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July 19, 2009
Save Me From MyselfYou’ve probably never heard of Brian “Head” Welch. Ask a “tweener” or a teen-ager.” They’ll undoubtedly know; Brian “the Head” Welch was a guitarist with the Nu-Metal Band Korn. Never heard of Korn? Ask your teens to play a Korn song they’ve downloaded to their iPod; you’ll hear songs titled, A.D.I.D.A.S., an acronym for “All Day I Dream About Sex,” or lyrics to a Christmas song, Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, everybody was stoned, even the mouse... A Man from the courthouse, and me from jail, all just settled down, to get a piece of her (bleep)... When all of a sudden, I heard such a clatter, I tripped on my (bleep) and busted my (bleep)... I went downstairs, and what did I see, a fat little red (bleep), hanging from a tree... He stuffed the stockings, with reefers and beer, and a big (bleep bleep bleep), for the family (bleep)... That's the end of my story, wasn't it funny, you see... [your Christmas means nothing to me.] I added that last part, but that’s the gist of the remaining lyrics. Korn is big business. Since the debut album in 1993, Korn has had nine consecutive debuts in the top ten of the Billboard 200. To date, Korn has sold over 30 million albums worldwide while earning six Grammy nominations-two of which they have won. Brian Welch and his Korn band mates live very well; they want for nothing. On February 22, 2005, Brian informed his band mates that he was leaving the band. On March 10, 2005, Brian, together with several other people, was baptized in the River Jordan while on a tour of the Holy Land. Sixteen days after leaving Korn, Brian “Head” Welch became a Christian. What happened to this gifted guitarist head banging rock star whose book Save Me From My Self made the New York Times Top 20 Best Seller List? Some say Brian one day heard his 5 year-old daughter singing the words to Korn songs. Others contend that his addiction to methamphetamine-speed to keep him going, and Xanax... to help him sleep, drove him to the point of never wanting to wake up. In what must have been a moment of clarity, Brian checked in to a hotel room, threw himself on the bed, and prayed, “You are the Healer. Heal me.” Whatever it was that captured Brian’s heart, his story is an extreme example of repentance. His life in the darkness of drug and alcohol addiction, songs that promoted hatred of others and abuse of women, and untold money and possessions threatened to destroy him. Now clean and sober, his body is a living tapestry of his new-found devotion to Jesus, inked with tattoos of scripture:
There is a tattoo of a cross running down his neck and across his shoulders with the words Head to Christ draped over it. Brian Welch repented, he turned his head to Christ and in so doing experienced newness of life. That’s what it means to repent. Repentance is turning one’s life to Christ. It is turning to God because the path your life is on is the wrong path, a path which only diminishes life as it leads you deeper into the darkness of sin. To repent is to come to your senses. It is not so much something you do as something that happens. True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, “I’m sorry,” than to the future and saying, “Wow!” (Buechner; Wishful Thinking) Repentance, like forgiveness, frees you for the future by allowing you to be at peace with the past... we’ll always be shaped by that past, but never controlled by it. And like forgiveness, repentance is an experience driven by the nature of sin. When Lutheran Christians talk about sin, we are either talking about one of two things. First, we may not be talking about something we DO, but who we ARE. Theologians call this “original sin,” meaning that, as human beings, we are imperfect. We can’t do anything about this type of sin... original sin is a condition which we don’t have the capacity to stop; it is like a terminal illness for which nothing can be done. Original sin is a terminal condition from which none of us can escape... you, me, the former lead guitarist of Korn. Today’s Gospel addresses this type of sin. People asked a question that still gets asked in some way, shape or form on a regular basis, “Who sinned, that this man was born blind?” In other words, who messed up? Did he... or his parents? Jesus says something to the effect of, “No one sinned to cause this. People are imperfect... sinful... which means that sometimes people are born with imperfections.” Like the blind man in the story, each one of us is born with imperfections. And like the blind man, our only hope for healing of our imperfections, our sinfulness is through the grace of Jesus Christ. Then, there is the type of sin that we can do something about: cheating on an exam, failing to help someone, blowing through a stop sign, etc. These are sins of omission (things we should have done but didn’t) and sins of commission (things we did and wish we hadn’t). Of course, we can never fully stop sinning, but as today’s reading from Romans says, we aren’t simply to give up either. Rather, we are to strive for repentance. We are to do the best we can to “head to Christ” and experience the “Wow!” of living a life in Christ. What if I don’t feel like seeking repentance? What if I don’t want to head to Christ because of something I’ve done or should have done? Must one be repentant to be forgiven? There are sins in my life for which I may never be able to repentant. Not necessarily because I don’t want to, but because doing so is too painful; too painful to acknowledge my part in sinful behavior, too much resentment and anger towards those whose sinful behavior meted upon me caused such grievous pain and sorrow, too much shame for having to head to Christ and name and confess the sin. Choosing not to repent such sinfulness means that I’ll have to live with whatever the consequence or aftermath results; estrangement from loved ones or bitterness toward colleagues once trusted or unrelenting guilt for behavior contrary to a Christ-like life. For that which I cannot or will not repent... for all that I won’t head to Christ, all that is possible for me to do is to believe that more than anything else... more than “preaching good news to the poor or proclaiming release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, or setting at liberty those who are oppressed... ” Jesus came to save his people from their sin. Jesus came to save me from myself... Let us pray. |
St. Paul's Lutheran Church § 824 N. Lewis § Waukegan IL |
