Powerless

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
March 21, 2010: Fifth Sunday in Lent
A Service of Wholeness

Powerless
Psalm 130

The shoeboxes were stacked neatly on the closet floor:
five boxes across, four high – twenty boxes in all.
The boxes were almost all the same,
the shoes from the same store:
practical, business-like.

The bottle moved around from box to box;
never in the bottom row,
usually in the third row.
Hidden away, but still accessible.

The bottle was always vodka.
Never the designer stuff,
the kind you find in ads in the glossy magazines:
sophisticated people having sophisticated fun
in sophisticated locations
while sipping sophisticated drinks.
But it was never the cheapest stuff either,
the stuff that was hardly better than kerosene,
the proverbial “rotgut”.

No, it was the kind a young professional could buy in the liquor store
without feeling overly self-conscious.
It was like the shoes the bottle kept company with:
practical, business-like, functional.

This vodka was never going to be shared with friends;
not something to lubricate a flow of laughter and good times.
This vodka was never going to be used to toast a success
celebrate a birth,
mark a promotion,
or rejoice at a wedding anniversary.

No, it was only going to be used to deaden,
to dull, …to darken.
A few small sips daily,
generally in the evening,
just enough to bring the dusk,
just enough to cloud reality,
but not so much that it would
blanket the world in darkness.

What kind of a person would do this:
hide a bottle from family and friends?
Clearly this person was trying to hide it
from themselves, as well,
hide the reality of their drinking from themselves.
What kind of a person would live this way,
moving the boxes each evening,
unscrewing the cap,
taking a couple of bitter slugs quickly from the bottle,
and just as quickly capping the bottle,
and putting it back in the box,
back among the shoes?

The actions speak of an undesirable person;
certainly not the kind of person any of us
would count among our friends, right?
Someone to be condemned, avoided.

But take a closer look:
Twenty pairs of shoes in the closet?
Clothing hanging above the shoes that spoke of success,
hard work, professionalism.
Diplomas on the wall nearby that had words like
“salutatorian”, “summa cum laude,”
even the seal of an Ivy League university.

Obviously this was not someone we’d label an “alcoholic”.
Alcoholics are those people who sleep on park benches,
who wear filthy, torn clothing,
who stumble down city sidewalks begging for money
to buy bottles of cheap wine,
wines with names like “Night Train Express”,
or “Thunderbird”.

But the reality,
the ugly reality,
the very real reality was,
that this was a picture of alcoholism.
This was a picture of a person who was addicted,
a person whose life was controlled by
Mr. Popov, Mr. Romanov, and Mr. Smirnoff.
The clothing, the house, the diplomas:
none of that mattered.
All that mattered was the daily drink,
the dulling, the deadening,
the hazy grayness.
Alcohol had taken over the person’s life.
This person was an alcoholic,
this person was addicted.

We’ve all seen them,
men and women huddled outside of office buildings,
shivering in the wind, rain, snow and cold,
steaming in the summer’s heat,
outside to have a cigarette because their workplace
won’t let them smoke.

The advertisements define what kind of person you are
by the cigarette you smoke:
lively, liberated,
intellectual, macho,
cool, young, desirable --
decide what kind of person you want to be
and there is a cigarette tailored just for you.

The cigarette manufacturers fought furiously for decades
the claim that smoking was dangerous
to a person’s health.
There was no clear, convincing proof, they said,
no absolutely clear link between smoking cigarettes,
and lung cancer, even though
the Surgeon General of the United States
found differently almost 50 years ago.

The tobacco manufacturers sent their lawyers out
to dispute the point
and then tried to change the subject
with the assertion that
the person who buys cigarettes
is simply making a personal choice
in the free marketplace.
This wasn’t Russia, they’d fume;
no one was forced to buy a pack of cigarettes.

The little secret the tobacco companies
weren’t sharing, though,
was that people were forced to buy cigarettes.
Nicotine is among the most addictive drugs known to humanity,
as addictive, perhaps even more so
than heroin or cocaine.
Nicotine occurs naturally in tobacco;
when a person smokes a cigarette, a cigar, a pipe,
or even chews a little “Mailpouch”
he gets a dose of nicotine.

Tobacco companies learned
the addictive qualities of nicotine very early on,
and they liked the idea:
turn a customer into an addict
and you’ve got the customer for life,
even if it is an abbreviated life.
So the tobacco companies,
companies that around this part of the world
were thought to be respectable members of the community,
began to wonder,
“if we were to put a little more nicotine in each cigarette,
would that make the smoker a little more addicted,
causing him or her to buy more of our cigarettes?”

