried the line that had always worked with us. "As long as you live in my house...." She moved out.

Much to the Tisk! Tisk! Tisk! of her aunts, she met Danny, a heavily tattooed man who had been in prison for drugs. She married him and they had a child.

Contrary to what you see on TV, Child Protective Services lets you take your baby home even if it is addicted to heroin. It is pathetically sad to see the sweet, scrunchy sleep of an infant disrupted by twitches and spasms. It is heart wrenching to hear the piercing screams caused by withdrawal that nothing can comfort. This was a loved and longed-for child, and we aunts were shamed and pained that the mother-love we thought was genetic in our family could allow Kim to endanger her baby.

Kim cried and apologized and promised better behavior. Baby Christina went home with Kim and Danny with our hope she might live a normal life of hope and accomplishment. But you really can't accomplish anything on drugs and your life is never normal. Drugs can be stronger than hope. And if you let it, heroin becomes stronger than love.

A few months later, my brother and his wife received a call. I f they did not agree to take custody of Christina by two in the afternoon, she would become a ward of the state. He and his wife were there in court with my cousin, the lawyer, by eleven.

The opinion of the aunts at the time was that Danny, the tattoo man, was responsible for all this of course, and that if only Kim could meet a nice normal guy, she might have the life we always hoped she would have. My brother Michael just wanted her to live. But a heroin addict--young, smart and beautiful or otherwise--doesn't have many prospects.

Michael became active in a twelve-step organization called NA in an effort to find a way to help her live. Meanwhile, Kim and Danny fell off the face of the earth. Whether they felt pressure or shame, they did not come for Thanksgiving. They did not even come for the baby's first Christmas. What was there to say? We could only wish things were different.

But about a year later, after missing another holiday season, Kim surfaced. She was seven months pregnant with her second child and still on drugs. I think it was one of the saddest days of my life when I heard that. Not again? How could she not have learned from the first time?

This news came at a time when all kinds of tragedy seemed to be happening to my family. We wondered what was going on with my mother when one day we found her wandering outside her home disoriented and confused because the smoke alarm had gone off; shortly thereafter, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And in the same week my brother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Kim gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby. But with all that was going on, we were truly too much in shock to care.

During that time, Kim and Danny, now with their new baby, Christian, seemed to be pulling themselves together, although it was a struggle. And when Michael was sick, all were surprised that it was Danny who climbed into bed with my brother to hold him up, whispering, "Breathe, Pop, Breathe." It was Danny, with his tattooed fingers who wiped the fowl drip that kept coming out of his mouth. It was Danny who begged him to just try a small sip of water. Our hearts were broken, but we were too staggered with grief to do much but watch and weep. But it was Danny, the former druggie who took action. My sister said, not jokingly, "when I die, I hope Danny will be there to nurse me!"

Sometimes you have to watch what you ask for because when God sends you the miracle, you wonder if it is all your fault. After Danny's redemption, after all thought that we even needed a miracle had faded, Danny died. He was horribly killed by his teenaged son in a freak accident. His funeral was a cross between a motorcycle rally and an NA meeting. If it wasn't a funeral, it might have been funny, because so many different kinds of people, different races, different shapes, different backgrounds stood up before us and said the same thing. "I would never have gotten sober if it had not been for Danny." "Danny helped me when I didn't think anything could help me."

That was when I realized that God has his own reasons and his own plans for answering prayer. Although I would have wanted so much for a miracle for my sweet mother to recover, or to have spared my brother all that suffering through some miraculous healing, what we got instead was Danny. And the miracle that Danny worked by helping all those people, well, that was probably bigger than anything we could imagine.
And Kim...well, she's wonderful. After the funeral, she rode off on the back of a motorcycle and into a new and fulfilling life. Christina and Christian live with her and her new businessman husband in a lovely house in the country. She speaks to youth about the dangers of drugs. She drives a mini-van and last summer had another wonderful, healthy baby.

God always has a blessing with your name on it; all you have to do is receive it. And that's the end of the story.

********

Paul, in that part of the Letter to the Galatians we read today, talks about how Christ came as a gift, so that we might no longer live under slavery to the law. Now, forget for a moment all the highfalutin theology around that. After hearing that story, just think of that word, "Law" for a moment, and superimpose on it whatever it means to you to live the old life. For Kim and Danny, it was a life of drugs, of heroine, a life that had imprisoned them.
So, what is it you are dragging along behind you--that is your Old Life? You might have come here dragging all of your failed decisions, failed hopes, your lack of discipline, or your disappointment that your dream for your life does not match the current reality of it; you might have come here today feeling, as St. Augustine felt about himself, a "cut and bleeding soul, longing for God."

Put all that under the category of what it means to live your life under the law, to live the old life, the life of inertia; to live your life believing the demon that whispers in your ear, "you'll never change."
Then, consider that you have to make a decision today, on this first day of the year, about what faith really is. That faith isn't some set of principles we can run up the flagpole and salute; a series of comfortable propositions we can say in unison and all go home happy to Sunday supper.

Here's the deal: the essence of faith is the trust, the gut-engaging existential stance toward life that this gift, Christ, can change you. Will change you, if you receive him. It is the expectation of that. That no matter what you have done in your life, or haven't done; no matter what terrible thing you might have done; no matter how disappointing or cowardly or insipid your life might seem to you, there is nothing about you that God cannot love; there is nothing that cannot be burned away in the fire of divine love, to reveal the beauty of God's image in you.

That's the decision you have to make to day. Whether or not to go into the New Year with that faith: the faith that God can change you; that God can take your failures and disillusionments and petty little deaths and turn them, and you, toward the light of a new day, so you can see yourself clearly as the remarkable creation God has made of you.

What will you decide?

January 1, 2006

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