And that’s just what they began to do,
even as they furiously denied doing any such thing.
But all the litigation over the past decade has made clear
that they have engineered nicotine in cigarettes for decades,
intending to capitalize on the addictive qualities of nicotine.
(see generally, “A Question of Intent” by David Kessler)

Addiction.
Addiction is all around us.
Addiction to smoking:
More than forty-five million men and women still smoke
even after all these years;
More than 400,000 men and women will die
of smoking-related illnesses – preventable illnesses,
here in the US this year.
Die because they are addicted.

Addiction to alcohol:
15 million – 15 million - men and women:
older men and women,
younger men and women,
children as young as middle school,
blue collar, white collar,
rural, urban,
affluent, poor.
Alcoholism knows no boundaries,
it is in every neighborhood,
it is in every church…
every church.

But addiction isn’t a character flaw;
addiction is not a sign of immorality;
not a sign of weakness;
not a sign of something gone wrong
in a person’s upbringing.
Addiction is a disease.

Addiction to alcohol,
addiction to nicotine,
addiction to drugs –
and not just street drugs
but drugs we can find in the medicine cabinets
in leafy suburban neighborhoods -
addiction to gambling,
addiction to food,
addiction to sex, shopping, the Internet.

Addiction takes over
and we are no longer in control.
We are powerless.
Utterly and completely powerless.

Every addict knows that first step toward reclaiming his life, her life,
is to admit their powerlessness,
to admit they are not in control.
To stop saying, “I can stop anytime I want to.”
To stop saying, “I can handle it.”
To stop saying, “I don’t have a problem.”

If you are at all familiar with any twelve-step program,
the kind first developed within Alcoholics Anonymous
and later expanded to all kinds of support groups,
you know that the first three of the Twelve Steps
is to admit your powerlessness,
to admit you are not in control,
to admit your need for a higher power.
This is how AA puts it:
“We admit we are powerless over alcohol—…”
And given our powerlessness,
“We have made a decision to turn our will and our lives over
to the care of God as we understand him.”

The addict turns his life, her life over to a Higher Power,
however they view that Higher Power.
The God of Moses,
The God Allah…
however each person understands
their God, their Higher Power.
For us, of course, our Higher Power
is the Lord God,
it is our Lord Jesus Christ.

The reality is that we all struggle
with something that controls us,
something that reminds us
that try as we might,
we are often powerless.

It might be your own struggle with addiction.
It might be that you are living with a loved one,
a spouse, a parent, a child,
who is struggling with an addiction.
My own experience was so wrenching
to have to acknowledge my powerlessness
when a loved one was addicted and struggling,
that I could not find some way to fix the problem,
some way to help the person.
How could I be that powerless?
But I was,
and I had to turn to a Higher Power.
I had to “let go and let God.”

Something has control over you – what is it?
What has power over you?
It may not be an addiction.
Perhaps it is an emotion,
an emotion like anger,
which once it takes hold
takes over completely,
leaving us completely powerless.
Anger, and its partners:
resentment, envy,
pride, stubbornness.

Perhaps it is a sense of loneliness,
grief over a loss,
a sense of despair,
a feeling of hopelessness.
Perhaps it is worry and anxiety:
about health – your own, or someone else’s;
about a relationship, especially one that is on the rocks;
about money, even as the economy finally
seems to be improving your situation
may be getting worse.

When something controls us,
grabs hold and won’t let go,
we can never hope to be complete,
to be whole,
We can never hope to be at peace
unless and until we turn our lives over
to our Higher Power.

“Out of the depths I cry to you…”
and the promised response is sure,
the voice of our Lord
so quick with assurance in our anguish:
“Come to me, all you who are weary
and carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest,”
(Matthew 11:28)

“Lord hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive to the voice
of my supplications!”
And again comes the reassurance,
the measured, calm response:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name,
you are mine.
You are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you,
(Isaiah 43:2ff)

Our Higher Power
our Lord God through Jesus Christ
will make us whole,
will heal us,
complete us.
We have only to give ourselves over to God
in Christ,…through Christ, …with Christ.

“I wait for the Lord,
my soul waits,
and in his word I hope.
In his word I hope.”

And the gentle voice of God responds,
“You are heard my beloved child,
my beloved daughter, my beloved son.
You are heard and
I “give you a future with hope.”
(Jeremiah 29:11)

Turn to God –
who is power when we are powerless.
Turn and fall back into God’s everlasting, everloving arms
and find peace, wholeness, healing.
God’s still small voice in the wind
whispering in your ear,
“Shalom, beloved”.
AMEN